That brings up another point: was Jason able to put this character away at the end of each day of shooting?
No. I mean, well, sure, enough that he could be loving and we could go out for a couple of drinks and have some fun. He’s definitely capable of doing that. But part of it is where we’d go to have some drinks is very much the tableau of what the film was about.
We were just working insane hours so it was like none of us could sort of escape the “Livien” capsule, which made it so intense and wonderful and why the connections between all of us are so strong. But we definitely could have a drink and relax, or drive home in the car and talk about it in sort of an objective perspective of what we accomplished that day, or what we need to accomplish. He could break from it long enough to do that. He wasn’t totally Livien but he’s a much more cheerful person, happy person, in real life than he is as Livien, which is fun. He did a great job of keeping himself sane and I don’t know how because he was so fully immersed.
Did Jason play an instrument before starring in your movie?
No. We basically fed him to the wolves. He knew a little bit of guitar but basically had to learn. We set him up with a guitar consultant who gave him the basic chord structures. There were certain scenes where poor Jason was trying to remember the words, he was trying actually to be Lennon to a degree, and he was also trying to play the guitar accurately. So there’d be certain takes where I’d have to say, “Jason, screw the guitar. We won’t lower the camera. The camera won’t go below your chest. Right now, focus on the words and the feelings and the emotion and do the acting.”
It certainly is a challenge to try to act while you’re focusing mechanically on what you’re doing with your hands. It kind of blows my mind what he was able to pull off. He did it well enough that in the film you see him playing guitar. He was very dedicated. We did the music the first week, which was a lot for him to handle. But I think the first week was hard because the other actors were bonding and the crew was bonding, and every free second Jason would put his headphones on and head into a corner with his guitar and listen to the music, or work with the guitar consultant. It worked for his character because Livien’s a detached character to a degree. It certainly helped in that regard, but he would just really put all of his time into it. He’d go home and he’d practice. He pulled it off.
And what about Dominic Monaghan? Does he play?
Not so much.
It’s weird you cast him as a musician and then he gets the part of a musician in “Lost.”
It’s so weird. I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s ironic. He has a good friend who is a bass player, so he was excited to play a bass player. He had studied his friend’s actions on stage and how he performed and was excited to be able to take those character attributes to his own performance.
As far as the technical stuff, we didn’t have to get so nitty-gritty with him. For some reason, it really played well. His [role] didn’t require so much work. He didn’t need it. He knew the basics enough to get away with it, really. And poor Josh [Leonard] who played the drummer, there were a lot of discussions there with him where it was like, “Please don’t let the camera go down to the drums during this session.” There’s a lot of cheating.
Are all the songs in the film written specifically for “Shooting Livien?”
Everything is original. It’s Beatle’s inspired by a musician named Fionn O’Lochlainn. He’s incredible. He did a song for the “Bridget Jones” soundtrack and his father was a composer. He sort of is the actual waking version of Livien. He’s very intense. He was very affected by Lennon and the Beatles so for him to write our music was very apropos.
I have to say probably the first thing out of every single person’s mouth when they leave the theater, other than how great the actors were, is the music. It’s just phenomenal. It is a music film so for me that is a real accomplishment. I wanted to do a film that reflected the New York music scene that I’d researched, and I think we did it. And on top of that we’ll have a pretty intense soundtrack, which is a lot of fun.
