Loud Pictures: A History of the Cinema of Rebellion and the Greatest Rock and Roll Films of All Time

With assistance from Lizzy Goodman and Rob Sheffield, beloved music journalist Marc Spitz’s final work explores the myriad ways that music and movies have always been linked.

Each of the films herein, whether huge or small, reflect the zeitgeist and has pushed both the medium and our culture forward the way the best art is supposed to do.  We will see music help power the “race” or “juvenile delinquent” or “gay” or marginalized “cult” film to mainstream consciousness with music as a delivery system; a literal sound system. Silent films, so magically displaced by sound, were never truly silent. There was always the noise of a piano, organ, or orchestra, depending on the size of the theater. There’s always been hardware.  Music and film have never really been apart.

—from the Introduction of Loud Pictures 

In a long line of beloved books, Loud Pictures stands as Marc Spitz’s final project. This big, broad, noisy, and expansive exploration of art marries the two things Marc loved most—movies and rock and roll. In many ways, films can become imprinted on our brains because of their soundtracks. And songs in films take on different meanings because of the scenes associated with them. Loud Pictures explains, explores, and celebrates that symbiotic relationship through interviews with directors, actors, music supervisors, critics, and many more. Films with nostalgic undertones such as Say Anything, Purple Rain, Trainspotting, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Taxi Driver, A Hard Day’s Night, Shaft, Saturday Night Fever, Postcards From the Edge, Dirty Dancing, Nashville, Blow Up, and hundreds more, are sprinkled throughout these pages, perfectly capturing moments in time where the intersection between film and music have shined the brightest.

The completion of Loud Pictures would not have been possible without the aid of Lizzy Goodman, author of Dey Street’s Meet Me in the Bathroom, and Rolling Stone Contributing Editor Rob Sheffield, author of Dey Street’s Turn Around Bright Eyes, On Bowie and Dreaming the Beatles.