Craig Brewer on How He Worked a Neil Diamond Performance Into an AA Meeting in the Opening of ‘Song Sung Blue’
“There’s something about the tone of my movies that some people find uncomfortable because sometimes they’re laughing at maybe something that they shouldn’t be laughing at,” says the writer and director.
S_ong Sung Blue_ is very much a two-hander, exploring the real-life romantic and professional pairing of Mike and Claire Sardina (Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson), entertainers who teamed up to form the wildly popular Neil Diamond tribute band Lightning and Thunder. But acclaimed filmmaker Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow, Dolemite Is My Name) saw the film’s opening as a chance for “a bit of a misdirect” with the audience. The script’s first two pages introduce Mike as the hero of the story, before the drama’s emotional weight shifts toward Claire in the back half. “To pay that off,” Brewer says, “I really needed to have an entry point.”
Courtesy of Focus Features
Growing up, Brewer’s father would often throw a particular item of movie trivia at him: “What’s the first line of The Godfather?” The evocative answer, “I believe in America,” has followed Brewer with every script he’s written. “This one bothered me — how do I get into telling about Mike’s life but also start off with something grand that he would say? — until Neil Diamond’s lyrics just totally hit me in the head,” he says, referencing the hit song “I Am … I Said.” “In having him do a change on that, where he says, ‘I am … an entertainer,’ he can start to explain himself.”
Courtesy of Focus Features
“There is thought that goes into me trying to create a rhythm that sounds like someone’s just speaking off the top of their head, but I’m trying to put my own little bit of iambic pentameter in it,” explains Brewer. “There’s something about the free hot dogs on Wednesday nights that creates just a little bit of texture — I don’t know if somebody who was playing at the Whisky or some other venue in Los Angeles would necessarily think this is the point to make clear. That alone suddenly takes me to a bar where I could see the wieners on the little conveyor belt. I already get an idea and a picture of what this guy’s landscape is.”
Courtesy of Focus Features
Mike fits into a classic Brewer character type: a larger-than-life niche celebrity eagerly — but still appealingly — leaning in to his own fame. “He wants you to know he’s fucking Lightning — he wants it on the back of his jacket!” Brewer says. “There’s that excitement in being recognized, because I think when you don’t have the money and you don’t have the career standing in something, you still want to have the respect that you’ve put your effort and your life into becoming a something — and that something has value.”
