Stuart Murdoch on the Dark Days Behind GOD HELP THE GIRL

“I think there is a bit of a responsibility – if you’ve got a good song, you’ve got to see it through.”

Love, life, and clinical depression aren’t the first things that come to mind when you’d think about a pop-tinged musical about young 20-somethings in Glasgow. But then again, writer-director Stuart Murdoch‘s God Help the Girl – out this week in limited release and on demand – isn’t your typical pop musical.

The film stars Emily Browning (Sucker Punch, Pompeii) as Eve, a troubled young woman who connects with smitten musician James (Olly Alexander, Penny Dreadful, Enter the Void) and musical dilettante Cassie (Hannah Murrah, Game of Thrones, Skins).

Recently, I sat down with the Belle and Sebastian frontman in an L.A. publicist’s office to talk about making the leap to a solo project – one that Murdoch tells me drew from a darker period in his life two decades ago.

FreakSugar: You’ve been talking about this project for a little while now – since maybe 2009, or maybe a little before that.

Stuart Murdoch: I know, I’ve been boring people with it.

FreakSugar: Well what, for you, was that moment of its real genesis, where you know what you wanted God Help the Girl to be?

Murdoch: I’ve probably said this a few times, but it was absolutely the moment the first song came out of it. It was December, and I was on tour with Belle and Sebastian and I was on a run in a kind of grim area in Northern England [laughs]. Suddenly, I had this great pop song in my head and I thought, “Wow, I wonder if this exists.” And I wrote it down, and that was the title track, “God Help the Girl.”

It was a female singer and I thought, “That’s fun, that’s something I’ve never done before. I don’t think this is for Belle and Sebastian, why don’t I take this in a different direction?”

And then, after that, I opened my mind to it and more songs came.

FreakSugar: You kind of touched on this a little, but was there ever a moment of trepidation from deviating from what you’ve been doing for the last two decades or so – making music with Belle and Sebastian?

Murdoch: Uh, no. I never have trepidation about creative things. Because when they come along, it’s a gift. You shouldn’t be scared of it – you should embrace it. You should be scared if you don’t do it.

FreakSugar: So who is Eve to you?

Murdoch: She was around for so long, that she started to feel like a muse or something. It’s almost like I can feel her sitting on my shoulder physically or something, helping me with the songs.

And it’s weird because even though we’ve done the film and made the film, the spirit of the character still feels kind of separate from the whole thing. Almost like she’s looking down at the film and going “Okay, well, you did it. It’s okay, I’m going to go off now.”

So yeah, she’s a slightly classical muse.

FreakSugar: So what made Emily Browning the right actress for Eve?

Browning: The funny thing is, I didn’t meet her until it was a week before shooting. I’d never meet her before we gave her the role.

The whole casting process was quite a marathon. We saw her originally and we kept looking and we kept looking and we ended up in a different place. And we actually were going to cast a pop star from England. But then she got cold feet and didn’t want to do it.

And this is the best thing that could have happened because we had to go back and look at the tapes again. And Barry [Mendel], the producer, said “You should look at Emily Browning again.” And I thought that she was great. She had this kind of quiet presence that maybe hadn’t leaped out at me before.

But I think, ultimately, that’s what the film needed. She’s like a rock, she kind of holds the screen – she’s quite subtle. But this turned out great for me, because if I’d ended up with someone who’s super all over the place, then I could have misfired with the film, you know?

Eventually, we would have a Skype-off. Olly had already been cast, and we would have Olly reading with other people on screen. And Olly would be in London and people would be in America or whatever, and they’d be on two halves of the screen. So we got Olly together with Emily, and when I saw them both together, there just seemed to be this balance between them. And it just seemed so much easier seeing them on the screen, because then you wouldn’t have to make the leap – I saw them there on the screen and they were amazing.

FreakSugar: What was your vision for the musical numbers?

Murdoch: I saw them as kind of these abstract things. The minute I got into this, I thought, “I’m going to be making a musical – just me!”

And I thought, “What’s the most important thing about a musical number? It’s the tone.” It’s putting the songs across in a way that makes the audience feel really comfortable with the fact that they’re watching a musical. And I think that is an important thing, but it became less important as it went along because the songs naturally found their place.

The songs all do very different things. I’ll pick a song at random: “The Psychiatrist Is In.” That was a little song where Eve kind of seduces James, even though they weren’t at that stage in real life. In the song, he kind of seduces her, and Eve says things that James would never say in real life through the music.

That to me, is quite a musical number – that’s like one person singing to another. It’s a little but The Sound of Music, it’s a little bit My Fair Lady. Whereas later, when they’ll all get up on stage and do “I’ll Have to Dance With Cassie,” to me that’s kind of more Grease or Fame. You know, like the 1980’s Fame where the kids get up and dance right here on the tables.

So every song had a different sort of vibe, but I always thought with the first song if Eve could walk down that corridor, come out the window, turn to the camera and sing that first song explaining her story and where she was at, if people accepted that, then I thought the film could be okay.

FreakSugar: There was something interesting about Eve where music is kind of the thing that’s going to save her as well as the thing that’s going to keep her from living her life to a certain extent. I appreciate how quite a few of the musical numbers are intimate, almost like a girl walking down the street quietly singing to herself.

To what extent do you feel like that’s a force for you – someone who loves and lives music at any cost?

Murdoch: Well it is a force and sometimes it’s maybe you let it be more of a force than it should be. But it’s nice to give way to it because it’s better than everyday life.

I think there is a bit of a responsibility – if you’ve got a good song, you’ve got to see it through. Even if it comes in the middle of the night, if you don’t hit the recorder before you fall asleep and don’t get the idea, you’re going to be so annoyed with yourself. You know, I’ve done that so many times.

But it’s definitely great to lose yourself in music.

I was saying to the guys when we were editing that the great thing about when you’re making an album is that when you’re mixing the songs, you’re constantly enjoying the music – or else, you shouldn’t be doing it.

Whereas when you’re editing a film, it’s not so enjoyable a process – it’s a much more academic process. So music is this thing that’s always alive.

FreakSugar: It’s always interesting to watch a film that’s deeply personal like this one is and wonder how much of it is giving us some kind of direct insight into the filmmaker’s experiences. To what extent were you worried about putting too much of yourself up on the screen? Did you ever feel like that kind of confessional element was either a challenge or a danger for you personally?

Murdoch: I like the way you framed the question, you know, “Is there danger?” And no one’s really put it that way before.

I think your natural taste would decree that you not go too far. I mean, that’s the whole deal in the creative process, which is knowing how much of yourself to give and how much to hold back. And so there’s this sort of taste thing.

We got so far with the script – and for me, it was very character-driven and I was typing what I thought the characters would say. But at one point, Barry would say “It’s too light, that’s not enough, we need more, it’s not good enough.” And I think at that point, I went away and wrote a fresh treatment.

The fresh treatment was closer to things that had happened to me 20 years, 25 years ago. The story of Eve’s darker side, when she ends up in the hospital and when she had problems with her health. And Barry said that if we could work these things into the film, it would be better for it.

And we did, so you know, I hope I didn’t go too far.

FreakSugar: Do you feel like you’d want to return to this characters again?

Murdoch: I think I’m inclined to say “no” at the minute. Because to me, the way that summer finished was just appropriate. And it left it in a good place for me – it felt real.

James’ little soliloquy at the end where he says what he thinks would happen feels real to me, and he says as much as needs to be said. You know, Cassie would go on to be sort of a bubbly person, and James might stagnate, and Emily is another star, shooting off with her music. I don’t know if much more needs to be said.

While God Help the Girl is opening in New York and Los Angeles on September 5, you can also rent or buy the film the same day from Amplify Films.