How Song Sung Blue Worked a Neil Diamond Performance Into AA Meeting

Song Sung Blue is very much a two-hander, exploring the real-life romantic and professional pairing of Mike and Claire Sardina (Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson), entertainers who teamed up to form the wildly popular Neil Diamond tribute band Lightning and Thunder. But acclaimed filmmaker Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow, Dolemite Is My Name) saw the film’s opening as a chance for “a bit of a misdirect” with the audience. The script’s first two pages introduce Mike as the hero of the story, before the drama’s emotional weight shifts toward Claire in the back half. “To pay that off,” Brewer says, “I really needed to have an entry point.”

Growing up, Brewer’s father would often throw a particular item of movie trivia at him: “What’s the first line of The Godfather?” The evocative answer, “I believe in America,” has followed Brewer with every script he’s written. “This one bothered me — how do I get into telling about Mike’s life but also start off with something grand that he would say? — until Neil Diamond’s lyrics just totally hit me in the head,” he says, referencing the hit song “I Am … I Said.” “In having him do a change on that, where he says, ‘I am … an entertainer,’ he can start to explain himself.”

“There is thought that goes into me trying to create a rhythm that sounds like someone’s just speaking off the top of their head, but I’m trying to put my own little bit of iambic pentameter in it,” explains Brewer. “There’s something about the free hot dogs on Wednesday nights that creates just a little bit of texture — I don’t know if somebody who was playing at the Whisky or some other venue in Los Angeles would necessarily think this is the point to make clear. That alone suddenly takes me to a bar where I could see the wieners on the little conveyor belt. I already get an idea and a picture of what this guy’s landscape is.”

Mike fits into a classic Brewer character type: a larger-than-life niche celebrity eagerly — but still appealingly — leaning in to his own fame. “He wants you to know he’s fucking Lightning — he wants it on the back of his jacket!” Brewer says. “There’s that excitement in being recognized, because I think when you don’t have the money and you don’t have the career standing in something, you still want to have the respect that you’ve put your effort and your life into becoming a something — and that something has value.”

Brewer points to this moment (above), with Mike explaining and owning his branding with beaming pride, as crucial to realizing the opening would work — mainly because of the way Jackman held the close-up. “It’s really that moment where even the most seasoned director or writer smiles when they see a movie star step onto their mark, look into that lens and you go, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s right — Hugh Jackman. There it is. There’s that magic,’ ” Brewer says. “The sincerity was just so perfect.”

On the first day of filming this scene, Brewer doubted the structure until his DP Amy Vincent walked him through the shooting plan. She explained how, up to this moment, Mike would be surrounded by dreamlike lighting, where you have no idea where he is until he says it out loud. “We cut wide, and then we realize, ‘Oh, we’re in an AA meeting,’ ” Brewer says. “It was a little bit worrisome for me because I wanted the audience also to laugh — there’s something about the tone of my movies that some people find uncomfortable because sometimes they’re laughing at maybe something that they shouldn’t be laughing at. But we got to set the tone for where the movie is going, dealing with people who are hurt and people who have hurt other people.”

As the scene ends, the audience realizes we’ll get our first Neil Diamond performance of the movie — in an AA meeting. “It’s like, ‘How do I introduce Neil Diamond as a concept to the movie, as this agent of grace to Mike, but at the same time tell you who Mike is?’ ” Brewer says. “If I don’t land him right at the jump, I don’t know if people would really buy into him as just a genuine person.”

This story first appeared in a January stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.