GFTPaul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia gave us raining frogs, Tom Cruise as an incel guru and a banger of a soundtrack by Aimee Mann. Her songs were so catchy even the characters couldn’t help but sing along at one point.
Anderson famously wrote the screenplay for Magnolia while listening to new songs Mann had recorded for an upcoming album and ended up working them into his movie. “Everything (Aimee) seemed to be thinking were things that I was thinking,” he wrote in the soundtrack’s liner notes.
Don’t Miss
The movie memorably ends with Mann’s “Save Me,” which was nominated for Best Original Song at the 72nd Academy Awards.
But at the time, none of us had any idea that this guy inspired the song:
Yes, Dave Foley of The Kids in the Hall fame has claimed to be Mann’s “Save Me” muse, a fact that recently caught social media users off guard.
The source of this info is Foley himself, who let radio host Steve Seel in on the details of his relationship with Mann during a 2012 episode of Theft of the Dial.
Foley explained that he became friends with the singer after moving to Los Angeles following his “horrendous” first marriage. “(I) was emotionally devastated by it and was trying to rebuild who I was as a human being,” Foley recalled. “Then one day Aimee came up to me and said ‘I suppose you know I have a crush on you.’ I of course said ‘No, no, I… no idea.’”
“So Aimee and I became sort of involved for a while,” he continued. “And then she went out on tour, and one day when she was in Paris, she called me on the phone at around 3 in the morning, and she played this song to me, the song ‘Save Me,’ which she had written about me.”
Foley went on to admit that “to a guy whose ego was just shattered from living with an insane person for 11 years first off to be liked by someone as amazing as Aimee, and then to have this song written was such a balm to my soul at that point. This was also a hugely important song – and hugely important moment – in my life that sort of sent me into my single life after that for the next five or six years.”
Incidentally, “Save Me” was up against “Blame Canada” from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut at the Oscars, a movie that briefly featured Foley as the voice of the Baldwin brothers.
Of course, both songs ended up losing to some dumb Phil Collins ballad about Tarzan.
