Hey, You In The Back! - Requiem For A Dream, Highlander
Every Time I Die frontman Keith Buckley answers your burning cinematic questions. Sort of.
My favorite musician in a movie is Jared Leto in Requiem For A Dream. Do you consider him a musician who acts or an actor who dabbles in music? —Fred Hunt, North Ridgeville, OH
When most screen actors move to the stage, they usually go to Broadway. Jared Leto moved to Warped Tour, though it’s still just as much of an act. I would absolutely agree that his appearance in Requiem For A Dream is one of the greatest examples of a musician acting, but what about the oft forgotten actors who end up playing music? The crown in that category goes to Randy Mario Poffo who flawlessly went from the four-cornered stage as the “Macho Man” Randy Savage to the studio and cranked out the eloquent and moving ballad “Macho Thang.”
In one of the final scenes in Highlander, the bad guy quotes a Def Leppard song. Why? —Geoff Pollard, Kansas City, MO
You’re speaking of the scene in which the Kurgan tells Highlander, “It is better to burn out than to simply fade away” (From Def Leppard’s “Rock Of Ages”). I did some research and found out that it was actually a lyric from a 1979 Neil Young song (“Rust Never Sleeps”) that Def Leppard took and used in “Rock Of Ages” on Pyromania. However, it is most notoriously known for appearing in Kurt Cobain’s suicide note. So, considering the lyrics’ complicated timeline, I’d have to say that Kurgan used it because he was also a shitty, overrated musician.
