Viewers lucky enough to see Marielle Heller‘s horror comedy Nightbitch at the Toronto International Film Festival may have been surprised to hear Weird Al Yankovic‘s 1986 hit “Dare to Be Stupid” in one of the film’s most memorable scenes. They may also be surprised to learn that it was inspired by the song’s use in 1986’s Transformers: The Movie. Heller revealed the needle drop’s unusual origin in an interview with IndieWire.
Says Heller, of her family’s affinity for Weird Al and cartoon robots:
…my son, at the time I was writing the script, was seven or something, and was obsessed with Weird Al, and so all we would listen to was Weird Al at all times. He was really into the Transformers movie from 1987 [sic] because my husband, it was his childhood movie, he got my son into it, and that Weird Al song is from the soundtrack.
I would always be blasting it on the radio when I pulled into a school parking lot, and I always felt like, “I don’t give a f*** if all you parents think I’m weird. We’re listening to Weird Al, and I’m singing along, and we’re blasting it.” It was all an ode to my son. And truly, because I had had my own experience of loudly singing Weird Al and realizing it was the moment where I no longer gave a f*** about anything in life and how anyone saw me, I was like, “Right, this has to go in there.”
It was easy for Heller to get the song in the movie: her husband, fellow director Jorma Taccone, and Yankovic are friends, so he only needed to make a phone call to make it happen. She noted that Yankovic had texted Taccone on the day of the film’s TIFF premiere, commenting “My Twitter’s blowing up. I guess Nightbitch has premiered.”
What Is ‘Nightbitch’ About?
Nightbitch, based on the Rachel Yoder novel of the same name, stars Amy Adams as a suburban woman who puts her career on pause to become a stay-at-home mother. As the stresses of motherhood and marriage start to weigh on her, she comes to believe that she is transforming into a dog. It also stars Scoot McNairy, Zoë Chao, Mary Holland, Ella Thomas, and Jessica Harper. In his review, Collider’s Ross Bonaime praised the film, saying Adams delivers one of her “wildest, most ambitious performances”.
“Dare to Be Stupid” is Yankovic’s loving homage to the band Devo; Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh called it “the most beautiful thing I had ever heard”. It crops up in Transformers: The Movie when the Autobots encounter the Junkions, a race of Transformers who communicate in garbled pop culture references; it subsequently kicked off a long association between Yankovic and the robotic franchise. In 2008, he voiced the Junkion leader Wreck-Gar on Transformers: Animated, and recently returned to voice the UFO Autobot Cosmos on Paramount+’s Transformers: Earthspark.
Nightbitch premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival this month, and will be released in theaters on December 6, 2024. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
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