The Greatest Hits is a fantasy story based on a phenomenon we can all relate to — Harriet (Lucy Boynton) discovers that the power of music to transport us to an entirely different time and place is more prominent for her than it is for others. It can do it quite literally, allowing her to relive and change key moments in her past. Following the tragic death of her boyfriend (David Corenswet) she has to either change the course of their lives forever, or make peace with her loss and move on.
It's clear that this is a film that comes from an intensely personal space, dealing with how a love for music can mean so much as our lives change for better or worse. In anticipation of its Disney+ release, FILMHOUNDS sat down with writer and director Ned Benson.
The thing I loved most about The Greatest Hits is just this core idea of using music as a time machine — can you tell me a bit about your own experiences that informed writing that?
So initially I had read this book in like 2008, called Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, which is about how music interacts with the brain. He talks about musical hallucinations, which kind of sparked this idea. But on top of that, I'm hugely affected by music and songs. I listen to music while I work, I listen to it in my life all the time, and I'm very emotionally affected by songs. Technically they do feel like a time travel mechanism for me. So those two things compounded really, and were the genesis of the idea of the movie.
I'm interested to hear more about Musicophilia, because I understand that it's all psychological theory — how did you come to read it?
I think at that time I was just fascinated by music and the brain because I'm such a music nerd. There was another book by Alex Ross called The Rest is Noise — I was just reading a lot in general about music. That's why the film is looking at what Harriet is going through not only as a time travel experience, but as a neurological experience too.
One of my favourite films is High Fidelity, and that's all about the fetishisation of vinyl records, and the communities that record shops harbour. With The Greatest Hits, we're in a different time now where music is super-accessible wherever we are through Spotify and other streaming services — do you think as a writer you gained or lost anything because of that?
No, because I think the tangible experience with music — the ritual of putting the vinyl on a record player — that, to me, is still part of what this was for Harriet. In this case, that experience is really about nostalgia. These objects do tether us to the past and that was part of the point too. But I also think, on the other side of the coin, music is this thing that tethers us to the past but it also reminds us to live. So it becomes this beautiful double-edged sword, like with a vinyl there's an A-side and a B-side, you know?
I'm a huge vinyl fan, and I have a huge DVD collection too, so I think that tangibility was really part of the storytelling. Even in the antique store with David (Justin H. Min) we're looking at tangible objects where each of these things carry their own story. Just like a song does, or a record does, or a DVD does. I think what we anthropomorphise onto an object is really part of this story too.
Were any of the needle drops written into the screenplay? And did you feel any pressure to curate a great playlist?
Of course there was pressure to curate a great playlist! Since the original script that I wrote back in 2009/2010, ‘This is the Day' by The The has always been in there. Rewriting it later, during the pandemic, that's when I put Roxy Music into it, and Jamie XX into it. It was just using my more recent experience to inform the music through that lens.
An element of The Greatest Hits that I really loved was how Harriet's identity changes depending on what her past is — and that's a similar theme to what you explored in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. Where does that interest come from?
I definitely wanted to look at this idea of letting go of the past so you can move on. I don't know if I consciously felt what you're talking about — I definitely think that we all live different versions of ourselves through different relationships that we have throughout our lives. We're different people in those different periods. I think that's why music can so easily define those different periods. I think Harriet is defining herself through those different periods and different people — once she meets David he definitely helps course correct her in a weird way. He gets her out of her isolated space, and encourages her to experience the world again.
I thought it was really interesting that Lucy Boynton and David Corenswet had worked together before on The Politician, and they happen to be the relationship in The Greatest Hits that's in the past. Was that a conscious decision or good luck?
A little bit of both honestly. David knew that Lucy was going to be part of the movie and that excited him. I also think that prior relationship really helps and informs their relationship in the film. They're both such incredible actors, and really fun to work with as well. It definitely helped, narratively for sure.
Something that seems to be a constant in your work, from The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, to Black Widow, to now this, is that they all centre around a woman coming to terms with some kind of grief and trauma. Is that something that comes from personal experience?
For sure. I think I definitely think about my mother a lot when I write. I use her as a character archetype for a lot of the characters I write, I'm writing through the lens of her experience and she's a pretty dynamic, wonderfully insane human being. She definitely has been a wonderful touchstone for me in terms of the characters I create.
Some of the references you make are to music from the generation before yours — is that your mother's influence too?
To a degree, yeah. I've always felt like such a reflection of my mother's generation. How we're both reflections, and how we both escape that identity to forge a new version of ourselves is a lot of what I think this movie is about. My mother's music really was my music education, but then obviously you find your own new music and you find your own identity through that music that you fall in love with over time. And that taste evolves and evolves and evolves, but there's always this amazing touchstone of that first music you were exposed to.
I think anyone who has a love for music will relate to the feeling of a particular song having the ability to transport us to a different time — would you share some songs that do that for you and the places they take you to?
Yeah, I mean I've been thinking about this a lot lately. The whole album, ‘Avalon' by Roxy Music takes me back. I remember my mom driving around Los Angeles when we first moved there with my brothers and I in the back seat singing along to all those songs. That's a huge touchstone for me. A Tribe Called Quest takes me back to high school — I remember waking up with my roommate listening to ‘Award Tour' every day when that came out. ‘Kid A' by Radiohead is college for me, that album is just brilliant and wonderful. There are too many songs that I love and too many moments that they take me back to, which I think really became the point of the movie. There's so much music that I think is resonant for so many people, and this idea that music is transportive and it can also remind us to live is really what I wanted to make a film about.
The Greatest Hits is available to stream exclusively on Disney+ in the UK and Ireland
