After Once, Begin Again and Sing Street, any John Carney is a must see and the soundtrack is a must have. His latest is Flora and Son starring Eve Hewson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Hewson plays a single mother who takes up guitar lessons with an American (Gordon-Levitt) over Zoom.
Carney and songwriter Gary Clark spoke in a Zoom panel for the Critics Choice Association and took us inside the music of Flora and Son. Flora and Son is now streaming on Apple TV+.
Q:How much was the goal of yours to make film music part of your career?
Gary Clark: It was something I’d always wanted to do but had no idea how to get into until this gentleman here called me. Based on, I think, records that I had made in the late ‘80s because he was making the movie Sing Street. That was the connection there and it’s just been an amazing new part of my career that I couldn’t have even dreamed about. It seems like everything that I’ve done up until that point has kind of prepared me to be ready for the roller coaster ride that is making a John Carney movie.
Q: And Modern Love. Does your appreciation of Gary go beyond the ‘80s?
John Carney: But maybe it is an unconscious thing where I, as a 14-year-old, listening to Meet Danny Wilson was hearing these references to movies or because I, like Gary, was brought up in a household where music and film were sort of weirdly connected. I don’t quite know why but it was like songs in films were very important and significant and musical movies but also it’s funny, actually. Frank Sinatra to me was somebody my brothers were playing around the house. Obviously my mother liked that music but they’re kind of like, those great Frank Sinatra songs or all those great Tin Pan Alley songs are kind of like mini movies in a way. The lyrics are so smart and the lyrics are so about character and we could talk a little bit about the problem of modern pop songs being so much about me, the songwriter’s perspective of how I feel, how you made me feel. You made me feel jealous or vengeful or angry, me me me me me. Seems like those guys were writing songs about, to take a cliche, the guys in a bar, the lineup of guys in a bar and the sad stories of the girl walks in looking for somebody. There was kind of a storytelling aspect to a lot of those songs which myself and Gary I think responded to in very different ways but so it’s kind of a natural fit in a way. Gary’s a great storyteller in terms of songs. He’s not writing about how you make me feel or boy meets girl and the end and love will save the day. They’re like: Love may not save the day, trying to be more of a little Raymond Carver or Raymond Chandler storyteller in song.
GC: I also think that the power of music and the power of film, when you put them together, there’s like this exponential, they both lift each other up in a way that’s kind of extraordinary. I’ve had quite a long career making records. You get a great feeling when you get it right and it’s working. When you get a piece of music that you’ve created for a piece of film and you see it on the big screen, nothing can come close to that.
JC: It’s true. We were talking earlier on about a great modern music film which is School of Rock. You’ve heard “Back in Black” by AC/DC a million times. You haven’t heard Jack Black playing it to a bunch of school kids. As interesting as “Back in Black” is is this character who is a stoner teacher whose an imposter who’s life is about this or that playing that to a bunch of kids. That’s a fantastic story and it brings the AC/DC song which was already brilliant into a whole new level of storytelling. The music use in that film is something that definitely inspired me for Sing Street. There’s never just a needle drop for the sake of it and a song is never just used to have a montage or show happiness or sadness.
It seems to me like the song is one thing. The making of the song is another whole song. Once you open up that little treasure trove with that idea, it’s like oh wow. Then in Flora, you’ve seen the scene where people play a song to people and everybody goes, “Oh my God, that’s the best song I’ve ever heard. You’re going to win a Grammy and I love you.” That’s lovely. We’ve seen that in Gene Kelly movies and Judy Garland movies and it’s beautiful. What if it failed? How does that feel? There’s a great scene in Inside Llewyn Davis the Coen Brothers movie where he’s playing a song and I think it’s F. Murray Abraham is listening to the song. You stay for three minutes and it’s quite good. He’s a good performer, the song is great and the final line is F. Murray Abraham saying, “I don’t see any money in this.” It’s just like what a great way to have a musical. So profound and so brilliant just so modern in terms of the evolution of musical storytelling. I ripped that off in Flora and Son.
Fred Topel: Do you write the songs as you’re writing the script or after the script is finished?
GC: There are ideas for songs in the script for sure. The cover versions in this were in the script and it’s very clear where the songs will happen in the script and obviously the story around that tells you what the song has to do. But we write the songs, preferably before shooting but not always. We have to get them into decent enough shape for John to be able to shoot the scenes. That’s sort of the process just before he starts shooting it. Sometimes we’ll see something back and go, “It needs something else.” So we’ll do a little bit of a rewrite or reshoot. It’s pretty bang up to the wire.
Q: Have you ever been up against it getting the songs write?
JC: This was pushing it. This was like pretty nerve wracking but only because it needed to be. It became very quickly evident, because I’m learning as I go along. There’s no template for these types of films where you’re getting actors to sing in kind of their own voice, they’re going to play guitars but they’re not natural guitarists. There’s no rulebook. There’s no agent being able to tell you well, my actor can do this but she can’t do this. It’s kind of like I don’t really know what you’re asking them to do. So it’s always a little bit to the wire when you’re making these kind of films and this one more so than ever because with Joe and Eve, the really interesting thing was they were both really happy to read all of the lines that I had written as they were written. I don’t think there was really ever a time any of the actors ever said I don’t feel like I buy what you’re asking me to say there, which frequently happens in my films. But when it came to singing, they were both like, ‘Please don’t make me, can we change that line?”
Only in the lyrics. It was because I think when, as an actor, you sing, when you’re asked to do something like singing, it opens up a whole other thing for you. Even though there are lines of the words that have been given to you, it felt to me like the smart thing to do here was not just give them a script for the song and say go and sing that. They weren’t comfortable doing that and it became quickly evident. I think an experienced director is somebody who can go, “This isn’t working. I have to listen to these guys and we have to work on this together.” So I just said, “Come into the studio and let’s write some lyrics together.” This is where we were a bit nerve wracked because frequently, or a couple times anyway, a couple days before shooting the scene, we would send an email saying we’ve got to work this weekend because we’re going to change the song or whatever but it’s kind of exciting.
GC: It was a real new experience for me, even though I’ve done a lot of cowrites with other artists, they were pretty much writing in character. It was like what would my character say? The great thing about that is because John had already started shooting, they were already in the characters. Eve knew who Flora was and Joe as well. It was a case of trying to find their characters in the songs. It really helped the songs I thought massively in the end.
Q: Who was responsible for Orén Kinlan’s rap?
GC: Well, I think I added couple lines at the end but 99% of that is John’s rap.
JC: I grew up on Grandmaster Flash. There’s a very funny sketch online called Old Rap vs. New Rap. I won’t go into too much detail on it but it’s basically the idea is I grew up on the “Hey pretty girl, you want some toast? I really feel like I like you the most.” That was edgy. However long it takes Oren to sing that rap, that’s how long it took me to write it.