Director Craig Brewer reveals what the legendary singer-songwriter asked after seeing the movie, which stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson.
Tom Cooper/Getty; Sarah Shatz/Focus Features
Neil Diamond; Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman in ‘Song Sung Blue’
Neil Diamond, you could say, is a believer in Song Sung Blue.
The new movie, written and directed by Craig Brewer and starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, isn’t a biopic about the legendary singer-songwriter, but he and his music play a big role in the true story of Mike and Claire Sardina. The two Wisconsinites meet later in life, fall in love, and form the Neil Diamond tribute band Lightning & Thunder to big success, propelled by Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, who — as seen in the movie — asked them to open for the band on a stop in Madison, though in real life they joined the band’s encore at Milwaukee’s Summerfest in 1995.
So when filmmaker Greg Kohs got a cease-and-desist letter from Diamond’s record label just before his 2008 documentary about the Sardinas, also titled Song Sung Blue, debuted at a film festival saying he couldn’t show the movie with the music, it was Vedder who “called up Neil Diamond, sent him the documentary, and said, ‘You gotta watch this and you gotta let them use the music,’” Brewer tells Entertainment Weekly. “Neil Diamond saw the movie, he was so touched by it, and he intervened and told his publishing company to leave Greg alone and show the movie.”
But was Diamond as touched by Brewer’s movie?
“I was not in the room with him, but I had a few spies,” Brewer says, adding that Diamond’s family, including his wife, Katie, as well as his team, were there. “I had also been prepped that Neil does not get effusively enthusiastic or into movies. He watches them, he studies them — that’s what I was told.”
Sarah Shatz/Focus Features
Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson, and Craig Brewer on the set of ‘Song Sung Blue’
Brewer prepared himself for a neutral response, perhaps something a bit ambiguous.
“But I was told from his people that they were surprised to see just how enthusiastic he started to get with it, that he was tapping his foot, that he would applaud after each music number, and that he cried,” Brewer recalls. “He went up to the projectionist, or the person was running the screening, and when they introduced themselves to him, he said, ‘Okay, well, when’s the next screening? Can we watch it again?’ And so I was so happy about his reaction because I hope what it does for him — not that he looks for this or needs it — but I just hope he knows how incredibly relevant his contribution to songwriting is. Those songs are beautiful, and yeah, he’s a performer, but he’s a writer. He wrote these, he thought them, he felt them in his soul, and then he created them.”
That’s what you could call some beautiful noise.
