It didn’t win as many Oscars as Saving Private Ryan, make as much money as Forrest Gump, or define as many childhoods as the Toy Story trilogy, but That Thing You Do! is, without question, Tom Hanks’ best movie. Do not @ me. For one thing, there’s an exclamation point in the title. Movies with exclamation points in the title — Airplane!, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Win a Date With Tad Hamilton! — are always good. Also, “That Thing You Do!” might be the catchiest “fake” song — written by the very-real Adam Schlesinger, bassist for the pop-rock band Fountains of Wayne — in pop culture history.
Just don’t sing it around any of the Wonders.
Entertainment Weekly caught up with Tom Everett Scott, Johnathon Schaech, Steve Zahn, and Ethan Embry, better known as the One-ders, for a 20th-anniversary retrospective of That Thing You Do!. When asked about the fastest rising single in the history of the Playtone label, Embry responded, “I hate that song. I remember it reached that point of, like, ‘I can’t play this song one more time.’ ” Scott added, “It got to the point where it was totally appropriate to punch another person from the cast or crew if they were humming it off set.”
They don’t feel the same resentment for the song as they used to, but “I’m not going to, like, put it on my phone and jog to it,” Scott said. Shades was always more of a Cap’n Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters fan, anyways.
One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is when the Wonders hear their song on the radio for the first time, and they react like children getting the toy they wanted on Christmas morning. “You know, over the last 20 years, I can’t tell you the amount of people who have called me, or I’ve called them, when their song got on the air,” Schaech said. “When Jared Leto’s song went big time, I remember calling him up, saying, ‘I can’t freakin’ believe this, you’re on my radio right now.’ I know a lot of people who have, over social media, have hit me up and said, you’re not going to believe this, I just had a That Thing You Do! moment.” We should all have a That Thing You Do! moment at least once in our lives.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
