Oh yes it's ladies' night, and the feeling's right...
I think I first noticed Zooey Deschanel in the big-screen adaptation of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which a lot of true-blue Adams fans hated because it dramatically reinterpreted the whole premise of the radio show/novels upon which it was based (namely that it allowed for a love interest, as played by Deschanel). I was not truly aware of Hitchhiker's before the film, at least not enough to be offended. Besides, I got lost in Miss Deschanel's blue, blue eyes.
As it turns out, she's also a singer, and not in the way that most actresses "can also sing"; she actually sounds great when she's singing, and her band She & Him (a duo project with M. Ward) is credible in indie- and alternative-rock circles. At least they were the last time I worried about such things (maybe two or three years ago. I'm telling you, once you hit your thirties, indie-rock just passes you by. It's like the episode of South Park where each generation's favorite music sounds literally like shit to the previous or succeeding generation). I have so far acquired both of She & Him's albums (Volumes One and Two, helpfully titled) and look forward to any third entry in the discography as it becomes available.
What makes Zooey credible and fun to listen to is the fact that...well, I'm not sure what, but she's just so much into it that you can't help but get sucked in, even if you think her country leanings are a little cornball or that after a while, songs don't really resemble one another as visit the same territory sonically and lyrically. It's a matter of taste, however, and one of the songs I come back to is "Home," from their second album. It's a lyrically weird but ultimately satisfying song about that most elusive of human emotions, the need to love and be loved. The line about "I wanna be where your heart is home" is my favorite, I'm a sappy romantic at heart (my inability to actually make a relationship work with a real, living and breathing and complicated female nonwithstanding).
But first and foremost, Zooey is an actress, and a good one; in (500) Days of Summer, you can't stay mad at her even as she breaks Joseph Gordon-Levitt's heart. Who wouldn't fall in love with the character she plays (or the one that she plays on New Girl, her show on Fox)? Regina Spektor's beautiful "Us" is the opening-song credits, after a narrator has already warned us that "this is not a love story" (though the part that sticks with me is the line about sad British pop music and misreading The Graduate, both of which describe me in my early adulthood. I even have a Joy Division shirt like the one JGL wears later in the movie, of the "Love Will Tear Us Apart" sleeve). It captures perfectly the ecstasy of love, though with its placement in a film that is essentially about two people who find love but not with each other, it does seem like an odd choice. Perhaps "Love Stinks" would be more accurate in the sense of what happens in the film, but it wouldn't work with the sentiment that is conveyed: you have to risk getting hurt. That's a lesson I think we all shy away from time to time, letting ourselves think that someone else wouldn't see that about us which makes us lovable if we were vulnerable enough to show it. Hell, I still catch myself thinking like this sometimes, but I'm working on it.
Until I find my own Summer Finn or Jessica Day, I can always listen to the two songs here, or watch anything that Miss Deschanel is in (she's kind of my celebrity crush at the moment; we'd bond over the Smiths and bad Eighties romantic comedies, I think). Maybe then I'll find someone into whose heart I can make my home. Here's hoping...
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