The Sound of Memory: Writer/Director Ned Benson Talks ‘The Greatest Hits’
by CHAD KENNERK
Behind the scenes of The Greatest Hits: writer/director Ned Benson with David Corenswet, Lucy Boynton, and Austin Crute.
Photo by Merie Weismiller Wallace, All images courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Writer/director Ned Benson captivated audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival, and beyond in 2014 with his astute, intimate look at a relationship torn apart by tragedy. Although The Greatest Hits technically marks Benson’s sophomore feature as writer/director, in a way, it’s also his fourth.
Conceived and shot as two films simultaneously, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her were later edited into a single film; Benson’s The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, which premiered at Cannes and opened in the U.S. in September of that year, with Him and Her later releasing together as a double feature the following month. The origin of his new film, The Greatest Hits, traces all the way back to 2008, when Benson was inspired by neurologist Oliver Sacks and his thoughts surrounding the connection between music and memory. Benson wrote the initial draft of the story in 2009 as a cinematic exploration of how mind and music interact. After debuting his acclaimed The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby trilogy and penning the story for Marvel Studios’ Black Widow, Benson returned to his time-travel drama during the pandemic.
Haunted by the songs that she once shared with former boyfriend Max (David Corenswet), Harriet (Lucy Boynton) struggles to move beyond their relationship. Not only is she stuck in the past — she physically travels there. Songs transport her back in time to the exact moment the two first heard the music. Convinced that she can change the trajectory of their relationship, she begins an odyssey through their five years together, looking for the song that can change everything. Between her obsession to change the past and the traumatic experience of being thrust into a memory, Harriet finds herself isolated and limiting her exposure to the outside world. As she journeys through the hypnotic connection between music and memory, Harriet collides with a new chance at love with David (Justin H. Min) in the present. Benson’s thoughtful love letter to LA tackles love, loss, and the things we hold on to when we’re forced to say goodbye. Following its world premiere at South by Southwest in March, the Searchlight Pictures’ film releases in select theatres 5 April and on Hulu and Disney+ 12 April. Film Review recently talked to writer/director Ned Benson about spinning soulful tracks and the powerful correlation between music and memory.
In conversation with writer/director Ned Benson
Film Review (FR): Given that music is Harriet’s way in, let’s start by talking about the track list. Did you have a list of dream songs while writing the script and what was that process like working with your music supervisor to arrive at the final selections?
Ned Benson (NB): It was kind of an interesting way that we dealt with it. I think when I started, it was a bit like “Sound and Vision”, the David Bowie song, and thinking about how those two things were intertwining. I wanted something where the sound design, the music, and the score were all inseparable from each other throughout the movie. When I initially had the idea and wrote a bad draft a long, long time ago, The The’s “This Is the Day” was always the first song. It’s always been a big song for me. That was dialled in. When I revisited it and wrote the newer draft that became the movie, the Roxy Music song was important to me, the Jamie XX song became important to me. There were a bunch of tracks that I really tried for and ultimately, with Mary Ramos (VP of music for Searchlight Pictures), composer Ryan Lott, DJ Harvey (music consultant), Ando Johnson and Christopher S. Aud, we put together the tracks in pre-production that made sense, that we could clear. Then once we got into the edit, we tried to clear tracks that weren’t too crazy, but I know our soundtrack budget was kind of insane for a Searchlight Pictures’ movie.
(FR): The music informs and cultivates emotions with the characters, but it’s not dictating emotion to the audience.
(NB): Yeah, trying not to. I wanted a synthesis between the two. One of the things we talked about was this idea of frisson. There was a whole article written on it that’s interesting; when music does something unexpected and it makes your skin stand up — it gives you goosebumps. We talked about creating frisson throughout the movie with the scene in concert with the music, creating these goosebump moments for us.
(FR): How did you work with your Visual Effects Supervisor to find the prism effect of Harriet being transported into and within a memory?
(NB): It started with the production designer Page Buckner and Chung-hoon Chung the DP, we talked about what time travel would look like. In pre-production, I really wanted to shoot it and have it feel as practical as possible. What could we do in camera that didn’t feel like we were doing too much CGI or visual effects — making those more an augment of something that was built into the practical aspect of shooting the movie. We created dollies and we had all of these lens flares that we used as elements within all the time travel that then Crafty Apes, the visual effects house, used in creating that look. The idea of slit-scan, [a technique] which we used a lot. We looked at the Maxell tape ad from the 80s and the idea of how sound travels, but transposed that into light. We looked at The Rolling Stones Hot Rocks cover and all their different heads moving backwards. The question really became what could we do practically under the budgetary and time circumstances we had.
For the first scene of her time travelling, we created this dolly with the chair, rigged the camera, moved her into Duvetyne [fabric] and we were just flashing the lens with a flashlight. Chung was just exhausting his arm and elbow to give us that, so then we could use those elements in post-production to make the experience more. Then obviously sound design enhances that as well. On top of that, we really wanted the visual effects to have the rhythm of the music, so those two things felt synchronised. One of the things that I read that inspired the movie was this book by Oliver Sacks called Musicophilia and he talks about things like musical hallucinations, aphasia, and things like that. How music works with the brain and memory. All of these different disorders. That clued me into what I thought Harriet’s issue might be. On top of her own situation, I think we’re also playing with the metaphor of the power of emotion through music too. The power of her experience of emotion really is the thing that almost makes her time travel.
(FR): How did you use light and colour to tell the story — the contrast between the darkness of her apartment versus the bright outside world, as well as the different colour palettes explored, such as the use of bright colours in her memories.
(NB): We really wanted to show how isolated she was and really how shut off from the world she was. I did rewrite the draft during Covid, so there’s a lot of illusion to that and to someone being closed off from what her existence was or could be. Once she steps outside, at least in the beginning of the movie, she’s shielding herself from that, and as we start to open up, things become brighter, we added more colour, things become more vibrant. I played with colour temperature in terms of the warmth of the memories. We did a film-out, actually, of those memories with Max, which gives it that texture. As you move forward in the movie and she meets David, we took the warmth out of Max’s story and added the warmth into David’s story, so you get to a kind of purple toward the end, where things synchronise in a way. Playing with warm/cold, playing with isolated versus engaging in life. The movie, to me, was always about learning how to live again and figuring that out.
(FR): How did you approach the shooting schedule in terms of memory versus present day. Was there any separation between the two? Were there any timeline challenges?
(NB): A lot of it was just scheduling in terms of location. We shot in LA (at over 35 locations), so it was really just about shooting things out in terms of what made sense budgetarily. I really wanted to shoot on location, so that comes with its own issues. We shot in this apartment for a week [Benson gestures to his background] to help save money, so I could keep some of the other locations that I wanted. This became Morris’ apartment essentially and where we had the party that she flashes back to. I think it was just about figuring out how to get all these locations in within the 31 days that we had. I didn’t have to worry about shooting anyone out. The Max character shot for a week, so we shot his stuff early. I wanted to keep that relationship together, so that it felt fluid for the actors. The relationship is building versus shooting it out of sequence, so it remains connected for them. We had a big stage and saved our stage days for the end of the shoot, because dealing with nights and days on the stage, things were easier. We tried to be as fluid as we could.
(FR): Like The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby trilogy, this is also a film that wrestles with love and grief — as well as how we tackle the loss of, in this case, five years of shared experience. What is it about that universal subject and its complexity that inspires your writing?
(NB): I think it’s the sort of unknowable of what makes love work. I’m fascinated with relationships, with what it means to love. In this case, I think Harriet goes through this experience of understanding that she has the capacity to love these two people so whole-heartedly and is forced with this crazy choice. I think that understanding shows a maturity that we’re not used to when we’re younger. It’s always so Romeo and Juliet. We think about the intensity of younger relationships. Watching her evolve into this acceptance, I really wanted to explore the capacity of her heart and the human heart in general, because David and Max both have these amazing capacities as well.
(FR): You’ve previously talked about making intimate films and how it almost becomes like going to camp. Was that your experience here as well?
(NB): It was kind of a dream. The cast was so amazing, it was such a fun group. They’d come over for dinner on Saturdays and we’d listen to music or sing karaoke. It was really special and they’re such a special group of actors. It’s been really phenomenal. I felt really lucky to work with all of them. Chung and I got really close, the crew and I got really close. I agree, camp is almost the right word. It’s such a great experience when everybody is enjoying themselves making these things and it’s not just like a job. It never is quite just a job for me. It can be such a special experience — and this one was really special.
(FR): Let’s time travel into some of your own memories. You once had dinner with Robert Altman?
(NB): I did; I met Robert Altman. The first time I met him I was with an ex-girlfriend and she was invited to this lunch in Malibu. I was a fish out of water. I was a 24-year-old aspiring writer/director and everyone else was much older than me. I just didn’t know what to do, so I walked outside. I look up and Robert Altman is sitting there with this cigarette case rolling a joint. He looked at me and said, “Want to sit down?” I just geeked out and started talking about the jib arm he created for McCabe & Mrs. Miller and the multitrack sound in The Long Goodbye. He just looked up at me like, ‘who the hell are you?’ It was just fun. We had a really long conversation about his movies. The Player was a huge movie for me when I saw it in high school, but all of his movies. He’s such an awesome filmmaker, but also the coolest guy. Randomly, his wife came and sat with us and took a liking to me. She was like, “Why don’t you guys come over for dinner one night?” So we drove to the Malibu Colony to his house one night and walked in and there was Bud Cort and Sally Kellerman. I think Paul Thomas Anderson walked in at one point. I was like, ‘what the hell am I doing here?’ They were super sweet to me. It was towards the end of his life, but it was a pretty special experience for me to get to meet him. He’s an all-timer.
(FR): Were there any foundational moviegoing memories that inspired your desire to tell stories?
(NB): So many. I think you and I could probably talk about the movies we love for like 30 days straight and still be going. As a kid, the experience of seeing the Star Wars movies in the theatre. I was a bit young, but Return of the Jedi I was old enough to see in the theatre. I saw E.T. in the theatre with my grandfather, which was mind-blowing. I think I watched Back to the Future seven times in one summer at the theatre, which was amazing. In high school I became a film nerd and I loved going to the movies when I could. When I got to college, I think that evolved and I got really into it. I remember seeing In the Mood for Love at the Lincoln Square theatre. The Ice Storm was a big movie for me, that affected me really wholeheartedly. Then getting into Tarkovsky and going into your film classes and watching The Red and White and [films by] Sergei Eisentein and all that stuff. I think the big ones for me were The Double Life of Veronique, and [the Three Colours trilogy] Blue, White, and Red. Seeing those at that period made a huge impression on me. But so many, I could keep on going for days.
NED BENSON is a writer, director and producer. Benson’s directorial debut feature, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, starring Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy and Viola Davis, premiered at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and the Toronto International Film Festival, ahead of its theatrical release in 2014. In the same year, Variety named Benson as one of their 10 Screenwriters to Watch. Benson, who also served as a writer on Marvel Studios’ Black Widow, has a number of film projects in development. A graduate of Columbia University, Benson’s work has been selected for the Blacklist twice.
