SLS 07/28/19 – “See You Again”

I am a little late to the party but I really wanted to participate in this week’s challenge. Jim, from A Unique Title For Me, has picked a song from a movie as the theme. I swear I could probably do about 100 and still not pick all the ones that are suitable for me but this one I think is the best because it not only closed out the movie nicely, but it paid respects to one of the main characters in a beautiful way.

I am of course talking about “Furious 7” of the famous Fast and Furious movie franchise. While filming was still going on, Paul Walker, who played Brian O’Connor, was killed ironically in a car crash. Cars were as much a passion of Paul’s as they were Brian’s. Walker was in the passenger seat when the high speeding car crashed and exploded into flames. Both he and his friend, Richard Rogas died instantly.

The movie stopped filming for a while so that everyone could regroup after this tragedy. As everyone connected to the project dealt with personal emotions, they also had to make decisions on whether to rewrite parts of the script or stop the project altogether. When the cast, crew, and executives agreed it was what Paul would have wanted, they made the necessary changes to make it all work.

One of those changes was to have a song written in memory of Paul Walker. Rapper Wiz Khalifa and singer/songwriter Charlie Puth came up with a beautiful song. The rap lyrics matched the strength of the cars and the characters while Puth’s lyrics were soft and moving. Charlie Puth has often told the story that he was asked to submit some lyrics and a melody to pair with Khalifa’s part. He wrote the words, they liked them; however, they wanted a “big name” performer to sing them. So as a relative unknown Puth said boldly “if you want my lyrics I will let you have them … only if I get to sing them.” It was a bold move but they tested it with Wiz’s part and the rest is, well, history.

The song was on the Billboard Top 100 for 12 (nonconsecutive) weeks and was the breakout hit for both artists who were billed as “Wiz Khalifa, featuring Charlie Puth.”

Oh, yeah, they didn’t kill Brian off in the movie. Instead one of Paul’s brothers stood in for him at a distance on the beach with his family. Then, Brian and Dom Drive off in separate cars (using past scenes). When they reach a fork in the road, Brian/Paul drives into the sunset… to the tune of this song (and the sequence is in the video as well).