Power of Synergy: Hit Song, Hit Movie

Diane Warren was thrilled when her hairdresser told her the other day that after seeing the movie “Up Close & Personal” she’d walked straight to Tower Records and bought the single of “Because You Loved Me,” the movie’s romantic theme sung by Celine Dion.

And Warren--who has written scores of hit songs over the past 15 years--was ecstatic when another young woman mentioned to her that she’d gone to see the movie in the first place because she loved the song after hearing it on radio and TV ads for the film.

“She didn’t know I wrote the song,” Warren says of the second woman. “She just said that she saw the movie because she loved the song.”

Apparently a lot of people are buying the song because they love the movie or seeing the movie because they love the song. The appeal of the song, which was featured prominently in TV commercials and theater trailers before the movie came out, is credited with helping the movie get a strong opening, taking in a total of more than $30 million in its first three weeks.

And the success of the movie, the romantic story of a news anchorwoman (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) and her mentor/love interest (Robert Redford), helped propel the song to No. 1 last week--just three weeks after its release--where it remains this week. Dion’s new album, “Falling Into You,” debuted this week at No. 2, with about 193,000 copies sold.

“This is where you get the real use of the word ‘synergy,’ ” says Jon Avnet, the film’s director.

It’s a word that several of the key players--and beneficiaries--of the making of this double hit use in describing how it came to be.

Warren, one of several songwriters commissioned by Avnet, instantly connected with the film’s emotions, filtering the relationship between the Pfeiffer and Redford characters through her own feelings about her father, who died eight years ago. Dion and her record company then agreed to delay the release of her new album from February until this past week in order to record the song.

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The song was hastily recorded in December, with producer David Foster overseeing the musicians in Los Angeles and Dion--through the magic of fiber optics--performing her vocals in a New York studio. And, in the final piece of the puzzle, executives at the Walt Disney Co.--primed by the similarly synergistic success of the movie “Dangerous Minds” (also starring Pfeiffer) and the soundtrack’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” by rapper Coolio--gave thumbs-up to a marketing plan of airing TV commercials that were as much Dion videos as promos for the film more than two weeks before the film’s March 1 opening.

“This was the first time I can remember that they actually put the video in the commercial immediately, not after the movie had been out and established,” says Darcy Fulmer, director of music for cable channel VH1. “It was basically a Celine Dion 30-second commercial.”

Dion, 26, is a French Canadian songstress with two previous movie-related hits--the Grammy-winning “Beauty and the Beast” duet with Peabo Bryson and “When I Fall in Love,” a duet with Clive Griffin from “Sleepless in Seattle.” Another single, “The Power of Love,” was No. 1 for four weeks in 1994.

“The French Album,” her most recent of several French-language releases, last year became France’s all-time biggest-selling album.

Warren, whose five previous No. 1 credits include Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” and Milli Vanilli’s “Blame It on the Rain,” says of the “Up Close & Personal” commercial: “It was like having a video in heavy rotation on every network. You didn’t even hear about the movie until the end of it. It really reached people and was great for the movie, and vice versa.”

Avnet says that making the ad was not a calculated commercial move on his part.

“I don’t come from marketing,” he says. “I come from feel. What I wanted from the spot was to get a feel for the movie. For me, the film interprets the song in that spot.”

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Of course, it’s hardly the first time such synergy has been in play. Songs and movies have had mutually beneficial relationships since the original version of “The Jazz Singer.” More recently, Whitney Houston’s performance of “I Will Always Love You” (also produced by Foster) from the movie “The Bodyguard” became one of the biggest-selling singles of all time, while the movie was also a blockbuster. And, though not that dramatic a hit, the “Waiting to Exhale” music-movie combo, also featuring Houston, drew more attention to each side of the equation.

That’s exactly what Glen Brunman, senior vice president of Epic Records’ Soundtrax division, envisioned when he first heard the song and imagined Dion singing it. Brunman had worked before with Dion when she contributed a track to the “Sleepless in Seattle” soundtrack--another case of a movie and music giving each other a boost.

“If it was going to happen, everyone involved in setting up her album had to hear the song and agree that it was worth altering the course of the album,” Brunman says. “And it was.”

The final proof, Brunman says, will be in sales of Dion albums and concert tickets. Her last English-language album sold more than 3 million copies in the United States, and more than 8 million overseas. Yet here she hasn’t quite achieved household-name status. Brunman believes that “Because You Loved Me” will make that happen.

“She’s a big star,” he says. “I suspect this will make her bigger.”