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Robin Tunney stars as Zoe Adler, a girl obsessed with
1970s and 1980s love songs, in writer/director Finn
Taylor's Cherish.
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In director Finn Taylor's latest film, Cherish, The Human League's sugary '80s Pop song "(Keep Feeling) Fascination" plays on the radio, while geeky computer animator Zoe Adler (Robin Tunney) is forced to stay in her apartment under the electronic bracelet program.
In real life, Taylor heard "(Keep Feeling) Fascination" while listening to an AM radio station during a drive from California to Oregon. The songs continued to turn gooier. Before the trip was over, Taylor heard "She's Gone" by Hall and Oates, "Happy Together" by The Turtles and "Cherish" by The Association. Putting these 1970s and 1980s love songs into a movie he was beginning to write became a personal goal.
"When you're writing a screenplay, there's a point where you visually see it happening in your head," Taylor says, speaking recently from New York City. "I was driving from rural California to rural Oregon and I could only get this AM station that was playing the best love songs of all time all the time.
"You got these sugary melodies, but the lyrics are obsessive. Like Hall and Oates' 'Private Eyes', 'private eyes are watching you, they see your every move,' or 'Cherish,' 'If I could hold you like a thousand other guys or mold you into someone who would cherish me as much as I cherish you.' These are intense lyrics and I thought that would work well."
With Cherish, Taylor moves the music to the forefront. Basically, a song like "Private Eyes" by Hall and Oates becomes part of the characters in the film. When Taylor created the character Zoe Adler, he used Pop music to help tell her story.
Taylor worked closely with Cherish's music supervisor, helping choose the songs that appear in the movie. His hope was to create a marriage between a Pop song like "I Melt With You" by Modern English and the film's subject matter. Taylor chose songs for the emotions they elicit from listeners. Movie magic is about its score. Cherish's Pop songs help make the movie intentionally slight, upbeat and recognizable.
"The idea was that we were creating a tonal compass," Taylor says. "We wanted humor and really good songs. We also wanted songs that were big enough hits to spark a memory. Stevie Wonder was too tasteful and too complex for the film. During the scene where Zoe is running through the streets, I thought about using the theme song to The Streets of San Francisco, but I decided it was too broad. We were trying to walk a line between funny and not too funny."
Like much film music, Cherish's soundtrack is a product for studio-owned record labels. Its Pop soundtrack also functions as a commercial for the movie. Audiences will recognize the songs, and hopefully, they will want to see the show.
With Titanic, audiences think of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On."
If Taylor has his way, after watching Cherish people will think of Soft Cell and "Tainted Love."
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