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Bill Condon & Larry Mark Making 'The Song is You' a Musical

by Ethan Anderton
February 11, 2010

After collaborating on the musical award magnet Dreamgirls, director Bill Condon and producer Larry Mark took on the awards in a different way last year when they worked with Hugh Jackman for a slew of musical numbers for the Academy Awards telecast. If the subsequent awards show ratings boost was any indicator, the duo know how to put together one hell of an entertaining musical show, so it's no surprise that Deadline Hollywood reports Condon and Mark will collaborate again by adapting the Arthur Phillips novel The Song is You (Amazon) into a film that isn't exactly a musical, but more of a "music-infused film."

The story focuses on the unusual relationship that develops between a middle-aged commercials director who fixates on a young woman he hears singing at a bar one night. It becomes a tenuous romance despite the fact they’ve never met. But the way Condon talks about the film makes it sounds so much more lively:

"The book is a story told through music, but there’s a whole other dimension we can bring through film. This is a guy who has loved music since the moment he was born, who connected music to the big turning points in life and who retreats into music after suffering a trauma. He essentially falls inside his iPod Shuffle, that is the form the film takes. The only emotional connections he makes are dredged up through songs, until he stumbles into the bar and hears a young singer who slowly reawakens something in him. He becomes her guide and she his muse, in a relationship that is carried out through email messages and phone calls. The chance to tell a story through song is the thing that really turns me on."

The connection of music to certain emotions of moments in life is something, I think, everyone can relate to in some way. Music, especially when combined with film, has the uncanny ability to spark so many emotions from viewers. However, we'll have to wait a little while before this one officially takes off because Condon is already set to direct an adaptation of the Paul Torday novel Salmon Fishing, which will start shooting this summer, in addition to writing and directing the recently announced HBO comedy series Tilda, and finally getting his Richard Pryor biopic off the ground, too (he's got a lot going on). Well, whenever The Song is You finally goes into production, as a fan of musicals, I'll certainly be looking forward to it. How about you?

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