Brian Wilson biopic: Love and Mercy

Brian Wilson is listed as one of the producers of this film. If nothing else, I'd hope that will help ensure the finished product doesn't veer too far into the ugly pool.

I'm a little disappointed... I had always wanted to make this movie!

 

Do you make films?

 

No... I'm raising kids!

I've been in television production for my entire adult life and have several pet "projects" that I've always wanted to write. Brian Wilson's life story was one of them... dating back to the mid-90s. I had all sorts of ideas about attacking the story as as sort of rock version of "Shine." I loved the idea of the misunderstood, fragile auteur who breaks down. Lots of ideas about depicting the sandbox and the tent in Brian's house... Murray...Manson connection. I think that the Beach Boys have a very "Disney" sort of image and that there's a deeper story to tell about who they were... and who Brian really is. The boy band idea had really taken off by then, and I thought this was a movie that could have been sold to young audiences with it's twist... that there's more than meets the eye to popular music acts.

You know why I didn't whack something together back then? There was a great concept with an incomplete story arc. I used to discuss it with friends who had similar creative ambitions. I'd say, "for this story to work, Wilson would have to get over his stage fright and tour, finish Smile and generally change the emotional tone of his life. No way is all of that going to happen." Flash forward 15 years. I'm looking forward to seeing what they make here, but if they happen to do any of the stuff I had imagined back then, it will sting a little because I KNOW that this is a great subject for a movie. Back then, the most interesting thing was that Brian was the only Wilson brother STILL ALIVE... isn't THAT ironic. I struggled with creating a story arc that would have made Brian's life to date satisfy some dramatic needs that we knew about. It's been something else to watch him get all this karma on his cosmic bucket list in the years that followed.

I had a really great thing worked out for "The Little Girl I Once Knew," where DJs would keep talking over the track thinking the song was over. Would have been funny - sort of a "not all of Brian's ideas worked out for the best" kind of scene. Lots of ideas for Smile. Obviously. A couple of years later, "Ray" came out and I was jumping up and down watching the "overdub" scene and telling my wife I KNEW the geeky stories about how records are made COULD be made interesting for a general (non music obsessive) audience... that people would get how talented and impressive your subject is if you do it right.

At the time I had imagined that Colin Hanks would have made a good Brian. My working title was "In My Room." Film was to start with "Our Prayer" as the opening credits rolled and we were treated to a continuous tracking shot of an idyllic looking suburban home in the dark of night. The peaceful nature is broken by a domestic disturbance at the hands of Murray Wilson. And the darkness takes off from there. I imagined a very Goodfellas type of sensibility... thought it would have been cool for music geek Scorsese to have done this...

I guess none of that stuff matters now! ;-)

For the record, I've had lots of ideas that I had to suffer watching trailers for. If you could get paid for thoughts instead of action, I'd be worth hundreds of millions by now...

 

Wow, you really put a lot of thought into this. I really like your ideas for the film, it is a shame that you are not the one making it. I didn't realise that you are a TV producer.
The idea that it would be along the same lines as Shine is a really fantastic one. I love that film, and you are completely right, Brian has a very similar personality as Helfgott, both are/were genius's with massive internal conflicts.

Hopefully Love and Mercy will be along similar lines to what you have described, and if it isn't, then hopefully it will bomb and you can make your film. I would certainly watch it.
It really is amazing how much Brian has done over the last 15 years, how could you ever know that he would successfully revive Smile, reunite with Mike, release a successful new album and then have a very successful anniversary tour?

 

My fear is that because Brian is one of the producers, he'll be too timid to veer into the ugly truth that's part of his own life.

 

and you can bet "Sweet Insanity" will not be mentioned (some readers of this will be ticked, others will be overjoyed).

 

Brian is scheduled to release his autobiography next year (yes, let's hope it's actually written by him not like his first book)--so perhaps he'll already be delving into those parts of his life for the book and it will carry over to the movie.

 

I'm not convinced that Brian even read his last autobiography...

 

Christopher Waltz should play Landy, not Giamatti.

 

This should be in it at some point, closing credits maybe:

 

Christopher Walken should play Landy...

 

And in other news, Brian now says in The Onion that he's ready to do his first "surfin' safari"...

http://www.theonion.com/articles/im-happy-to-say-after-71-years-im-finally-going-on,33384/

 

Admit it. When you read this you were all think about this

 

Can someone please confirm the rumour I've heard that Darian Sahanaja of the Wondermints and more recently Brian Wilson's band is musical director on Love And Mercy? I'd love for this to be the case, as he's a great talent who went from super-fan to collaborator - his knowledge of SMiLE bootlegs proved instrumental (no pun intended) in helping to assemble the final album, and I can only begin to imagine how different the end product may have been if he'd not known about such minute details as bleedthrough from a clarinet on Look/Song For Children playing the original vocal melody, once thought lost forever. This guy deserves the gig, and at least we know this will be a film worth listening to, if not watching due to the suspected dilution of certain key points in the subject's life as a result of current wife Melinda having a say on what makes the cut. Then again, Landy's clearly getting a lot of screen time, so who really knows how well the end product will turn out? Nothing could be any worse than the so-called autobiography, I reckon!

 

I've not heard anything about Darian being music director on the film.

 

To me, a lot of what has appeared with Brian's name since The Wondermints got involved should really be credited as

The Wondermints featuring the presence of Brian Wilson.

I think The Wondermints are terrific mimics. But not terrific artists.

 

Ever since the Wondermints found their way into his touring group, there's no denying just how influential they've been - I wouldn't even be surprised if a lot of the work credited as Brian Wilson's is indeed mostly their effort behind the scenes, with plenty of equally significant contributions from Paul Mertens and Jeff Foskett along the way. Although they are indeed great mimics (especially when it comes to emulating 1960s sounds using modern day techniques), I wouldn't ever call them terrible artists. Masters of power pop, on the other hand...

 

He didn't. There are lots of truths and untruths in that book...sort of a read between the lines book.

 

Landy himself has been dead since 2006, so I suspect they can pretty much say anything they want to about him in the film and get away with it. I'm sure there will be a disclaimer that says, "this film is a dramatization based on true events drawn from several different sources," stuff like that. The recent Jobs film also went all over the place in terms of truth vs. fiction or facts vs. legend, sometimes a muddling mix between the two, and I suspect this is what will happen with the Brian Wilson film. One hopes it leans more towards truth than fiction.

 

From Brian's FB:

 

It's been said that the filmmakers really want to put the audience inside Brian's head and to experience the same rollercoaster ride that is Brian's life. That should be easy to accomplish when the screenwriter of the film is Oren Moverman, who wrote the Bob Dylan "biopic" I'm Not There. I think we're in for a treat....

 

From the info I have seen, he will be a musical consultant, but not the musical director.

 

I'm pretty sure that there was an interview with Brian within the last few years in which he admitted as such.

 

He said it in a court deposition that was part of the "get Landy out of Brian's life" legal proceedings.

 

While there's no doubt that Landy is no longer with us, the same can't be said for other known "Surf Nazi" associates such as former partner Alexandra Morgan or longtime assistant Kevin Leslie... they've been frightfully quiet since the legal separation in 1991, with the exception of his son Evan (allegedly being the one) uploading those candid videos onto YouTube a few years back from the second period of round-the-clock therapy, including the revealing sight of a clearly dependent Brian Wilson ordering quite the cocktail of pills from his supposed carer while sat in a Chevrolet between filming sequences for a promotional clip. If you've not seen this - or the Diane Sawyer interview, for that matter - it's perhaps the most shocking eye opener you'll ever come across. In fact, I believe the latter was used as evidence to get the good doctor out of the picture for good, along with the great assessment from Peter Reum that Landy's final patient appeared to be showing all the symptoms of Tardive Dyskinesia. I genuinely believe that were it not for this great catch, we may have lost Brian to the very people meant to have been saving his life, and my guess is little of these details will make the cut for Love & Mercy.