Summary: The new film Song One has a fairly simple premise: Boy likes music. Boy ends up in coma. Boy's sister (played by Anne Hathaway) rushes to town and ends up getting in touch with boy's favorite musician (played by English singer Johnny Flynn). Sister and musician talk about boy, and about music. Sister and musician may or may not fall in love. On its surface, it's a straightforward story about two people whose lives intersect at a strange and tragic angle. But the objects of director Kate Barker-Froyland's own affections are less the characters and more the music—and the city of Brooklyn—that whirls around them. The film features cameos and performances from a bevy of NYC's finest musicians, like swaggering crooner Sharon Van Etten, the ecstatic string band The Felice Brothers, electro-wizard Dan Deacon, and many others. "The movie is about experiencing music, listening to music, and what that feels like," says Barker-Froyland, and "while there is a lot of music in the film, there's so much more sound in New York." In addition to the Brooklyn luminaries named above, original songs for the film were written by indie pop maven Jenny Lewis and her boyfriend, Johnathan Rice. On screen, those tunes are performed by Flynn with his customary grace and folky lilt. The role of James Forester is a natural fit for Flynn, not least because the character incidentally shares all manner of similarities to the actor—including the same initials. Barker-Froyland even wrote a disturbing encounter with a moose into Forester's back story; Flynn too has a moose story. "There were a lot of nice similarities, that just meant I could trust what happened to him," says Flynn. Johnny Flynn and Kate Barker-Froyland join host John Schaefer in the Soundcheck studio to talk about their ode to Brooklyn, working with Anne Hathaway, and the subtle ways Song One subverts the conventions of movies about music. Song One opens on Friday January 23 in New York at the Angelika Film Center on Houston St., and will be available on Video On Demand. Click here to check out the film's amazing soundtrack.
