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Theyre far from the only requirements, though.
Its clearing the rights to use a song that often results in sleepless nights and splitting behind-the-scenes headaches.
Less expected names include Richard Carpenter, Dire Straits, and ABBA.
There was no wiggle room.
They werent even human.
They said, Nope.
In essence, youve got to beg.
Getting that in a low-budget film in a scene where somebody gets their ear cut off was really hard.
I had to get on the phone with Joe Egan [from Stealers Wheel] and convince him.
I guess, to my credit, I had the ability to really get people rallied around the project.
Shifts in the entertainment industry have helped music supervisors.
That doesnt mean music supervision is easy these days.
Often, the biggest contemporary hurdle is tracking downwhoowns the rights for certain songs.
Its probably too time-consuming and expensive to go back now and figure out the splits and ownership rights.
We were really careful about how we used music.
His second film I worked,Smashed, was very, very low budget.
There was this scene written in the script where Mary Elizabeth Winsteads character sings karaoke.
We have no money for like a recognizable song.
Then we landed on Cruel to Be Kind by Nick Lowe.
It was upbeat and happy and this wasnt a happy character.
I went to the label and the publisher.
The publisher just said, This is just too low of a fee.
We cant do this.
So, my mother lived in England when she was pregnant with me.
hey, hey let us have the song.
And they let us have it.
James always brings that up.
I tried every email, every phone number we could find for his individual publishing company.
Once we finally got a hold of everybody, they were very excited to be a part of it.
So that part was easy.
We finally got it cleared the night before the scene was shot.
No is not an option is how we work on Ryan Murphy television.
Fortunately, my team, were all very good at our job so we havent heard no too much.
But we do often have backup plans.
In the shooting phase, we tell people to get coverage, meaning filming them singing different songs.
In this case, it would have been another version of The Star-Spangled Banner.
But watching the scene, it was so critical in every way to have Whitneys version.
So thank God, we got it.
I had that happen with David Bowie, withThe Rugrats Movie.
The director [Igor Kovalyov] wanted Bowie, so I went and I made that happen.
I flew to Bermuda and he gave us this song, Sky Life, that was unreleased.
Its so gorgeous and haunting.
You know how they say, Never meet your heroes?
He was the most wonderful person Ive ever met.
And he gave it to me.
He wrote, To Karyn, with all my love, David Bowie.
I cherish that with all my heart.
Now, mind you, the song was very sad, but its so beautiful.
The director just said, No.
When you hear it, youll be like, Oh, how could that have worked inRugrats?
To an extent, we were all kind of like, How are we going to make this work?
I feel like there was a way we could have.
And it was just me having to tell David Bowies camp that they didnt want his song.
He was very upset.
Because it was David Bowie, I was ultra sad.
Mrs. Maiselis the most challenging and the most rewarding in that regard.
There was no reason we didnt think it would clear, but I lost so much sleep over it.
Ive found hundreds of songs forMaisel.
He said, No, I do this myself, but my brother will be coming over.
I just got out of the shower.
It was pretty creepy.
Another one was a Hawaiian song, Fish and Poi by the Morgan Sisters.
He was in hospice.
His lawyers sent me all the paperwork and they confirmed it.
It was crazy and it was wonderful.
A lot of it comes down to having a really thoughtful relationship with the script.
Its not dissimilar to what actors do we spend a lot of time getting to know the characters.
I use a program called Swinsian, which is like iTunes, and create a ton of mixes.
We will, in our imaginations, match them up with where we think the character might go.
Theyre positive and a little bit highbrow and they have a sense of playfulness.
Whereas the truth is that Jimmy is much more funky.
So now hes evolving from Jimmy McGill to Saul Goodman, and the music helps to punctuate those moments.
We usedDennis Coffeys Scorpiowhen hes changing his suits and trying to get fired from Davis & Main.
It shows the grittier side of him coming out, but we retained the fun because hes enjoying himself.
He picks up a lot from movies, and those tools become part of his spiel.
Its a very sensitive process.
