The Projector #36: RIP Adam Schlesinger (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

The Next Picture Show is a movie podcast, so pardon this only movie-adjacent newsletter, but we were all hit pretty hard by the death of Adam Schlesinger, who died yesterday at the age of 52 as the result of COVID-19. But, since this is a movie podcast, let’s open with Schlesinger’s highest profile film contribution: the title song to the 1996 Tom Hanks’ movie That Thing You Do! (You’re going to hear a variation on this sentiment in an upcoming podcast, but bear with me anyway.) The way you know the song “That Thing You Do” is great is that you ought to be sick of it. Even catchy songs can become tiresome when played too often, and the movie plays the sole hit cut by The Wonders (or “The Oneders”) over and over again as the band makes its way across the country. It ought to wear out its welcome by the end, or sooner. But it sounds great every time. In fact, why don’t you give it a listen now? 

Schlesinger was just starting out as a songwriter when he wrote the song, which appeared the same year as his best-known music project, Fountains of Wayne. Schlesinger cofounded the band with singer/songwriter Chris Collingwood, and where “That Thing You Do” offered a shiny, irresistible pastiche of post-Beatles pop, Fountains of Wayne dragged that aesthetic into the final years of the 20th century and beyond. There’s not a bad album in the band’s catalog, but if I had to pick a favorite it would be 1999’s Utopia Parkway, a semi-concept album about suburban malaise. It didn’t sell, but their next one, Welcome Interstate Managers, had the group’s biggest hit, “Stacy’s Mom” (another great song that somehow stands up to being played over and over again).

But you could put together a pretty nice playlist just from Schlesinger’s contributions to movies and television, be it “Way Back Into Love” from Music and Lyrics or “Pretend to Be Nice” from the great Josie and the Pussycats. That’s to say nothing of the 100+ songs Schlesinger co-wrote for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or his other bands, like Ivy. For a fuller sense of his work, read this New York Times overview. There’s a sense of love and discovery to Schlesinger’s work, as if he never tired of figuring out what he could do with pop music (or ran out of ideas to try). That he was also, by all accounts, an all-around decent guy is no small thing, either. 

Music writer Cary Rose observed on Twitter that “None of us are ready for the obituaries we are going to have to write” as the coronavirus spreads. Certainly Schlesinger — solidly middle-aged, seemingly in good health, still extremely active professionally — was on nobody’s death pool. But these are strange, awful times and you can go crazy thinking about what we’ve lost, what losses lie ahead, and wondering how much of it could be prevented. This newsletter doesn’t have any answers, but one thing we can do is shine a lot on the great work that’s left behind, the things they did.

That’s a bum note on which to end, and it’s unlikely that this week’s Contagion episode will offer much in the way to cheer anyone up. Sorry! Maybe some of these articles will provide some distraction?

• Or… maybe not? But you can prep for an upcoming episode by reading this great New Yorker essay on Todd Haynes’ Safe, which features a cameo from a Scott Tobias interview.

• And, if you want to read two different reflections on High Fidelity’s 20th anniversary, Scott Tobias has one at The Guardian and Keith Phipps has a personal essay about the movie in Chicago magazine.

• What would COVID-19-themed episodes of your favorite shows look like? Vulture’s Maria Elena Fernandez went to some showrunners to find out.