Douglas Trumbull's 1983 film "Brainstorm" has been a personal favorite since its theatrical release. There's a scene in the middle of the film where Natalie Wood's character quietly sings a song to Christopher Walken's character. She sings it in a very silly style, mostly reciting it rather than really singing it. It's a very adorable and romantic moment when taken in context. If you haven't seen the film, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, I can't find the source of the song. Google isn't finding anything. The song sounds like an excerpt from an existing song, though it doesn't seem to be listed in the end credits. I suppose it could possibly have been written specifically for the film, though the way it's used in the film makes it sound like an existing song that the characters know together.

Does anyone recognize the song outside the context of the film? Its lyrics are:

In this place we're all together now
Figuring out and figuring out who's crazy
And afterwards, we go out and have a nice coffee
And we smoke a cigarette and make a dream
That everybody in the world will be good
And then we'll be nervous no more
And these are the hopes and the dreams of beautiful people like me
And the other people

So this made me rewatch the movie... still one of my all time favorites.

I did a quick search around and the only reference I could find was a Finnish language site that uses some of the song as examples of how to use 'nervous'... so maybe it's a forgotten Finnish song?

https://fi.glosbe.com/fi/en/hermoilet

Very interesting find!

The screenwriter describes the scene as being an important part of the original idea for the script: https://www.brucejoelrubin.com/brainstorm.html

The biographical information about him on Wikipedia doesn’t indicate that he speaks Finnish, but he is well-traveled (though Finland is not mentioned).

I wonder if the scene is somewhat autobiographical and the song came from his actual wife?

I have emailed him. :-)

Alas, Bruce says he has no memory of the song or how it ended up in the film.

My guess, then, would be that it came from someone other than the screenwriter. Can’t ask Douglas Trumbull, the director, he died a few years ago. (I didn’t think to ask him this question when I spoke to him at a Q&A session several years ago when he was still alive.) Natalie Wood famously died during the film’s production. I suppose I could see if Christopher Walken remembers? Wonder if I could contact him through his agent or something. It seems unlikely that he’d know or remember, so I probably shouldn’t bug him.

If you're reaching out, perhaps one of the people who did music on the movie remembers?

It's not a song that shows up in the credits, at least I didn't see it there. James Horner composed the score but I don't expect he had anything to do with the script in that scene.

Do you mind if I post your question to a few film communities I belong to? Perhaps widening the search could yield some results...

*edit*
There's one group I belong to, where I've posted partially-remembered films that I watched 30 years ago and asked anyone if they might be able to identify what I was thinking of, and they were able to get both of them pretty quickly. This is a different kind of question, of course, but I'd like to put them to the test!

Please do. And send me links to the posts. And mention that I already talked to the screenwriter.

My favorite podcast is Blank Check, a podcast about auteur directors who have initial huge success and how they use that success to make the films they want to make. I've posted to their reddit.

One of my other favorites is one of the longest-running podcasts around, The Flophouse. Basically the original "bad movie" podcast. Their Facebook group is basically the single bright light in that god-forsaken platform, as far as I'm concerned. I apologize but apparently it's not public so I can't share the post, but I fully cross-posted it to their community as well. They're the ones that I've had great success in ID'ing things with.

I hope we get an answer! These are the biggest movie nerd circles that I run with, so if they don't know the answer, then I'm probably of no further help!

But there's a possibility that the expert community you'll end up needing is not in the movie world. You might be in more need of a musicologist or something...

Ok so... That was a complete bust! Sorry Tony

Thanks for trying!

Also, regarding the suggestion of asking the film's composer: I hadn't realized James Horner died in 2015. He was a treasure, I loved all of his film scores.

Yeah that’s a sad one.

Tony someone replied with an answer but I can't confirm it:


I can't tell if they're pulling my leg or not...

WOW.

Did you find out any more?

The whole 2000YOM album is on Youtube and it's not in there. It seems there's no 2001YOM album, but there is a skit, and it's not there either. The song doesn't at all seem in the Brooks / Reiner style.

That's what I was wondering. I didn't give the guy any kudos because I'm still not sure he wasn't pulling my leg. People on reddit are something else sometimes...

Lana Wood's description is indeed there in the memoir. Attached is a screen shot of the page in question scraped from Google Books. The Redditor was quoting the book directly.

Though I can't find a comedy album named "The 2001 Year Old Man", I can only find the "2000 Year Old Man". Still, I could see it being a Brooks/Reiner thing, the only trick is finding an extant recording.

They misremembered the name of the album slightly. As wikipedia says, it's actually called "2000 and One Years". It, too is on Youtube.

Peter

Fantastic find!

That YouTube video is blocked in the USA (and only the USA interestingly). I have to VPN to Canada to play it. But the link works!

So, final details:
- The piece is at the very tail end of the comedy piece "The New Technique Psychiatric Society".
- The piece is found on the album "2000 & One Years" by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks.
- Natalie personally liked the piece and used it in the film.
- Natalie's sister, Lana Wood, wrote about it in "Natalie: A Memoir by Her Sister", but got the title slightly wrong when she wrote about it.
- Link to the piece on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUaTBHECJhU&t=444s
- The YouTube copy of the piece is region-blocked in the USA, but can be played by US residents by VPN'ing to another country.

Thanks so much, everyone! Mystery completely solved.

Nice bit of sleuthing!

Here's a US friendly link:

https://youtu.be/t1YfQFgUxcg?si=Wjetn6ICY8Cj9ws0&t=840

Fantastic! Thank you!

Always satisfying to have a conclusion. You presented quite the challenge here, Tony!

The EmpegBBS is awesome for finding obscure details like this one. I can't believe how resourceful this group of people is.

The only thing surprising about finding the answer is how long it took.