Is there anything in this world that can’t be improved by Dire Straits’ “Walk of Life,“ the band’s seminal slap-happy ode to just being a person, man?
Should every movie and TV show end with Dire Straits’ Walk of Life? Probably!
Caroline Framke wrote about culture, which usually means television. Also seen @ The A.V. Club, The Atlantic, Complex, Flavorwire, NPR, the fridge to get more seltzer.
This is the theory behind Peter Salomone’s “Walk of Life Project,“ which is about as straightforward as it sounds. Salomone has made a habit of editing “Walk of Life” into the endings of famous movies (and even a couple of television shows), the better to play them out to a jauntier tune.
Sometimes — like with the saccharine series finale of Friends — integrating the upbeat synth organ of “Walk of Life” just makes sense:
Other times, introducing “Walk of Life” into the mix makes you laugh in the face of horrific death, like with the ending of The Blair Witch Project:
And then there are the instances that will forever haunt your dreams, lurking in the back of your subconscious every time you walk down an empty hallway, ride a rickety elevator, or wait an extra minute for a sandwich, biding its time until you let your mind wander just long enough to bring you back to this, the ending of The Shining … as set to “Walk of Life”:
The more you watch Salomone’s “Walk of Life” edits, the more you’ll start to wonder whether there was ever another song that ended the original movies. Intellectually, you know The Lion King didn’t conclude with a jam-rock hoedown — but shouldn’t it have?
You’ll lie awake at night and wonder, “If Paul Simon was so smart, why didn’t he think to send Benjamin and Elaine off to their new, Mrs. Robinson-free life with ‘Here comes Johnny singing oldies, goldies / Be, bop, a, lua, baby, what I say’?”
And as the sun sets on one of the most iconic endings in Western cinematic history, you’ll shake your head sadly, knowing that Casablanca could have been approximately 60 percent jollier if only the Dire Straits had been around:
In the words of the now-immortal “Walk of Life”: “After all the violence and double talk / There’s just a song in all the trouble and the strife / You do the walk, yeah … you do the walk of life.”
You can check out more of Salomone’s unsettling creations on his YouTube channel.
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