Diane Franklin, instantly recognizable from ’80s cult classics like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, TerrorVision, and The Last American Virgin, has one particular character she has always been most associated with. And that character — Monique Junot from Better Off Dead — had a particularly memorable article of clothing, with which Franklin absconded from set: a long, baggy, grey-brown coat that helped offset Franklin’s glamor and ground Monique as an offbeat tomboy. Monique, despite her beauty and winning sense of humor, was as much an oddball and outcast as anyone else in Better Off Dead, a movie so stylized and eccentric that even lead John Cusack reportedly took years to warm to it.
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Franklin, who today accepted a Best Supporting Actress award for her short Falling Up at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival, wore the coat on the cover of her latest autobiographical book, The Excellent COMEDY of the Last American, French-Exchange Babe of the 80s: The Better Off Dead Movie Tribute Book. The book features her recollections from the film’s production, as well as interviews with many of the other people involved, including “Savage” Steve Holland, the film’s director, and a number of her co-stars. And it’s the book that led to her latest creative venture, “The Coat Song.”
“Originally when I had the idea of writing the song, this was supposed to be a promotion for my book,” Franklin told ComicBook.com. “Most people just put a book out and that’s it, but I thought, ‘Let’s do something, where for a whole year, I’m going to put the book out, but then I’m going to put out things where people go, Oh, that’s cool.’ Then I thought I wanted to do a song, and I thought, I had the coat. All these people who have come to conventions and worn it — I thought it would be cool to do a song that focused on that piece of wardrobe. To me, this wardrobe kind of represented people remembering the film and coming to conventions to wear it and get involved.”
You can see a video of the song below.
Franklin said that she has always enjoyed singing and songwriting, but she knows that isn’t her forte. “The Coat Song,” then, is her love letter to that part of her brain. Franklin, whose daughter Olivia De Laurentis is a writer, comedian and actor (recognizable from Apocalypse Goals and Smosh, among other things) also saw a return to the iconography of her youth as a chance to bring a younger generation into the Better Off Dead world. That took the form of dancers and actors who she works with in her day-to-day life as a teacher.
“I had a couple of ideas when I started doing the video,” Franklin said. “Originally I thought I would use film clips from [Better Off Dead] and then, of course, I found that was a big no-no. But also, I wanted it to be a showcase for the new generation. I teach, and I have students who I work with. I teach acting, and I was also helping and working with students who are dancers at this organization called Hip-Hop Mindset. They didn’t necessarily know my career, but I thought it would be cool if they danced in the coat, and then when they get older, they could be like ‘Wait a minute…’ And that it would be a cool thing to combine my past and my present.”
The ’80s-inspired synth bop is a bit out of Franklin’s comfort zone — when she has performed in the past, she had more of a classical/operatic kind of singing voice — but that actually fit tonally with what the song was all about.
“The most important part of writing the song is that I’ve seen so many kids experience social anxiety coming out of the pandemic, and bullying, and not feeling confident,” Franklin said. “I really thought, my character in the film was so unique and so different, that I wanted the theme of this music video to use the coat as a metaphor for comfort. So, come out into the world, and be brave, but…dance with your coat on. Go out, be brave at a time where you don’t feel that confident, be yourself, and don’t care what other people think of you. Just be you, and let it go around you.”
You can pick up a copy of Franklin’s Better Off Dead book here. “The Coat Song” is streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, and other music platforms. The film itself is available on Amazon, Vudu, and other digital video on demand platforms for rental and sale.
