Tonight, American Idol will crown its eighth season winner; will it be the
Acoustic Rocker or the Glam Guyliner? In celebration of tonight’s season finale
(watch it on Fox at 8/7pm Central), Rotten Tomatoes caught up with Season 7
winner and Platinum-selling recording artist David Cook, who will perform his
single, “Permanent,” during tonight’s show. (Buy the live recording on iTunes
and all proceeds will go to charity!)
Cook shared with us his favorite films of all time, revealing that his tastes
tend toward rock music influences, silly humor, and quotable comedies. But will
we soon also see the 26-year-old venture into acting, a la
Kelly Clarkson
and Justin
Guarini, or even filling the dancing shoes of
Zac Efron? See
what David Cook picked as his Five Favorite Films (and his plan to follow fellow
Idol winners into Hollywood) below!
Rock
Star is an interesting movie for me; I watched it probably around 15 times.
I love what it represents; I love that it’s almost a mockumentary of ’80s
excess. And any movie with
Jennifer
Aniston is always a good movie. But more than anything for me, I love the
music in it. I actually have bought the soundtrack twice — I lost the first one
— and I’m a big Steel Dragon fan. I like Steel Dragon enough to know there are
two singers who recorded the music for it, Jeff Scott Soto and Miljenko
Matijevic from Steelheart. I know more than I should.As a musician
yourself, how do you feel about the fact that it’s also a cautionary tale about
rising too fast to stardom?Absolutely. You take what lessons you can from the movie, but I try to enjoy
it but not get too caught up in it. Not to get too philosophical about Rock
Star.Some of your fellow American Idol winners have gone on to act in movies.
Is that something you see in your future?You know what, I hope so. I got a little taste of acting in the last music
video we did [“Come Back To Me,” which was filmed entirely in reverse]. I had a
chance to do a little bit of acting — I don’t know how good I was — but I’ll get
back into acting at some point. I know I want to do something of some substance,
something I’ll feel proud of ten, twenty years down the line. I think it’s just
a matter of everything falling into place at the right time. But I’m a musician
first, and I have a record to push.You know, film musicals are back. That genre combines both of your
interests, music and acting.I heard that I got put on some survey of who should replace Zac Efron
in Footloose, and I came in third. But I beat Bow Wow, so there’s hope.Is Footloose something you’d be interested in doing?
Absolutely not! [Laughs] I can punch-dance with the best of them, don’t get me
wrong. It’s all the other stuff — the actual dancing. [I did musical theater]
and I think anyone who has seen me do that can attest to the fact that I can
sing okay, I can act okay, but I was not good at dancing.
I
have always liked Tracy Morgan, and when I saw him in that movie teaching this
kid how to hit on women in a mall, and his head pops up and he says, “Peekaboo,
I’m gonna hump you” — that is the funniest thing I’d ever heard in my life.
Really, that alone made me want to pick this movie. Sometimes stupid humor is
great, and that movie just puts me in a great mood.
I
actually just got re-enamored with Philadelphia. I remember seeing it a few
years back and really just loving A) the message behind it and B) I just thought
that everything about that movie is very subdued. The music — Bruce
Springsteen, “The Streets of Philadelphia” — there’s an undertone to it that’s
very calming, but also very heavy. I loved Tom Hanks’s performance in the movie;
I thought it was amazing.
Juno
is for me, the perfect one-liner movie. “Thundercats are go!” “That’s one doodle
that can’t be undid.” I actually do use that one, more than rarely. It’s another
film with a great overall soundtrack. It’s not a style of music that I always
find myself getting into, but I think it’s one of those movies where the
soundtrack fits the film to a T. The movie itself is quirky, it’s got a kind of
a brash attitude, and I think the music really goes hand in hand with that.
Run,
Ronnie, Run! From the creators of Mr. Show — David Cross and Bob
Odenkirk. It’s another movie full of one-liners. It’s a little more adult than
Juno, but to me it’s kind of a mix of Rock Star, Juno, and
Totally Awesome. It’s kind of just dumb, funny humor, also kind of a
mockumentary about reality shows. Pretty much half of my daily vocabulary is
from that movie.
