Fridge / That Thing You Do!

• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Not really noticeable unless you're paying attention. Listen to just how many times the movie plays through "That Thing You Do". When the band is starting out, it's a catchy tune, for some bordering on Awesome Music. But then they play it for the recording session, then on the radio, then on tour, and then, and then, and then. By the end of the movie, no matter how much you liked it, you're starting to get just a little bit tired of hearing it so many times in a row. Which is exactly what it's like to listen to a one-hit wonder, a decent song overexposed all to hell until the audience is sick of it.
    • This makes Jimmy’s desperation to get back into the studio and record new original songs even more understandable. The first few times his song played on the radio, he was probably overjoyed, but eventually, you want to move on to other projects. Unfortunately, Mr. White was no George Martin...
    • Since the band are the main characters, it might also be a reflection of what it's like to be a one hit wonder: By the end of the movie, you're probably as sick of hearing the song as its fictional performers would be of playing it.
  • One of the reasons for the constant mispronunciation of the band name as "O-NEE-ders" may be that Oneida, NY is not very far away from Erie, PA and a fellow Great Lakes town. The locals probably think they're stating they're from Oneida. That said, this theory doesn't hold water for everyone, since the host of the talent show at the beginning mentions that the band is from Erie and yet calls them the "O-NEE-ders".
• The band's first manager, Phil, isn't a proper manager at all, he's a flipper. This is why he seems to live in his RV: he travels the East looking for promising talent, signs them to a management contract, gets their songs on the radio to attract the attention of larger record companies, and then arranges for their contracts to be bought out.
• Why did Mr. White keep putting off Jimmy's demands to cut a second album? Because he always knew they would be one-hit wonders. He probably knew as soon as T.B. Player said he was going to basic training in the fall, and certainly did once he actually got to know Jimmy and Lenny. So he mentored the two people who he thought would make use of his advice (Guy and Faye) but kept them playing that one song all summer because he knew that a second record would make no money for Play-Tone—the label would only have time to profit from the tour.
  • Also in there is that he knew that Jimmy hadn't really read the contract and knew that he was a balladeer instead of a pop singer, hating the up tempo version of his song that made the band famous.
• The name change from "Oneders" to "Wonders" works on another level if you know that the Beatles took their name in homage to Buddy Holly and the Crickets—in this case, The Beetles. This became Beatles to make the band stand out. The situation in That Thing inverts this: the Oneders start out with a unique name, and then get changed to the Wonders, a far more ordinary name that doesn't stick in the memory...and thus fades into obscurity.
• Guy, when playing solo in the studio, starts with the drum part from "That Thing You Do!", but then stops... and improvises — like a jazz musician.