Musical Montage: The Bangles “Hazy Shade of Winter”
Less Than Zero is a pretty heavy drama from 1987 that was loosely based on a novel by American Psycho writer Bret Easton Ellis (who hated the movie). Andrew McCarthy, James Spader, Jami Gertz and Robert Downey Jr starred and the movie was about the dangers of drug addiction, which probably hit home a little too much for RDJ at that time. Because of the subject matter, there was lots of time spent in 80’s nightclubs and, as a result, the soundtrack was actually pretty awesome and featured bands like Aerosmith, Public Enemy, Poison, Roy Orbison (singing a song written by Danzig), LL Cool J and The Bangles, who covered a Simon & Garfunkel song, A Hazy Shade of Winter. The Bangles amped up the original to make it more rock n roll and awesome and it hit number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 but was not included on any Bangles albums until their Greatest Hits album in 1990 and the video was not included in their video compilation for that album due to rights issues with the movie. Fortunately, it’s on youtube and you can check it out below as The Bangles rock out in a room full of TVs while clips from the movie play around them.
