I know what you're thinking. Eddie and the Cruisers isn't about writers at all. It's about a band, a group of musicians. True. But we covered Bob Dylan earlier, so we clearly have a precedent for musical creatives here. (Of course, I do realize that Dylan was also a poet, and a Nobel-winning writer.) Stick with me here, anyway. I promise this music movie has a lot to say to us writers of prose too.
Let's get the cast together first.
- Eddie Wilson, guitar, lead vox
- Frank Ridgeway, keys
- Sal Amato, bass
- Wendell Newton, sax
- Joann Carlino, backing vox
- Kenny Hopkins, drums
Now, a brief recap of the plot for anyone unfortunate enough not to have seen this awesome flick. Eddie Wilson is a garage band idol with lots of raw energy and talent and charisma, but he wants to be more -- he wants to be a legend. He wants to leave a mark. Only, when he couldn't, he took his own life. Maybe. Now it's years later and a music mag wants to do a story on the band's unfinished and unreleased final album. Only that ends up turning into a search for the missing tapes through the Cruisers' history and remaining band members who are still alive.
Eddie brought the show and sizzle, but the magic? Well, the magic came from the lyrics. Even the record company realizes that. While discussing the idea of doing an article on the band years after Eddie disappeared, one of the publishing guys says early in the film: "Guy on piano was Frank Ridgeway. He wrote all their lyrics. Called him the Wordman."
I've always liked that. The Wordman. After all, as a writer, as a storyteller, it's what we do. We are all "The Wordman." (Ignoring the masculine reference this time for the sake of the movie script.) It's a moniker Frank earns right off the bat when the band asks him what he thinks about a song as they rehearse in the bar.
