Fans of That Thing You Do!
Several of the cast are having a "watch party" tonight at 7pm ET of what is one of my favorite films. They will be gathering via an online Zoom chat and live-streaming that event
on their You Tube channel.
This is all brought about because of the Coronavirus crisis and the recent death of Fountain of Wayne frontman Adam Schlesinger--who wrote the titular song of/for the film.
Here's an article giving details on the event.
Should be fun! All the participating cast--and viewers--will be pushing "play" on their copies of the film at the same time and the cast will be talking/commenting all the way through.
The TTYD Watch Party was tons of fun. Lots of stories from the cast. Besides the four Wonders (Tom Everett Scott, Steve Zahn, Jonathan Schaech and Ethan Embry, we also heard from Colin Hanks, Giovanni Ribisi,and Kevin Pollak. Colin read a message from Tom Hanks. No Charlize Theron. And they took great pains to say Liv Tyler wanted to participate but that she was in the UK and it was in the middle of the night there.
There was just no way I could miss this TTYD event. There were more than 20k people waiting for the event to start (so it said on their YT page). The comments (mostly quotes from the movie) were flying by so fast that it was literally difficult to keep up. So...much...fun. The gang engaged in non-stop talking and showing off cool stuff from the filming. The only time they went quiet was when they were captivated by two scenes from the film: the iconic scene in which the band hears its song on the radio for the first time and the scene at the very end when Guy kisses Faye as the movie is closing.
About that scene in which the band members all heard their song on the radio for the first time (at the same time), each one of the cast said how impactful that scene has been for fans and for themselves the first times they saw it, too!
Fantastic. I hope it becomes available again...but they were fearful of showing too much from the film during the chat for fear of breaking copyright laws and being shut down by YT. So, maybe not.
They were very clear that the audience was to start their own viewing of the movie in their home (the theatrical edition) so as to constitute a legit "watch party." That particular gambit worked very well. My HT was perfectly timed to the one at Tom Everett Scott's house.
One of the other observations was about how this is a film which really doesn't have a bad guy in it (although Jonathan Schaech shared a story about how his young son recently watched the film for the first time and was mad at him for the way he treated Faye!). Just a string of positive events held together by a superb cast, catchy music and solid, very quotable writing. It is pretty cool that the band members really seem to enjoy each other's company, stay in contact quite often, and look back so favorable on their time together during the shooting.
