The first time that I can truly remember a song in a movie hitting its mark with me in the theater came in the opening credits of The Breakfast Club.  When Simple Minds’ Don’t You Forget About Me came pounding through the speakers, I instantly loved the song, immediately understood what I was getting in the film and became uncontrollably happy about the melding of the two.

Actually, you’ve got to give John Hughes credit for a lot of what we think of as the modern soundtrack.  He was one of the first to compile songs he liked and work them seamlessly into the films he was making.  Along with one of the best opening tracks in that Simple Minds song, he also is responsible for one of the most iconic ending scenes with musical accompaniment after he sat Molly Ringwald on the table across from the boy of her dreams with a birthday cake between them at the end of Sixteen Candles, then cranked up the Thompson Twins’ If You Were Here as they leaned in for the kiss that changed countless pre-teen and teen lives in the early 80s.

Thank you, John Hughes, for those.   (Not to mention for National Lampoon’s Vacation and Ferris Bueller and Weird Science and a sizable chunk of my adolescent entertainment.)

I love a good movie soundtrack.  Most recently, we’ve been enjoying the one for Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist (which given the title would have been a sad movie had it not had a decent soundtrack).  Like the Hughes movie soundtracks, Nick and Nora is really a compilation, not an album.  It is a great compilation, as are other favorites of mine, Garden State and Grosse Pointe Blank.  But that is not to say that a soundtrack (or for that matter, a mix tape) should be considered a work of artistic achievement in itself.

Take the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack (and I’m considering both volumes as a double album here).  It has a couple of my favorite Specials tunes and a couple of great Clash songs.  Sprinkle in some Violent Femmes, Pixies and The Jam, along with some kitsch like the Dazz Band and 99 Luftballoons, and you’ve got a good listen.  You’ve captured a moment, but you haven’t created anything really.  It is packaging.  I’ll buy it, of course but ….

There is another, more satisfying kind of soundtrack album.  Every once in awhile, you get an album that was actually written for the movie, as opposed to merely included in the film.  Or the oddest phenomenon which would be “inspired by” the movie even though the songs don’t appear in the flick.

(That said, one great “inspired by” album is the I Am Sam soundtrack.  Great artists doing great Beatles covers.  Worth a spin.)

My two favorite soundtracks that actually are an integral — or I should say inseparable — part of the movie are Once and Magnolia.

Some people don’t like the movie Once, so I’ve stopped recommending it.  (Well, I still recommend it, but I’ve stopped expecting people to like it as much as I do.)  My wife and I got the soundtrack first and then watched the movie.  I think that this helped tremendously.  It is a small film.  Just a simple love story without much in the way of a script or a plot.  The main character for me was the music as acted and performed by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová.  It is almost a concert film.  And it is a beautiful little piece of work — both the movie and the soundtrack.

Magnolia is a different thing altogether.  Aimee Mann’s collection of songs written for the movie also cannot be separated from the film itself in my mind.  However, while I can’t imagine not having heard what I consider to be Mann’s best album, I can take or leave the film itself.  The best parts were when Mann’s songs were on screen.  The rest kind of plodded along.  It didn’t help that we watched it on DVD and somehow decided to view the entire director’s cut and extras, turning the whole thing into a four-hour ordeal.  But I’m getting away from the important point here — Aimee Mann got more out of the movie than I did and the resulting tracks are absolutely amazing.  Go buy them now.

Which brings me to last cryptic part of the title.  The Oscar for best soundtrack for an unproduced screenplay goes to … Anna’s Letters by Michael Landweber and Jonathan Phillips.  (The crowd goes wild.)  OK, so we wrote this little script that I love but no one wanted to buy.  It’s still available if anyone is looking to shoot a film about a girl whose father commits suicide leaving her with an irresponsible aunt who takes her on a road trip to find her absentee mother with the ghost of the father and an asthmatic best friend tagging along.  I came up with a soundtrack (of the compilation variety) when we were writing it.  That awesome album’s track list follows:

1. So. Central Rain - R.E.M.

2. Frankenstein - Aimee Mann

3. That’s Just What You Are - Aimee Mann

4. She’s Got a Problem - Fountains of Wayne

5. Angel Mine - Cowboy Junkies

6. Sweetness Follows - R.E.M.

7. Better Days (live) - Dar Williams

8. I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones

9. All Mine - Dance Hall Crashers

10. Don’t Get Your Back Up - Sarah Harmer

11. Center of Attention - Guster

12. Right in Time - Lucinda Williams

13. As Cool As I Am - Dar Williams

14. Either Way - Guster

15. Lodestar - Sarah Harmer

16. Life Is Sweet - Natalie Merchant

17. Rome Wasn’t Built In a Day - Morcheeba

18. Kind and Generous - Natalie Merchant