Film director Cameron Crowe is a music enthusiast himself. In his Tom Cruise led 2001 thriller Vanilla Sky, Crowe recently spoke with Vulture magazine and discussed the hidden easter egg in the film. According to Stereogum, Vanilla Sky featured Nirvana’s “You Know You’re Right,” illegally, a year before it was released.
Crowe explains: “This is a good thing. I don’t think this has ever come out before: I did a lot of subliminal music cues, and in the scene where Cruise has his freakout and he’s come from [Sofia/Julianna’s] murder, and he’s coming down those winding stairs to Todd Rundgren, there are bits of studio chatter of Brian Wilson freaking out while he’s trying to make “Heroes and Villains,” mixed in with what was then the only unreleased Nirvana song, “You Know You’re Right.”
He continued to say “We couldn’t credit it in the movie and it was actually illegal, but Courtney Love gave it to us. She said, “This is the only Nirvana song that’s never been released. Hide it in your movie somewhere.” The track, later on, was included in Nirvana’s anthology. The film also had another hidden gem, Sigur Rós’ “Untitled 4,” aka “Njósnavélin,” which also was in the film a year before it came out.
In the same interview, Crowe also reflects on including Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place” in the film’s intro scene, showing Cruise in the middle of an empty Times Square with a mask, much like the reality New Yorkers are living today.
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