Wayne's World 1992
Rob's favorite music-movie moment (Bohemian Rhapsody in the car), though he can't name another song from the soundtrack besides Crucial Taunt's Ballroom Blitz cover.
The Big Picture · Discussion · Top Five · Interview
Top Five Movie Soundtracks
December 9, 2021/ 77 min/ Sean Fennessey · Rob Harvilla
Sean and Rob Harvilla argue about what actually makes a soundtrack great, then each run a five-deep countdown, before Sean talks to director John Maggio about his Robert Stigwood documentary Mr. Saturday Night.
28 films across 4 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
What makes a great soundtrackneedle drops vs. standalone albums
Ghostbusters 1984
The first soundtrack that ever hit Rob, via a cassette tape of Ray Parker Jr.'s title song when he was six.
The Breakfast Club 1985
Sean's example of the one-song-does-it-all soundtrack, via Don't You (Forget About Me).
Ferris Bueller's Day Off 1986
Sean's platonic ideal: the art-museum scene set to an instrumental Smiths cover permanently rewrote the song for him.
The Royal Tenenbaums 2001
Rob on Gwyneth Paltrow's bus entrance to Nico's These Days recontextualizing a song he thought he already knew.
Juno 2007
Rob tears up every time at the hospital scene set to Cat Power's cover of Sea of Love.
Palm Springs 2020
Both hosts' favorite movie of 2020; Rob on John Cale's Barracuda landing like someone reading his mind.
Rob Harvilla's Top Five Movie Soundtracks
Purple Rain 1984
No. 1. Rob's New Testament to the Harder They Come's Old Testament: Let's Go Crazy, When Doves Cry, Darling Nikki, staged in the film as a heel turn the crowd hates.
The Harder They Come 1972
No. 2. The reggae soundtrack's gateway drug, from Many Rivers to Cross to the title song; Rob thinks the record is better than the movie, and the movie is fine.
Once 2007
No. 3. The Irish busker film with Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová; their Oscar winner Falling Slowly anchors a soundtrack Rob calls more human than Garden State's.
Waiting to Exhale 1995
No. 4. Babyface-orchestrated murderer's row of 90s R&B: Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton's Let It Flow, Mary J. Blige's Not Gon' Cry, Brandy, Aretha, Patti LaBelle. Rob picks it over The Bodyguard despite I Will Always Love You being the bigger song.
Angus 1995
No. 5. Rob's dark-horse pick: a scruffy pop-punk soundtrack (Green Day, Weezer's Say It Ain't So, Ash, the Psychedelic Furs' Richard Butler covering his own Am I Wrong under the band name Love Spit Love) for a small bully movie with James Van Der Beek's first credit, plus George C. Scott and, he says, Rita Moreno.
Sean Fennessey's Top Five Movie Soundtracks
Super Fly 1972
No. 1. Curtis Mayfield's score-as-character album (Freddie's Dead, Give Me Your Love, Pusherman); Sean picked it before learning critic Greg Tate, who championed the film's Criterion release, had just died.
Goodfellas 1990
No. 2. Scorsese's needle drops (Rags to Riches by Tony Bennett, the Layla piano coda) chart the decades and shepherd Henry Hill's rise and fall.
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 2003
No. 3. Tarantino's most unusual soundtrack: almost entirely pre-existing film scores and TV themes, not pop songs, including the Green Hornet theme.
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 2004
No. 3 (paired with Vol. 1). Same collage approach, drawing on blaxploitation cues like Isaac Hayes's Truck Turner and spaghetti-western scores.
American Graffiti 1973
No. 4. George Lucas's teenage-cruising soundtrack of late-50s/early-60s pop; Sean calls it a clear influence on Licorice Pizza.
Juice 1992
No. 5. Ernest Dickerson's hip-hop soundtrack anchored by Eric B. & Rakim's title track and Cypress Hill's How I Could Just Kill a Man; Tupac Shakur (Bishop) doesn't appear on it because he wasn't signed to the label.
John Maggio on Mr. Saturday Night
John Maggio on
Mr. Saturday Night 2021
Maggio's HBO documentary on Robert Stigwood, the manager and producer who paired the Bee Gees to Saturday Night Fever and helped invent the movie soundtrack. Built almost entirely from archival footage; no talking-head interviews.
John Maggio on
Saturday Night Fever 1977
Stigwood's biggest gamble, made for a fraction of what it earned; Maggio calls it one of the darker American films once you look past the dance scenes.
John Maggio on
Jesus Christ Superstar 1973
One of the stage productions Stigwood turned into a film.
John Maggio on
Tommy 1975
Another Stigwood stage-to-screen production, from his run managing the Who.
John Maggio on
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 1978
Stigwood's big swing that missed, mentioned as the gamble that didn't pay off.
John Maggio on
Shaft 1971
Gordon Parks's biggest commercial hit, brought up because Maggio's prior documentary covered Parks and drew him toward this project.
John Maggio on
Elvis 2022
The Baz Luhrmann film producer Kevin McCormick (a key interview source) was shooting with Tom Hanks in Australia when Hanks announced his COVID diagnosis.
John Maggio on
Val 2021
Maggio's answer to the last-great-thing-he's-seen question: the Val Kilmer documentary, messy but affecting.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Named in passing CluelessThe CrowSinglesReality BitesGarden StateThe BodyguardLicorice PizzaJackie BrownOnce Upon a Time in HollywoodReservoir DogsPulp FictionHigh School HighFridayAbove the Rim
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