Billy Joel: We Didn't Start the Fire

Music Video
1989
G
4m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Billy Joel in Billy Joel: We Didn't Start the Fire (1989)

The music video for "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel, starring Marlee Matlin.The music video for "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel, starring Marlee Matlin.The music video for "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel, starring Marlee Matlin.

Director
- Chris Blum
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.7/10

660

YOUR RATING

Director
- Chris Blum
Stars

3User reviews

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 4 nominations

Photos

Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
As of 2023, Brigitte Bardot, Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker and Bernhard Goetz are the only real-life people mentioned by name in the song, still living. Harry S. Truman, Walter Winchell, Joseph McCarthy, Marilyn Monroe, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Sugar Ray Robinson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Rocky Marciano, Liberace, Santayana, Joseph Stalin, Georgi Malenkov, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sergei Prokofiev, Winthrop Rockefeller, Roy M. Cohn, Juan Domingo Perón, Arturo Toscanini, Albert Einstein, James Dean, Elvis Presley, Nikita Khrushchev, Grace Kelly, Boris Pasternak, Jack Kerouac, Enlai Zhou, Charles de Gaulle, Buddy Holly, Syngman Rhee, John F. Kennedy, Ernest Hemingway, Adolf Eichmann, Sonny Liston, Pope Paul VI, Malcolm X, Ho Chí Minh and Ayatollah Khomeini were all already deceased at the time the song was released in 1989. Doris Day, Johnnie Ray, Joe DiMaggio, Richard Nixon, Marlon Brando, Queen Elizabeth II, Roy Campanella, Mickey Mantle, Fidel Castro, John Glenn, Floyd Patterson, Menachem Begin, Ronald Reagan and Sally Ride have all passed away since it was released.

Quotes
Billy Joel: Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom Brando, "The King and I", and "The Catcher in the Rye" Eisenhower, Vaccine, England's got a new queen Marciano, Liberace, Santayana, goodbye We didn't start the fire It was always burning, since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it

Connections
Edited into Billy Joel: Greatest Hits Volume III (1997)

User reviews3

Review

Featured review

7/10

Billy Joel: We Didn't Start the Fire is pretty entertaining as a music video

As we hear Billy Joel mention the events of the '50s through the late '80s, we see him standing by while an American family goes through various events of their own during the same time period. Actress Marlee Matlin plays a woman in the '60s part doing stuff like burning her bra. Scenes go by so fast, one doesn't have time to really tell what's going on so one would have to watch more than once to get it. I myself had just watched it on YouTube for my first time so I'll probably do that...Still I say Billy Joel: We Didn't Start the Fire video is worth a look.