#Eddie and the cruisers movie
#Eddie and the cruisers tv

Overall, though, Davidson’s format is true to Kluge’s story. Sax player Wendell (Michael Antunes) – a prominent character in the film, despite having zero dialogue – survives in the novel, while the film uses his death from a drug overdose for dramatic effect. The cast manage to make the band feel authentic, from Matthew Laurance as cocky bassist Sal Amato to Joe Pantoliano as the group’s slimy but lovable manager Doc Robbins.Ī few character changes actually work in the film’s favor, such as making Joann (Helen Schneider) a bandmember instead of Eddie’s mistress like she was in the book (yep, Eddie Wilson was married).

#Eddie and the cruisers movie

The movie maintains the mystery in regard to the tapes, but drops the killer angle, focusing instead on Eddie’s obsession with greatness and how it divides the band.

Kluge was more of a murder mystery, following Frank as he revisits his former bandmates on the trail of a killer hunting the missing tapes. While director Martin Davidson borrows blatantly from the structure of Citizen Kane to portray the band’s biography, a strong cast and original soundtrack make for a lively cinematic ode to rock and roll and the legacy of the man in the spotlight. Much like in the film, the music of Eddie and the Cruisers was reborn. Renewed interest inspired the studio to re-release the soundtrack by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, landing the album on Billboard’s top ten. While the movie was a box office flop in 1983, it quickly gained cult status after hitting VHS and HBO the following year. When I first saw Eddie and the Cruisers, I was still young (and dumb) enough to believe the fictional band actually existed, and that Michael Paré – in all his lip-syncing glory – was Eddie Wilson. Ridgeway's trip down memory lane pivots between the band’s '60s rise to fame and the '80s aftermath, slowly opening old wounds, unveiling secrets, and confronting what might have been, had Eddie lived. Interviewing the surviving members of the band, her search for the missing tapes of the group’s never-released second album brings back a rush of memories and unanswered questions for lyricist Frank “Wordman” Ridgeway (Tom Berenger).

#Eddie and the cruisers tv

Although it’s said in the biz that the show must go on, the Jersey band sees no point in making music without their enigmatic frontman.īut twenty years after going their separate ways, their songs make a comeback when a TV reporter (Ellen Barkin) launches an investigation into Eddie’s mysterious death – his car flew off a Jersey bridge, but his body was never found.

After the sudden death of lead singer Eddie Wilson (Michael Paré, in his feature debut), the future of the Cruisers is pretty far removed from the rock and roll lifestyle they once envisioned. In the process, I hope to unveil how these two vastly different mediums work together to tell the same story, from cover to credits.Įddie and the Cruisers is a tale of nostalgia set to one of the best original soundtracks of the eighties. In this column, I’ll be checking out old and new adaptations to further explore both sides of that experience.

As a lifelong bookworm and cinephile, I've discovered that whether I read the book before or after seeing the movie can have a profound influence on my enjoyment of the story across both mediums. While we've all uttered some version of this sentiment at one point or another, there have been those rare occasions when the opposite is true. 'Don't judge a book by its movie' is another common jab. 'The book was better' is a phrase heard often in conversations about book-to-film adaptations.