The Playlist generally trades in factual information, but while the cat’s away the mice will play. As a concession to the owner of this blog we’ll start with the facts before we move on to our fanciful wonderings. IMDB’s cast listing for the John Krasinski adapted and directed labor of love flick “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men”, from the David Foster Wallace short story collection, includes beloved indie rocker Ben Gibbard in his feature film debut.
We scoured IMDB in search of some hint as to the film’s intended soundtrack but not so much as a music supervisor was listed. This makes us wonder: will Krasinski go the Zach Braff route and put the soundtrack together himself? Krasinski is a noted indie rock lover, more on the Arcade Fire tip than Explosions in the Sky, as highlighted in his Filter magazine interview with The Shins. This intrepid reporter had the chance to speak to him about music during MTV’s 24 Hours of Human Giant stunt for the Subterranean blog, during the course of which he hijacked our laptop for 20 minutes while trying to pick the best possible video for our live blog coverage of the event, finally settling on a White Stripes track.
“Brief Interviews” shot in the Northeast last November 2006 and some pick-up work was done this past May – we know because movie cast-members Rashida Jones and Joey Slotnick were spotted backstage at the Gibbard solo show at Town Hall in NYC by us and Gibbard’s management confirmed on-site they were in town for purposes relating to the movie. We recall that Gibbard revealed, without naming any project names, his soundtrack involvement with “About A Son” and then played a song he said was rejected from an unnamed film project for being too depressing. Might Gibbard be doing more than just acting in Krasinski’s movie, which the writer/director has told other outlets will have comedic moments but is “very intense and dark”?
With no release date yet set, editing still to be completed and Krasinski’s free time of late sucked up by the George Clooney/Renee Zellweger love triangle piece “Leatherheads”, we’re thinking you’ll be lucky if this soundtrack encompasses your favorite indie hits from 2008.
Download: Ben Gibbard “All Apologies”
Download: The Shins “Phantom Limb”
