“I’m Still Here” marks the first feature film by Salles since 2012’s “On the Road,” though he directed shorts and a documentary about Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke. As a child Salles knew the Paiva family, though the film is not a memoir from his perspective.

Instead, it’s adapted from an autobiography by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, the son in the family, and reorients the story around matriarch Eunice. She’s played in a fiercely concentrated, Gena Rowlands-caliber performance, by Fernanda Torres – and in a late-film cameo by Torres’s mother Fernanda Montenegro, 95, an Oscar nominee for Salles’s “Central Station.”

That beloved movie was also the last Brazilian film nominated for the Best International Film Oscar. “I’m Still Here,” which will be released by Sony Pictures Classics in January, is the country’s submission this year.

The first 30 minutes of the movie take place in the family’s home near the beach. We see kids playing in the street. One of those boys, back then, was actually you, right?
That’s correct.  I lived in the same neighborhood. Meeting the five kids and being invited to that house opened up a world of new possibilities to me. Suddenly I was in an environment where different groups were freely discussing politics and listening to music that was forbidden at the time. The windows were open and there was no key in the door, which was so rare given the political situation of the country. And we adolescents were allowed to listen to conversations that I never accessed in my own house.

The film does not obsess over politics. Its larger point is that Rubens’ abduction and murder was a crime, regardless of what he believed. 
I think it is political, in essence, but the political stems from the humanity of the characters. It’s an effective way of being political, because by embracing Eunice’s point of view, we go through the institutional channels with her. She became a lawyer who was extremely effective in eroding the dictatorship and ensuring the re-democratization of Brazil. But that came out of her quiet inner strength. And her understatement, politically, was very destabilizing.

Eunice is played by Fernanda Torres. She has said that if her character cried in the film, you would edit it out.
Well, when people are struggling with loss, the first thing they do is try to retain the emotion. And in real life, Eunice never allowed herself to be seen as a victim. Whenever the family would be photographed, she would ask the kids to smile. So to portray this woman in full honesty, we had to embrace her perception of life.

Fernanda’s goal was so difficult: To portray an emotion that would be steaming and bubbling inside her, without allowing it to be expressed in any melodramatic manner. And for her as an actress, it was like walking on a tightrope in between buildings. Because if she diminished the information too much, then the audience doesn’t see what the character is truly enduring. But if she overdid it, then the film would be betraying the very essence of her character. Somehow, incredibly, she did it. There are very few who could hit that balance of emotion.

The film has been screened at many festivals since winning a prize at Venice in September. What has been the reaction of audiences so far?
It’s so interesting how many different cultures react similarly to the story. Something happened after a screening in New York, when I was approached by a tall, young man who told me that the film reminded him so much of his relationship with his father. His father was killed on September 11th. 

Oh, wow.
I was touched by talking to that man, because for him the film was a life affirmative story about how you can survive terrible loss. But also there’s the feeling of when someone disappears, which he can relate to, unfortunately. The person who was literally there is then all of a sudden not there anymore. And how painful that is, even beyond grief. Without the presence of the body, you don’t go through the same rituals.

I’m reminded of the Virgil quote at the 9/11 museum, now in the context of your movie: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.”
Exactly. That’s an extraordinary quote and it applies so powerfully, not just to Rubens Paiva in our film, but to all the loved ones who have been lost and disappeared.

A version of this story first appeared in the SAG Preview/Documentaries/ International issue of TheWrap awards magazine. Read more from the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue here.

The post ‘I’m Still Here’ Director Walter Salles Says Quiet Inner Strength Can Knock Down Dictatorships appeared first on TheWrap.

First, though, June Squibb will have to invite you in, because the table is at the entrance to her kitchen, next to a formidable glassed-in bookcase that sports an impressive collection of carefully placed volumes dominated by mysteries and thrillers written by Scandinavian authors. It’s here, in this pleasantly kitschy midcentury complex, that Squibb first met with “Thelma” director Josh Margolin when he offered her the role of an elderly woman who is swindled by a phone scammer and sets out to get a little revenge.

It’s here where Margolin brought her costar Richard Roundtree over for lunch before the ’70s blaxploitation star (he was Shaft!) gave his final performance as a mild-mannered friend of Thelma’s. It’s here where she and Fred Hechinger, who plays her grandson, met for what was supposed to be a rehearsal but instead became a lively discussion that she said has never stopped.

And it’s where she first drove the scooter she uses in “Thelma,” with the stunt coordinator running alongside her, scared that she was going to kill herself.

“I could just sit here and they brought everybody to me,” said Squibb as she sat near a sliding glass door, on the other side of which an orange cat slept away the afternoon. (Her other cat, a gray and white one, was “probably hiding in the closet,” she said.) It was two days after her 95th birthday, but Squibb was sharp as a tack and in high spirits as her delightful performance in “Thelma”continued to stir up awards talk 10 months after it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It’s her first leading role in a film career that didn’t begin until she was 61, a Broadway veteran but a film neophyte until Woody Allen cast her in “Alice” in 1990. 

In other words, June Squibb launched her film career at an age when most actresses were considered to have aged out of the business by an ageist and sexist industry. “I never felt that women of that age couldn’t get parts, because that was me — that’s who I was at the time,” she said with a shrug and a smile.

“People laugh and say, ‘Well, you broke the rule on that one.’ All I knew was that all at once in New York, we were having a big influx of filming. I knew theater people who were working on these films, and so I thought, I could be doing this.

“I went to my agent and said, ‘This is happening, and I think I should be doing some of it.’ A week later, I had an audition for ‘Alice,’ and I got it. And from then on, I did stage once in a while, but most of the time, I did film. I did ‘Alice’ and then ‘Scent of a Woman’ and ‘The Age of Innocence,’ one right after the other.”

Alexander Payne’s “About Schmidt,” in which she played Jack Nicholson’s wife, was key to raising her profile in Los Angeles, so in the early 2000s, she moved west, into the apartment complex where she still lives. (She did make a concession to her age three or four years ago when her son persuaded her to move from the second floor to the first.)

Most of the parts were small but the work was steady, and occasionally she landed a standout role in a high-profile project, most notably when Payne gave her another chance to play a star’s wife, this time Bruce Dern, in “Nebraska.”

“I’ve done leading roles on stage, and it’s fun,” she said. “If the role’s fun, it’s fun. But other than that, to me it’s the same. But I will say, you get more time on camera with a leading role. You get to say things three times where you say them once in a supporting role.’’

Her first leading role came haphazardly, courtesy of her friendship with Beanie Feldstein, with whom she appeared in the 2021 film “The Humans.” “Beanie is a friend of Josh Margolin and his family,” she said. “They were talking about Josh’s new script, and she said, ‘Who do you want for the lead?’ He said, “Well, I’d like June Squibb, but I don’t know how to get a script to her.’ She said, ‘I’ll get a script to her!’

“So she texted me and said, ‘I’m sending you a script,’ and I texted, ‘OK.’ It was ridiculous. It didn’t even go through my agent — it was just Beanie saying, ‘Here. You wanna read this?’”

The role of a feisty woman who needs help with the internet but is hell on wheels when you put her on a scooter was an ideal one for Squibb. “When I read the script, I thought, Oh, I can’t wait,” she said. “I thought, This scooter’s gonna be such fun.”

A pause. “Well, it was fun, but they first didn’t want me to drive it. They said, ‘We’ll shoot you sitting on it, and then you’ll get off, and the stunt lady will take over and drive it and do everything.’ And I thought, That’s silly. I should be able to drive it.” In the end, the filmmakers relented and let Squibb do her own scooter stunts — though neither Margolin, the stunt coordinator nor Roundtree were expecting her to ram her scooter into his as hard as she could in one scene.

“They told me drive up to him and stop, and then get off and they’d get a stunt lady to do it. And I thought, Hell, I can do this. That was my attitude toward the scooters, the bed rolls, the stairs, everything. I really ended up doing most of my own stunts.”

And now, with one of 2024’s most undeniably crowd-pleasing comedies under her belt,  she’s basking in the kind of glow she hasn’t felt before. “I’ve done good films and I’ve done bad films,” she said, “but I’ve never done something where the overall feeling from people who see the film was what it is for this one. It really is kind of amazing.”

She’s already booked her next gig — and it’s her second lead role, in a film that marks the directorial debut of Scarlett Johansson. “It’s called ‘Eleanor the Great,’ and I play Eleanor,” Squibb said, laughing. “After ‘Thelma’ and ‘Eleanor the Great,’ I’m gonna tell my agent, ‘Only leads, and only if  the film has my name on it.’”’

This story first appeared in the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post June Squibb Gets Her First Lead Role at 95 — and She’s Ready for More appeared first on TheWrap.

Both of these films could easily be two- or three-part doc series. Did you always envision them as standalone films?
Absolutely. If ever there’s a life story that deserves the big-screen treatment, it’s Martha Stewart’s. And that’s also what I envisioned from the beginning with Elton. In the years prior to meeting (codirector) David (Furnish), if you had asked me what my wish list was, at the top of the list would have been a film about the first five years of Elton John’s career. He put out 13 albums. Seven of them went to number one. He answered the question, “What happens after the Beatles?” He redefined what pop music was and where popular music was going. And he struggled with enormous personal demons and began the long journey to overcoming them by coming out to Rolling Stone magazine. That in and of itself felt like an extraordinary narrative.

How do you merge that approach with what Furnish was looking to do, a film about the final months of Elton’s last tour?
The metaphor I proposed to David when I first met him was that the final months of the tour would be the spine of the film and the first five years would be the nervous system wrapped around that spine. In that first meeting it was clear to us that we could envision the same film.

Was he able to set aside the fact that he’s also Elton’s husband?
He was. He recognized that I have a lot of experience as a filmmaker and let me take the lead. But he had incredible wisdom and perspective and an emotional barometer for truth. David very early on said to me that the central tone of this is a desperate yearning, and that is a truth about Elton’s entire life story. David was able to distance himself but also to access the kind of keen insights and wisdom that you could only get from knowing the subject as intimately as he does.

For Martha, what was what your relationship like? She’s a fascinating interview and she’s very open about some things, but she also clearly has lines she won’t cross. You’re not going to make her cry.
Well, I don’t know about making her cry. That’s not how I work. Here’s the thing about Martha: This is a life story filled with lots of triumph and a lot of trials and tribulations, a lot of highs and a lot of lows, a lot of success and a lot of falling from a very high perch. It’s a difficult story to tell, and that is what you feel in the film. There are places she doesn’t want to go, because as she says in the film, she’s not an introspective person.

She told me once that the only time she had ever gone to therapy was for one session. She spent 10 minutes in a session, got up and declared that the session was over. And on her way out the door, she said to the doctor, “Don’t bill me.” This is not a person who who’s prone to introspection or comfortable in it.

On the other hand, she was incredibly forthcoming with her archive, and as a result you get these revealing and intimate letters to her husband when it was clear their marriage was failing. (She gave us) her prison diaries and so much more. You get startling revelations of infidelity and rawness, and you experience how raw it is. And equally important is the fact that in literary terms, she’s an unreliable narrator. You look at the film and you’re like, “Whoa! Our unreliable narrator is telling her own story. Boom, we’re on to something.”

These days, that’s really one of the virtues of nonfiction filmmaking — to call out the unreliable narrators who surround us.
Yes, I agree. I’ve been saying this for 35 years: These are real movies. These are narratives with characters and themes and cinema. “Maestro” is a movie about a fascinating man that looks at certain aspects of his life and explores certain themes and relationships and different other characters in his orbit. It tells the story and is a piece of cinema. We feel the same way about a movie like “Martha” or a movie like “Never Too Late.”

This story first appeared in the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more of the issue here.

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But there were more traditional musicals, too: the smash hit “Wicked,” which reserved its new songs for Part 2 in 2025, along with “Moana 2,” “Mufasa: The Lion King,” and others.

And the year found lots of notable musicians writing songs for films, including Pharrell Williams and Elton John (with Brandi Carlile) writing new tunes for their own documentaries. Then there were Lady Gaga, Ed Sheeran, Miley Cyrus, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Sky Ferreira, Andrea Bocelli, Andra Day … and, oh yeah, Diane Warren, because they’d have to cancel Oscar season if Diane Warren didn’t have a song in the running.

This year’s field contains 89 qualifying songs, five fewer than last year. Here’s a roundup of some of this year’s notable contenders in the Best Original Song race, along with a “bonus tracks” sidebar of additional songs. Shortlist voting in the category will take place between Dec. 9 and 13, with a shortlist announced on Dec. 17.

“El Mal” and “Mi Camino” from “Emilia Pérez”
Songwriters: Clément Ducol and Camille

MOVIE  “Emilia Pérez,” French director Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language musical about a Mexican cartel leader (Karla Sofía Gascón) who enlists a high-powered lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) to help her undergo sex-reassignment surgery.

IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED…  The song “El Mal” is set at a lavish black-tie dinner party, with Saldaña’s character, lawyer Rita Mora Castro, walking among all the motionless guests while she spits out a rap-style condemnation, accompanied by occasional operatic flights from the title character (Gascón). “From the start, Jacques had the idea of a dinner party with the jerks frozen and Rita pointing at them,” Camille said. “The difficult part was to find the right musical climate. We started with a blues protest song in the Bob Dylan style, but that was too literal. Then we tried a Talking Heads kind of song, but that was too ironic. Then we tried a groovy ’90s hip-hop style, but it was too relaxed and not tough enough. We needed something precise and straight to the point.

“We ended up with a version that was originally more electronic, but we made it raw after meeting Zoe. She allowed us to record with a live band and big, big energy, because she gives so much.”

MADE TO MEASURE  “Mi Camino,” a statement of purpose for Selena Gomez’s character, was another example of the music shifting with the actress who would deliver it. “We had written a sort of waltz turning into a techno punk song for the bedroom scene, and then another, even punkier song,” Ducol said. “But Jacques met Selena and said, ‘Unfortunately, we have to throw away this song. It isn’t right for her. We need a song that tells the story of her as a woman looking for freedom.’ So we watched her documentary ‘My Mind & Me’ and felt immediately inspired.”

Camille added, “We wanted it to reconcile femininity and spirituality. She’s not looking for redemption, she’s looking for self-esteem.”

JACQUES SHOOTS, CLÉMENT SCORES “Mi Camino” was the last song to be written, but Clément still had to compose the film’s score, which made extensive use of wordless vocals sung by Camille. “There are three kinds of dimensions or layers to the vocal landscape of the film,” Ducol said. “There is the spoken dialogue and the songs embodied by the characters. And the third layer is voices that distance themselves from all of that and echo or resonate with the souls and emotions.”

“Piece by Piece” from “Piece by Piece”
Songwriter: Pharrell Williams

MOVIE Director Morgan Neville has made music documentaries before — “20 Feet From Stardom” and “The Music of Strangers,” among them — but he’s never made one like “Piece by Piece,” which charts Pharrell Williams’ career not through archival footage and modern interviews, but through reenactments and interviews done entirely with Lego characters.

COLOR FULL Williams said he wrote the title song to “Piece by Piece” in less than an hour, starting with the idea that it had to feel energetic, but also contain contrasts. “I wanted the verse to be dark and determined, and I wanted the chorus to be light and very rewarding in the way it paid off,” he said. Then he stopped and took another shot at describing what he was after. “I wanted it to be dark and stealth and black and navy blue, with a little bit of brown in there,” he said. “Like a black background with the vocals feeling very brown with accents of navy blue. That was the vibe for me.”

And does he always think of music that way, in colors? “That’s the only way that I know how to get around,” he said. “Some people identify it as music notes. I see it as colors.”

BLOCK PARTY Becoming the subject of a film meant that the songs he wrote for that film necessarily had to be introspective. But the form of that movie changed everything, in a way. “I know when people hear the word objectified, they usually think of the terrible experiences that our female siblings have had to endure,” he said. “But we actually used that word and flipped it on his head and used it in a positive way to objectify my story and my life — to Lego-fy everything.

“And when you do that, it makes it universal. Heavy things become easily digestible, and you see other things that are emotional, but it just hits differently when you see everything in Lego.”

MUSIC, MAESTRO Throughout his career, Williams has learned how valuable the synergy can be between song and film—most notably, perhaps, with the smash hit “Happy” from “Despicable Me 2.” “Music is the companion of a film, the companion of the integral moments of our lives,” he said. “Music is the soundtrack of your life, literally. You think about your first dance, your first kiss or the times you wanted a kiss and never got one—there’s always a song connected to it, whether it was good or bad or indifferent. As long as you have a memory and you have hearing, music is always going to be there.”

“Forbidden Road” from “Better Man”
Songwriters: Robbie Williams, Freddy Wexler and Sacha Skarbek

MOVIE  Another film about a star named Williams that uses an unusual form to tell the story, “Better Man” is a fantasy-laced, music-driven biopic of the former Take That singer, a huge star in England. Oh, and it depicts Williams as a chimpanzee, a conceit director Michael Gracey hit upon when Williams described himself as a “performing monkey” onstage.

NOT OSCARY ENOUGH Almost 35 years after having his first hit with the boy band Take That, and 27 years after launching a solo career that would find him selling more than 20 million albums in the U.K. alone, Robbie Williams got his biopic. And though the movie is unconventional, there was never much question that “Better Man” would include a new Robbie Williams song. “Ooh, it would be a dreadful wasted opportunity for there not to be,” he said. “I’m writing all of the time and there’s seldom places for everything to go, so there’s good opportunity considering it’s a musical, which I’ve called actually an abuse-ical.”

But that doesn’t mean there weren’t rocky moments on the “Forbidden Road.” “I remember sending a song that I thought was suitable for the film a long time ago, and Michael Gracey going, ‘No, this isn’t an Oscar nominee vibe of a song.’ And I was thinking, ‘Well, f— you. It is.’ And then I heard about Eminem sending ‘Lose Yourself’ to the musical director or the director of ‘Eight Mile,’ and them saying, ‘This song isn’t good enough.’ And I was thinking, See? I’m right, he’s wrong.” 

When he saw a full version of “Better Man,” though, he had a change of heart. “I saw the film and was like, ‘Oh, this makes sense. I went away with Freddy Wexler and we wrote ‘Forbidden Road.’”

TRANQUILITY BASE So how did he figure out that the movie needed a gentle, acoustic, introspective song that builds slowly? “Well, I was actually told what we needed to do by Michael Gracey,” he admitted with a grin. “He was like, ‘Look, the audience has been through a lot up to that point, and they’re gonna need a cuddle.’ And once he said that, it was like, ‘Oh, I get what you’re after now. So we set about, I dunno, making natural Xanax.” 

ABOUT THAT OTHER SONG GRACEY DIDN’T LIKE… Williams, by the way, still remembers that first song he was sure would be right for the movie. “It was a very different approach,” he said. “It was a mixture of Matt Monro, “The Italian Job” and Neil Diamond in “The Jazz Singer.” And in the end, we went for a completely different approach. I still think the other song’s really, really good.”

A pause, and a grin. “As you can probably tell, I’m not quite over it.”

“Harper and Will Go West” from “Will & Harper”
Songwriters: Sean Douglas, Kristen Wiig and Josh Greenbaum

MOVIE Josh Greenbaum’s documentary follows a cross-country road trip undertaken by Will Ferrell and Harper Steele, one of Ferrell’s closest friends and a former “Saturday Night Live” head writer who recently came out as a trans woman.

MAKING A LIST AND CHECKING IT TWICE Early in the film, Ferrell and Steele call Kristen Wiig from their car, ask her to write a theme song for them and then give her all sorts of requirements: It should be jazzy but also have a country twang, it should be fun but it should make you cry… The bit was a gag but the call was real, and Wiig and Douglas thought about it.

“Throwing all these different styles at me, we were kind of like, ‘What should we do?’” Wiig said. “They listed every type of music that you could possibly imagine, and we talked about making that version. But then it would’ve been a crazy song that probably would’ve made everybody anxious. I’m proud of us for getting as many of them in as we did.”

INTO THE GROOVE Greenbaum was friends with Wiig and with Sean Douglas, a successful songwriter and producer. The collaboration, which largely took place over a day and also involved Greenbaum, was easy, Douglas said. “They said they wanted it to feel like a road thing, which meant it should feel kind of folky and upstrokey and have a little Appalachian thing going,” he said. “I was playing it on piano, which doesn’t sound the same, but we were just off and running on the idea. We had a certain groove going and the first couple of lines, and then everyone keeps developing it and passing the ball back and forth, and by the end of the day you’ve got a song.”

Those first few lines, by the way, definitely set the tone: “Harper and Will go west / Just a couple old friends and a couple brand new breasts.”

THE UNMASKED SINGER A couple of weeks after they wrote the song, they got back together to record it. “I sang as a kid and I was in the choir, but I wasn’t a confident singer,” Wiig said. “And a lot of the musical stuff I did, especially on ‘SNL,’ was more jokey — and it was a character singing, which is easier for me. When it’s me singing, I get nervous. It’s vulnerable. The film has resonated with so many people and I’m more comfortable with it now, but I’m still getting there.”

And if it gets a nomination, will she sing it on the Oscars?  “Absolutely,” she said without hesitating. “That’s like a dream, right?”

“Kiss the Sky” from “The Wild Robot”
Songwriters: Maren Morris, Delacey, Jordan Johnson, Stefan Johnson, Michael Pollack & Ali Tamposi

MOVIE Chris Sanders’ animated epic is based on Peter Brown’s 2016 sci-fi novel for children, which tells the story of ROZZUM Unit 7134, or Roz, a futuristic robot who is programmed to be a helper, but accidentally becomes the guardian and surrogate mother to an orphaned goose.

CLUELESS Maren Morris had enjoyed a successful career as a Grammy-winning country singer and member of the all-female supergroup the Highwomen. But she hadn’t written for films when she was approached to write and record songs for the Dreamworks Animation project. “I truly had no idea what I was doing,” she said. “I just had to fake it and come from the place of, OK, this is about a robot that’s landed on this remote island and has to adapt really quickly into motherhood.”

With a son who was born in early 2020, that angle made sense to her. “I felt like I was right in that same seat, so I was able to come from that perspective.”

ACHIEVING LIFTOFF The song “Kiss the Sky” is heard during one of the film’s most spectacular sequences, when the timid young goose Brightbill overcomes his fear to join the rest of the flock as they take off on their massive migration. “With that scene of Brightbill taking flight and Roz realizing that this iteration of her journey has come to an end, I couldn’t help but think about my son going off to college. It makes me emotional to even talk about it now.”

BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME After writing and recording the song about motherhood, Morris got to show “The Wild Robot” to the son who’d inspired it when she rented out a theater in Nashville in October. “He had seen the trailer on my phone 1,000 times and was already a fan, and he knew my song was in it,” she said. “It was my third or fourth time seeing the movie, but when you get to watch something that you’ve already seen with your child, it feels new because you’re watching it through their lens now.

“He was just in awe. But when my song kicked in and he heard my voice, he was like, ‘That’s you!’ It was so precious and really emotional, I’ll never forget it. I’ve never had a moment like that, and I don’t know if I ever will again.”

“Winter Coat” from “Blitz”
Songwriters: Steve McQueen, Nicholas Britell and Taura Stinson

MOVIE Steve McQueen’s drama looks at World War II through the viewpoint of a mother and son who are separated at a time when the Germans are raining bombs down on London.

THE NEW OLD SOUND The family at the center of “Blitz” is a single mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), her young son, George (Elliott Heffernan) and her father, Gerald (British rock icon Paul Weller in his first acting role), and the center of their family life is an upright piano on which Gerald is constantly playing the pop songs of the day. But McQueen enlisted composer Nicholas Britell, who had arranged period music for the director’s “12 Years a Slave,” to come up with some new songs that sounded old.

“He wanted songs that felt right for the period, that were really authentic to the world. But he also wanted to make sure the songs could speak to an audience today and feel impactful,” Britell said.

WHAT’S LEFT BEHIND For a song that Rita sings on the radio from the bomb factory where she works, McQueen began working with Britell. “He had this idea of when you’re missing somebody, an object could connect you to that person,” Britell said of the song that became “Winter Coat.” He brought in frequent collaborator Taura Stinson, who got it right away.

“In my family, when someone passes away, you either take something they left behind, or they’ve left something to you,” she said. “It was a sentiment I was all too familiar with: putting on someone’s coat, the scent, the memories, the warmth, all of those things that come with it.”

TIME TRAVEL “Our goal was to make it feel like these were songs that already existed in the world of these characters,” Britell said. He stayed away from harmonies that might feel too modern, while Stinson combed over old books of poems and consulted with her 95-year old grandmother, whose family is British. “The best compliment that I’ve received is the people who say, ‘We really thought that was a song from that area,’” Britell said.

Stinson agreed. “Yeah! When I was at Middleburg (Film Festival), someone told me, ‘Oh, I love that song! I remember that!’” She laughed. “I thought, Do you, now?”

“The Journey” from “The Six Triple Eight”
Songwriter: Diane Warren

MOVIE Tyler Perry’s Netflix movie is a World War II drama about the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion of the Women’s Army Corps, an American battalion that was sent overseas during the war.

YES, IT’S HER AGAIN Diane Warren has been nominated for 15 Oscars, including the last seven years in a row, and she’s the only songwriter to receive an Honorary Academy Award. And every year, she’s back in the race and back on the circuit, still looking for her first competitive win. It’s an interesting contradiction for a woman who’s well known for preferring to work by herself (no cowriters!) in quiet rooms.

“I’ve learned to enjoy it,” she said. “You’re right, I’m basically a hermit, just trying to wrestle with these songs to make them great. But I love this time of year. It’s a forced social life that I’ve learned to enjoy, but I don’t let anything get in the way of my writing. I make sure I write every day. If I have a piano, a guitar and a cat, I’m happy.”

EASY COME A friend of Warren’s first told her about “The Six Triple Eight,” describing the entire movie in such detail that Warren said she saw it in  her head and for what she says was her first time ever, wrote a song for a movie without seeing any of the movie. “I was really touched and inspired by these women’s story. I sat down at the piano and started playing those chords, and all of a sudden I started singing, ‘It’s the journey/It’s the getting there to where you’re going to/Go through hell but still you’re gonna make it through.’ That kind of came with those chords.”

And while she doesn’t want to downplay the work she put into crafting the sultry slow-burn song, she also knows it came more easily than usual. “I’m a mad, crazy perfectionist with my songs,” she said, “but this one, I hate to say, almost wrote itself. I was watching on the sidelines going, ‘Well, OK, you’re writing that.’”

AND IT’S H.E.R. AGAIN, TOO  Back in 2021, Warren appeared on TheWrap’s virtual music panel with H.E.R., among other songwriters with work in the race. “She beat me!” said Warren, whose song “Io sì (Seen)” from “The Life Ahead”lost to H.E.R.’s “Fight for You” from “Judas and the Black Messiah.” “But that’s OK. She’s great.”

She felt that again when H.E.R. came into the studio in Warren’s Hollywood office, listened to “The Journey” and then immediately arranged and recorded it the same day. “It was one of the best performances I’ve ever heard in my life,” she said. “I’ve worked with the best singers ever — Whitney and Celine and whoever. And she was on that level of performance. Where she went vocally was just astonishing to me.”

*

Bonus Tracks

“Beyond” from “Moana 2“
Lin-Manuel Miranda landed an Oscar nomination for a song from the first “Moana” in 2016. Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear took over for the sequel, with their work including this driving Disney-princess statement of yearning. (Also submitted from the film: “Can I Get a Chee Ho?”

“I Always Wanted a Brother” and “Tell Me It’s You”from “Mufasa: The Lion King“
Miranda moved over to this Disney franchise that won Elton John an Oscar in its earliest incarnation. It gives him another chance to pick up the O he’s missing from an EGOT.

“Never Too Late” from “Elton John: Never Too Late“
Speaking of Elton John, he’s in the running for the second song he’s written with the title “Never Too Late” in the last five years. The first was written for the “live action” “Lion King” movie in 2019, while this one, with a nicely retro feel, is a collaboration with Brandi Carlile for the new documentary about his life and career.

“Under the Tree” from “That Christmas“
You wouldn’t necessarily think of Ed Sheeran as the guy to write a song for a movie starring grizzled heavyweights like Brian Cox and Bill Nighy — but if the movie is an animated one based on a book by the guy who wrote and directed “Love Actually,” and the song is a new Christmas song, why not?

“Sick in the Head” from “Kneecap“
The movie is an unruly, wildly fictionalized romp about the career of Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap, so of course the group offers its own driving statement of purpose: “I’m too far gone when it comes to mental health/Rather be sick in the head with a little bit of wealth.”

“Alone,” “The Big Blue Sky” and “Catch Fire” from “The End”
One of this year’s robust slate of musicals that you wouldn’t expect to be musicals, “The End” is a post-apocalyptic black comedy in which Tilda Swinton, George MacKay and others break into song awkwardly and endearingly.

“Out of Oklahoma” from “Twisters“
A couple of songs are eligible from “Twisters,” including this affecting country ballad sung by Lainey Wilson and written by Wilson, Luke Dick and Shane McAnally. (Luke Combs also has a song in the running, “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma.”)

“Not My Fault” from “Mean Girls“
There are eight credited songwriters on this spirited pop/hip-hop ditty, among them performers Megan Thee Stallion and Reneé Rapp and singer-songwriter-producer Ryan Tedder. (That’s too many under Academy rules.)

“Leash” from “Babygirl“
A provocative Nicole Kidman movie gets a provocative, tunefully assaultive end-credits song from Sky Ferreira.

“Beautiful That Way” from “The Last Showgirl“
For a film starring Pamela Anderson, an actress long dismissed as a lightweight, it makes sense to commission a song from Miley Cyrus, who has had her own experience being underestimated.

“Folie À Deux” from “Joker: Folie à Deux“
In between the old standards like “For Once in My Life,” “That’s Entertainment” and “I’ve Got the World on a String,” Lady Gaga whipped up a waltz that sounds as if it came from another time, or maybe another mental state.

“Why I’m Here” from “Shirley“
The surprise 2023 Grammy winner for Best New Artist, Tamara Joy, downplays her jazz roots for this dignified anthem celebrating the pioneering Black politician Shirley Chisholm.

“Compress/Repress” from “Challengers“
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have two Oscar wins and three nominations for their work as composers, but they have yet to be nominated for one of their movie songs. This piece of electronica, both stately and jittery, includes a vocal appearance by Reznor’s wife, Mariqueen Maandig.

“Dare to Be” from “Cabrini“
This period drama about a female Catholic missionary in the late 1800s is another family affair: Andrea Bocelli sings the big, stately ballad in Italian, and his daughter Virginia chimes in in English.

This story first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post Talking With Oscars Song Contenders: Pharrell Williams, Kristen Wiig, Robbie Williams … and Yep, Diane Warren Too appeared first on TheWrap.

Her visually sumptuous feature, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, takes place as the Second World War ends and one generation moves into the next. The slow-burn plot focuses on a teacher’s daughter who falls in love with an army deserter – and how the relationship impacts the lives of everyone in the village.

“Vermiglio” is Italy’s submission for the Best International Feature Oscar. Italy is the most awarded (14 Oscars) and most nominated (33) country in the category’s history, having last won in 2014 with Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty.” Delpero is the first women filmmaker submitted since Cristina Comencini (“Don’t Tell”) in 2005.

You have said that this project began with a dream. What was the vision that triggered the story?
Yes, I had a happy dream in a sad moment. When my father passed away, I dreamed of him as a 6-year-old boy. I have a photo of him when he was that age, and he was playing in his childhood home, which was the house of my grandparents in Vermiglio. I had never thought about making a film about my family, but losing my father changed my position in the world. That was the epiphany moment.

The film is about the adult characters – a daughter in the family marries a soldier who’s deserted from the war – but the kids are so important. 
The kids are like a Greek chorus. When they all go to bed at night, it becomes a moment in which everything that they think and observe during the daytime can be shared between siblings. They say the things adults think but we wouldn’t say because we have too many filters. In those scenes, the kids are curious and harsh and tender. This is essential for the tone of the film.

You also depict a terrible reality: the loss of a child. But you do so off screen, without focusing on the pain.
It’s not that my grandparents didn’t suffer. They did, greatly. But it was a world where the family had to go on. The baby is lost, and she’s already pregnant with the next child. My grandmother was pregnant continuously for 20 years. They had 10 children. And as a filmmaker, I prefer not to engage in emotional blackmailing, like seeing a baby suffering or a mother suffering. What was important to me is that back then, more than now, they had the sensation that nature is bigger than us.

The film is set in 1944, but it’s very connected to the way we live today, especially in the second half. How much did you think about that?
I thought about the story taking place the day before yesterday. The past still talks to us. While writing, I always had a snowball in my mind. That little ball of snow that rolls down the hill and gains snow, snow, snow and then rolls quicker. The film has a slow beginning because I wanted to give the audience an immersive experience. You’re in this remote place in the mountains and you’re not thinking about your life. But then I hope you do think about your own life. The film is about where we come from, where we are and where we’re going.

It’s been nearly 20 years since a film directed by a woman was submitted to the Oscars from Italy. How do you feel about the selection? 
I’m very happy. So many things happened at once: The prize at Venice, opening in cinemas in Italy, the Oscar selection and I also have a baby at home. I wish I could have extra time to process everything. But the Oscar selection—it’s a courageous choice. So much of Italian cinema is made in Rome, but this is a film made in the periphery, the outskirts. It’s something fresh and new, and I’m proud to have been supported in such a way.

A version of this story first appeared in the SAG Preview/Documentaries/ International issue of TheWrap awards magazine.

Read more from the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue here.

The post How ‘Vermiglio’ Explores Its Director’s Family History as an Immersive Wartime Saga appeared first on TheWrap.

Shannon was wrong: Almost 20 years after he became intrigued by a book about one such gang, Nichols finally made “The Bikeriders” with Austin Butler, Tom Hardy and Jodie Comer. It was made in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and premiered to rave reviews at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival.

But what should have been the triumphant culmination of his two-decade quest was bittersweet at best. In the wake of the writers and actors strikes, 20th Century Studios pulled the film off its release schedule and eventually sold it to Focus Features, which finally released it to modest box-office returns in June of 2024.

“The Bikeriders” deserved better: Only the sixth film in Nichols’ 17-year career, the film is tough and stylish, one of the year’s best dramas. It drips with the machismo of biker gangs, until you realize that it’s really the story of Comer’s Kathy, an indelible character based on a real-life woman who hung out with the Outlaws Motorcycle Club in Illinois.

For Nichols, the Little Rock-born director whose previous films include “Take Shelter,” “Mud” and “Loving,” the initial appeal was as much visual as narrative. “It was really about the style: the way they dressed, the way they had their hair,” he said of the world he discovered in Danny Lyon’s book of the same name. “I feel like that’s such a big part of the subculture, and I find it especially interesting because there’s something so masculine about a motorcycle club that you wouldn’t think they think about style or fashion.”

He laughed. “But they do. And that’s something I experienced in the mid ’90s with the punk-rock scene in Little Rock, Arkansas. You see these kids roll out and at first glance you think they just kind of bounced out of the gutter, but then you realize, no no no.”

Lyon’s original book consisted entirely of black-and-white photos, but Nichols wasn’t interested in the monochrome approach; he wanted the vibrancy of the color photos he saw in a later edition. But he also had to figure out how to create striking characters to go with the striking looks, and how not to be intimidated by a subculture that felt very foreign to him.

“I felt like a bit of a fraud, you know?” he said. “It took me a long time to get up the courage to enter that world.” He needed to fictionalize the story rather than stick to the real Outlaws, to enable himself “to take ownership of the story enough to feel good about sitting down and writing it, to be honest.”

Comer’s character was a key; Kathy finds herself in a love triangle of sorts, with her charismatic but hot-headed husband, Benny (Butler), torn between his love for her and his attraction to the gang and its leader, Johnny (Hardy). And if the dynamic is charged between the three central characters on screen, Nichols said it was like that on the set, too.

“Tom knew about Jodie and knew she was good, but they had never worked together,” he said. “The first scene they did together was the scene where she comes into the bar to challenge him [about Benny] and say, ‘You can’t have him. He’s mine.’

“I always talk to the actors and say, ‘Who would like to go first?’ because we’ve got to point the camera in one direction or the other because of the lighting. Jodie said, ‘I’ll go first,’ and we were all a little nervous. It was our version of the scene from “Heat”(between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro). We had these two powerhouses coming together for the first time, and she came in like a shotgun blast.

“I don’t mean this in a negative way about Tom, but I think she was so good and came in with so much energy that he forgot a line. And his reaction as Johnny was to actually slow down. She’s trying to deliver these lines and he’s slowing everything down. It was frustrating her, but she was supposed to be frustrated in that scene.

“As a director, it was one of the most fun things I’ve ever gotten to watch.” 

This story first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post Jeff Nichols’ Favorite Part of Making ‘The Bikeriders’: Watching Tom Hardy and Jodie Comer Go Head-to-Head appeared first on TheWrap.

How did you get involved in the film? It came after Will and Harper had already decided to make a trip across the country, and potentially film it?
Yeah. once the idea of doing this road trip came about, the possibility of it being a documentary is when I became part of the conversation, as a documentary filmmaker but also as a fairly long friend of both Will and Harper. I’ve known Will for about eight years, and knew Harper for about four. Kristen Wiig introduced us when she had Harper come in to do a punch-up on “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” which was my first narrative film. They approached me and said, “Josh, do you think there’s a documentary here?” to which I answered, “Absolutely.” A few months later, we were on the road driving across the country.

Had Harper already come to terms with the idea of putting a very sensitive part of her life on film?
I think they had mostly gotten past that. I know it took a while for Harper to come around to the idea of not only of doing the trip but of it having it filmed. But I think that’s a reason why I made a lot of sense as director. I had a pre-existing relationship with both of them, which helped because it was super important for creating a very safe space for them to be able to be open and vulnerable and honest — not just for one another, which is hard for anybody, but in front of cameras.

And I think the three of us share a similar comedic sensibility. We all wanted whatever came out of it to be funny. I think Will and Harper’s love language is comedy, and so it was very important to them that whoever was directing this film had a sense of comedy. I think I was perhaps the last piece of the puzzle that made Harper finally just say, “Yeah, let’s do it.”

When you sat down to think about what this film would be, what were the big questions you had to answer? 
There were a lot. I think my first question was, What is the film exploring?  The concept of the trip was: Harper loves this country, but she’s not sure if it loves her back since her transition. She was going to the places she used to love, these small towns and dive bars, and seeing if she can still feel comfortable. So we had to make sure we had a small and nimble crew so that if Will and Harper had any idea of, “Ooh, let’s pop into this place, let’s go go-kart racing,” I was able to follow them with a crew.

The big second question was about their friendship and their relationship. It was a big change obviously for Harper, but as Will says in the film, it was uncharted waters for him. That was always going to be the deeper thing the film explored, and the more universal themes of empathy and love and acceptance and growth and change within a relationship.

But how do I capture that? A lot is going to be in the car. We came up with some fun creative ideas like mounting two cameras on the hood of Harper’s Grand Wagoner. One was a two-shot and it was strapped down. I also put a second camera next to it with a longer lens, and I had a remote head to pan back and forth.

And the last part of it was that I wanted to make sure I was capturing Harper’s version of America that she loves. She loves to find the beauty in the mundane and the quote-unquote ugly. So that goes down to choosing lenses, and I chose these beautiful old Cooke prime lenses that have soft characteristics to capture the way she sees America. 

Obviously it’s ideal for you if the conversations start out tentative and get more intense and open by the time they get three quarters of the way across the country. But can you tell them, “Don’t get into it too much in the first week?” 
It’s a very astute observation. That’s the concern — and by the way, not only that, but given the nature of how I was shooting it, where we’re tracking their trip and they start in New York and make their way across the country, you can’t really do what you can normally do in a documentary, which is take a scene that maybe happened 15 days in and edit it so it looks like it’s Day 2. That wasn’t on the table, given that you could see where we were in the country.

I had them both send me questions they wanted to ask one another, so I had what I called the question or conversation bible in case they ran out of things to talk about, which they shockingly didn’t across 16 days. But what really happened is the organics of how these conversations go. Nobody jumps into the most difficult conversation on Day 1, you know? It played out in the way that you expect, which is that they started in lighter, more comfortable territory, and as the journey went along they let some of their inhibitions down, both with each other and in front of the camera. 

What was it like sitting down with 250 hours of footage?
The word I would use is overwhelming, and I mean that in both a positive and negative connotation. The first cut of the film that I thought was really working was five hours long. And the secret was to let go of some of the comedy. They’re two of the funniest people I know, by far. But once I let go of that and focused on structuring the film around moments of growth and change and more emotional story beats, I got the film to a reasonable length and could start to fold back in the more comedic moments. 

In the film, the experience of traveling across the country did seem to help Harper figure out her relationship with this country and her view of herself. But the way the film has been received and embraced must have been a continuation of that journey in some ways.
Absolutely. All of us, but particularly Harper, have undergone incredible growth since starting to make the film. And then obviously this transformation has taken on a whole new identity since the film’s been released. Even making the film, one of my favorite moments was when she decided to go in alone to that bar in Oklahoma. She did not want Will by her side. She wanted to see if she could do this on her own. And she was met with a surprising amount of love and acceptance, even without Will in there, in a bar where I was certain that love and acceptance was not going to be the outcome.

And shortly thereafter she was at the race track and she said, “I think I’m realizing I’m, I’m not afraid of other people hating me. I’m afraid that I of hating myself.” She’s still on that journey — and I think a lot of trans people can relate to this, but also everyone can relate to this. There’s a universality in learning how to love yourself, all flaws and all. That’s what a lot of the journey of the back half of the film is about, and it’s been wonderful to see that continue as the film has been out in the world. 

Did the experience make you think that America does still love Harper?
Yes, but obviously we have a ways to go. The reality right now is that we’ve got a soon-to-be president who spent over $215 million on campaign ads that target trans people. I can speak for all three of us when I say our film took on a whole new meaning [after the election]. He and his loudest supporters regularly go after the trans community and spread division and hate in general, not just at the trans community.

The last time Trump was president, hate crimes spiked 20%. And for me and I think all of us, the only way to push back against this hate and division is with love and empathy. On social media, people have become nothing more than avatars and usernames. We’ve lost touch with each other’s humanity, and I feel a lot of politicians are exploiting that. And so stories like ours, stories of love and friendship and allyship, are how we fight back.

A version of this story first appeared in the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post How ‘Will & Harper’ Took on a ‘Whole New Meaning’ After Trump’s Election appeared first on TheWrap.

Fifteen new films were added to that room on Wednesday, a departure from the usual weekly additions, which typically come every Friday. The newcomers include Best Picture contenders “Conclave” and “The Piano Lesson,” following a Nov. 22 influx that included “Emilia Perez,” “Joker: Folie a Deux,” “Juror No. 2,” “Nightbitch,” “A Real Pain,” “The Room Next Door,” “Saturday Night” and “September 5.”

But some major films are still missing, Neon’s “Anora” and A24’s “The Brutalist” foremost among them. Other contenders that haven’t shown up in the screening room include last weekend’s big releases, “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” along with the yet-to-be-released “A Complete Unknown,” “Nosferatu,” “Maria” and “Nickel Boys.”

In the case of “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” it’s logical that Universal and Paramount would keep those films off screening platforms while they’re making big money in theaters. When it coms to the films that haven’t been released, it’s understandable that companies would feel as if they have enough time with voters who don’t cast their nomination ballots until the second week of January. (Voters for other awards like the Critics Choice Awards, who vote earlier, have received screeners of “Maria” and others.)

And the inclination to wait can be particularly strong for directors who are particular about the formats in which their films are seen: “The Brutalist,” for example, is clearly designed as a theatrical experience, with a built-in intermission that includes a card that appears on the screen while music written for the break plays. The film has been screened aggressively for voters and will be added to the Academy Screening Room in December.

As of Thanksgiving, there are 144 films in the Academy Screening Room, out of which about 30 to 40 have a realistic chance of receiving an Oscar nomination, and the same number an outside chance. Placement in the room requires a payment of $20,000 to the Academy, or $25,000 to add forensic watermarking. Films with budgets of less than $10 million are eligible to apply for a reduced rate.

Currently, the films in the main screening room include 20 documentaries, 11 animated films and 15 entries in the Oscars Best International Feature Film race. Films that qualify in those categories are also put in special screening rooms devoted to the categories free of charge.

Here’s the full list of films in the Academy Screening Room as of Thanksgiving:

“The Absence of Eden”
“Albany”
“Alien: Romulus”
“All We Imagine as Light”
“Am I Racist?” (documentary)             
“American Star”
“Americans With No Address” (documentary)
“The Apprentice”
“Argyle”
“Armand” (international)
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”
“Between the Temples
“The Bibi Files” (documentary)
“The Bikeriders”
“Blink Twice”
“Blitz”
“Bob Marley: One Love”
“Cabrini”
“Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid” (documentary)
“Celebrating Laughter: The Life and Films of Colin Higgins” (documentary)
“Challengers”
“City of Dreams”
“Civil War”
“Conclave”
“The Count of Monte Cristo”
“Daddio”
“Dahomey” (documentary, international)
“Dandelion”
“Daughters” (documentary)
“Day of the Fight”
“The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie” (animated)
“The Dead Don’t Hurt”
“Deadpool & Wolverine”
“The Deliverance”
“The Devil’s Bath” (international)
“Didi”
“A Different Man”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Elton John: Never Too Late” (documentary)
“Emilia Perez” (international)
“Everybody Loves Touda” (international)
“Exhibiting Forgiveness”
“Ezra”
“Fall Guy”
“Fancy Dance”
“Firebrand”
“Flipside” (documentary)
“Flow” (animated)
“Fly Me to the Moon”
“Frida” (documentary)
“From Embers”
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”
“Ghostlight”
“The Girl With the Needle” (international)
“Good One”
“Goodrich”
“The Greatest Hits”
“Heretic”
“His Three Daughters”
“Hit Man”
“The Hopeful”
“Horizon: An America Saga Chapter 1”
“How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies” (international)
“I Am: Celine Dion” (documentary)
“I Saw the TV Glow”
“The Idea of You”
“I’ll Be Right There”
“I’m Still Here” (international)
“The Imaginary”
“In the Land of Saints and Sinners”
“Inside Out 2” (animation)
“The Instigators”
“It Ends With Us”
“Janet Planet”
“Joker: Folie a Deux”
“Juror No. 2”
“Kinds of Kindness”
“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”
“Kneecap” (international)
“The Last Showgirl”
“Late Night With the Devil”
“Lee”
“The Listeners”
“Longlegs”
“Lost Ladies” (international)
“Love Lies Bleeding”
“Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln” (documentary)
“Martha” (documentary)
“Maxxxine”
“Memoir of a Snail” (animated)
“Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa” (documentary)
“Murderess” (international)
“My Old Ass”
“My Penguin Friend”
“Nightbitch”
“The Piano Lesson”
“Piece by Piece” (animated, documentary)”
“One Life”
“The Outrun”
“Porcelain War” (documentary)
“Problemista”
“Queens” (international)
“A Real Pain”
“The Remarkable Life of Ibelin” (documentary)
“The Room Next Door”
“Rumours”
“Santosh” (international)
“Saturday Night”
“Sasquatch Sunset”
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (international)
“Separated” (documentary)
“September 5”
“Shirley”
“Sing Sing”
“The Six Triple Eight”
“Skincare”
“Small Things Like These”
“Spellbound” (animated)
“The Substance”
“Sugarcane” (documentary)
“Suncoast”
“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” (documentary)
“Thelma”
“The Thicket”
“Touch” (international)
“Transformers One” (animated)
“Tuesday”
“Twisters”
“Ultraman: Rising” (animated)
“Unstoppable”
“Vermiglio” (international)
“The Wait”
“Waves”
“We Grown Now”
“We Live in Time”
“White Bird”
“Wicked Little Letters”
“Widow Cliquot”
“The Wild Robot” (animated)
“Wildcat”
“Will & Harper” (documentary)
“Wolfs”
“The Young Woman and the Sea”
“Zurawski vs. Texas”

The post Academy Screening Room Nears 150 Films for Voters to Watch – but It’s Missing Some Major Contenders appeared first on TheWrap.

“There’s 100 minutes of score in this movie, and probably five or six minutes that contain Hans’ themes,” he said. “At the end of the film, I wanted to just slip into Hans’ theme as if it evolved there naturally. So when I constructed Lucius’ theme, one of the elements was this falling seventh, an ostentatious two-note progression that was very Hans.

“When I got to the climax of the movie in the script I remember reading, ‘This is where Lucius becomes Maximus.’ And I thought, ‘Well, hello! This is where Lucius’ theme becomes Maximus’ theme. So I called Ridley and said, ‘This is what I’m gonna chase after. What do you think?’ He said, ‘Brilliant. Don’t f–k it up.’”

It’s safe to say he didn’t. Gregson-Williams, a veteran British composer who’s never been nominated for an Oscar despite a filmography that includes “Shrek,” “Enemy of the State,” “Gone Baby Gone” and six Ridley Scott movies, among them “Kingdom of Heaven,” “The Martian” and “The Last Duel,” wrote a muscular, expansive 100 minutes of score as big and bold as Scott’s vision for the sequel.

It started with Lucius’ theme, which had to be robust enough to carry the character through fights with baboons, rhinoceroses and Roman armies, but which also needed to contain the sadness he carries after his wife is killed in the film’s opening moments. (A little reverb and delay on a passage from the Ethiopian vocalist Ejigayehu “Gigi” Shibabaw provided the appropriate sense of loss.)

And because Lucius appears at the beginning of the film running his hand through a field of wheat in a nod to his father in the original movie, Gregson-Williams tried to summon up what he calls “the spiritual essence of the first film” by writing a motif for an ethnic flute played by Richard Harvey. “We use all these little ways of poking and prodding the audience and also adding some subplot,” he said.

For Denzel Washington’s character, a powerful owner of gladiators who has secret plans to become emperor, the composer also found an instrument to convey the person. “He’s a schemer, a bit of a slippery snake,” he said. “So I had a friend in Zurich, Martin Tillman, play his electric cello, which is very handy because unlike a guitar, there are no frets. You can slip from one note to another, so I created these diminished and augmented intervals where you’re not quite sure, is it major or is it minor? Is he true or is he a liar? What’s he up to?”

He also found a musician on YouTube who plays an instrument called the carnyx, a brass instrument the length of a room. “What a beast,” he said. “I saw him playing it and thought, man, I’ve got to have a bit of that. It made a very low sound, and quite unruly.”

Because “Gladiator II” was a Ridley Scott movie, with Scott editing and re-editing up until the last possible moment, Gregson-Williams also had lots of time to tinker with the score. And that made him think back to Hans Zimmer once again.

“I can’t remember what film I was on, but once I said to him, ‘Oh, my God, this is endless, Hans. I’ve been on this film for six months!’ And he said, ‘Harry, more time means you can do it better, so just get back in your room.’”

He laughed. “Quite a truism, I think. So I’ve decided to embrace that.” 

This story first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.  

The post Composer Harry Gregson-Williams’ Job on ‘Gladiator II’: 100 Minutes of New Music, and a Little Bit of Hans Zimmer appeared first on TheWrap.

But Bertelmann, who has worked in the fields of hip-hop and classical music as well as almost two dozen albums of his often experimental compositions, didn’t want to go too deeply into the expected musical terrain. For Berger’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” he famously used an old harmonium type of organ for doomy low notes, and won an Oscar in the process — so for their next collaboration, he took a similar approach.

“Maybe I was inspired by ‘All Quiet,’ because I found the harmonium as an instrument that was tonally very good for the score. I was thinking that maybe I need another instrument for ‘Conclave’ that could set the religious tone. I was searching for an acoustic instrument, but also one that sounds like a synthesizer or something electronic.”

The search led him to the Cristal Baschet, an instrument developed by two French brothers in 1952. “It’s an instrument with glass rods that you rub,” he said. “It has a similarity to glass harp, but this one has also metal cylinders that transport and amplify the sound, and suddenly these glass rods begin to transform into a distorted sound. That is the sound that you hear in the reflective moments in the film.

“The Cristal Baschet theme is celebrating a religious feeling and inner strength and belief as something that is important for humans. But at the same time, I can also use it to go nasty in certain areas.”

As they did on “All Quiet,” Bertelmann and Berger were conscious of when not to use music. But more than in that previous film, the score in “Conclave” feels as if it is part of the conversation in a very talky movie, dropping in to punctuate certain moments, then receding but keeping a persistent presence.

“The procedural music and the repetitive string arpeggios, I had the feeling that they had to sit very tight, and Edward is a big fan of that,” he said. “So when a door locks, the music starts to kick off, or when something falls down, the music stops and there’s a little bit of an after shadow of the music.

“We also placed a lot of music in dialogue, but very subtly just with little awkward crescendos of cello so that you always feel like there’s something destructive happening. I try to figure out these sounds to make sure that we can actually place the sounds in between the dialogue without losing connection with each other.”

Between “All Quiet” and “Conclave,” Bertelmann has been extremely busy, writing scores for a handful of movies, including “One Life,” “The Crow” and the documentary “Hollywoodgate,” as well as the TV series “The Day of the Jackal” and “Dune: Prophecy.”

“Since the Oscars [in 2023], I’ve never had a break,” the composer, whose work might have once been considered too adventurous for mainstream cinema and TV, said.  “I know that there are a lot of colleagues that had harder times because the industry is quite slow at the moment, but I didn’t feel that at all. In the end, you know, what is wonderful is that I don’t have to explain myself anymore.”

This story first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

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