Transforming 3 Songs From The Last Five Years for Anna Kendrick, Jeremy Jordan, and the Big Screen
(© Thomas Concordia)
Richard LaGravenese, Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director of The Last Five Years, understands the musical-theater fanatics who'll be lining up to see his newest film this Valentine's Day — because he is one. A self-proclaimed "theater geek" who studied theater as an undergrad, LaGravenese made a name for himself penning the scripts for films like The Fisher King and P.S. I Love You, but he's never lost touch with the theater scene.
"I fell in love with [the Last Five Years] score around 2004," LaGravenese said. "You know when you get an album and you just listen to it over and over and over and over? I was obsessed with it…and it was just a fantasy making this little jewel of a movie."
A few years later that dream became a reality when original Last Five Years star Sherie Rene Scott walked into the audition room for the film P.S. I Love You. Through Scott — who did snag a role in the film — LaGravenese was introduced to the musical's writer, Jason Robert Brown. And seven years later they were making a movie starring Oscar and Tony nominee Anna Kendrick and Tony nominee Jeremy Jordan.
"It was really easy to [develop chemistry] on set with Anna. She was always incredibly available. We stepped on set and she was in there one hundred percent," said Jordan. "We all loved [the film], and we just wanted it so badly to be how it was in our minds."
With transferring that mental image to screen as his main objective, LaGravenese utilized his storytelling background and the input of his highly collaborative cast to design "camera angles and locations, back story and costumes and hair" in order to tell the story he loved so much.
(photo courtesy of RADiUS)
"If I Didn't Believe in You"
Richard LaGravenese: The first time we all got together and were in a bare room with a piano player and some blocks and my cinematographer…I said to them, "Just have your argument and start the song and just go wherever you want and we'll follow you." And when the actors did it and motivated it that way, we looked at each other and went, "Wow. If we can keep this all in one shot, it'll be awesome." [Jeremy] can tell you how it felt doing that….He sang it fourteen times.
Jeremy Jordan: What did we use? [Take] twelve? It wasn't that difficult. I never really ran out of steam on that one. The song has some really big moments, but there are a lot of quiet moments as well, so you can kind of conserve your energy…and every time we finished it, we would be in a state that we'd want to just go do it again. Once we kind of set it through the first few takes, one of us was like, "Go go go." Everybody good? Reset. Get some water.
You discover new things in each little take, so you want to try to embellish on them. The sad thing about filming a musical specifically is, in the theater world you have all this rehearsal time and previews and audiences and you have a long time to really get to work out all those little moments. And in film you have one day and you have a bunch of takes and you have to take advantage of every single one in order to get somewhere.
(photo courtesy of RADiUS)
"The Schmuel Song"
Richard LaGravenese: I worried about it so much that I used to ask Jason, "Do you want to write an original — maybe not use Schmuel?" Because it's always the song I skipped on the CD. And he was like, "No, that's the show." I went "All right, you're right, actually. We should just do the show." Then I thought, "I'll animate it." Then as we were going towards production I realized it's a six-minute f**king song. I said I can't stop the movie for six minutes with animation.
I found the key at some point in pre-production. I went back to the lyrics and I suddenly realized "It's not what he's singing, it's why he's singing." Then it became the most important song, because [Jamie] ultimately becomes, for some people, a prick. In that moment, you realize how hard he works, how much he loves her…he's working so hard and he loves her so much and finally, I realized how important that was [to] the second half [of the movie].
Jeremy Jordan: We had all these ideas about how Jamie's going to express his feelings. He's Jewish and she was raised not-Jewish. He probably doesn't know a whole lot about Christmas and how people celebrate it, so he's wrapping lights around anything he can find…
Richard LaGravenese: I wanted to build the lighting so that at the end it just becomes this glowing thing of warmth and love for her.
Jeremy Jordan: And I think he knows exactly how [Cathy]'s gonna be when she walks in. It's really actually the last moment in Jamie's journey where we see him trying to make her happy.
Richard LaGravenese: Later on, in "Nobody Needs to Know" — "I build a tree house, I keep it from falling" — you've got an example of what he did. You have to understand…he's done that a million times. And it still won't change her. And he's tired.
(photo courtesy of RADiUS)
"Still Hurting"
Richard LaGravenese: [Anna] was a little concerned about starting it off that emotionally [in "Still Hurting"]…Especially in that song, because of where the story goes, it was important for me, I said, "We need to remember how hurt we were. So if you're holding back too much it's going to appear cold — even though in "If I Didn't Believe in You," she breaks down again." I really thought we needed it to ground it, to ground [Cathy]. And she just did a gorgeous job. I think she did that one section I think about seventeen times. And it wasn't because of her voice. It was because of the camera. We had this tricky long camera move.
Jeremy Jordan: She was in there one hundred percent…I learned a lot from her, actually, as an actor — especially for the film. I've done a lot of theater and I felt very comfortable doing the musical stuff. But at the same time, there's a camera in your face and I've done enough film work, but she really taught me about stillness and sort of underplaying things.
Richard LaGravenese: She was always coming up with stuff when something didn't click exactly right. So she was a great collaborator. Both of them I treated as co-filmmakers.
