As That Thing You Do! turns 30 this week, it is the perfect moment to revisit a film that still feels like a warm, fan-first memory of 1964. Tom Hanks’ feature directing debut follows the Wonders as they rise on a single song, and the making of the film is full of small pleasures that deserve a closer look.
The title hit began as a wistful ballad
In the story, “That Thing You Do!” is a slow-tempo ballad written by Jimmy and rehearsed in his garage. At the talent show, Guy Patterson pushes it into a faster tempo, and that uptempo version wins the band the competition. A song first imagined as tender became the rocker everyone remembers.
The Wonders’ voices were not exactly their own
Mike Viola of the Candy Butchers provided the lead vocals for the Wonders. Tom Everett Scott, Jonathan Schaech, Steve Zahn and Ethan Embry took weeks of individual lessons, followed by daily practice as a group, to perform convincingly on camera. Only Zahn and Embry had prior experience with their assigned instruments; extras thought they were really playing, but the actors were miming to professional recordings.
The fake band had a real chart hit
Written and composed for the film by Adam Schlesinger, bassist for Fountains of Wayne and Ivy, the title song peaked at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100, number 22 on the Adult Contemporary chart, number 18 on the Adult Top 40 and number 24 on the Top 40 Mainstream. It was also nominated for a 1996 Golden Globe and a 1996 Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Tom Hanks wrote the opening-credits earworm
“Lovin’ You Lots and Lots”, which plays over the film’s opening credits, is credited to the fictitious Norm Wooster Singers but was actually written by Hanks. The song is a send-up of Ray Conniff, Mitch Miller and other practitioners of the “beautiful music” or proto-Muzak formats that were a staple of early 1960s adult radio.
Hanks also composed Guy’s drum solo
The jazzy signature drum solo “I Am Spartacus” was another composition by Tom Hanks. It gives Guy a moment of musical identity amid the band’s brief rise.
The bass player’s credit is an inside joke
The Wonders’ bass guitarist, played by Ethan Embry, is unnamed in the film. In the end credits he is listed as “T.B. Player,” short for “The Bass Player.” The joke is based on the perception that bass players are often unknown.
A fake record label became a real one
The soundtrack album, released under the Playtone name with Epic Records, peaked at number 21 on the Billboard 200. Its CD artwork is a replica of the fictional Playtone label used in the movie, and the liner notes are written in a mockumentary style, as if the Wonders had been a real group. Hanks later used the film’s success to launch the actual Playtone Records label, which released soundtracks for his subsequent films and other projects such as Bring It On and The Sopranos.
The “extended cut” was really a first rough edit
In 2007, a two-disc Tom Hanks’ Extended Edition was released with 39 minutes of deleted scenes and new bonus content. Despite the title, the longer cut was actually an assembly cut, a first rough edit of the footage. Tom Hanks did not participate in its promotion, and the disc contained no new footage of him.
“The movie may be inconsequential, but in some ways that’s a strength. Without hauling in a lot of deep meanings, it remembers with great warmth a time and a place.”
— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Which of these is your favourite piece of That Thing You Do! history? Tell us the fact you always bring up when the song comes on.
Facts from Wikipedia: That Thing You Do!, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Film images from TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
