John Cusack Remembers Brian Wilson: Exclusive Interview

In 2014’s Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy, John Cusack was tasked to play the elder version of the enigmatic musical genius who led the Beach Boys and progenitor of California rock. This was following the Smile sessions, when Wilson who died on Wednesday at age 82, became more insular, both musically and personally. It was when he “went into his darker period, that part of his life was much less known,” Cusack tells Rolling Stone. To better inhabit the intricacies of who Wilson was, Wilson and his wife Melinda Ledbetter gave Cusack “extraordinary access into his life and past,” prior to filming. He spent time at their house, and they would visit Wilson’s favorite diner together, a place the Beach Boys co-founder visited daily, and spend time in his music room. “If he’s near a piano, he’s usually strumming on it,” Cusack remembers.

He says there was a lot of synchronicity that took place during the film. He and Paul Dano, who portrayed the younger Wilson at the peak of his Beach Boys creativity, initially avoided talking to each other, and didn’t compare notes, “just to have two totally different takes. And that felt right,” he says. When they did meet towards the end of the shooting, he discovered that “we had the same entry point into him, which is we both went into the Smile sessions,” Cusack says. “I had some version of that going around me every waking hour that I wasn’t filming. That was sort of my language into him, some doorway into him. And I just thought it was interesting, after not talking at all, that Paul and I picked the same one.”

Wilson’s generosity of spirit and openness extended beyond the film and to the stage with Cusack. At the wrap party, Wilson wanted to perform and asked Cusack and Dano to join him, and he handed Cusack the lyrics to “Do It Again.” It wasn’t the last time he’d sing with Wilson. He attended several of his concerts over the years, and even joined him onstage to sing “Sloop John B” during Pitchfork Music Festival in 2016. They remained in contact through the years, sending each other holiday cards. “He’s such a mythological figure,” says Cusack. “His heart was as big as you think it was.” He added: “He was just extraordinary, like otherworldly.”

He really did give me access into his life, he and Melinda, so I could kind of learn and find out what it was like for him and how he lived. They were very generous about it. And I think they wanted the movie to get it right, number one. But I also think he approached the troubled aspect of his life — and you know, there’s also he fell in love with Melinda, and that part was beautiful — but he approached that, I think, with the same kind of open, raw, big-hearted way that he approached, I think, anything, which was: lay it all out there, tell the truth, let it out. So he wanted all the darkness exposed because he thought that would help take away the stigma of mental illness away from others, that it could help other people.

He was quite an extraordinary guy. I think he was a very complex guy, obviously. There’s a bit of a Cheshire cat in him … It comes from some people who have been that famous. … The difference between someone who thinks about music all the time and somebody who literally can’t get the tune out of their head, like they can’t not hear music — I think he sort of played into that a little bit, that aspect of being that kind of famous, legendary, genius kind of guy. But he was actually very aware, and more aware than people think — he just came across as a very eccentric, big-hearted person. So, he’s super open about it, and I think he was the kind of guy like, when he’d be talking to you, you know people who are talking to you, and then they just, like a cat looks over your head? What are they seeing up there? Brian would do that. He was so sort of instinctual — you definitely felt like he was touched in a way that other people aren’t. He’s a little bit different, you know, in that way. He was very, very open and honest about everything that he went through.

I can give you an example of how extraordinary he was. When we were doing the scene where Brian breaks down in the same studio where he recorded all those things, and he was going to really the peak of his distress with his relationship with that mad psychiatrist, or fake, fake psychiatrist, Dr. Landy [who overtook Wilson’s life as a therapist and business adviser; his license was revoked and later Wilson had a restraining order against him], and Melinda was trying to pull him back kind of out of the abyss. But he was, he was so tortured there. It was really, really his rock bottom, certainly in the film’s point of view, I think maybe from his point of view and Melinda’s as well.

On that day when we’re going to shoot the breakdown scene, right? I’m listening to the Smile sessions. I’m trying to figure out, all right, how do you do that? I don’t know. What can I do? You know, Jesus Christ. This is the guy’s life. And it’s kind of an impossible scene to do. And so I’m listening to the Smile sessions, immersing myself in that and waiting to roll the camera and film and stuff. Someone taps me on the shoulder, and they say, ‘Brian’s here.’ And I said, ‘Brian who?’ And they go, ‘Wilson.’ And I went, ‘What?’ OK, so he didn’t tell anyone he was coming. The director didn’t even know he was there, right? He just showed up, like, five minutes before the breakdown scene. Now, that day, I chose to wear [a Hawaiian shirt] because Brian, he wore these kind of Hawaiian shirt kind of things. There’s a picture of me: I’m wearing, like, kind of a red one; he comes with his hair slicked back, wearing a different color Hawaiian shirt. He says, ‘Hey, how you doing, man. I just want to talk’ and so I walk up to him, and looked around, and then everyone was just staggered, you know, he just showed up. [And then it was] roll the cameras, something’s about to happen. And, you know, you can’t really explain that. How do you explain that he was just in-tuned and decided he would drop in at that moment. That was the only time he came [on set]. He waltzed in, just like sprinkled fucking magic dust on us and we rolled the camera.

[He didn’t advise anyone on how to portray him.] He would just sort of look at you and look over your head and talk to you. And he would just, he would just sort of really try to absorb you, your energy. But he didn’t say anything specific or tell you to do anything.

When we finished the film, he took a music pad, wrote up lyrics to ‘Love and Mercy’ and Melinda was like, ‘Well, he’d never done that before.’

If you think about where he was in his darkest hours to where I met him, when he had kids running around, and he was with his wife, and he had a nice house and community, and he was not only talking about his past, was open about it, not only talking about Smile, the Smile sessions, which he couldn’t even talk about for years — but then to go perform it, perform that, right, and then to be so open about his struggles, his mental health struggles with me, and because he wanted to help people by really showing it, take the stigma away from it … Yeah, was he scarred from his trips into the abyss? Sure. But, to me, it was a triumph of endurance and spirit and grace, that he had made it all the way through. It was lovely to see him find that stability and peace and happiness, in my view.

I think that the paradox about him is like, you know, as gentle — I’ve said he was like a raw, open, beating heart with two legs and sort of an ear that heard stuff from the angels, right? You know, so the most kind of sensitive guy, right? But he was also a tough motherfucker to survive all that and his father. He was a survivor, man. There was a toughness under there, but he was, he was genuinely that gentle, warm, gentle person, too, for sure.

There’s that kind of toughness. I always thought that was an incredible insight into him, you know, that no matter what was happening, his ear was still there. So, when he talked about his father beating him, he talked about what it felt like, but he said, ‘This is what it sounded like. It sounded like this.’ I can imagine what it felt like. But he also wanted me to know exactly what it sounded like.

What was interesting was Melinda said, ‘Hey, we’re going to see the movie.’ And I said, ‘Oh, well, we just got to call me, tell me what’s going on.’ And then she was texting me what their reaction to it was. When he saw the Landy scene, he said it was very upsetting. And I was like, ‘Oh no, you know, I hope in a good way.’ And she goes, ‘Oh yeah, it, brought back a lot for him. But you know him, he bounces back, he’s going to recover. And don’t worry, that means you did a good job.’ … There’s a lot to take in, but they really liked it.

It was their life and their experience and they were so generous with me. I wanted them to feel like we had done them right, you know, I’d done him right. It was important to me we feel that they knew that we gave it our all.

It was an honor to try to represent a version of him onscreen. And it was something that you knew you could immerse yourself fully in. It was a world that had kind of endless depth to it. It was a very sort of a deep, intense experience, doing it with a lot of love and respect. And it was also special to do something when someone’s alive, and also knowing that they can feel good about it was really special as well.

The part of his life I was playing was much more interior and private and hidden from the public. It wasn’t as high profile … I really just felt like all you can do is a version of him like — you can never, one thing can’t ever tell the whole story. … You’re never going to get everything. But I think if you can make it a version of him that feels, I guess, in tune to him, right? I think if it’s sort of, if it feels like him, if it really does feel like him, then you capture some of him. I was just so inspired by his kind of genius, he’s just very inspiring. I felt there was an audience of two for me that I really cared about, and that was Brian and Melinda.

He’s a big deal. You know, and it’s a big deal. He is. What he was able to give the world was seismic, he broke it all open for everybody else. It gives you chills when you think about what he did.

It’s such an honor to immerse yourself in his world, I guess, somehow, and try to do him right. It felt meaningful, because I knew it was a story that we had to get right for the for the legacy of the music and the impact it had on the culture.