THE LIFE, LOVE AND GENIUS OF BRIAN WILSON.
The kind of biography where the writers found something interesting in their subject’s life and focuse on that rather than just try to cover everything from beginning to end. We follow Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame during two critical periods – the 1960s when he had to fight to get the groundbreaking ”Pet Sounds” album made, and the 1980s, when he was heavily medicated and controlled by a dangerous quack but was saved by the woman he’d eventually marry. Passionately directed, especially the scenes in the studio with the Beach Boys at work, and engagingly told; good cast, with Paul Dano a standout as the searching young Brian.
2015-U.S. 121 min. Color. Produced by Bill Pohlad, Claire Rudnick Polstein, John Wells. Directed by Bill Pohlad. Screenplay: Oren Moverman, Michael Alan Lerner. Song: ”One Kind of Love” (Brian Wilson, Scott Bennett). Cast: John Cusack (Older Brian Wilson), Paul Dano (Younger Brian Wilson), Elizabeth Banks (Melinda Ledbetter), Paul Giamatti, Jake Abel, Kenny Wormald.
Last word: “John Wells had talked to Brian and they worked on a little project and hired Michael Lerner to write a script. They brought it to us to maybe partner and coproduce with them. It’s a good script, but it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, I guess. It didn’t do much for me in that regard, so I told them, ‘If this didn’t work out of them trying to put it together, they should come back and maybe we’d start over.’ So, they did, and that’s ultimately what we did was kind of start with a different approach to it than Michael’s script, I guess a little more aggressive in the way we approached the story and a little less biopic-ish, and a little more, I guess, intimate was the goal.” (Pohlad, Coming Soon)
