131. She Likes the Boys in the Band

131. "I Want You To Want Me" by Cheap Trick

In the write-up for song #190, I talked about how that song was part of a movie script about a man who travels back in time using music. The song "I Want You To Want Me" is part of a different movie script idea.

I've had in my head for a number of years a story about a group of five high school nerds/misfits that have a miserable 9th and 10th grade experience--mocked by the cool kids, bullied by the jocks, ignored by the hot chicks, and belittled by one group of preps that also have their own rock band that has won the school's battle of the bands competition for the last three years. The boys get together on the last day of school and commit to do something drastic during the summer to not have the same thing happen in 11th grade. (Yes, I know it's an old idea that's been beat to death in movies for decades, but I still like it, and I bet you it'd make money if anyone ever made the movie.)

Two of the boys are in the school's guitar class, where their teacher makes them play classical pieces that none of the kids like. One of these guitarist is really into Cheap Trick, and idolizes Rick Nielsen, the lead guitar for Cheap Trick. Two other boys play in the percussion section of the school's orchestra, and their music teacher makes them play pieces they don't like either. These two also share all of the rest of their school classes, including advanced chemistry. The fifth kid is in the school choir because his mother makes him. The choir sings modern songs that all the kids like. However, this boy is assigned to sing harmony parts and never gets to solo or sing the melodies. He's always in the background, never up front.

On the last day of school, these kids get together at lunch and talk about what a rotten year they had and how they don't think they can take another three years of it all. They fantasize about what they want the next year to be like--they're popular, they aren't bullied anymore, and they get the chicks. Then they start talking about what they'd have to do to make that happen. Among the other ideas, one of them suggests that they form a rock band, but the idea gets shot down by the boy in the choir.

The first day of summer, the singer finds out that his mother is going to Europe with her new boyfriend. He's excited to go with them, but then is crushed when he finds out that they aren't taking him but rather leaving him with the mother's weird old uncle for the summer. The uncle lives on an old dilapidated farm inside the city limits that's been surrounded by suburban housing projects. The uncle is under a lot of pressure from the city government and some developers to sell the farm or have it taken away for failure to pay back-taxes. (A Duke's of Hazard plot that never gets old!)

The boy invites his other four friends to come over to the uncle's house to play some video games, but the kid who was supposed to bring the game console forgot it. They start arguing about whether or not to go back on the city bus to get the console, and the uncle hears them. He tells them he's got some old video games that they can play, and when they investigate it, he's got an old copy of Guitar Hero along with all the instruments for the game. The two guitar players freak out and start playing the game with "I Wanna Be Sedated" as the song. One of the percussionists hops on the drum set, while the other gets on the keyboards. The singer watches and laughs while they rock out to the song. The uncle watches them from the doorway. Afterwards, he claps and tells them they ought to form a band. The singer says no, but the others are enthusiastic about the idea now. The uncle tells them he used to be in a band back in the 70s, and he still has all the band's equipment stored out in the barn. He takes them out and shows them the equipment, and they put it all together and start jamming. The singer doesn't want to participate, but the others have a great time, and they ask if they can come back the next day to play some more. The uncle says yes before the singer can shut the idea down.

The kids practice over then next few weeks and begin to plot how they can win the high school's battle-of-the-bands competition at the beginning of the school year. The weird uncle has some of his former bandmates over one day, and they all teach the boys how to rock it pre-MTV style. They say how back before MTV started up, it didn't matter how you looked, as long as you were good at playing and singing, you had a chance. But these guys are all pretty ugly, so music videos killed their careers. Still, they talk about how the last time they played they put on a show with lights and pyrotechnics that really rocked.

The next day, the chemists bring over their chemistry set and start experimenting with the pyrotechnics, and they end up blowing up all sorts of things on the farm. The boys continue to practice throughout the summer and have more and more fun on the farm doing all sorts of crazy things, including blowing up more stuff.

The singer's mother returns from Europe without her boyfriend, and the boy moves back into his own home before school starts. At school, the boys get treated worse than before by the student-body when it is revealed that they have signed up for the battle of the bands. But they still decide to go ahead with the battle, since they have nothing to lose at this point.

The competition has a bunch of bands in it, and we see the preps' band do very well with their song. When it's the boys' turn, they get off to a great start with their song--"School's Out" by Alice Cooper. They chose the song because they thought they'd get the other students to support them if they sang about how they hate school. Their performance gets the attention of the girlfriend of the lead singer in the prep band. She appreciates music and people with the talent to play it well. That's what attracts her to the lead singer for the preps. But halfway through the song, the boys' equipment gets sabotaged, and they start to sound horrible. They get booed off the stage and don't even place in the competition.

The boys continue to have a terrible time at school over the next few weeks, but then it is discovered by the prep's girlfriend that the boys' performance was sabotaged by preps. She is outraged by this and publicly denounces her boyfriend, who defends himself by saying that if the boys want a rematch, he'll give it to them. The guitarist that idolizes Rick Nielsen eagerly accepts the rematch--to the chagrin of the singer--but they say the rematch has to take place on their turf, not the school grounds where the preps have the advantage. Also, the girlfriend has to be the referee for the competition. The preps agree to these conditions.

For the next two weeks, the boys get the farm set up as the site for the competition. The drummer/chemists set up pyrotechnics and also explain how they plan to use the explosions to disperse a synthetic phermone that they believe will make the girls go wild for them.

The singer insists that they charge admission, hoping that no one will show up if they have to pay to see the battle. So they also have to fix up some of the fence on the farm and block some of the gates with hay bales. A pyrotechnic test goes awry, and they accidentally blow out the back of the barn. The uncle laughs it off and suggests they use the open back of the barn as the stage for the show. He gets his old bandmates to come and help them repair/build the stage, put up the lights, and set up the equipment for the show. They also set up booths to sell food, drinks, and concert t-shirts.

The competition is set up so each band gets to play three songs. At the end of each song, an applause meter reads the noise level to determine how loud the crowd is cheering. The winner is the one with the highest average applause level of the three songs.

The competition begins with the preps playing a song that rocks pretty hard. They get a really good cheer from the audience, which is disheartening to the boys, as they see the crowd is definitely in support of the preps' band. They are sure they're going to lose, but they are determined to play anyway just to show the rest of the school that they won't go down without a fight.

The boys begin by playing School's Out--the same song they played in the previous competition. Like before, they do well at the beginning of the song, but their equipment is so old that something goes wrong in the middle of the song--just like it did during the first competition. Even though they didn't finish the song, the girlfriend still insists that the crowd do the applause-meter reading at the end, and to their surprise, the boys get more applause than they thought they would.

The boys have to fix the equipment while the preps sing their second song, which rocks harder than their first. The applause is pretty loud, so it is all but certain they will win this competition.

The boys are unable to fix one piece of equipment that is central to the second song, so they make a last second change to play a different song, one that they haven't rehearsed for a while, but one the Rick Nielsen wannabe guitarist really wants to play it because he thinks he can rock it better than any other song. And that song is "I Want You To Want Me."

At the beginning of the song, the singer yells out "I want you to want me!" which is followed by a huge pyrotechnic explosion that sprays out a massive dose of phermones into the air. As the band plays the opening verse, all of the girls in the crowd start sniffing and breathing in deeply with looks confusion and then pleasure on their faces. Then they all begin to focus on the band and start smiling and moving with the beat like they are getting into the song, with some of them repeating the first "cryin', cryin', cryin'" chorus. By the second chorus, they are all screaming wildly "cryin', cryin', cryin'" and look like they have fallen in love with the band, even rushing the stage and reaching up to try to touch the boys as they play. The girls are in an absolute frenzy by the end of the song. The girlfriend checks the applause meter, and it goes way above what the other band got. The girls love the boys so much that they won't even let the preps get on stage to play the third song. Instead, they all demand that the boys continue to play.

The preps object to this, claiming that the contest isn't over, and they start to pick a fight with the boys. The boy singer stands up to the lead singer of the preps, who ends up punching the boy in the face. His lip swells up and bleeds.

This attack infuriates the prep's former girlfriend, and she storms out onto the stage to kick the guy in the nuts. Two of the other guys in the preps' band rush at her, but the Rick Nielsen wannabe guitarist bashes his guitar over their heads, knocking them out and destroying the guitar. The audience goes silent in shock at seeing this, but then erupts in a cheer. The rest of the preps drag the others off the stage.

The audience demands another song from the group, but the boy can't sing anymore with his fat lip, so the Rick Nielsen guitarist calls out a song to the rest of the band, steps up to the mike, and starts singing an over-the-top version of "If You Want My Love." The girls go crazy over this song, with some even swooning. The boy and the prep's old girlfriend watch from the side and laugh at the performance. The girl looks like she wants to move in for a kiss, but his hurt lip keeps her from sealing the deal. Then, in the middle of the song, the cops show up. They stop the show and everyone goes home.

Because of the money they got from the concert, the uncle is able to pay his back-taxes and fix up the barn as a place for outdoor concerts. The Farm becomes the hottest place in town for bands to play.

Back at school, the boys in the band still are not really accepted into any of the other groups in school, but at least now they aren't mocked, bullied, ignored, or belittled. They've earned some respect, and more than a few girls wearing the concert t-shirts give the boys a flirty smile when they walk by. Still, it's apparent they haven't got any girlfriends yet. The prep's old girlfriend doesn't fall in love with the boy singer either. Instead, she becomes the band's manager, which we see in the final scene of the movie when they are all at the farm rehearsing for an upcoming concert.

Okay. That's pretty much it. The story is basically one big set up for the boys to play "I Want You To Want Me" as the climax of the movie. And that's the story that goes through my mind every time I hear the song on the radio and the girls start shouting "cryin', cryin', cryin'!" It's that sound of all those Japanese girls screaming that makes the live version of the song so electrifying. And that's the inspiration for this whole high school movie idea. One of the reasons I associate this song with the movie idea is that I think it does a perfect job of expressing the way I felt in high school about those girls that I was attracted to. I wanted them to want me. I wanted them to need me. And I would have loved them to love me. Unfortunately, I never did see them cryin', cryin', cryin'.