There's Something About Mary (1998)

There's Something About Mary was a huge hit.  That's not an opinion, it's an objective fact.  It grossed over $379 million worldwide on a $23 million budget.  I watched the movie in the theaters but it was very late in the theatrical run, so I was late to the party.  In fact, I kind of experienced kind of in the reverse order that I should've experienced the movie.  I don't mean that I literally tried to watch it in reverse to see if was the gross out comedy version of Memento or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I just mean that I listened to the soundtrack before I watched the movie.

So, it's probably best to backtrack to why I hadn't seen the movie but still had a copy of the soundtrack.  My sister worked at a record label during my teen years and she'd send me some free CDs whenever she had the chance.  Sometimes I'd get the new album from a band before it was released like The Beastie Boys' Hello Nasty, sometimes it would be an artist she recommended and sometimes it seemed like there was no reason at all.  I was always grateful regardless since free music was free music, but There's Something About Mary definitely fell in the last category.  Perhaps, she wanted me to realize that Jonathan Richman is a god damn national treasure, or perhaps because Ben Lee was in Noise Addict and Evan Dando was in the Lemmonheads, I'd be interested in them since I liked their former bands.  Maybe, she figured I'd probably see the movie so she threw in the soundtrack for fun, I honestly have no idea.

I don't really have a set rule about watching a movie before listening to the soundtrack, but it just seems like common sense.  Without seeing the movie, the songs on the soundtrack exist without any context, and there could be a minefield of spoilers for the movie.  The Mallrats soundtrack, for instance, has dialogue from the movie spliced into separate tracks throughout the soundtrack. While it's hard to discern the plot of the film from these tracks, some funny exchanges do get spoiled, and obviously these exchanges are why you watch a Kevin Smith film.  Not all comedy soundtracks employ this method, and while you can skip those tracks, in 1998, skipping those tracks had to be done manually.

Jonathan Richman wrote 3 songs for There's Something About Mary, including a song called "There's Something About Mary".  Writing 3 original songs for a movie that aren't part of the score is uncommon for a movie, but not unheard of.  Because I saw the movie so late in the theatrical run, most of the big gags were ruined for me in trailers and TV spots.  The hair gel, the crazy dog, anything that could be deemed "safe" had been thrown into TV ads except for the cameos of a certain ex-boyfriend and Mr. Richman.

I'm used to artists featured on soundtracks making brief cameos in movies.  Usually, they're almost just part of the set, playing in the background, often not even interacting with the characters. If the artist does interact with the characters, it's usually not part of any major plot development.  So it was a complete surprise to me that Jonathan Richman is the onscreen narrator who shows up multiple times throughout the movie, and he actually takes part in a great comedic gag near the end of the film. That and the zipper accident were probably the only scenes that really shocked me during the screening. (I'm going to assume it's safe to refer to spoilers from a movie that's 20+ years old.)

Obviously, I wouldn't recommend listening to every soundtrack before watching the movie, but it worked out in this case.  While I guess I could say the soundtrack gave me some spoilers for the movie, I actually think it actually enhanced the experience for me.  I wouldn't have really thought about the narrating musician on screen.  In a pre-high speed internet world, it would've taken some effort to find out who that was, either I'd need to pay close attention during the end credits or I'd have to go to the high school computer lab to look up the singer from There's Some About Mary. I probably would've assumed he was just some local musician friend of the Farrelly brothers and I probably would've left it at that, so in a way the soundtrack totally succeeded. I recognized Jonathan Richman and knew who he was, and while it didn't bring Jonathan Richman to the mainstream, it probably gave him a modest boost as well. 

While I don't listen to the soundtrack all the time, I have listened to Jonathan Richman and his previous band, The Modern Lovers.  I haven't seen There's Something About Mary since I saw it in theaters, but it's still impacted me 20 years later.  Sure, it sounds weird that I discovered Jonathan Richman via a movie most famous for an ejaculation gag, but here we are.  The universe is a strange place and I'm glad I have Jonathan Richman to help me make sense of it.