Save It For Later: The Glory of Ambiguity
Sometimes it’s fun to just get lost in the weeds.
The question of why a piece of fiction or entertainment works or doesn’t work is subjective, and also gets pulled towards a few basic considerations over and over again—things like plotting, or dialog, or editing and direction1. And that makes sense, because if you get that big stuff wrong you’re pretty much fucked when it comes to everything else. And writing an essay series like this, it’s easy to get caught up in that macro question of whether something “worked” or was “good,” as if anyone truly cares what I think about it2.
But sometimes it’s fun to stop wondering if something works or why that might or might not be the case and simply dig into something surprising. The great thing about creative projects is how they squirm and wriggle and go in directions you might not have intended, and how the back story of certain elements can be just as fascinating as the the whole thing. Every piece of art out there is an opportunity to discover something new—an author’s influence, a visual reference in a film, a song you’d never heard or thought much about before. Sometimes it’s not about how the disparate parts of an entertainment come together and work or don’t work, it’s about following threads and discovering something that you never understood before3.
For example, Love on Netflix, Pete Townsend, and “Save It for Later” by The English Beat4.
Your Legs Give Way, You Hit the Ground
Love ran for three seasons on Netflix, telling the bittersweet dramedic story of Gus (Paul Rust), a passive-aggressive aspiring writer, and Mickey (Gillian Jacobs), a self-loathing radio producer with substance abuse issues5. The two meet randomly on what is a bad day for both of them, and engage in a stuttering, on-again, off-again relationship that winds up being one of the most realistic relationships depicted on TV. One of the joys of this show is the fact that these characters are not great people. They have their moments and their good qualities, but they’re weak and selfish and lazy in just the ways most of us are weak and selfish and lazy6.
Still, it’s a terrific show and I enjoyed it a lot. The last episode of season one sees Mickey and Gus quit each other as the dynamic between them shifted. At first Gus was infatuated with Mickey, and they both seemed to regard her as out of his league. But over the course of the season Mickey’s insecurities, poor judgment, and emotional dysfunction leveled the playing field, and by the season finale Gus is happy to move on and it’s Mickey who is stalking him, eventually rushing from her apartment to track him down for an emotional confession7.
This sequence is set to Pete Townsend’s version of “Save it For Later,” a song originally by The English Beat. The original is a spiky ska number, but Townsend transforms it into a crackling song that implies the precise sort of restless emotional turmoil Mickey’s going through. Watching the scene and listening to the song, I was transported back to my own years as a sad, single person who felt like he’d never be loved, like he always fucked everything up8. It’s the ideal song for the scene as Mickey does a dark version of the RomCom Airport run, desperately trying to track down a guy who has clearly decided she’s insane, worried that she’ll miss her chance.
Just Hold My Hand While I Come … To a Decision
What I love about this emotional response to the scene is the fact the song—this perfect song for the emotional moment—is actually a smirking adolescent song about a sex act.
Basically, the phrase “for later” is a play on the word “fellator.9” Songwriter Dave Wakeling wrote the song as a teen, and thought it would be hilarious to trick everyone into singing “Save it, fellator!” over and over again, and get that phrase on the radio. And it totally worked. In fact, the lyrics are brilliantly double-edged, because lines like “Sooner or later your legs give way, you hit the ground” can be interpreted as that moment your emotions get the better of you and you surrender to something like love, but it’s also a double-entendre concerning the act of oral sex10.
So this is a dirty little schoolboy’s song that happens to have a killer hook, and years later Pete Townsend picks it up and retools it into an emotionally powerful song without changing a word, and then decades after that director Dean Holland and writers Judd Apatow, Lesley Arfin, and Paul Rust take it and match it with an emotionally resonant scene, totally transforming how the song lands.
Even better, the song also matches Mickey’s acerbic and foul-mouthed personality11. You can totally imagine her saying “Save it, fellator!” to someone, and simply being comfortable talking about blow jobs on a regular basis. Somehow this song suddenly works on every single level. Either the person who chose it for the scene is a genius, or a very, very lucky person12.
I love these sorts of rabbit holes. So much art is a boiling stew of various intentional and unintentional connections, implications, and interpretations, and much of the fun is discovering stuff like this, even if half the world already knew all about it and you’re comically late for the discovery13. Part of it is the fact that in real life we often misinterpret songs or other art for our own purposes, like the folks who still believe “Every Breath You Take” by The Police is an appropriate wedding song. The intersection of so many different artistic interpretations—of lyrics, of music, of dialog, of character—in one 3-minute sequence is kind of incredible.
Of course, I misunderstand everything and my entire life is just me stumbling onto obvious facts and being amazed by my discoveries. When I was 18 I think this was passably adorable, like a confused kitten. At my current advanced age I think it is ... less adorable14.
Next week: Glass Onion: Misdirection all the way down.
Or, most hurtfully, the question of how many footnotes or references to pantslessness is too many footnotes or references to pantslessness.
If you don’t care what I think and you’re hate reading this … I am okay with that. Hate read money spends just as well as any other kind.
I am fortunate to know and understand almost nothing, making my life a constant wonder of discovery.
Is there a random saxophone solo in the middle of this song? It was 1982, what do you think?
For the sake of efficiency, I represent the combined passive aggressive writer bit with the mental health and substance abuse issues. You’re welcome.
Is “Weak and Selfish and Lazy” the title of my memoir? It would be, if I wasn’t so damn lazy.
Yes, this is the classic “I wish a crazy hot girl would obsess over me” male fantasy that usually ends with someone’s house being burned down, what of it?
The fact that The Duchess tolerates me remains a real shocker.
Now THAT’S writing, folks.
Okay, “brilliantly” may be overselling it a bit, but I, too, was once a 14-year old boy. As recently as this morning, actually.
The fact that Mickey is very, very hard to like makes her kind of fascinating, especially once you realize she does not like herself very much. One relates.
Life secret: This is almost always the same thing.
"Comically Late” are pretty much my House Words at this point. As you get older, every failure stops being tragic and becomes comical. This is horrifying and depressing.
I am about three days away from people offering to help me cross the street and asking if I have any family members nearby.
And how many of us rocked out to the song "Longview" by Green Day?