Classical music in films is all well and good, (John Williams being my favorite example of such) but I think struggling young filmmakers would do well to bear in mind what can be done with a film soundtrack composed entirely of pop songs. Say, The Graduate, or Pulp Fiction. Easy Rider. These are almost universally acknowledged as great films. The list goes on.

Cobbling together a soundtrack from odds and ends in my CD collection is one of my favorite parts of making movies. It doesn't tax my resources at all like commissioning an original score would and it lets me incorporate the songs I love into a movie I hope other people will love.

Taking into consideration the vast range of recording artists, past and present, whose songs are available out there, I think one would be hard-pressed to find a movie that wouldn't benefit from one or two such songs in the soundtrack. And with such a variety of tunes to choose from, repetition like the recently demonstrated Signs phenomenon can be easily avoided.

Of course, when my movie makes it onto this site, someone will probably accuse me of overusing pop music. And he'll probably be right.

Yeah, but I just don't ever wanna hear "Let's Get It ON" used for a sex sequence ever again in any film

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-Kyle Johnson
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I agree, a lot of traditional scores have become overused, i.e. Thomas Newman (Shawshank, Green Mile, Road to Perdition all sound too similar). Cameron Crowe is one of my favorite directors because of his use of popoular music in his films (Vanilla Sky especially, but also Almost Famous, Jerry Macguire) I think the best use of popular music in film is Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge. He successfuly turned classic pop songs into a musical dialouge masterpiece for the film. Also, any film with Thom Yorke's stunning vocals at the end will improve the feel of the film (ie Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet). Radiohead are gods.

Yes, yes they are.

hehe, haha, hehe, hahah, mawahahahah i got away with it on The Untitleds because I was makin fun of other movies so I could use Pearl Harbor's beautiful soundtrack with my god awful (on purpose) war scene.