The song ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’ (Stealers Wheel) in Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’. How the right song in the right scene makes a film iconic

Looking for the song ‘Stuck in the middle with you’ (written by Gerry Rafferty and Joe Eagan; performed by their group ‘Stealers Wheel’) on YouTube (2016) , displays the immense popularity of this song; more than 40 years after it was published on the 1972 Stealers Wheel debut album. The number of clicks is considerably impressive: the most popular video on the website counts more than 44 million views since July 2010.

The original music video shows the band with Joe Eagan alternately performing in a big, empty building and him being at a banquet table, surrounded by odd guises, unsuccessfully trying to get some food from the table. Comparing the top comments to the video shown, some incoherence becomes visible. For instance, user ‘nosferotica’ writes: ‘Last time I listened to this song I cut someone’s ear off.’ (YouTube, 2016). Another user asks if anyone could listen to the song, ‘without thinking of torture anymore’ (YouTube, 2016).

Without knowing the linkage of the song to one of the most iconic scenes in later film history, these comments make no sense at all. Moreover, we must agree with Quentin Tarantino, who said ‘that certain pop songs have been used so successfully in certain movies that in a sense the movie blots out all other associations and ‘owns’ the song . In the case of ‘Stuck in the middle with you’ and the ‘infamous’ torture scene in Tarantino’s debut film Reservoir Dogs (1992), this statement does fully apply, as the song originally is about an annoying record biz dinner that Eagan and Rafferty had to attend . Tarantino’s debut became cult over the years, considered to have notably inspired further independent cinema.

The quintessence of Tarantino’s idea of film making is already identifiable in his rough debut: cool characters and violence combined with deadpan humour plus a fantastic soundtrack.