Emotional Turns and Truths with ‘Song Sung Blue’ Writer-Director Craig Brewer

Based on a true story, two down-on-their-luck musicians (Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson) form a joyous Neil Diamond tribute band, proving it's never too late to find love and follow your dreams.

When inspiration strikes, it’s a wonderful adrenaline rush to make your art - whether it be writing a script, writing a song, putting brush to canvas, or whatever your artistic outlet may be. Where we find our inspiration can often be surprising. It can come from anything, really – daydreaming staring up at the clouds, reading up on current events, or watching a documentary. This was the case for filmmaker Craig Brewer when he initially saw the 2008 documentary film Song Sung Blue by Greg Kohs, about a Milwaukee Neil Diamond tribute group, led by a husband and wife singing duo, who’s lives take a drastic turn.

Craig Brewer, the writer and director behind the film Song Sung Blue, starring Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman whom portray this real life couple from Milwaukee with complete and utter abandon, spoke with Script about the challenge of distilling a 16-year story into a two hour film while maintaining emotional truth, why he's drawn to people and stories on the fringe, and dives into the power of extreme close ups.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: Knowing that this was inspired by the documentary of the same name, what was your process in adapting that film, as well as this true story and putting that all a narrative framework?

Craig Brewer: As a writer, we're always just looking for really interesting characters, and I think we're looking for interesting stories, and that receiver is just constantly on…

What I found so wonderful about seeing this documentary is that first of all, it wasn't a well-known documentary, and not because it isn't a wonderful film, it just kind of fell into that same category that my first film fell into… I'm talking about my first digital movie called The Poor & Hungry, which you can see on YouTube. It's the only place you can see it, because it didn't get distribution, much like Song Sung Blue (2008). If I needed to see Song Sun Blue, Greg Kohs, the filmmaker, would burn a DVD, and he'd mail it to you in the mail… When I saw it in 2009 it was at a film festival in Memphis… and I just kind of became obsessed with their story. I thought it was just going to be a rather simple, fun, almost humorous look at a couple being in a Neil Diamond tribute band, but as the story began to unfold, I just remember feeling so impressed, not only just with what they did in the documentary, but just with this couple.

And I just remember seeing it and going like, wow this is really in that world that I really respect of people on the fringe, people that don't have power, people that don't have money, but they have this enormous drive and this enormous dream. And in the pursuit of that, they ultimately create a family. They find real, meaningful, committed love towards each other. It was daunting on top of daunting, because I knew that no one would see what I saw in it.

Nobody knows who these people are. They're complete strangers to this world. And people always say to me, 'I knew nothing about this couple.' I'm like, 'I know, that's the point.' That's why I wanted to do it.

I knew very early on that I was going to have to take this story that took place over 16 years, and I was probably going to have to compact it into three. And I remember talking to the family about that and saying, ‘I need your help as an artist. I've got this opera, and I need to make a three-and-a-half-minute song. So, tell me about everything in your life. Don't think that anything is going to be insignificant, and I'm going to pick and choose as to what is going to be told and in what order to get to some emotional truth to what your family went through.’

And in these interviews is really where I found some amazing moments that were speaking to me about the dynamics with the characters. I'll give you one example, I was talking to Rachel, and I said, 'I just want to get the car accident chronology correct. Where were you when the car accident happened?’ And she goes, 'I was with my boyfriend in the car, and Dana and dad were at home.' Dana, the little boy, was there when his mother had been hit by the car, and was helping to keep her alive with everybody else, and he was covered in blood, and it was a very traumatic experience for him. And she said, 'I was in traffic, and for some reason I couldn't get home, and I saw a helicopter fly over…’ She was in traffic because of her mother - the ambulance is trying to get to her. Rachel came to the hospital late. And when she went into the hospital, Mike looked terrible and she and Mike started to realize that he's having a heart attack while they're working on Claire. And I was like, 'Wait a minute. He was having a heart attack right then and there?' And she was like, 'Yeah, we dealt with it, but we didn't want mom to know about it, because she was just dealing with this trauma.'  And I thought to myself, OK, well, that is a really great way to get into the accident, and not have it all be just about that moment with the accident and be with Claire, but really about the people in her life and the dynamics between them, and especially with a teenage daughter who now has this new father in their life..

And so, to me, it's really about what are going to be those narrative details that really reveal the emotional turns that I think that the characters need at a moment, and that's really what the pre writing process is about.

Sadie: That’s so extraordinary that you had that kind of access. The daughters, and really those characters as a whole, such a great gateway to telling the truth, without having to ask these characters out right ‘what is wrong with you?’ Such a great way in.

Craig: Yeah, you need to get the information. But how great to actually get it through children that have no choice in the matter. [laughs] And they've had to be parents in their own way. I'm inspired by my daughter with that. I have a 17-year-old daughter, very mature, but she's also got two parents that are artistic and that leads to messy lives and complications. She still loves us, but she also feels that she needs to tolerate us and take care of us at times. [laughs]

When she saw the film, she had this favorite scene in it, it's when Rache’s pregnant, and Mike tells her about SMEAC, about how to deal with the situation. And as much as she can probably be critical of her mother when he asked, 'Who do you want leading this?' When she says, 'My mom.' It's this really vulnerable moment that so many women have told me, 'That's a real moment about a daughter and a mother. We will totally yell at her moms and roll our eyes at our moms, but when we really are in trouble, we want our mom.'

Sadie: Yeah, 100%. That scene, that line, it landed so hard, but so clearly defined. Laying the foundation for this ticking clock love story without necessarily pulling the rug out from under us, what was your process behind that?

Craig: My little own private easter egg in this movie is the opening title card that says, '"Based on a True Love Story." I know that people are going to look at that and go like, 'Oh, it's a true story. Oh, and how sweet. It's a love story.' Usually, they say based on a true story, but now we're saying it's a love story. But I have a different meaning with it in my head, which is, and maybe it's a matter of where you would place the comma or the quotes, but it's really about true love. And I just don't know if young people, myself included when I was young, really knows what love is until you really get into the real traumas of life, and that's when it's tested. That's the difference between a love story of people in their 50s and people in their 20s.

When you have older actors, mature actors like Hugh [Jackman] and Kate [Hudson], who have lived life and have had children and marriages and divorces and issues in their life as well, just like everybody does that has gotten to a certain age, love and commitment to each other hits differently. And so, I felt that if I could just get everybody on board with the two of them and their family for the first half of the movie, that I could really test them for the last half of the movie and take people on a real emotional ride, because they just fell in love with this delightful couple.

There's also something special I think, when you see people who have a dream that the audience knows is probably not going to happen…. you also find that you're envious of them, that they're just going at something with this sense of abandon that is empowering. And we as a viewer, wish we had that more. But to then have right at the moment where you go, oh shit, Pearl Jam just had them open for them [laughs] they're gonna be taking America by storm. Here they go. And then this tragedy happens, and to see how a family deals with that tragedy, and see how the person who was traumatized by it deals with it, to me, is really what I feel like America is experiencing right now, where it's just we've got a lot of good people in this country and a lot of good people who don't have much, and they're doing the best they can with it and when they take a punch to the gut, it's really they only have each other to rescue each other, and we only have our dreams and our passions to rescue them.

Sadie: There's hope. The power of your close ups and transitions in this movie. I'm curious how much of that was written in the script, or planned out with your DP and editor?

Craig: I know what shots you're talking about. They are extreme close ups. And I think what's really beautiful, and I really have to give a lot of credit to Amy Vincent, my director of photography. I don't do any storyboards. I have ideas in my head on sequences, on how I'm going to shoot things, especially when music is involved. But I really, over my career, have found that it's really best to get to set and come with the ideas of the day, instead of doing a lot of pre planning and pre determining what the staging, or even what the camera's going to be doing. But I do like to have something in the back pocket. I like to have one arrow in my quiver, so to speak.

I remember driving to set, and I was having a little bit of a panic attack, and I just finally said to myself, 'Just be vulnerable. Be your movie.' And I said, 'Amy, I'm a little bit lost. I don't know if this idea that I have is really going to work. And I need some help here.' And she goes, 'Well, what are you thinking?' I go, 'I know that I want to be very close to Mike, because I can't show anybody where he is, because I want to hide the fact that we're in an AA meeting for a while, and I kind of want to disorient my audience just a little bit - is he talking to me?  Is it a breaking the fourth wall thing? But it doesn't look like he is. It looks like he's talking a little bit around. So, I need to be in this kind of like nebulous space without it feeling dreamy, need to feel grounded.’ But at the same time, I need to kind of have this element of a special place until the moment where he says, ‘Hello, my name is Mike, and I'm an alcoholic.’ And then we're going to cut wide. And I kind of want to be a little bit funny that people go like, ‘Oh my God, I've been in an AA meeting this whole time.’

And I just remember her reaching up and putting her hand on my shoulder and going like, 'Hey, don't be afraid. I think this is going to be great. Here's what I would recommend: let's do a long lens and just have him be very blurry, and him just walk into a real extreme close up,' and she goes 'and let me explore every crack in Hugh's face. Let's see the life. Let's see his age. It's going to be uncomfortable… and let's just live in that and don't be afraid. It's going to really, really work.'

And not only did that moment work, but then it came time for us to do the scene later in the movie with Kate, and she is in a similar situation. And I remember Amy and me, literally going, 'You know what we should do.' [laughs]

But then you have to kind of think of something else. And I'm just going to go ahead and go here, but this is where Kate Hudson is brave. I'm like, 'Kate, I need to show you this moment with Hugh.' And she was like, 'Don’t spare me at all. Get in there. I'm going to tell my makeup people not to hide anything. I want you to see every crack that I have. I want it to be seen, and I want to feel real. And I want women to see that I'm a woman, damn it.'

And I remember her conviction in that moment, because that's a very vulnerable place for an actress to be, or anyone at all to be that large and that vulnerable. It's the two parts that I'm mostly proud of, because I just think it was an all-hands-on deck, the actors, my director of photography and my editor saying we need to just linger in this shot with Kate for as long as we can. And it's a beautiful moment.

Song Sung Blue is now in Theaters.