Trailer

Check Out The Official Trailer For LOVE & MERCY Starring Paul Dano & Elizabeth Banks

By Michelle McCue | April 14, 2015

Roadside Attractions has released a brand new trailer for LOVE & MERCY, starring John Cusack, Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks and Paul Giamatti.

LOVE & MERCY presents an unconventional portrait of Brian Wilson, the mercurial singer, songwriter and leader of The Beach Boys. Set against the era defining catalog of Wilson’s music, the film intimately examines the personal voyage and ultimate salvation of the icon whose success came at extraordinary personal cost.

What does Wilson think of the film? “Some of it was rough for me to sit through. It wasn’t always pleasant. I thought it was very factual.” Read the rest of the LA Times interview with Wilson here.

Directed by Bill Pohlad, the film is written by Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner.

Pohlad says, “It’s a story about Brian Wilson and it’s told in part from Brian’s point of view and in part from Melinda’s (Wilson). And it’s supposed to be an intimate, personal story that way. If we were trying to tell a Beach Boys biography, that would be different. But that’s not what we were going for-this is a very intimate story of Brian. The Beach Boys play a role in it, his brothers, his cousin are people he interacted with and were huge parts of his life-but we were trying to explore the life inside Brian Wilson.”

“His music and interaction with the Beach Boys is a big part of who he is too. I can’t say we didn’t want to use Beach Boys music, but it was a matter of finding that balance so the music didn’t overwhelm the film. It’s not about riding on the music, but riding on the character and letting the music kind of help it along. You don’t want to go overboard because sometimes it can be so forced to try and make a song literally speak to some part of the story when that’s not really what the song was intended to be in the first place. It’s creating a feeling or an ambiance is what it really is, and finding those ways to use the music to reflect the story without using the music as a crutch to tell the story.”