Música

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I spent several weeks in the summer of 2022 commuting to Jersey City to work on this movie, which has finally been released on Prime Video after premiering at SXSW last month:

There are a few surface similarities to In The Heights: in a working-class Latine neighborhood maybe ten miles from Times Square, clave rhythms, capoeira-inflected Stomp-ography and magical realism betoken a world "made of music" -- here in a sometimes-hectically literal sense, albeit on a far smaller scale (and celebrating a community of Brazilian-American Newarkers instead of ITH's Spanish-Carribean upper-Manhattanites). 

But if its cast and story are smaller, its themes less lofty and its execution not as Hollywood-glossy, Música's charms are no less charming for their modesty—chief among them being writer-director-star Rudy Mancuso's indefatigable, Vine-ripened guerilla-filmmaking ingenuity.  During production I heard about the story's autobiographical-ish¹ premise, and worked on its playful visuals,² enough to become curious about how it would all come together onscreen, so it's really nice to finally see the finished film: in another coincidental echo of ITH, this ended up being another nearly-two-year wait, but the results are pretty nifty.

If you're in the mood for a quirky coming-of-age romantic comedy with its own distinctive low-budget zazz, Música will do nicely.  It was designated a Critic's Pick in yesterday's NYT.  And in a case of life imitating art, it brought Mancuso and his costar Camila Mendes together offscreen as well -- they've apparently been together ever since.


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¹ In addition to the hero's synesthesia and his devotion to music and puppetry — all traits shared with his creator — "Rudy"'s mom is played by Mancuso's real-life mother, a regular presence in his work since the Vine days; and her actual house likewise plays itself in the film.

² Including the PATH station (Hoboken standing in for Newark, dozens of ornamental cast-iron H's converted to N's using tape) with its piano-keyboard steps (black and white sticky vinyl, carefully plotted out several days in advance and then slapped down in a thirty-minute frenzy by about six of us scenics "on the day," while bemused commuters rushed past); the subway-busker hero's "puppet box" (walnut stain and ultra-matte black, IIRC — meticulously applied, because this either was Mr. Mancuso's own custom-made box or it was intended to become his after the shoot) and his buddy's culturally-versatile food truck (lots of interchangeable food graphics, and plenty of extra price stickers for the posh-neighborhood markup); the Brazilian-restaurant location for the story's farcical dating-two-people-at-once climax (I actually only went there to help restore the dining room afterward, so I never saw it fully-dressed — but, for what now looks to have been a relatively large, crowded and active scene with plenty of different camera setups, I don't recall there being as much touchup afterward as one might expect); and most of all, the entire one-shot sequence midway through the film, moving with exuberantly theatrical narrative economy through seven cleverly-designed and rapidly-assembled studio sets in four minutes.  Apart from Rudy's meticulously-recreated bedroom, the quickie sets in this sequence each tended to be designed around printed-vinyl graphic walls which, aside from the vinyl's sometimes cumbersome application, required careful wall prep to make the wooden flats perfectly smooth and seamless so they'd accept the vinyl without any bubbling or wrinkling.  Most of these mini-sets also involved furniture and prop pieces painted the same colors as the graphics, which called for precise color-mixing and painting (and lots of FrogTape) to match their crisp, bright, Photoshop-heightened style.

[scenicdesign71]

Featurettes!  Actually kind of interesting ones!

Never mind the "anti-musical" pitch — here taking on a slightly more specific spin than usual, with music itself as the story's antagonist, and musical theatre, of a sort, as its hero's unlikely salvation in the end.  (In terms of movie-musical story structure, neither of these twists is unprecedentedly original; and in terms of marketing, the past two decades of trying to sell musicals to musical-haters by pandering to their aversion haven't made the strategy any less perverse; but whatever).  Música is chockablock with music, but almost none of it is sung — and then only by the synesthetic hero or his puppet alter-ego — so, while much of its running-time might be described as a wittily sustained visual assault on the idea of film as an inherently realist medium, fragile viewers are largely spared the affront to their willing suspension of disbelief posed by having characters burst into song.