Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008)

directed by Peter Sollett

Meggie Gates

What makes teen flicks so memorable is a good soundtrack. The kind that walks the line between tender and sexy. A perfect blend of Motion City Soundtrack, Band of Horses, and Vampire Weekend is what I’d prefer for my Alexandra Patsavas curated show but unfortunately, I’m not in a rom com. Even if I was, it’d still never live up to the soundtrack of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

Michael Cera is the perfect blend. He perfectly walks the line between tender and sexy, a hill I’d absolutely die on. When I graduated high school in 2012, I was devastated to learn he had no band I could groupie. I was seventeen and he was off his prime, right between the release of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Scott Pilgrim. There was nowhere else I’d rather be but in his yellow truck that didn’t run the entire time he and Kat Dennings were chasing down a band in New York. No other person’s mixes I’d dig through my high school trash for. Everyone has that one song when they think of that one person. My person is Michael Cera.

Music shapes every experience in high school because every experience is a movie. Films and shows tell you to stuff teenage moments into your personality like a scrapbook featuring the best times of your life. You have a song in your head for when you graduate. A song for when your crush finally acknowledges your existence. The specifics are why you choose which song you choose. Thom, played by Aaron Yoo, sits on the back of their band’s van, trying to decipher which kind of song Norah is to Nick. “You just haven’t found what it is,” Thom tells Nick. “The Beatles had it all figured out. It’s not about sex or pain. It’s about this,” Thom says, shaking Nick’s hand as he tries to decide whether to be hung up on his ex-girlfriend Tris (Alexis Dziena) or Norah. They’re both this in their own way. Which this does Nick want?

What makes my first this memorable was excitement. He was a drummer who wore old sweaters and introduced me to Radiohead. I didn’t like Thom Yorke, but I went with it. I wrote a thesis paper on how “Like Spinning Plates” played a different song backwards even though I didn’t think the band was too good. We exchanged playlists in our high school halls with quirky, ironic phrases on them. “Boner Jams.” “Now That’s What I Call Music Vol. 69.” We didn’t do anything beside hold hands, but he did put ”Blow Job” by Blink-182 on a CD for me once. Technically, I guess he wasn’t my “first,” but my friends did pass me drawings of us making out between fourth and fifth period.

Before Norah came Tris. The girl who broke Nick’s heart but is still pictured on his bedroom wall. She still holds some power over Nick, despite the fact that she couldn’t care less about him. She cheated on him the entire six months they were together and throws every mix he gives her in the trash. “He made another one,” she tells Caroline (Ari Graynor) and Norah as the opening credits roll, nonchalantly throwing away a CD with thoughtful, intricate cover art. Norah is quick to retrieve it while her best friend Caroline looks on, teasing her for being in love with someone over their music taste. They bounce down the stairs of their school and hear news that Where’s Fluffy, everyone’s favorite band in the movie, will be playing somewhere in New York City tonight. As an avid music listener, Norah’s going to try, like everyone else, to see her favorite band at an undisclosed location. As resident bassist in every movie, Michael Cera will also be trying to see Where’s Fluffy at said undisclosed location.

What makes my second this memorable was dedication. My friends didn’t trust him and my parents didn’t like him so obviously, I loved him. My eyes reminded him of autumn and we watched all of John Mayer’s Where the Light Is concert on my TV. I didn’t like Elliott Smith as much as him but loved that he thought of me when he heard ”Say Yes.” As far as infinite playlists go, ours never ended. Yeezus came out when we were together and he said “Bound 2” reminded him of me since, for some reason, some part of me translated to Kim Kardashian in his head (insanely nice, incredibly incorrect). Our this is long and never ending. We chased Kanye across NYC to an undisclosed location in June 2016 and never saw him. We crushed cars with our love until Bill de Blasio cleared the streets.

Before Nick was Tal, Norah’s friend with benefits played by Jay Baruchel. Unlike Norah, Nick doesn’t learn the stakes of their relationship until later. Tal is the push towards jealousy that makes him finally realize how important Norah is to him. Cliché that jealousy is a part of the rock ‘n’ roll glue that holds the two together, but it is. Norah serves as nothing other than a stepping stone to Tal, who knows her father is a famous record producer. Hoping he can get a record deal, Tal slips Norah his demo and heavily suggests she gives it to her dad. After seeing them together, Nick asks for clarification on how long she has been with Tal. It clocks in at around three years. An air of tension hangs between them as they realize how badly they want to escape past relationships for the one they want to explore together. Of course, saying how you really feel to someone you like is impossible. They must cut ties with the past before jumping feet first back into romance. Opening yourself up to the potential of love is heartache after you’ve been crushed before. They only went out intending to look for Fluffy, not all of this.

What makes my third this memorable was friendship. I was always comfortable with him because he valued my music taste, something I hadn’t felt up until that point. I rapped ”Dysfunctional” by Tech N9ne for him in the rain after he showed me his childhood house. He said it was the most attractive I’d ever been, so I turned on a Ludacris song I knew by heart. We exchanged Spotify playlists between his friend group and mine and danced to LCD Soundsystem in his basement until 2 A.M. I considered him my best friend as much as I considered him my boyfriend. All the nights we spent listening to MO and the XX solidified something important between us. Ironically, Scott Pilgrim was our favorite film.

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist is a rat race of finding what “this” is. The entire crew stumbles upon the band they were looking for on top of a New York City rooftop and Nick and Norah are presented an opportunity to choose which is most important to them. Stuck in Tal’s grips while Tris looks on, Nick and Norah are surrounded by their past and presented with their future. Time slows. A close up of the band’s feet taking the stage shows. For a second, I’m genuinely convinced they’ve going to return to the comfort of their exes and write this off as a memory of love instead of a transformation surviving the trials and tribulations of heartache. Michael Cera smiles his cute, sideways smirk (my heart!), Kat Dennings face mirrors his, and they leave the venue holding hands. “Are you sad we missed it?” Norah asks Nick, as he waits for her walking the opposite way of a down escalator. “We didn’t miss it. This is it,” he responds, the most cliché line I’ve ever melted over. “Come on. Don’t you want to go home?” Nick asks Norah, an indicator of the space they share. They kiss and descend into the depths of Pennsylvania Station and for a second, I imagine myself opening to the warmth of finding that shared space with someone again. My last this felt like that and now, I’m too scared to create playlists to give to someone. I want to go home again. I don’t want to miss it. I want to have it.

There’s so much to be said about young love. About love, in general. Raymond Carver writes it well, in a collection of short stories given to me by another love. A different love accented by passing books back and forth instead of mix CDs. One took the place of the other, but it never diminished the first, just like Carver says:

“The terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, would grieve for a while but the surviving party would go out and love again.”

Thom sits with Nick’s hand in his, shaking it to emphasize how important it is not to let a good thing pass you by. It’s not about sex or pain, it’s about this. Finding the magic that existed in your heart when you see Netflix come out with a new rom com. Embracing the songs that bring you so much pleasure and pain when you lose someone. Every song I’ve carved out with a person I’ve loved is a place that hurt, but one I’d revisit a million times over. Growing in love between dusk and dawn is a story often retold that sells every time.

Meggie Gates is a writer and comedian in Chicago, IL. They’ve had bylines in Bitch Media, the Chicago Reader, Consequence of Sound, and the Outline. They need everyone to know they’re getting really good at chess.