That Thing You Do!

Two Sundays ago, I watched That Thing You Do!, one of my favorite movies, for the first time in a long time. This was the first time either Frank or his mom saw it. That is one of those movies that you have to watch a few times because there is always new stuff to it, layers that you didn't see before. Not another layer, but this time, I realized that Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcolm in the Middle) was the astronaut interviewed on the show-within-the-movie Hollywood Showcase.

Last week, Steve Zahn, who played Lenny in TTYD, interviewed on Preston & Steve. Preston asked Steve Zahn about if he sang on TTYD. I thought I had heard that Tom Hanks (the writer, director, and supporting actor) wanted the movie to be very realistic, so the actors in the band did everything. Steve Zahn said that Fountains of Wayne actually performed the songs. They said that Steve Zahn could have performed the song, but they went through a lot in preproduction, so FoW stayed.

Dad investigated more:

I was checking around on the web and found that Adam Schlesinger, bassist of FoW, wrote the title song from TTYD. There was like a writing contest and his take on the song won over about 2000 other entries. He said that FoW has never done the song live because it doesn't have anything to do with FoW. I haven't seen any mention of FoW playing on the soundtrack.

I have the TTYD soundtrack. Now that I think about it, it does sound like FoW.