"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

That's another quote that didn't make the AFI list. (I write about the movie, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," here.) John Tabin cites the quote as he debunks that compassionate lions story.

Hmmm... two animal posts in a row for me. How much more animals stories will I have? There are probably blogs that just do all animals stories. It would be very easy to monitor the daily stories about animals and link to them.

Another blog idea I had -- not for me to actually do, for somebody else -- would be to simulblog C-Span constantly. I had this idea while simulblogging the AFI quotes show. I think it's really fun to watch TV and just do a little post every fifteen minutes or so -- just some random observation or wisecrack or critique. Someone could do that with C-Span, just all the time, and do nothing else. Maybe someone already does.

Speaking of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," the 60s on 6 channel of XM radio had a whole long show a few days ago, interviewing Gene Pitney and playing his various songs. I knew something strange was going on when I got in my car, put on my favorite station, heard "Town Without Pity" playing -- which isn't at all strange -- and realized it was being sung in German. Then there's Gene, presumably a pretty old man, talking about his career, talking about how the words to that song were translated into a blander story in German, because the story the song is based on involved a rape case in Germany and a straight translation would have been too upsetting.

Pitney goes on to talk about the cool song "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," which many people hear before ever seeing the movie, think about when seeing the movie, then wonder, why wasn't the song in the movie? Well, the song was supposed to be in the movie and was written for the movie. It wasn't just some fan of the movie singing about a movie. Pitney didn't have any real explanation of why the song wasn't put in the movie. I suspect the nice poppy sound just didn't fit in the Western setting and was judged inappropriate -- perhaps by the director (John Ford). But why didn't Pitney know that? Maybe he did but didn't want to say.

Anyway, writing that last paragraph, I was trying to think of an example of a pop song that names a movie, but wasn't written in connection with the production of the movie, just somebody talking about a specific movie. The closest I could get were songs that referred to movies more generally, like "My Baby Loves the Western Movies," and "Watching the Detectives." Can you think of any? Use the comments, either to add to my generic movie reference songs or to supply examples of the kind of song I couldn't think of. It seems to me that people who write a lot of songs are always looking for subject matter and you'd think that they'd also go to the movies and then feel like writing about them. I'm sure there are plenty of songs inspired by movies that don't even mention movies -- you know, love songs written by people who don't have love stories in their personal life to draw upon.