Justin H. Min and Lucy Boynton in THE GREATEST HITS. Photo by Merie Weismiller Wallace, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
Courtney Howard // Film Critic
Filmmaker Ned Benson makes a welcomed and triumphant return to the silver screen with THE GREATEST HITS. This fantastical romantic drama is centered on Harriet (Lucy Boynton), a woman who’s struggling with the devastating loss of her boyfriend Max (David Corenswet) but unable to move on since a traumatic brain injury causes her to time travel when hearing certain songs. It’s a gorgeous and heartrending film dealing with grief that also speaks to the immersive, transportive power of music. So it should come as no surprise that the soundtrack is filled with bangers and bops.
At a recent event held at the Grammy Museum, Benson, composer Ryan Lott and music supervisor Mary Ramos spoke about crafting a musical without actually it actually being a traditional musical and how they whittled down their playlists to come up with one of the best marriages of score and soundtrack this year.
The inspiration came to Benson organically. He stated,
“Objects carry stories with them. When we think about vinyl, or HiFi, or an antique store, or a car, any of these things they all carry memory with them – the way the songs do too was really important to what we were trying to tell here as a collaborative.”
From the opening notes of the film, it’s clear music tells its own story. It subtly scores characters’ actions, as well as providing a complementary foundation for which they evolve. Ramos said,
“This movie is something Ned’s been living with for a really long time. He wrote this screenplay in 2008, but he’s been creating a playlist for this story over the years. When I met with Ned, the first time, he already had a list he was thinking of.
One of my goals was to make him feel supported and never tell him he can’t have something. But also be a guide and leaning it toward a little more focused on characters – specific characters listening to specific types of music – so that not everybody had the same cadence, dialect or taste. When [a track] wasn’t feeling dynamic in a scene, we’d steer and try different things.”
Benson added,
“We started to look at these songs and if you really pay attention, the lyrics are telling you the subtext of the movie. So Leon Haywood “Don’t Push It Don’t Force It,’ Patty Jo “Make Me Believe In You,” and The The “This Is The Day,” lyrically all the songs are helping us tell the story through the subtext of what these characters are all going through.”
Ramos created the soundtrack having a base of knowledge of what Benson was looking for and then finding alternative suggestions to greater amplify his creative voice.
“I’m really good at “Yes, And-ing.” So his playlist was this and I can do a yes, and playlist. I see you Cure and I raise you The The. I knew I wanted to come in and take his lead and go from there. I don’t like to come into a room and go, ‘I’ve got the answer to everything!’
It was telling the story of a relationship from 2016 through 2020, so whenever she was flashing back, we had those parameters. How familiar were they in the relationship, how far along were they in the relationship when they were flashing back and what were those years. That became a game of what fit in those years.”
Lott, who reunites with Benson after scoring THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY, was pleased with his role in aiding the creation the sonic language of this romdram.
“The privilege I had making this film was to represent the feeling of the sound of music – not just make the sound of music, but to make the sound of the feeling of the sound of music. That was the way to create an interplay between my score and the songs, but more importantly, to truly sense the physical experience [Harriet] was having with these songs.
When we started to talk about score, we wanted to make the line between needle drop and score disappear, so they were one thing – a whole sonic experience.
The blend of soundtrack cues and Lott’s warm aural overlay best exemplifies their technique used during Harriet and new beau David’s (Justin H. Min) karaoke duet of 10CC’s ethereal ballad “I’m Not In Love.”
“I added the ooey-gooey. If you take out what I added, it sounded very plastic and kinda silly – it’s gonna sound like karaoke. The more beautiful, in a strange way, I made it, the funnier it was to hear them singing, the dichotomy of it was more successful. Lot of little puzzles to solve in this movie.”
Ramos praised working in conjunction with Lott.
“When you’re using older masters, they become kind of hard to make pop. So one of the brilliant things Ryan was talking about when we very first met was having overlays – his music on top to make those scenes pop. Like the dance scene in Chinatown, that music is fantastic and the DJ mix in between the two songs, but Ryan lays some beautiful magic on top of those tracks and it just elevates those moments. He does that with a lot of tracks in the movie. It’s subtle but it elevates the moment.”
The songs not only create a physical texture, they help conjure emotion. There’s light spills and aesthetic blur that give the feature an undeniable energy. Lott, who also plays the DJ in the scene where the new couple dances on top of the rooftop in silent disco, said it was integral to translate that sonically.
“That was my job as the score – to connect them to audio light spills.”
Benson elucidated,
“With Chung-hoon, our DP, we talked a lot about utilizing our lens package to find elements in flaring and light spill and create this practical time travel effect while trying to ground it in as much reality as we can with visual effects and making it feel like ALTERED STATES or JACOB’S LADDER to a degree.”
Roxy Music’s “To Turn You On (Disco Pusher Remix),” which is the first time folks can buy it on vinyl is on this soundtrack, plays a pivotal part in the picture and it required some shrewd thinking on soundtrack supervisor Mary Ramos’ part.
“Roxy Music was in the script. We had planned on shooting them in concert. They were coming to Los Angeles on their 50th Anniversary Tour. There was the thought of shooting them in concert at The [Kia] Forum. It was getting crazy. There was some talk of having to scrap that and making something smaller rather than the concert.
So I started thinking about it in the way where you don’t want to say no to a director. Thinking it’s the Anniversary Tour, they’ve got to have a videographer following them, right? Also, that song was not on their playlist. Not only did we got them to video their performance, we got them to change their playlist to include that song in it…”
Benson jumped in, adding,
“We also got them to change their camera package so it would match ours.”
Ramos continued,
“That’s right. The thinking behind it was so that the band could control their image and control the way they looked. It also was so that the band could control and own the images so the money went into their pocket. So when we licensed their song and the image and footage, all of that was a package and they pocketed most of that money. The record label got some and the publisher got some but they got the majority of it.”
Benson credits Ramos and Lott for helping to bring his vision into full color.
“I couldn’t have created the soundscape without them. It was really fun building the soundtrack with them.”
THE GREATEST HITS is now playing in cinemas. It streams on Hulu on April 11 (at 9pm PT). The soundtrack on vinyl is available for purchase here and here.
