Craig Brewer on Kate Hudson, Hugh Jackman, and the agony of love in ‘Song Sung Blue’
When Craig Brewer, along with only three or four others in the audience, attended the Indie Memphis film festival in 2009, sitting in for a documentary about a Neil Diamond tribute band, they all had the same idea: a chance to relax and have a bit of fun.
Turned out, Song Sung Blue by Greg Kohs was quite the opposite.
In the fanciest hotel room I’ve ever set foot in, with a crisp winter’s day beckoning over my shoulder, Brewer fills me in on the behind-the-scene details of the bedazzled biopic, including how his relationship to Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, the pair who star as the real-life Mike and Claire Sardina of the Neil Diamond tribute band, feels like a marriage.
Plus, Brewer reveals how the tale of working-class resilience and love as persistence combats the dangers of escapist cinema, and exactly how Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder ties into it all.
The “magic” of Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman
There’s a scene in Song Sung Blue where Hudson’s character is trapped in a dream, and in her dreamscape, she is lit up on stage as her teary, round eyes look out at a faceless audience. The illusion shatters when her husband, Mike Sardina, played by Jackman, pulls her back into reality. She is writhing on their front lawn, screaming at him to let go of her, but he holds on, a saviour to her bout of traumatised sleepwalking amid the almost unbelievable crushing tragedy the pair had faced, with the winking opening credit, “Based on a true love story”, a near-constant, painful reminder of otherwise.
The scene, teetering into the melodramatic, only works so well because the esteemed actors pull off an incredible joint performance as the tribute duo, Thunder and Lightning. Brewer, with a voice thickened by pride, tells me that he was in awe of the pair: “I would call cut and watch them talking: Kate putting her hand on Hugh’s shoulder and encouraging him, and vice versa. There was just such respect and love between the two of them.”
Brewer has worked with plenty of famous names over his time, such as Eddie Murphy in 2019’s Dolemite Is My Name and 2021’s Coming 2 America and Samuel L Jackson in Black Snake Moan, but out of nowhere, he threw a different name at me: Seth Green. In 2010, Brewer officiated the wedding of the It actor to his wife, Clare Grant, the memory of the ceremony floating back to him, as he reflected, “When you’re doing that, you feel the special thing that it’s actually between the three of you”.
He felt that connection again on the set of Song Sung Blue. In their pseudo-wedding, it was Hudson, a long-time friend of Brewer’s, who cemented their commitment to one another: “I had someone I really, really trust, and I felt that they trusted each other. It was a very loving set”.
Before every great proposal comes nerves, something that Brewer admitted he felt before the pair faced the cameras. After that, the euphoria came, as he noted, “They’re not only doing great, but there’s something magical watching them together”.
Sure enough, there’s a healthy dose of Oscar’s buzz around the pair, particularly Hudson, whose larger-than-life character deals with a life-altering injury. We see her soar through charming musical numbers and battle through a horrendous bout of depression, a stint in a mental hospital, and the loss of her husband.
The issues the pair face echo far and wide across working-class America. This is what Brewer wanted from the movie: Love as perseverance, commitment against all odds. “That’s not always the magic that studios think everybody wants to see,” Brewer admits, “You want to see that beautiful place where nothing bad can happen, but that’s not the case for a lot of people in life”.
And so, the Sardina’s working-class story took on epic proportions: “What if we could make a feature film [in which] relatable, working-class people were the kinds of heroes we saw?”, and that’s exactly what the Brewer did.
Famous support: Neil Diamond, Eddie Vedder, and Pearl Jam
For a story of such humble beginnings, the Sardinas did garner the support of famous names along the way. As depicted in a glorious scene in the movie, Thunder and Lightning played alongside Pearl Jam in 1995. In the movie, they open for the Eddie Vedder-fronted band, while in real life, they played as part of the encore at Milwaukee’s Summerfest.
Vedder continued to champion their story, even after Mike passed away in 2006, as Brewer shares of the original 2008 documentary, Thunder & Lightning, saying, “The publishing company sent a cease and desist letter to the filmmaker, but then Eddie heard about that, called up Neil Diamond”, and Diamond himself approved of their story.
When Brewer approached Diamond and his wife, Katie, about making the movie, he recalls that the couple “were bracing themselves”, and they had good reason: A torrent of run-of-the-mill music biopics has hit cinemas lately, wherein a legacy can quickly turn sour from a gaudy recreation, but when they heard the story would be about Lightning and Thunder, they gave full permission for the use of the whole Diamond catalogue.
Though this was “daunting” for Brewer, the same went for Vedder. Though “Pearl Jam has never licensed that song [‘Alive’], or anything off their first album,” Brewer recalled, “Vedder loves the story so much that he let us use it.”
In the movie, newcomer John Beckwith plays the smiling Vedder; however, we don’t quite get to see a younger version of Diamond: his figure looms over the movie, a promised token of Thunder and Lightning’s victory lap before tragedy strikes (again), as the story steers clear of sensationalising the life of fame. After all, Brewer is interested in the extraordinary lives of ordinary people, not the glare behind the stage lights.
A film for the youth
While it’s difficult not to blubber through the film’s last half, the waterworks aren’t just contained to the audience: “A lot of the crew got very emotional,” Brewer reminisced, “They said that they felt like they were watching elements of themselves”. The central love story is all-encompassing, sure, but Song Sung Blue has more on offer, for it contains stand-out performances from Ella Anderson, who plays Claire’s daughter, and musician King Princess, who plays Mike’s daughter from his first marriage.
When I mention the emotional relationship between the two daughters, Brewer smiles. Though obviously based on real-life characters, his script was inspired by his own life. “I have so much love and respect for my 17-year-old daughter,” he explains, “There is something about daughters that is unique: They are truly soldiers in their family.” As such, while the topic of Neil Diamond is seemingly catered for an older audience, Brewer stresses that the movie is for “everybody”, adding, “Every young person that I’ve talked to that has seen the movie felt that I made the movie for them”.
This isn’t the happy consequence of an unintentional subplot: he is very aware that young people face unprecedented challenges today, worsened by the escapist tendencies of cinema: “I love escaping as well,” he confessed, “but it creates detachment. You’re not necessarily thinking that your surroundings could be equally as epic as what you’re watching on the screen.”
He explains that, in turn, this heightened focus on the spectacle impacts what young people are aspiring to: “I worry that they think that success is this fame and fortune thing, when really I think it’s identity.” Reminiscing about his own humble beginnings, which included making movies on a small digital camera to show at a local bar, Brewer adds, “It’s perfectly noble to set your expectations for your community”, who, for example, returns to Memphis when his movies open, because he’s “built a family and a community there”.
Snoopdog and Brewer’s “bold” future
While Song Sung Blue depicts Brewer’s pursuit to champion the miracles of working-class America and the beauty of an unsuspecting love story, his next project centres on an artist so big that his monolith is a household name: Snoop Dogg.
Comparing the new biopic to Song Sung Blue, he admits, “It’s a different energy than this movie.” Again, his daughter comes up, where he says, “My daughter and all her friends know who Snoop is, but they don’t know who Snoop really was when Snoop was 18″, which, he admits, means he has an important tale to tell.
Over two decades ago, he directed Hustle and Flow, the story of a struggling pimp who dreamed of being a successful rapper, which went on to win the ‘Audience Award’ at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. “I’m going back to my Hustle and Flow roots,” he smirks.
Snoop Dogg, who is known for his excessive marijuana habits, as well as his naughties bangers, was a “Rollin’ Crip gang-banger in Long Beach,” Brewer shares incredulously, “And it is a wild tale how he ultimately became an artist”. The colourful story demands “bold” choices from the director, regarding which the director trails off, “I think we’re really going to, I wouldn’t say shock people, but…”, and in the silence, I realise that for him, anything is possible.
