John Carney loves music. And he loves music in his movies. Oh, and he knows you love music in his movies. The Irish filmmaker saw his breakout film, “Once,” take the Original Song Oscar for “Falling Slowly,” “Begin Again,” earn a nomination for “Lost Stars,” and his fantastic period piece “Sing Street” robbed for a nom a few years later. Now, Carney is back with “Flora and Son,” which popped at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival before landing in theaters and Apple TV+ this Summer. And he’s hoping for an Original Song trifecta that would land him his first individual nomination in the category.
In “Flora and Son,” the Flora in question (Eve Hewson) is a single mom struggling to raise her teenage son Max (Orén Kinlan) in contemporary Dublin. As Max continues to get in more and more trouble with the local authorities, she befriends an online music teacher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who teaches her how to play guitar. Eventually, Flora and Max, who have already demonstrated mad rapping skills (well, he thinks they are mad), bond over songwriting. And they perform their first collaboration, “High Life,” during the climax of the picture.
For Carney, it was important for the story that Flora and Max’s track be good but not be an automatic breakout hit. Flora isn’t Billie Eilish, and Max isn’t Drake. But in the context of the movie, it works.
“It shouldn’t be the best song in the world. It would be actually disingenuous to the movie if suddenly these sort of lucky upstarts from Dublin and LA who had failed in their musical careers were suddenly able to write a disco banger that went to number one,” Carney says. “But at the same time, I wanted it to be an enjoyable experience. So, that song is very, very carefully structured and is sort of written from the point of view of all of the parts of the people who on screen supposedly wrote the song, with all their limitations or their skills or lack thereof or their musical skills or their rapping skills.”
Over the course of our conversation, Carney discusses his love of songwriting, how there are expectations for a “John Carney movie,” why “High Life” should be in the mix in the Original Song category this year, and much more.
This interview has been condensed for length.
_____
The Playlist: The film is out in the world. It is on Apple TV after being in theaters. Are you getting any feedback?
John Carney: Yeah, I am. I’m getting a sense that the movie is welcome in people’s lives at the moment, which is really cool. It may not be the best movie ever made, but it’s a movie. It’s earned its place, and between the “Barbie’s” and the “Oppenheimer’s,” which we all need, we also need films that feel that they’re about the human condition and that there’s no fantastical sort of quality to them. That makes us feel O.K. about the weird place that we find ourselves in terms of technology and polarization and that it’s okay to feel conflicted and weird about all of that. I think we need those movies too, and I feel like “Flora and Son” is very comfortable in that place in people’s lives, which is absolutely fulfilling to me as a filmmaker.
This is now the fourth out of five movies you made that has music at the heart of it. What keeps bringing you back to making films centered around music?
I think that music was probably the most important art form in my life when I was young, I tried to paint, and I tried to draw, and I tried to write poetry. And music was something that I felt like, “Oh, I can kind of get my head around this.” And the joy that the discovery of music had for me again, and again, and again in life is something that I think I’m probably trying to replicate again, and again, and again in my work because I had it so many times. When you’re 14, and you’re into music, have you ever thought about the amount of discovery that you’re just about to embark on? The amount of three and a half or four minutes you’re going to have of bliss, and of happiness, and discovery? And I’ve managed somehow to make that work in my films and in my professional life. So I’m slightly like, why would I change that? I’m not about to make a slasher movie.
What do you like about the songwriting process, and, as a follow-up, when you’re writing a script like this, are you thinking about the songs, or do you say, “Nope, story first, figure out the song after”?
Yeah, it’d be like script first. First and foremost, it’s the film, and I’m a filmmaker first, so all of that has to be in place. Otherwise, it’ll just be a jukebox-style movie with a plot that’s tying together a bunch of songs, which is fine, but it’s not what I do. So, I always feel like you should really be able to take these songs out, and it would still work as a story or as a slice of life, and the characters should still be possible. And in a way, I mean, I describe these movies as sort of stealth musicals. The music sort of creeps up on you in them and doesn’t declare itself like a normal musical does.
But yeah, it’s got to hold water without the songs, and then the fun part begins of creating the soundscape of the movie, and the plausibility of the characters, what they’re going to play, what kind of instrumentation. But it all comes from the story. The lyrics come from the story, and the limitations on the characters come from the story, their predicaments, or where they find themselves. The hints are all in the script.
As a songwriter on your films, what do you enjoy about that particular process?
Well, I’ll tell you, there’s nothing like writing a song and performing a song for someone or for an audience. It exposes you in a way that nobody could prepare you for. And also, you don’t get any other format. Like reading a poem is one thing, and it’s very intimate. Acting is private and nerve-wracking, I’m sure. But singing a song, particularly one that you wrote, performing that for somebody is the most sort of naked you’ll ever be in your life, and literally, the person will see inside your values, your soul in a way that you don’t get access to with normal people. It’s why I encourage couples to sing to each other and harmonize, which is something that I would like to explore a little bit in a film. Imagine you were arguing with your partner, and you just suddenly started singing back at them. I mean, they probably punch you in the face, but once they got used to it, they’d be like, let’s just stop arguing and sing a song together for four minutes and then come back to this argument. I bet you would change things because you’re just you. You’re just your larynx, and your lungs, and your vocal cords, and your lyrics. That’s all the person sees when you play them a song. It’s profound. It really is.
In this film, you have “High Life,” which I know you co-wrote with Eve and Gary Clark. What was the inspiration for that song? And then, can you talk about that songwriting process with those two other writers?
So, the idea behind that song was this does not need to be the best song in the world. It shouldn’t be the best song in the world. It would be actually disingenuous to the movie if suddenly these sort of lucky upstarts from Dublin and LA who had failed in their musical careers were suddenly able to write a disco banger that went to number one. But at the same time, I wanted it to be an enjoyable experience. So that song is very, very carefully structured and is sort of written from the point of view of all of the parts of the people who on screen supposedly wrote the song, with all their limitations or their skills or lack thereof or their musical skills or their rapping skills. I love that scene because it’s truthful, and it’s exactly about where that particular group of people would be in real life. It’s a satisfying scene because it’s not trying to be “A Star is Born,” or it’s not trying to be an incredibly beautifully written duet or something that would be implausible. You have to believe that those characters are making that noise, and that was a challenge from the point of view of a musical filmmaker. That’s a really exciting challenge. And it’s not that you write a bad song; it’s that you write a song that has different rules than somebody who has known the guitar for 20 years or knows music intimately. It has to be written from the point of view of the characters.
You say it’s not supposed to be the best song in the world, but you’re treading a fine line because it needs to show that these people have talent and that they can at least create something memorable and special.
Yeah.
So when you’re writing the song, are you like, “Oh wait, that sound is too good, we need to dumb it down a little bit.” Was that part of the process?
I mean, not really. Not as literally as that. It wasn’t like we had to dumb it down; it was just an instinct for, like, well, Flora’s not going to say that because she’s just starting to learn how to write lyrics. Or if I wrote the rap sequence in that song, if it was too good, you’d be like, “Hang on a sec.” If it was Eminem or something, you’d be like, “Yeah.” So, I want it to be more old-school Grandmaster Flash, kind of naive, I guess. “I’m like hot butter on breakfast toast. You want to see me girl? Well, you can be the most.” That’s the kind of level that he would be at; not that Grandmaster Flash was naive, actually, but the rap has moved on a lot since then, is what I mean. So yeah, it was more just like our antennae were up for like, ah, “Hang on a second, that seems a little bit too evolved.” Is there a way of saying it that’s not dumber but is more appropriate to that character, and their age, and their worldview, and where they’re at musically?
Watching it again last night, I do feel like this could be a song that could chart in the UK just as a viral hit. Did you not want people to think that?
I mean, what we want is this. We want it to seem like an enjoyable but plausible musical moment in a story about musicians. Do you know what I mean?
Yep.
So we’re putting it forward for an Academy Award nomination because we feel the theme and the song and the creation of the song is a great piece of musical filmmaking as opposed to a great song on its own. And that’s what, to me, the great musical moments often in films are not the best songs. They’re often from the place where the character is performing.
I know you guys made this as an independent, and there were, no doubt, budgetary concerns. How did you secure “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell, let alone the video of her performance?
I think a lot of it was to do with the fact that we’re a small movie and that the scene was respectful of the song and the performance, and that we were including it fully in the movie, and it wasn’t just a needle drop to help sell our movie, it was part of the drama of the piece, but we definitely got our Irish producers to write the letter as opposed to our American ones. [Laughs].
You mentioned how, earlier in this conversation, you wouldn’t make a slasher flick, but could you make a slasher flick if music was involved?
Yeah, you can. You can make a comedy. You can make a comedy about a troop of terrible singers all being killed by somebody who didn’t get into the band or something and who has a revenge mission. I think that anytime a filmmaker is fortunate enough to carve a niche for themselves, that’s incredible, rare, and unpredictable. It’s very lucky. And I think I’d be a fool to say like, “Oh, I’m going to go and do a thriller, and then I’m going to do a David Fincher-style dark thing, and then I’m going to do a comedy movie.” I think that would be slightly looking the gift horse in the mouth. I don’t mean that I’ll be banging on about the same thing, but I would like to, if people have an expectation, however small that audience is, that there’s a John Carney vibe or style, I feel like I would want to interact with that. Not completely deliver exactly what everybody wants, but I think that I do a thing now, and I think I’ll probably stick to that for a while. As long as there are more than five people going to it.
“Flora And Son” is available on Apple TV+ worldwide.
