Quentin Tarantino Has A Favorite Scene In Freaky Friday (Seriously)
The early 2000s was a wild time for Disney, as the studio delivered a string of live-action bangers. Sure, they weren't as bold or inventive as their '90s releases, but their relatively low-budget, family-friendly movies still made bank and struck big with audiences. And that is without counting their high-concept movies like Disney's only successful ride-turned-movie "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," "National Treasure," and the prescient "Sky High," all phenomenal movies that would not get made today.
In 2003 alone, the studio released hit after hit, with "Holes," "The Lizzie McGuire Movie," and "Freaky Friday" all being released in the same year (until "The Haunted Mansion" broke the streak). Funnily enough, two of these had great musical numbers that fans continue to talk about to this day (while "Holes" didn't have a proper musical number, it did have a banger of a theme song). As great as the final song performance in "The Lizzie McGuire Movie" is, however, only the climactic battle of the bands in "Freaky Friday" counts Quentin Tarantino as a fan.
Indeed, in an oral history with The Hollywood Reporter to commemorate both the film's 20th anniversary and the fact we are all old now (as well as tease an upcoming sequel), director Mark Waters recalled the time he was cornered at a party by Oscar-winner Quentin Tarantino.
"[He] outlined in great detail, shot-by-shot that sequence of the House of Blues to me. He was, like, outlining why it was a genius scene and a perfect ending for the movie, and I was like, 'This is cool man. Quentin Tarantino was like, fan-geeking me.'"
'Don't wanna grow up, I wanna get out'
"Freaky Friday" is one of the best family movies of the early '00s, mostly thanks to the fantastic performances by Jamie Lee Curtis (who famously barely had time to prepare before replacing Annette Bening and joining the cast) as Tess and Lindsay Lohan as her rebellious rocker daughter Anna, who manage to not only do a successful reimagining of the 1976 film of the same name, but set a standard for body swap performances in the years since.
The film, which follows a mother and a daughter magically swapping bodies and being forced to walk in each other's shoes, climaxes with a scene in which Lohan, who is playing Tess pretending to be Anna, has to attend a very important audition for Anna's rock band.
Of course, because it is actually Tess in Anna's body, she can't play a single proper chord, much to the embarrassment of the band. But then, the real Anna (in Tess' body) shows up and plays the guitar behind the scenes while Tess (in Anna's body) just poorly pretends to strum the guitar. But somehow it all works out!
The song, "Take Me Away" is already a banger, but the scene is made 100 times better by the fact that Jamie Lee Curtis actually plays the guitar solo and performs like she's Keith Richards in his prime. As actor Chad Michael Murray told THR, "It was such a big production," saying the number of people on set that day made the musical performance more electric, "It's just such a fulfilling, like, 'I'm really here at this moment.'"
Tarantino may be known for his love of exploitation movies and international action cinema, but it is a delight to know he also has good taste in cinematic musical performances.