“Dan in Real Life” writer-director Peter Hedges wanted to find someone to compose both songs and the score for his new comedy opening Friday.
“Problem is, my musical knowledge kind of peaks with late Elvis,” Hedges said.
The movie’s music supervisor, Dana Sano, and Hedges’ friends gave him hundreds of CDs. Hedges dutifully listened. The artist he kept returning to was Sondre Lerche, a singer-songwriter superstar in his native Norway but largely unknown in the U.S.
Hedges met Lerche in New York, sketching out his ideas for an hour. Lerche left the room, came back with a guitar and sang him a song that captured the spirit of the movie’s adrift title character.
Lerche, who comes to Chicago’s Park West on Nov. 24, wrote several new songs, dusted off a couple of old ones and even appears in the movie, singing “Modern Nature,” a duet with Lillian Samdal. The “Dan in Real Life” soundtrack is his fifth album, and he hopes that it will introduce him to a wider audience in America.
“For a sweet, simple human story, it’s easy for the music to drag the film down,” the 23-year-old Lerche said. “If ‘Dan’ had the standard Hollywood strings, it would color the film in a different way. Peter wanted something handmade. He’s allergic to sugary things.”