Yahoo Lifestyle ‘The Beanie Bubble’ Duo Damian Kulash And Nathan Barr Purposefully Blurred Lines Between Songs And Score – Sound & Screen Film
The Beanie Bubble is about the Beanie Baby craze of the 1990s and the drama behind the scenes. Zach Galifianakis plays Ty Warner, the founder of the toy line. Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Snook and Geraldine Viswanathan play the three women in Warner’s life who found each other, and success, in the company. OK Go singer Damian Kulash directed with his wife, screenwriter Kristin Gore.
Kulash said he hoped people couldn’t tell where the movie’s “needle drops” of archival music ended and his original score, with Nathan Barr, began. The film includes songs by The Cure, INXS, The Cranberries, Queen and more.
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“The job of the score was not to offset that stuff but rather to make it unclear when you’re in a pop song and when you’re not,” Kulash said.
Kulash said they even fooled the Apple legal team with the selection they performed for Deadline’s Sound & Screen: Film event at UCLA’s Royce Hall. Apple worried that Kulash and Barr were playing someone else’s copyrighted music.
“That’s the score which to me was a big win,” Kulash said. “They don’t know which one is score and which one is song.”
For the instrumental score, Kulash wanted the music to be more universal than the ‘90s sound. They incorporated organ as an instrument, and Barr specified it was from the ‘60s.
“There’s this whole genre from the ’60s featuring a Wurlitzer with an orchestra and drum kit,” Barr said. “That lent itself really well to where we were trying to take the story.”
Kulash hopes the three women’s triumph at the end of the movie reflects on universal themes of business and capitalism. They get out of the capitalist system, but it’s not an easy victory.
“It had to be very uplifting but also a sort of melancholy to it,” Kulash said.
Barr had never worked with Kulash before. He said the moment they realized they could criticize each other, he knew it would be a good collaboration.
“We just looked at each other and laughed,” Barr said. “We would just try and be more sarcastic than the other.”
Kulash remembered the piece Barr played for him that didn’t work.
“The moment you’re talking about was a thing that kind of sucked,” Kulash said, adding that he appreciated “just being able to look at each other and go, ‘This isn’t it yet.’ ”
Check out the panel video above.
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