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Songwriter Sean Douglas, who’s written hits for a wide assortment of pop artists including Demi Lovato, Madonna, Nick Jonas, The Chainsmokers and Selena Gomez, found crafting the signature song “Harper and Will Go West” for the documentary Will & Harper alongside comedienne Kristen Wiig was more than a little akin to improv comedy.
“All songwriting, at least in my world of different co-writes of combinations of people all the time is very like, “Yes, and…” Douglas, who’s the son of actor Michael Keaton, said from the stage of Deadline’s Sound & Screen musical showcase.
“You start with a little nugget of somebody’s got a title or a melody or a chord progression, and then the other person kind of pulls the thread on their side of it and you kind just keep going until there’s a song,” Douglas explained. “And [this song] was very much like that. I had a little of seed of an idea that I thought could be a way into the concept and we just chipped away for the day, and it was a dream.”
Douglas had previously collaborated with filmmaker Josh Greenbaum, who directed Wiig in the comedy film Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar and put the two together to craft the song for the documentary, which follows Will Ferrell on a cross-country road trip with his longtime writing collaborator Harper Steele following Steele’s gender transition. Within the film’s framework, the duo’s mutual friend Wiig is tasked with putting together a theme song for their journey with nearly impossible stylistic mandates – it had to be folksy, yet jazzy, and on and on.
“The running bit throughout the movie obviously is a tall order, which is kind of what’s funny about it,” said Douglas. “That was the fun challenge, is that we just sat down to try and carve out something…It’s hard to encapsulate the full journey that they go on in that movie, but something that kind of contained the humor and the message of this friendship.”
He and Wiig screened a cut of the film with Greenbaum and rolled up their sleeves. “It came pretty naturally because it was pretty clear that was what we needed to do. And my favorite kind of songwriters are people who can do funny songs that aren’t jokes. Like Randy Newman, where you just, every other line is like, ‘Wow, it’s a perfect joke, but it’s not a joke, it’s not a parody of something.’ And I think to be able to walk that line is one of the harder things to do and I don’t get that much chance to do it in the main Top 40 pop stuff, so it was great.”
As for Wiig, she turned out to be an ideal collaborator, Douglas said, calling her “obviously a national treasure, and she’s just as wonderful and funny and sweet in person – and such a good singer! I was just blown away by how sort of affecting her voices is.”
Here is Wiig performing the song earlier this awards season:
Check back Monday for the panel video.
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