Featured Image Credit: Universal
Gabriella Ferlita
American Pie fans everywhere are rejoicing at the prospect of a brand new movie in the franchise.
There’s set to be a fifth instalment hitting our screens, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
But while fans get excited about a possible upcoming movie for the comedy franchise, we’re taking a look back at the previous films.
More specifically, we’re looking at the reason why the directors of American Pie never included the infamous song in the film. You know, the one of the same title by Don McLean.
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Well, in an unearthed interview with the films’ creators in 1999, Chris and Paul Weitz explain why the 1971 track never made it onto the movie soundtrack.
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The interviewer asked the filmmaking duo ‘how many people going to see the film are expecting to hear the Don McLean song? Is it something you thought of inserting to the soundtrack?’
To this, Chris did confirm that they ‘thought about it,’ but chose not to include the song of the same name as their film due to a grim rumour that was circulating in 1999 - the year that the original movie was released.
He said during the interview: “We did think about it, but because it’s a kind of depressing song about a plane crash, we eventually decided not to.”
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Paul added: “We didn’t want to do a Vanilla Ice remix of it either, so we decided not to put it in.”
The plane crash which Chris was referring to sadly took the lives of rock and roll legends Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and ‘The Big Bopper’ J.P Richardson, as well as pilot Roger Peterson in February 1959.
But - and this is a big but - Don McLean’s song was never about that plane crash.
As the singer himself confirmed in an interview in 1999, there was a morbid rumour that his song also happened to be the same name as the musicians’ plane, but this was also false.
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McLean said of the song meaning: “The growing urban legend that ‘American Pie’ was the name of Buddy Holly’s plane the night it crashed, killing him, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, is equally untrue. I created the term.”
In fact, the crashed aeroplane, which was chartered through Dwyer’s Flying Service in Clear Lake, Iowa, did not even have a name - only a wing registration number.
Known by the number ‘N3794N,’ it is worlds away from McLean’s song name.
The more you know.