Produced by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich; written by Bob Seger
Polygram International 566591 1998 Did not make pop charts
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I had all these friends--not really cinephiles, but literate, educated friends--who loved John Sayles movies and loved Spike Lee movies. And yes, there were things I liked about all those movies. But far too frequently I found myself wishing that Sayles would be something more than a novelist with moving pictures that didn't move enough, and that Lee would be more than a kinetic cinematician with bumper-sticker dialogue.
After a while, I realized what I really wanted. I wanted Sayles to write a screenplay that Lee filmed--great scenes, great shot composition, all around good movie. I've never believed in the hyphenate in cinema. (Woody Allen's two best screenplays, for example, are the ones on which he had a collaborator.) Some people should just write and some people should just direct and some people should just perform.
I feel that way about pop music too sometimes. Since Dylan and the Beatles, there's been this real emphasis on singer-songwriters, but is it really such a great thing that Lindsay Lohan felt she needed to write songs on her albums in order to be "real"? My favorite single of hers is still "Ultimate," the one she did on the Freaky Friday soundtrack. It almost certainly won't make the cut for this list, but it's catchy and she sells it. It's just about right for her. Thank God she didn't feel the need to rewrite it into a soul-baring ballad about her relationship with her father.
Anyway, this Metallica single is for me the equivalent of my dream Sayles-Lee collaboration. Seger has a better eye for synecdochal (rather than allegorical) detail than Lars and James ever did, but when they sing Seger's lyrics they sound genuinely burnt out. As you may have guessed by now, I'm a big fan of covers, as long as they're the right ones.
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