Ned Benson’s sophomore feature, The Greatest Hits, is a romantic drama following a young woman who travels back in time anytime she hears a song to the last time and place she heard it with her late boyfriend. It’s a charming film with an incredible soundtrack that will delight any musicophile, not that you would expect any less.
We at FandomWire spoke with Benson and the film’s composer, Ryan Lott (frontman of Son Lux and Oscar nominee for his work on Everything Everywhere All at Once), about their work on the film. Keep reading to find out what they had to say.
The Greatest Hits Interview
In The Greatest Hits, more so than many other films driven by music, the soundtrack essentially functions as a character. We asked the team behind the film where the song choices came into play — whether it was during the writing process or later in production. They explain:
“It’s a bit of both,” says Benson. “I think a majority, or a good portion of it, was scripted or finding it at least in pre-production. And then really talking with Ryan and Mary Ramos, who acted as our music supervisor, in terms of finding the interaction of score, song, and soundscape, and what that would feel like in terms of creating this musical character. I think you’re right. I think music is a leading character in this film. And I think Ryan and I discussed that from the get-go.”
“It was funny because logistically, there’s an inherent challenge in this film to reconcile score and source for a film,” Lott adds. “As you said, music is a primary character in this film, and our protagonist’s experience of music is so fundamental to the plot, which means the music can’t just be an afterthought in the way that sometimes it can be in the filmmaking process.
Sometimes, it has to come really late in the process. This is the film where it’s front and center, just like casting. It kind of comes early. A lot of the musical decisions, or at least directional musical decisions, had to come early, and we had to determine the process we would use to marry score and source.”
This is not the first collaboration between Benson and Lott, either; the duo previously worked together on Benson’s ambitious project, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. We asked them at what point Lott joined forces in this film.
“I lead a band called Son Lux, and I remember, Ned — we were playing LA one year years ago, I think at the El Rey; you floated the idea to me of a movie you were dreaming up where music was going to be a central aspect of it,” Lott recalls. “At the time, I think your ideas were in their infancy, but I remember that was even years ago, starting to flirt with another collaboration.”
“Ryan and I had such an amazing experience working together on Rigby, and he did such beautiful work there,” Benson adds. “But the funny thing about that movie is that there were like nine score cues in that movie, and it’s like three hours and nine minutes long. And then this one, it’s like all score cues, and it’s 94 minutes long. But he’s a special musician and a special collaborator. So I think anything that I do, whether it’s music as a character or not, I was going to work with him.”
We went on to ask Benson what some of his influences for the film were, suggesting names like Nick Hornby and John Carney as similarities that immediately came to mind.
“There were a ton,” he asserts. “I was thinking a lot about Cameron Crowe, movies like Singles and Say Anything, Reality Bites by Ben Stiller, High Fidelity definitely — the Nick Hornby. Definitely, John Carney’s in there. And there are some other kind of more obscure like time travel movies as well, along with some not-so-obscure ones like Back to the Future. It’s all across the board, really.”
Also Read: The Greatest Hits SXSW Review: Music-Filled Romance is Undeniably Charming
Similarly, we asked Lott what some of his influences on the score were, asking if some of the bands featured heavily on the soundtrack, such as Roxy Music, shaped his approach to composing the music for the film.
“For sure,” he says. “This was such a fun project because it was like a jigsaw puzzle, but you didn’t have all the pieces laid out before you needed to start working. So it was a bit like living on the edge. You had to commit to certain decisions using a lot of intuition, just kind of believing your heart that the follow-through was going to work out. And Ned mentioned Mary Ramos, whose role functionally as music supervisor was so essential.
I know this interview is me and Ned, but she deserves a lot of credit for being the third piece of this musical trifecta, piecing everything together and making decisions together. For me, I had to make a lot of geeky decisions, nerdy logistical music theory stuff to make things work; Ned held the North Star, what we were going for; and Mary was always talking about story and always talking about character. Even though the job of the music supervisor can be really tedious, and a lot about licensing music and a lot of paperwork and wheeling and dealing, she was constantly focused on the character in the story. And so she gets a lot of credit.”
“Seriously,” Benson agrees. “She invested so much of herself and her heart into this movie, and I think one of the really fun things that came through, just working with her early, was this idea that the songs, lyrically, they’re helping tell the story, they’re helping give the subtext of each scene.
So, if you pay attention to the lyrics of the song choices that we have in the movie, they’re really helping tell this narrative in terms of what’s going on emotionally in each scene. So that was something that she worked really hard on with me to clear stuff that did help tell the story as we were going through the movie. And Ryan was just a mad scientist, just making this gorgeous score and bridging the music and the soundscape.”
Speaking of nerdy details, one that hardcore cinephiles will notice is that, instead of the iconic Fox fanfare over the Searchlight Pictures logo, audiences are thrown directly into Lott’s score. We brought this up to the duo, and here’s what they had to say about it:
“I was following Ned’s lead here,” says Lott. “He wanted to create a montage of sound, a swirl of sound. Part of the reasoning behind it was to support the idea that she’s constantly swarmed by music and sound, and we needed to create an opening montage of sound for that. And it was an honor to kick off the movie with score, for sure.”
“I think we wanted to create this Sonic overture that really just gave the sounds of Los Angeles; that gave the things that she basically had to buttress her life from to soundproof her life over that Searchlight logo,” adds Benson. “And the fun thing about that logo is that it is Los Angeles. We’re seeing Los Angeles, and we’re hearing the sounds of Los Angeles, and we’re introducing the movie.
And that’s not only like radio play, or helicopters, or traffic, or horns, or people; it’s the entire sonic landscape of the city. And that’s a tough job for someone. “Hey, can you recreate the entire sonic landscape of Los Angeles in like 40 seconds as the movie’s starting?” But Ryan did an incredible job. I wanted it to feel like the orchestra warming up.”
“And what’s rad is that we create this swarm of sound that just drops off into room tone,” Lott adds. “And we sense in the opening shot of our protagonist a loneliness and solitude and isolation. So it was a really good functional idea as well on Ned’s part.”
Beyond the music, though, the heart and soul of The Greatest Hits is its incredible cast, led by Lucy Boynton, Justin H. Min, and David Corsenwet. We asked Benson what working with such a talented group of up-and-comers was like.
“Honestly, the whole experience, just the collaboration that this group is — and that stems from the cast onward to working with Ryan and Mary and the DP — it honestly was a dream scenario for me because it’s such a collaborative medium,” says Benson. “And it was such a special group. And these actors are really generous, not only as actors but as people. They’re just phenomenal human beings. And I agree with you, Austin Crute included in that, these are four of the, I think, most exciting actors kind of emerging right now.
So it was kind of a treat for me to catch people in this moment in their careers where they’re here. Lucy, getting one of her first lead roles, and I think she’s such a special actor and so vulnerable and giving. And I’m running around with them right now on this press tour, and we’re just having a blast, and I think that’s what the movie felt like.
On Saturdays, they’d come over, have dinner, and we’d be singing karaoke and listening to records. And the same thing when I was going over to do the score with Ryan, we’re just hanging in his place, looking at music, looking at instruments he’s creating, and it’s just the whole thing was just an awesome, creative, fun experience, almost like camp or something.”
And yet, as fun as the film (and apparently its production) is, there’s something moving to be found in its unorthodox love triangle. We asked Benson why he thinks this is so uniquely resonant.
“I don’t know, exactly,” he admits. “But what I wanted to discuss or address with the movie is the fact that we have the capacity in our hearts to have more than one great love. And I think that’s part of what Harriet’s experience in this movie is. It’s letting go of someone she loves, yet hanging on to them and opening the door for this new love. And in order to do that, she kind of has to let everything go. I don’t want to spoil the ending of the movie, but it really is about the sort of emotional power of music that tethers us to the past but reminds us to live at the same time.”
The Greatest Hits is now streaming on Hulu.
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