While I agree the movie had a lot of problems and several of your questions are legitimate, I disagree with drilling down on the name of the movie in this way.
The reason they named it Proud Mary is in the description given of the song "It was obviously a metaphor about leaving painful, stressful things behind for a more tranquil and meaningful life." That was what she wanted, to leave her life as an assassin and have a peaceful life with her new charge.
Also, many people, particularly African -American people, are way more familiar with the Tina Turner version of the song. I get Mr. Fogerty needing to speak up, but as you said he doesn't own the rights and they jumped through the necessary hoops to use the title and song. Despite its problems, because of the song's meaning, Mary's issues, and her dreams the name is appropriate.
BTW; someone I know saw it; told me I would hate it until the very last scene. I like her as an actor, so I'll see it. I thank the write for their true opinion.
Interesting article, but would suggest Proud Mary is the most famous rock song about anyone named Mary -- am willing to bet the Latin hymn Ave Maria is at least equally famous as a song (with all due respect and affection for John Fogarty!)
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I felt the same way about the movie "Good Morning Vietnam" using Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" during the scene with a napalm-fueled firefight. It took a nice song and clubbed us over the head with irony. It was bad art and so is this.
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If Fogerty owns the rights to the song and it was used without his permission, he has reason to sue and would probably win. If he doesn't own the rights, he sounds like a crotchety old man and should get on with his life.
"Proud Mary" is John Fogerty's song. He wrote it, even though he no longer owns the rights to it. As the author of this classic rock song, he should be able to express whatever opinion he has about how it's used. He is not a crotchety old man. He, more than anyone, should be able to present his view on how his material is used, by other musicians or on film.
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this screenwriter was previously inspired to re-make cassavete's, gloria with sharon stone,
he recycled the story yet again here with "urban" casting.
shoulda called it "gloria tre'
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cant watch her.....alwys has big chip on her shoulder, even on the talk shows ...
I marched with 300,000 proud Mary's strong yesterday in Chicago. Millions more walked all round the globe. Nary a single one would pick up a gun to shoot another human being. So why is Hollywood desecrating women? Isn't it time to start celebrating them?
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...to the author's question I have another; why are they using Nina Simone's music, voice and lyrical adaptation for everything under the sun after the horrible, atrocious treatment of her?
Answer that questions and touche,' what goes around at some time or another comes around!
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Whomever owns the rights approved the commercial use of Nina's music.
..just putting it out there; it was not out there while she was alive is all I am saying.
Maybe Zaentz can dance. (You had to be there)
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And Yoko Ono allowed Nike to use The Beatles' "Revolution" until Paul McCartney issued a "cease & desist" order. I'm sure John Lennon and Paul wrote it to sell sneakers. Please note sarcasm.
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There is no creativity in Hollywood. I have not been to the movies in years because the movies that they are making are awful and lack creativity. I do not want to see one Black person killing another Black person, we have enough of that in the real world. I am not interested in seeing the movie, Proud Mary, however, I do like the song by Ike and Tina Turner.
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I don't want to see one White person killing another White person. I see enough of that in the real world.
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“probably the best-known song about anybody named Mary.”
Ave Maria, etc, etc.
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Seth, I thought the same when I read it.
Artists really need to control all rights to their songs,
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"probably the best-known song about anybody named Mary"--? What about "Ave Maria"!?
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Ike & Tina Turner's "Proud Mary" is part of the soundtrack of the weekly exercise class at my mother's nursing home. Nothing will put a smile on your face faster than watching nonagenarians wriggle and bop in their chairs, doing their damnedest to clap on the two and four beat, sing at the same time, and occasionally throw a kick in the air.
It's a much healthier use of the song. John Fogarty should be proud.
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Ave Maria is also pretty well known, especially the Schubert and the Gounod compositions.
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The point isn't hard to discern; it is just that it is meaningless to the film. The point is look, diversity.
Legend around here is that the song references the "Mary Elizabeth," a riverboat that worked the Mississippi and docked here in Memphis.
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"Mary Is a Grand Old Name" by George M. Cohan has been America's champion "girl named Mary" pop song for more than 110 years. Case closed. Please turn out the lights when you leave.
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The best known song about anybody named Mary? Maybe the best known secular song. Or maybe Leonard Bernstein's "Maria" from "West Side Story" would be a worthy contender for that title.
My guess though is that a certain somebody named Mary (or Miriam where she was born over 2000 years ago ) generated more songs in her honor, with more staying power, than all the Marys who ever walked the earth combined. The text of the "Hail Mary" prayer has been set by innumerable composers; several of these "Ave Maria" settings have been staples in church choirs since the Renaissance and are also sung in university "early music" concerts, such as the ones I once sang in. Let's not forget the popular Christmas carols, which encompass not just the old German and British carols that have made their way into American carol sings, but the more modern Gospel songs such as "Mary had a baby."
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An adaptation of "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" (Sound of Music) might have made more sense.
Personally, I prefer The Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix. Caron Wheeler, formerly of Soul II Soul did a wondrous version of the song too.
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Hardly ever go to movies, but this is a hilarious review. Thanks Wesley Morris, I needed a laugh this morning.
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Never did like Tina's sped-up version of the tune. Lost the groove.
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I remember Ike and Tina Turner opening for the Stones at Madison Square Garden in 1969. They belted Proud Mary to the upper circles of the arena. (B.B. King was also on the bill.) Tina had to persuade us to accept the soul version. She succeeded, as if we were at a Sam & Dave concert. Mr. Fogerty got his revenge on Motown when he did an endless version of I Heard It Through the Grapevine shortly after. Not quite tit for tat. It was a meeting of rock cultures, if not races. Brit Pop, Psychedelia, Soul. It was all there on the same shelf in vinyl.
It took the song less than a year to lose its hippy patina. That was nearly half a century ago, in 1969, before you were born, Mr Morris. BTW, it is not just the film that has decontextualized the song.
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Aw, come on; John Fogerty's song is merely the hook being used by the studio's sales department. It's a well-known song, needless to say, so the filmmakers decided to name the heroine "Mary" and allow the song to sell the film. Such creativity! Such originality!! Come to think of it, perhaps they should have named the heroine "America" and called the movie "America the Beautiful."
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I thought Mr. Fogerty would be more upset about Leonard Nimoy's cover of Proud Mary than this movie's title. Is it just me, or does the font for the movie title try to make the movie seem like Taratino's JACKIE BROWN. It's not. Not even close.
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Say, this reminds me of that Whoopi Goldberg movie Jumping Jack Flash. That also used the song whose name it took, and it also had little to do with the lyrics. That movie didn’t do too well with critics, either.
Instead, watch the Archers’ film Stairway to Heaven. That movie in fact actually has such a stairway.
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Dear CA Meyer,
Ah, that was a pretty lousy movie, BUT the song did have an integral part in the plot. There was a clue that the key was in the song "Jumpin' Jack Flash", and Whoopi went nuts over the lyrics for awhile before realizing the key was B flat. Spoiler there, I know, but who really cares at this late date.
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Dear CA: Your beginning the comment with "Say...." brought to mind Edgar Kennedy in a Little Rascals short.
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Poor Mr. Fogerty is still feeling the sting of having his song rights ripped away from him through shady management contracts (and credulous band mates).
That's right, he wrote all those classic CCR songs and earns not a single penny each and every time they are used for a commercial, tv show, movie... He also has zero input as to how the songs are used. Remeber that 'Fortunate Son' car commercial?
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How could such a bright and talented man give away his song rights? Was he drug addled at the time?
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"...not a single penny..."...really?...that really is unbelievable...it's a wonder that can't be fixed after all this time...who does have the rights?
Instead of complaining on Facebook, why doesn't Fogerty buy back his songs?
Thank you for a very funny and/but/yet pointed review !
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"Proud Mary" is NOT the most famous song written about anyone named Mary because -- as you had Mr Fogerty immediately disclose -- it's about a riverboat!
Anyhow, there was also this Mary who had a little lamb . . .
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"Ave Maria" is a pretty well known song too.
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and, of course, Along Comes Mary by the Association...
Mary had a little coupe
Whose doors were riddled with holes
And Mary walked wherever she went
That thing refused to go
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Who cares about the music/movie cohesion? Its Taraji Henson playing a badass woman on a mission. Nobody can do it better, and that's why we will flock to see it.
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I'm reminded of the time that a Republican presidential candidate's campaign (George W. Bush, 2000?) was using Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A" as flag-waving warm-up music at rallies. Springsteen objected with the question: "Haven't they ever listened to the lyrics?"
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It was Reagan.
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Actually, Springsteen was upset whenever a Republican used one of his songs as a campaign song. But that's another story.
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Good article. This kind of popular song mis-appropriation thing drives me and many people completely crazy.
And it's not just due to the mismatch of lyrics with story. In 'Thor: Ragnarok', during not one, but two, separate action sequences of Thor kicking butt, to my utter surprise and confusion, Led Zeppelin's 'Immigrant Song', the original head-banging heavy metal song, revved up on the soundtrack. One could say the vaguely Teutonic lyrics were a close enough thematic match... but I still objected to the use of a song that had nothing at all to do with the world of the film, and was misappropriated from my fondly-remembered adolescence. Far too jarring for my aesthetics!
However, Millennials unfamiliar with the song apparently instantly dug it, and bought the song online by the tens of thousands. The filmmakers, and Led Zep's surviving members, must have been delighted, but the whole episode made me feel like an old fogey.
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The Immigrant Song has been overused & pounded into the ground due to the Main theme /Riff. It really invokes the metal & mayhem & is going to be overused & ripped off a thousand more times in Movies & Series.
Same thing has happened with "Barracuda" by Heart. Totally overplayed and stolen. Just how many original riffs using E Pentatonic Power chords & Riffs can there possibly be to slam?
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Sorry to disagree but lines like "Valhalla I am coming" are more than appropriate in Ragnarok. As well as those preceding that line.
Ah-ah, ah!
Ah-ah, ah!
We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow
The hammer of the gods
W'ell drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde, and sing and cry
Valhalla, I am coming!
On we sweep with threshing oar
Our only goal will be the western shore
Ah-ah, ah!
Ah-ah, ah!
We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow
How soft your fields so green
Can whisper tales of gore
Of how we calmed the tides of war
We are your overlords
On we sweep with threshing oar
Our only…
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Thank you for reviewing the movie, Mr. Morris (not that I was ever going to come close to watching it anyway). Another hot woman holding a handgun in a promo photo. How original! Ugh.
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When Stanley Kubrick decided to keep his temporary classical score for 2001 A Space Odyssey, and jettison the commissioned score, he began a trend that has been abused by lesser directors ever since.
Scorsese was about the first to use pop hits as narrative, (in Mean Streets). but he's Scorsese, and knew how, and that worked too.
More often, it's a lazy way to prop up weak film making with someone else's art. I completely understand Fogerty's complaint, but if Hollywood understood artists, or art, it wouldn't be Hollywood.
The best advise was from Faulkner, (roughly): "I go to Hollywood and throw a screenplay over a big wall, and they throw over a bag of cash, and I go home." It works for songs too.
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They’ve been using “One Way or Another” by Blondie to advertise Swiffer Wet Jets. They’re not even editing the lyrics or anything—like they don’t understand the song is about being stalked by an ex-boyfriend.
In the commercial, this guy is mopping his kitchen while Debbie Harry sings, “I will drive past your house / And if the lights are all down, / I’ll see who’s around.”
If one line of the song seems to fit they’ll use it regardless of how inappropriate the true context is.
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I think it's a little silly to expect any meaningful song choices, or plot, from an obvious formula shoot-em-up like this. It's great that this one is possibly the first in the subgenre to star a black woman, it's good for diversity and so on. Previously these women have been mostly led by white men, black men, Asian men, white women, and possibly a Hispanic man, and Asian woman or two.
But from the commercials this just looked like the standard Vin Diesel vehicle, or the worse Jet Li movies. No deeper meaning, no clever self-mockery, just killing a lot of two dimensional bad guys, car chases, and misused classic rock tunes.
So just as one shouldn't look for intelligent, truthful statements from Trump, one shouldn't look for coherence from a standard shoot-em-up. If y'all want to see a good shoot-em-up movie, watch "Shoot 'Em Up", with Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti; very inventive and sometimes hilarious.
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THE gunplay Macho Man Man movie to end all Man Man movies
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Sorry, that should have been "previously these movies" not "women". I guess I proved there that my subconscious is nearly always focused on women, or something.
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I don't like A-Ha's "Take on Me" being used for Hood cottage cheese. One of the most passionate rock songs (and possibly the best rock video) in the past 40 years, being used for something as bland as ... cottage cheese.
When are artists going to get it together and retain the rights to their songs?
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I really like every thing Wesley writes and the different style he brings to the Times. But I wonder if hes being too literal here. Tina Turners version of Proud Mary can't help but to suggest the metaphor between the powerful riverboat rolling down the river and Tina herself. The Creedence version would never suggest anything like that and Tina made the song her own because of it
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I haven't seen this film and don't plan to, either. Just sounds like yet another tired old reboot from imagination-free Hollywood. See the original "Gloria" with Gena Rowlands (and not the first laughable reiteration with Sharon Stone).
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I had one of my best, though much too brief, moments in time, when that great song was playing, back in the day! But, I still think Bad Moon Rising was CCR’s greatest, and so upbeat! Nonetheless, let’s not forget, Mary Had A Little Lamb, when mentioning the top song, that talks about a Mary!
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I think a better Mary song was "The Wind Cries Mary", by Jimi Hendrix of course. And actually, the lyrics are a bit of a better fit for this movie.
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Or perhaps Along Comes Mary by The Association, written by Tandyn Allmer.
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Good point! I’ll take all three Mary’s, but the Proud one, which got away, because of my foolishness and timing, remains number one as a song, and number two in my ......By the way the name Mary is from the Hebrew, which many folks are not aware of!!!
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Twenty-One Guns by Green Day being used in the 2nd Transformers movie should be on the list. The opening lines are "Do you know what's worth fighting for/when it's not worth dying for?" and it only gets more mismatched from there. I assume Green Day granted the use of the song as a joke.
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The movie sounds quite awful. As for use of the song, you just have to laugh. Creedence being one of my favorites, I've always been highly entertained by the use of "Fortunate Son" in TV commercials portraying flag-waving patriotism. You get great instrumentals and the lyrics "some folks are born, made to wave the flag, ooh their red, white and blue!" But for some reason they don't really use any of the other lyrics, like the chorus.
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I think that the only time I've ever heard "Fortunate Son" used appropriately was in the first Vietnam scene in "Forrest Gump". Fortunate Son indeed!
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I love Creedence and their music was part of my life when the Vietnam war was raging, but it has been used so much in movies that it has almost become cliche. I saw "The Post" yesterday and there was Creedence again in the war scenes.
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The most entertaining was when Fogerty sang it during the Super Bowl halftime show, effectively right in the face of Bush 43, who was a "Fortunate Son" if there ever was one. I'm sure he loved it.
But Bush probably got all patriotic and teary-eyed over "Born in the USA", too.
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I would like to know what Mr. Morris thought of the use of the song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" to advertise Marvel's superhero film Black Panther.
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Please, say it ain't so. It is fortunate that Gil Scott-Heron is dead so he doesn't have to be mortified by that.
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