The Cure “Boys Don’t Cry”

All Time Top Five Movies That Cribbed Their Name From A Good Song, And Managed To Be Pretty Good Themselves . . .

When I was a kid, I HATED baked beans. I mean, I didn’t just not like them. I would actually gag while trying to eat them. My Mom was from the “You have to have at least one bite” of everything being served that night, school of thought. But even if she’d make me try the asparagus, the beets and the mushrooms, anytime she was serving them, she finally just gave up on the baked beans.

Twenty years later, I was at a barbecue at my friend Eric’s house. Eric had relocated to South Carolina after high school, and had learned the ways of southern cooking. Lard and bacon.

Okay, so I can’t refuse anything with bacon in it. And he was raving about how good his baked beans recipe was. So I took a scoop from the crock pot.

And I loved it.

I can’t explain it. I don’t think baked beans had changed since I’d last tasted them. So I guess I had.

I had some close friends in college, with whom I shared a strong musical connection. It was great to come out of high school---where you weren’t cool unless Van Halen was your favorite band---and meet people who were into R.E.M. and Jim Carroll.

But they all loved The Cure. And The Cure made me gag.

I just could not warm up to that band.

I could comprehend that Robert Smith was talented, and that the music was different and interesting. But listening to him sing made me want to retch.

And them something happened. It was half a dozen years after college, I and heard “Boys Don’t Cry” and it moved me.

And I don’t mean it made me nostalgic---though it did that too.

I mean, I GOT it. That emotion he’s trying to convey connected for the first time. That sense of dislocation, and of having to control your emotions for societal reasons outside of yourself.

When it became the name of a forthcoming indie film about the Brandon Teena story, I knew exactly what emotional notes the movie was going for. And I guess that’s why the titled the movie the way they did. Smart.



See the Cure video and a little bit of Hilary Swank’s Oscar winning performance.

Buy the The Cure’s “Greatest Hits” and the "Boys Don't Cry" DVD.