Stuart Murdoch and Emily Browning Talk ‘God Help the Girl’By Max Evry
September 4, 2014
In 2009, Stuart Murdoch, frontman for Scottish indie superstar band Belle & Sebastian, released a concept album titled “God Help the Girl” which was built around a story for a movie he had in his head. Now that cinematic ambition has reached fruition with “God Help the Girl” the movie finally hitting theaters to the ecstatic cheers of B&S fans everywhere.
The Murdoch’s adorably twee sensibilities are in full force in telling the story of Eve (Emily Browning), an anorexic girl who escapes institutionalization and meets a young songwriter named James (Olly Alexander) and his precocious music student Cassie (Hannah Murray). Together they form an upstart pop group in Glasgow, falling in and out of love with each other in the process.
This is a sweetly meandering musical that should delight fans of the songs with its low-fi romance and spontaneous choreography, a sure bet to become a future cult classic. We sat down in New York to talk to Murdoch and his star Browning about the long process of bringing “God Help the Girl” to the screen.
“God Help the Girl” has been a long time coming, with the album coming out a few years ago already. Did this incubation period give you a chance to figure out what you wanted to ultimately do with the film?
STUART MURDOCH: “Incubation”… that’s a good word for it. You never plan it, nobody’s ever planned an incubation period. Maybe if you’re pregnant or something. (laughs) It just took that long with the various processes it went through. It was a little seed that grew into a tree.
Barry Mendal convinced you at one time to start over from scratch. How different was the original conception to what you wound up with?
MURDOCH: The good thing about Barry is he was my creative partner. He had an outside view of what the conception would be, so in the end it was something that’s truer and nicer for me because I had somebody watching out for me. He knew there was more to it than the initial draft. He knew there was more to it than three late-teenagers prattling on, which is what the first script was! (laughs) Endless prattle lingerie and laundry and things like that.
What took so many years with you two?
MURDOCH: It was like Hollywood vs. Paris in the ’60s, ’cause he’s Mr. Hollywood now. I was one guy in a European country who had never made a film before, and he felt like the might of Hollywood. I’d be working away writing and he’d say, “Not good enough.” I knew at the time that he was working with Judd Apatow and the funniest people in the world, Jonah Hill and all those guys, making “Funny People” and “This is 40” at the same time. I’m one person. When they sit down they have a great time rapping away. He said it needs to be better, and that set me back a long time. I went away and wrote a new treatment, which was the story that was on the original LP called “Eve: An Introduction,” and it told the story of some of the darker things that happened to Eve before the movie was going to happen, and that gave me a new place to come from. I knew the different level of drama I wanted to bring out, because it didn’t have those darker things before, it was much more up, frothy ’60s musical.
You had experience doing a pseudo-musical before with “Sucker-Punch,” which was a much more lavish, big budget affair. How was this experience different?
EMILY BROWNING: The movie itself was completely different. It didn’t even feel like making a movie, it felt like school camp. Me and Hannah and Olly met on the train on the way to Glasgow to rehearse some of the songs with Stewart. We met and were all equally excited and freaking out a little bit, so we forged a strong bond pretty quickly. There were days where we were like, “Shit, what can we shoot? Let’s just do this little extra scene!” Stewart would give us something, “Let’s just do this now,” which is so much more fun and exciting than that kind of regimented… there was no sitting around on this film, which was really nice and kind of rare. In terms of the music, when I was singing for the “Sucker-Punch” soundtrack it was all just in the studio and we had lots of time and money and production. It was very cushy and easy, this was harder for sure, more challenging in just getting to Glasgow and getting in a room and Stewart just saying, “Sing it.” “Okay!” (laughs) It was pretty comfortable pretty quickly, I guess. I thought Stewart was going to say, “You need singing lessons, you’re awful!”
MURDOCH: I picked you out from a thousand people… “You’re awful.” (laughs)
BROWNING: No but I thought just with the singing aspect, because you’ve been doing it for such a long time that you’d be really picky, but you were just like, “Okay, that’s good. Cool. Done.”
MURDOCH: One thing you had a pre-notion of was that it was going to be like when I made my first record. Belle & Sebastian made a record called “Tigermilk” with a gang of people that came together very quickly. I was in charge, but kind of orchestrating things. It was done in Glasgow, very quickly, there was no time, it was rough around the edges, and I knew that by the time I got all the elements together this was going to be a three-dimensional equivalent of our first record, with you guys as the band!
A lot of your interpretations of the songs are very different than the ones on the original record. What was the process of evolving them to fit your style?
BROWNING: I listened to the record quite a bit before I got the part, but it was important for me to try to forget it a little bit. The girls on the record are proper singers, and I was like, “I can’t try to compare myself to this.” People ask, “What kind of research did you do?” I didn’t, we were all just there and the summer in the film kind of was the summer that we had. It happened and it was quick. In terms of the singing it was like, “Was that ok?” “Yeah, we got it.” “Cool!” I feel like without the songs Eve’s a bit of jerk, which I like, I think that’s really cool that there’s a female lead that doesn’t have to be oh so lovable. I think she’s kind of an asshole sometimes because people are assholes sometimes, and selfish. It was really important that in the songs she was like this cartoon Disney princess version of herself winking at the audience. She has to be the most her when she’s singing the songs, she’s in her most happiest place.
MURDOCH: I’m glad you agree with me on that. There was a time when you were acting the music and you were standing behind the camera going, “Overacting!” And I’m going, “No, underacting!” (laughs)
BROWNING: That’s sweet. When we recorded things more recently I’m like, “Should I overact a little more?” You’re like, “Yeah, you know it.” That was uncomfortable at first, I can’t smile this much, I can’t be this happy and jazz hands-y and then I understood, it made sense in the end. You were right.
“God Help the Girl” opens in limited theatrical release and Vimeo On Demand this Friday.
