Apart from Ryan Gosling's Pants, Suicide Is the Sexiest Part of 'The Place Beyond the Pines'

I saw The Place Beyond the Pines over the weekend. It's about five years long and I got very impatient in the last third of the movie, but the first third is kind of perfect. That's the part with Ryan Gosling, who has nasty/amazing bleached hair, a dagger tattooed on his face, some rad skull-print pants*, and a t-shirt for this now-defunct discount store in my hometown, called Spag's. Ryan Gosling rides a motorcycle and robs banks, and in one scene where he's about to make a terrible decision the song "Che" by Suicide plays, and it made my stomach hurt and my head explode in a really exciting way.



Suicide is maybe the best music for making doom sound all hot and gorgeous; it's so sexy and creepy and druggy and evil. My favorite thing about them is that the album Suicide came out the day I was born. I listened to that album three times in a row last night and it gave me the weirdest headache and I liked it.

I wish Suicide songs were used in more movies, and I wish there were an alternate version of The Place Beyond the Pines that's just Ryan Gosling's story, but with more motorcycle scenes soundtracked by Suicide: I want more scenes with Ryan Gosling riding his bike around a tiny cage with two other psycho dudes, more scenes with Ryan Gosling riding his bike through the cemetery and through the forest, more scenes with Ryan Gosling riding his bike down some empty street in the middle of a summer night with Eva Mendes holding onto him and being tough and awesome. That version would be a great movie to fall asleep to and it would probably give you cool and terrifying dreams, way better than the dream I had last night where I was back in college and taking a class where Megan Calvet Draper was my professor and assigned me an essay in which I had to answer the question "Should S&M Be Allowed?" (?????).

Since seeing The Place Beyond the Pines I've listened to "Ghost Rider" a zillion times while driving and it feels good. I wonder if they thought about using "Ghost Rider" instead of "Che" but didn't cuz the "Ghost Rider" lyrics are a little too on-the-nose. I'm grateful to the movie for giving me "Ghost Rider" back, after a few years of associating it with that M.I.A. song that means nothing to my life.



But the most important thing of anything is that Alan Vega from Suicide once made a record with Alex Chilton. I just listened to the whole thing and it's good I guess but kind of a drag 'cause Alex Chilton isn't the singer on any of the songs. Basically all I ever care about is Alex Chilton.

-Liz

*I got to see those pants in real life; here's my picture of them.