{"id":266891,"date":"2026-10-04T17:19:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T17:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/04\/that-thing-you-do-is-30-years-old\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T17:19:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T17:19:16","slug":"that-thing-you-do-is-30-years-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/04\/that-thing-you-do-is-30-years-old\/","title":{"rendered":"That Thing You Do! is 30 years old"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/l.lj-toys.com\/?auth_token=sessionless%3A1791162000%3Aembedcontent%3A3616053%262188374%26%26%26youtube%268EdOdfCM1hM%3Acfa6e49d0eb86fc7128afd03a455a2c7b1f6cfe6&amp;journalid=3616053&amp;vid=8EdOdfCM1hM&amp;preview=&amp;noads=&amp;source=youtube&amp;moduleid=2188374\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" class=\"lj_embedcontent\" allowfullscreen=\"\" name=\"embed_3616053_2188374\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>That Thing You Do! was released on October 4, 1996. Tom Hanks wrote the script for the film while promoting Philadelphia. By this time, he had worked with Nora Ephron several times so he asked for her feedback. One of her notes was: &#8220;You have so many characters and scenes in here it\u2019s like Scorsese run amok.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p><a name=\"cutid1\"\/>An open competition was held to find the title song. The winning submission was written by Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne), who received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for the song. He went on to be nominated for two Grammys with Fountains of Wayne, as well two Tony nominations for the musical adaptation of Cry Baby and multiple Emmy nominations for Stephen Colbert&#8217;s Christmas special, Sesame Street, the Tony ceremonies, and multiple seasons of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. He won a Grammy for his work on Colbert&#8217;s Christmas album and two Emmys for his work on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.<\/p>\n<p>Hanks said that Adam&#8217;s song was the second or third submission they listened to and that it was perfect. He wanted to make sure everyone else liked it so he sent it to several people on the production team and asked what they thought. They all loved it, but Tom asked them, &#8220;Did you play it five times in your car? Because you\u2019re going to hear it 25 times during the first two weeks of shooting.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Adam had roped his friend Mike Viola of the Candy Butchers into helping him with the song. Mike said at the time, he had just moved to New York after his wife died and he was &#8220;lost, really depressed, and fucked up.&#8221; Adam had written three variations of the same song and asked a few friends (including Mike) which one they liked the best. They all picked the same version. Mike agreed with them but pointed out that the chords weren&#8217;t very Beatles-y. Adam asked Mike to show him some Beatles inversions, and Mike obliged which prompted Adam to change some of the chords. Mike said that he didn&#8217;t realize until later that the opening lick of That Thing You Do is &#8220;a complete rip off&#8221; of the beginning of Caribou by the Pixies.<\/p>\n<p>A few days later, Adam asked Mike to help him record the demo. Music producer Andy Chase told them that if they wanted the song to sound like the Beatles, they had to mic everything in mono, not stereo. Mike recorded the lead vocals and then said the harmonies had to sound like John Lennon and George Harrison, so he recorded those parts too. Andy said he recorded on analog tape and slowed it town while recording Mike&#8217;s background vocals, then he played the tape at normal speed to raise the pitch and make it sound like the Monkees.<\/p>\n<p>When the song was selected for the movie, they asked Mike to fly to Los Angeles to record the vocals. The song was done at Ocean Way in Studio 3, which is the room where Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys was recorded. When he got back to New York, he started talking to other musicians (including Squeeze, They Might Be Giants, and Marshall Crenshaw) and learned that they had all submitted versions of That Thing You Do.<\/p>\n<p>Steve Zahn was one of the first actors cast. He was shocked to see Tom Hanks at the audition because the screenwriter had been given a fake name. Ed Norton, Billy Crudup, Matt Damon, and Luke Wilson all auditioned for the other band member roles. Charlize Theron, who was unknown at that time, came in to read for Tina but told Hanks that she wanted to play Faye. Hanks thought she was &#8220;too much of a supernova&#8221; to play Faye. After her audition, Hanks announced to the room, &#8220;We just met a movie star.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ethan Embry said he was in his punk phase after filming Empire Records. At the time he was wearing nail polish and women&#8217;s clothes. He was only 16 when he showed up to the TTYD audition with his own bass guitar. He had learned the melody for If I Only Had a Brain for the audition and did not expect to see Tom Hanks.<\/p>\n<p>Jonathan Schaech showed up dressed for the role in a black suit and skinny tie. The audition scene was the &#8220;I quit, I quit&#8221; scene from the end of the movie. Jonathan sang the line he thought the lead singer character would sing while quitting.<\/p>\n<p>The roles of Faye and Guy were the last ones cast. Tom Hanks wanted to cast Alicia Silverstone as Faye but she had a scheduling conflict. Liv Tyler said she was terrible at auditioning but Tom Hanks brought her into his office and chatted with her and then casually said, &#8220;Let&#8217;s just read [the script].&#8221; She said he made her feel so comfortable that she was able to do well at the audition. <\/p>\n<p>Tom Everett Scott&#8217;s resume consisted of one episode of Law &amp; Order and a stint on Grace Under Fire. His resume said he could play the trumpet and the guitar. At the audition, Hanks asked him if he could really play. Scott assured him that he could read music and had played the trumpet from fourth grade until he graduated from high school. <\/p>\n<p>Tom Hanks did not want the actors to fake play their instruments so after they were cast, Tom Everett Scott, Steve Zahn, Jonathan Schaech, and Ethan Embry spent four weeks learning how to play their instruments. They each had an instructor for their particular instrument and then they learned how to play the songs used in the movie (That Thing You Do, Little Wild One, All My Only Dreams), but they also learned a lot of Beatles songs. They had band practice in the studio four hours a day.  <\/p>\n<p>The cast was given tapes of everything that happened in 1964 (The Beatles\u2019 appearance on Ed Sullivan, commercials, the World Series, the news, American Bandstand) to help them what it was like to be a teenager during that time.<\/p>\n<p>For the first table read, Jonathan decided the four guys should get matching outfits, so they went to a thrift store and bought white shirts and skinny ties. <\/p>\n<p>Tom insisted that there would be no bad guy in this movie, saying, &#8220;I don\u2019t believe guys that are overtly evil and demonstrate how overtly evil they are. I like guys who are conflicted, who do things that are not pleasant but everybody understands why.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kevin Pollak, who played Boss Vic Koss, said: &#8220;Life can be sucked out of a set by a director. Tom&#8217;s goal was, &#8216;We are here to have a blast.'&#8221; Tom Everett Scott said that Hanks told him: &#8220;This is my golden rule: be on time and know your lines. If you can do that, everything will take care of itself.&#8221; Despite this way, there was one day when coincidentally Tom Everett Scott, Jonathan Schaech, and Steve Zahn all overslept and showed up late. When they arrived, producer Gary Goetzman told them that Tom was very disappointed. Scott said none of them were late after that. Zahn said that he hasn&#8217;t been late for anything else since then either.<\/p>\n<p>Zahn said that one day his mom was on set. After he filmed a scene, Tom singled her out and said, &#8220;I think that\u2019s pretty good. Zelda, what do you think?&#8221; Zahn said his mom still remembers that moment.<\/p>\n<p>Hanks said that the scene where Liv and the band hear their song on the radio for the first time &#8220;is the one scene that came out exactly as I drew it in stick-figure storyboards.&#8221; He gave the actors all kinds of details for their characters. He told Embry that since his character was military bound, he would wipe his feet on the doormat before entering Guy&#8217;s dad&#8217;s store. He told Zahn to flirt with Guy&#8217;s sister and then kiss the cardboard cutout. He told the group that once they were all in the store, he wanted them to hold hands and jump in a circle. They didn&#8217;t think he meant it literally so on the next take, he told them to actually hold hands and skip in a circle. For the last shot, he told Tom Everett Scott exactly where to stand and yell, &#8220;I am Spartacus!&#8221; They did one take of that shot and Hanks said, &#8220;Cut, print, perfect.&#8221; The crew told him that Scott&#8217;s hands were out of frame and wanted to do another take, but Hanks said, &#8220;No, no, no, we got it. We can\u2019t improve on that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The tour scenes took place in four different states in the movie, but they were shot at only two locations (Orange County fairgrounds and Pomona Fairplex). In between takes, the cast and crew would play the carnival games that were set up for the shoot. Liv Tyler said she had giant stuffed animals that she stole from the games buckled into the back seat of her car while they filmed. <\/p>\n<p>Many of the band&#8217;s suits were found at a vintage clothing store in St. Louis, so unlike most movies, they did not have doubles for all of the costumes. The day that the band wore the red suits, Ethan found out that his pet duck had died. In addition to being sad about his duck dying, he pooped his pants. Tom Hanks (the only person who had a shower in his trailer) let Ethan use his shower while the costume department washed his pants and used a hair dryer to dry them so he could wear them again to finish shooting. Later that night, the doctor told Ethan the reason he had pooped himself was that he had gotten dysentery from mouth feeding his baby duck.<\/p>\n<p>Cap\u2019n Geech\u2019s Shrimp Shack was an homage to an abandoned fast food restaurant that Tom Hanks used to drive past every day while filming the boat scenes for Forrest Gump. The hotel scenes for That Thing You Do were shot at the shuttered Ambassador Hotel, which hosted the Oscars six times during its heyday. Liv said that she and Ethan loved sneaking off to explore the upper floors which were &#8220;completely derelict and terrifying, like a haunted house.&#8221; She said they also found a tunnel that used to go from the kitchen to these bungalows. <\/p>\n<p>Tom&#8217;s wife Rita Wilson had a cameo in the movie as a cocktail waitress. She had just given birth to Truman so she said that wearing a Playboy bunny-esque costume and smoking cigarettes seemed funny because it was &#8220;the antithesis to being the mother of a newborn.&#8221; Tom&#8217;s son Colin also had a cameo in the movie. He was the one who took Faye to her seat for the Hollywood Showcase scene. Liv said he had a beer with her in her trailer afterward and she felt like she was corrupting him (for the record, she is four months older than Colin).<\/p>\n<p>Rita Wilson said that when she told 5 year old Chet that they were going to the wrap party, he asked if Coolio was going to be there because he thought it was a rap party.<\/p>\n<p>Amid the promotional tour, Tom Everett Scott, who lived in New York, went to Los Angeles for some meetings. His trip ended up being extended so he wasn&#8217;t able to go home to New York before the cast went to Japan for more promo work. He had to have his wife courier his passport to him and he flew to Japan alone. Coincidentally, the in-flight movie on his flight to Japan was That Thing You Do.<\/p>\n<p>Despite positive reviews, the movie wasn&#8217;t a huge success at the box office. But it became beloved, especially after it was released on DVD and VH1 had a 24 hour VH1 marathon of the movie. Tom Everett Scott said people still tell him that the got into drumming because of the movie. When he was offered a role in La La Land, director Damien Chazelle told him that he is a huge fan of That Thing You Do. When Chazelle began dating his now-wife, they were listening to his playlist during a road trip. Whend he saw that That Thing You Do was coming up next, he thought, &#8220;If she doesn&#8217;t like this song, I don&#8217;t think we can be together.&#8221; Chazelle said when he told Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling that he had cast Tom Everett Scott in La La Land, they both freaked out and started quoting the movie to him. <a name=\"cutid1-end\"\/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8EdOdfCM1hM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">source<\/a><\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com\/132961830.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That Thing You Do! was released on October 4, 1996. Tom Hanks wrote the script for the film while promoting Philadelphia. By this time, he had worked with Nora Ephron several times so he asked for her feedback. One of her notes was: &#8220;You have so many characters and scenes in here it\u2019s like Scorsese [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":266892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-266891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hollywood"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}