‘Flora’s Son’ Director John Carney Talks Genre, Zoom, and Taylor Swift – IndieWire

“Flora and Son” was a movie that would have been impossible three years ago. From Once to Sing Street, director John Carney has found many ways to bring the joy of music-making to characters who need more than just singing. But he also always wants to complicate what music is and can be for someone. Not all progress means elaborate songs and dances, and not all music is enough to steer someone in the right direction.

The idea of ​​a woman who later becomes Flora (Eve Hewson) trying to escape her troubled son Max (Oren Kinlan) by learning to play the guitar felt very modern, but there was one problem. was there. Carney didn’t actually see her leave the apartment and take the guitar. lesson. So he tries to write a version in which she takes video lessons on a laptop from failed songwriter Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).

“When I was making ‘Modern Love’ in America, I wrote 20 pages of ideas off the top of my head,” Carney told IndieWire on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. “I got to the stage where she opened her laptop and came across a guitarist who was going to teach her…In fact, I had just written an introduction pitching how he teaches, and there he was. I think I stopped, and I said, “I’ve cornered myself here.”

The need to make the story modern and plausible clashed with cultural perceptions of video calls on the Internet. Carney said that when he started writing, he felt the use cases were limited to travel and long-distance relationships. Additionally, video calls also had a static nature. Carney didn’t think people would accept going to the big screen in a movie theater and seeing someone else watching on a small screen.

Lockdowns around the world in 2020 changed that calculus for Carney. “After three months, [the COVID-19 pandemic], we were all fully conditioned,” Carney said. “It was like a part of my brain had changed. And I reread the script. I thought, ‘This is going to work perfectly.’ The very thing that was holding me back, thinking, “Oh, I’m going to pause this writing and put it away for four months,” is what made this movie so universal. ”

But it wasn’t the universally catchy appeal of the song that attracted Carney to the idea. “Flora and Her Son” wants to meet its characters where they are, despite all their limitations as songwriters and musicians (Flora has just learned to play the guitar, after all). The production creates an exciting musical challenge for Carney and his longtime songwriting collaborator Gary Clark: how to write a mediocre song that evolves into a banger as the film progresses.

“I think the days when musicals were full of the greatest songs of all time are gone,” Carney said. “We want to develop the story and the way we use music. So it’s no longer just about atmosphere or fun or the best song ever. [the fact that] For some people, music can be the worst thing in their life. Music can be a savior. Music can spell disaster for relationships. When someone dies, music can decorate the wake. It’s also good for weddings. It can also be used as a lullaby to put your child to sleep. It doesn’t just have to be Judy Garland or Grammy winners or A Star Is Born type of thing. ”

Carney composed both the song and Flora’s character to develop and evolve over the course of the film as she became more musically talented. Perhaps most impressively, she was a teacher and a producer who encouraged her son to make better songs. According to Carney, there’s something powerful about the way she connects the audience to the characters, and when she’s playing music, they immediately accept the characters’ contradictions.

“In the case of ‘Taar,’ for example, just the fact that she’s the conductor changes everything about that movie. She probably could have done a lot of things. It’s true: The moment you put a guitar on someone’s back or put a baton in their briefcase, the moment you hand them that prop, you feel a strange, bizarre empathy for the characters, the musicians, the singers, the conductors. Because as a person, I empathize with them somewhere in my heart. They’re strange and different,” Carney said.

Carney’s desire to embrace the brilliant weirdness and secret desires of characters that don’t necessarily make it into film gave him great freedom to begin writing “very earthy” songs. That way, Clark was able to “paraphrase it in a catchier way and make it a fun experience. It’s not a documentary, so it has to be fun,” Carney said. “If you’re really talking about Spinal Tap, they’re [songs] It’s going to be really bad. It’s like I can’t bear to listen to it. However, they made a very wise decision not to make a documentary. The songs should be as good as any musical, and they are. ”

Still, the songs for “Flora and Son” were born out of a desire to write music for the characters and avoid the siren call of pop music trends. Flora discovers her love for the guitar by watching Joni Mitchell on YouTube. Her interest in Max’s rap and her EDM is quite viral. And guitar teacher Jeff’s go-to example is a Tom Waits song. Carney wanted each character’s tastes to be able to express their essential and wonderful weirdness without being self-conscious or overly obvious.

“I don’t listen to a lot of pop music anymore,” Carney said. “And I thought the other day, what would it be like to be 14 or 15 years old and have Taylor Swift sing about different ideas about femininity, youth, socialization, and your situation? I think I’ve left a few behind. I can’t imagine a 15-year-old with such complex lyrics.”

Seeking simplicity, Carney experimented with several different genres of music until he found a style inspired by 80s and 90s songs that allowed him to blend electronic and acoustic. Flora was more into country. Many constraints on the film’s music and visual presentation came from Carney’s desire to always do something true to the characters, rather than meeting typical musical conventions.

“The moment you make a movie that can be classified as a genre, it’s not original, it’s purely entertainment,” Carney said. “I’m not saying there can’t be interesting genre movies, but for me they don’t last long. I think horror, for example, is a terrible genre of movies. It’s not particularly appealing to me, but strictly speaking , there are four or five horror movies among the best movies ever made. But it’s more than just a horror movie. Only a fool would think Rosemary’s Baby is really a horror movie. It may be categorized or cataloged as a horror movie for ease of reference, but it’s a family drama with humor and the horror of being alive. Black, funny and dark, about nest building and the birth of a baby. It’s really great. But it’s like a horror movie. And I think all movies should try to challenge the categories that journalists and fans assume they’re in.”

“Flora and Son” is now available on Apple TV+.