Brett Haley: ​‘I do like The Back­street Boys, I wan­na put that on record’

How do you make a musi­cal that’s not a musi­cal? Brett Haley seems to have found the answer in his new film, Hearts Beat Loud. A warm, open-heart­ed take on father-daugh­ter rela­tion­ships and the joy of musi­cal dis­cov­ery, Haley’s fourth fea­ture stars Nick Offer­man and Kiersey Clemons as Frank and Sam Fish­er, as well as Ted Dan­son, Toni Col­lette and Blythe Dan­ner. Tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from his film, we quizzed Brett on his music (and musi­cal) influences.

LWLies: What kind of music did you grow up lis­ten­ing to?

Haley: I was an odd kid in the sense that my old­er broth­er – who’s about nine years old­er – [ed: Man Book­er-nom­i­nat­ed author Joshua Fer­ris] grew up in a dif­fer­ent town, and the way that he would con­nect with me was by send­ing me mix­tapes. Those tapes real­ly sort of defined me at a very young age, lis­ten­ing to maybe dif­fer­ent stuff than what my friends were lis­ten­ing to. So for me, the big ear­ly influ­ences were Pix­ies, The Mag­net­ic Fields, Tom Waits, and even odd bands like Pizzi­ca­to Five. That’s kind of what I was lis­ten­ing to when every­one else was lis­ten­ing to The Back­street Boys. I do like The Back­street Boys, I wan­na put that on record – I love pop music. Even as a kid I was sort of embar­rassed to be into, like, an Ace of Base song, but I look back at one of their albums, and I’m like, ​“That’s a dope-ass album.” The Sign is a great album. I did have that pop influ­ence on top which was hard to avoid when I was grow­ing up, but I also think lis­ten­ing to 69 Love Songs by The Mag­net­ic Fields, or Doolit­tle by Pix­ies, real­ly did kind of show me that there was this oth­er avenue of music that you had to seek out.

Did you have any expe­ri­ence of being in a band as a kid or mak­ing your own music?

No. I was nev­er in a band and I’ve nev­er writ­ten a song or played an instru­ment in my life. But I did grow up doing musi­cal the­atre in high school, and I love musi­cal the­atre and musi­cals. I think it real­ly helped me define who I am as a per­son and an artist when I was lost as a 15-year-old in high school. I joined the dra­ma club and start­ed doing act­ing and musi­cals, and it was a real life­saver. So I learned how to sing and I learned how to dance as best as I could, and I think that was a big influ­ence on my under­stand­ing of how music can tell stories.

What were the musi­cal movies and stage musi­cals you looked at for inspi­ra­tion when it came to Hearts Beat Loud?

Well, I love a prop­er musi­cal, where peo­ple just break out into song, and I real­ly want to do one, one day. Sond­heim is the God of Musi­cal The­atre for me, and Com­pa­ny is my favourite show prob­a­bly ever, but I love almost all of his shows. I think for this, because of the size of the film and what we were try­ing to do, I thought ​“Maybe we can ease peo­ple in with a film where the songs tell the sto­ry, but that every­thing is com­ing from a real place.” The biggest influ­ences on this were four movies – High Fideli­ty, That Thing You Do!, Inside Llewyn Davis, and a great Japan­ese film called Lin­da Lin­da Lin­da. Those are my real inspi­ra­tions for this film. I mean, it goes with­out say­ing you can’t make a movie about a band or peo­ple cre­at­ing music with­out men­tion­ing the won­der­ful John Car­ney, I think that he’s a mas­ter of this sub­genre. I think he’s done it bet­ter than any­body, so I’d be remiss not to men­tion him. I think if any­thing I looked at him as the mas­ter and said: ​“Okay, what has he done, and how can I carve out my own lit­tle path, that isn’t just a John Carney-knockoff?”

You men­tioned High Fideli­ty, and when you have a char­ac­ter who works in a record store it’s kind of impos­si­ble to get away from that. But there’s this ele­ment of pre­ten­tious­ness about that film, and I felt it was com­plete­ly the oppo­site with Hearts Beat Loud. Were you active­ly try­ing to avoid talk­ing down to any one type of music?

Yeah, I think it’s such an impor­tant part of High Fideli­ty, and Rob as a char­ac­ter and that whole movie is about becom­ing an adult and a bet­ter per­son. So in Hearts Beat Loud, I want­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent. When I talk to peo­ple and say, ​“Oh, have you ever heard of Songs: Ohia?” and they say no, I don’t say ​“What’s wrong with you, you dum­my!” I’m like, ​“Oh my gosh, let me give you this gift, of Songs: Ohia. Let me share this with you because it will prob­a­bly make you a hap­pi­er per­son.” I think that’s the way that Frank (Nick Offer­man) looks at music, as some­thing to be shared, a way to con­nect with peo­ple. That’s the way I’ve always looked at it. There’s noth­ing more joy­ful than play­ing a song for some­one for the first time or intro­duc­ing them to an album. I remem­ber my broth­er walk­ing me through a record store when I was young and he picked up Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, and he said: ​“You’re going to lis­ten to this.” It’s moments like that when you’re gift­ing peo­ple an expe­ri­ence, you’re pass­ing it down.

I think we all have to look back and say there were cer­tain pop songs that we thought were sil­ly or below us, but they’re actu­al­ly quite amaz­ing. ​“I Want It That Way”, Ace of Base, Brit­ney Spears – kind of sil­ly pop songs, the rea­son that they res­onat­ed is that they’re amaz­ing pop songs. There’s a place for that, then there’s a place for Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs, and Songs: Ohia, and Ani­mal Col­lec­tive. Every­body has dif­fer­ent taste and likes dif­fer­ent things. There are cer­tain things I can’t get into, but I can respect the craft – like I total­ly get why peo­ple love Mastodon. I don’t wan­na sit around lis­ten­ing to Mastodon but I get why peo­ple would. There’s so much craft there. I try not to be pre­ten­tious, but when there’s some­thing that I don’t like, I’m pret­ty opinionated.

You men­tioned Songs: Ohia and it was so great to hear them in the film. We see Ani­mal Col­lec­tive and Tom Waits, and Tweedy. How did you decide what music you want­ed to fea­ture, both as songs and as con­ver­sa­tion topics?

It’s a bal­anc­ing act of what can you afford, and what can you get the rights to. We had a very min­i­mal music bud­get and I give a lot of props to my music super­vi­sor Chris Swan­son and Joe Rudge who real­ly helped me define what I loved, what I want­ed in the film, and what we could pull off. But Chris owns a bunch of record labels, and I found out he owns the label that Songs: Ohia is on. So I was like, ​“Oh my God, Cap­tain Badass is one of my favourite songs, and that album changed my life.” So we start­ed doing research, and he talked to Jason Molina’s wife, and I got all this con­text for the song that I didn’t know about. So I put that in the movie, and it was this won­der­ful gift, to put his music on this plat­form. Then Ani­mal Col­lec­tive, and Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs, while we couldn’t afford to play the songs, I still want­ed to ref­er­ence the albums. And then hav­ing Jeff Tweedy him­self in the film – Wilco are one of the best bands ever! Jeff Tweedy is like a rock God to me. It was amaz­ing to have him in the movie.

How did Jeff’s cameo come to be?

It’s pret­ty wild – it hap­pened because Nick Offer­man is friends with Jeff, and I was try­ing to think of a cameo to have in the movie. That one seemed to make the most sense to me. So I said to Nick, ​“Do you think he’d want to do it?” and he asked Jeff. Jeff said ​“Yeah, I’ll do it,” so we flew him in for Chica­go, and it was amazing.

One of the joys of all the music in the film is that you namecheck so many bands and songs, and there’s this ele­ment of being able to go away and dis­cov­er them. That’s some­thing you only real­ly get from films with com­pi­la­tion sound­tracks. Do you have any favourites?

Ear­ly Taran­ti­no stuff like Reser­voir Dogs and Pulp Fic­tion – I played those CDs like crazy when I was a kid. It opened up dif­fer­ent avenues of music to me that I’d nev­er heard before. Anoth­er that I think is a real­ly deep cut and an amaz­ing sound­track is the first Austin Pow­ers movie. It’s actu­al­ly an awe­some com­pi­la­tion of tunes – I would rock that one out a lot as a kid. I think that the days of the com­pi­la­tion sound­track are kind of over, which makes me sad, I think Gar­den State was kind of the last movie to have that impact. But I went on Spo­ti­fy and I put togeth­er every song, that was played in the movie or ref­er­enced in the movie in some way, and made a playlist. It’s called Hearts Beat Loud OST. Peo­ple are curi­ous about the Mike Edge song, or the Roy Irwin song – so they can go and dis­cov­er that.

You’ve worked with Kee­gan DeWitt before, who com­posed the songs for Hearts Beat Loud. With the songs being such a big part of this film, did you give him license to do what­ev­er he want­ed, or did you give him some direc­tion on it?

Kee­gan has a band called Wild Cub and I love their music, so I know what Kee­gan can do with his eyes closed. He also does an incred­i­ble vari­ety of scores for all sorts of dif­fer­ent movies. I call him The Wiz­ard – he can do any­thing. I knew I want­ed a big, bold indie-pop sound. Some­thing elec­tron­ic, with gui­tars – I want­ed a mix of what a dad would be bring­ing to it and what a kid would bring to it. So we got the MIDI sam­pler and a gui­tar over it – a rich­er, fuller sound by mix­ing these ele­ments. Kee­gan would just send me sketch­es and ideas and I’d grav­i­tate towards cer­tain things, then he’d write the lyrics. But it’s real­ly just him and his band­mates, and I real­ly give them full cred­it. They cre­at­ed them from the ground up. I’m a huge fan of the songs in the movie because I didn’t cre­ate them. And I’m glad I like them, because I had to lis­ten to them about a mil­lion times.

Giv­en that there’s a great karaōke scene in the film, what’s your karaōke song of choice?

Aw man. I love karaōke so much, and it’s hard to pick just one song, because you have to read the room, right?

You do.

You have to look at the room and think, is tonight a ​‘Just What I Need­ed’ by The Cars night, do I need to kick things off and get peo­ple going? Or do I need to do a lit­tle Boss, ​‘Danc­ing in the Dark’? Or some Stones? Or do I need to slow things down – one of my go-tos is Michael Jackson’s ​‘Human Nature’. I love it all. My wife and I’s go-to is ​‘Sud­den­ly Sey­mour’ from Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors. It’s real­ly her song, and I just back her up. But it’s real­ly fun.

Hearts Beat Loud is released August 3. Read the LWLies review.