Everyone would have known Hey You was a Pink Floyd song.
The Wall came out on 1979. It sold a bazillion copies. Everyone knew the song in 1986.
shareand that's the joke. bravo!
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MovieChat Forums > The Squid and the Whale (2005) Discussion > Everyone would have known Hey You was a ...
Maybe not everyone, but out of a hundred or so people surely some would have heard it and probably quite a few. I still hear it on the radio. I found that really odd and stuck out when I was watching. Person below says it was a joke but I did not get it as a joke. He was given the $100 prize and later had to give it back. It didn't make much sense to me. I found it strange that they did not use a song that was not going to be well known by people. When he first sang it for his parents, I expected they would know the song and say something about it being a nice cover.
sharebut he explains it later to the shrink. and that made perfect sense to me coming from his character.
he just did what he wanted to do. i doubt he even cared about the money or getting caught.
I never heard of it. You mad that I don't listen to that crap music?
The Prettiest Girl In The Milky Way Is Neytiri!
I didn't even realize it was plagiarism until Lili said so. I missed the part of the film where Walt was shown reading from the music composition. So, no not every one knew the song. Besides, not every one in 1986 was a Pink Floyd fan. Musicians like him have grown more of a cult following decades after his music.
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"Your punishment must be more severe." -- Bane (TDKR)
yeah, a cult following, kinda like the Beatles
shareNo way dude. At my high school literally one kid was into Pink Floyd in 1986. The rest of us were into music by musicians who knew how to rock! Pink Floyd blew chunks.
shareDude, you and I were in high school at the same time. Do you remember wtf was popular in 1986? "rock?" Lmao! Mötley Crüe?! Def Leppard?! Lmfao. No idea where you went or were you lived but your friends must have been rather limited culturally.
I went to a huge school in Los Angeles, and we listened to KROQ, the world-famous KROQ, which broke most of the English punk and new wave bands in the U.S. -- and we all ALSO collected music from the classic rock era, including the Floyd, as we weren't morons who thought that one of the biggest bands in the history of rock "blew chunks." In fact they were an amazing band -- from the late sixties with the genius Syd Barrett, through the seventies with Dark Side of the Moon (on the charts for decades), Wish you were Here, Animals, until Roger Waters ' magnum opus The Wall. I agree with the OP that the gimmick with "Hey You" was too arch and pretentious and made the film unbelievable. The same gimmick happens in The Perks of being a Wallflower in which the main kid loves Bowie's "Heroes" (the film also takes place in the 80s) yet none of the kids have any idea that it is a Bowie song. At least pick an obscure song instead of key songs by two of the biggest rock acts -- acts that have sold hundreds of millions of records -- ffs. Stupid and pretentious.
"Hearts and kidneys are tinker toys! I am talking about the central nervous system!"
i think that the point is that the boy and is father are so narcissistic that they don't even know is plagiarism. They actually believe it's a beautiful creation.
Everybody else KNOWS. the normal people understand that this kid is a fraking douchbag! liar/cheater/douche
Sure it was about the kid being a narcissist, but it was also a criticism of the father and his fixation on "philistines" -- it showed that he was just as ignorant, just with respect to a different area of knowledge.
I think it feels that way to a lot of us who listened to that album a zillion times. But there were tons of people who were never into that style of music (what style? I guess it's sui generis, but not for everyone in any case).
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That just isn't true, I was a musician and a music nerd so I knew every song going back to Piper at the Gates of Dawn, but the vast, vast majority of people knew Anther Brick In The Wall Part II off the album, and maybe Comfortably Numb, but that is it, especially seven years later. Only people who owned and listened to the whole album would have known it, probably around a dozen or so in that whole auditorium I'd guess. 1986 was nascent hip hop, Brit bands like the Smiths or The Cure, and more poppy New Romantic stuff still, hair metal, and Heartland rock. Prog rock was dead, although people who smoked a lot of weed knew Dark Side of the Moon backwards and forwards, no matter their age at the time.
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