When I was a teenager, one of my favorite albums was my father’s copy of the soundtrack from the 1983 movie The Big Chill. Booming from my father’s cassette player came Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and the Temptations, the Rascals, the Steve Miller Band, the Spencer Davis Group, Aretha Franklin, and Creedence Clearwater Revival—a veritable battery of the best of rock, Motown, and R&B from the ’60s and ’70s. I so adored Percy Sledge’s rendition of “When a Man Loves a Woman” that my wife and I danced to it at our wedding.
Growing up in the 1990s, the photo on the soundtrack intrigued me: I recognized Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, William Hurt, Tom Berenger, and, of course, Jeff Goldblum of Jurassic Park fame. Some of the other actors, such as Mary Kay Place and JoBeth Williams, saw their stars dim in the years after the film. Kevin Costner was supposed to have a small role, but his scenes were deleted. I remember asking my father what the movie was about. He shrugged. “A bunch of former hippies get together for a weekend after one of their old college friends kills himself. It’s a midlife crisis movie.”
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