Love & Mercy (film)

Love & Mercy is a 2014 American biographical drama film directed by Bill Pohlad about the Beach Boys' co-founder and leader Brian Wilson and his struggles with mental illness during the 1960s and 1980s. It stars Paul Dano and John Cusack as the young and older Wilson, respectively, with Elizabeth Banks as his second wife Melinda Ledbetter and Paul Giamatti as his psychologist Dr. Eugene Landy. The title comes from Wilson's 1988 song of the same name. The film alternates between Wilson's production of the album Pet Sounds (1966) and his treatment under Landy's 24-hour therapy program in the late 1980s. Wilson called the film "very factual", despite containing parts that "weren't actually as factual". He had little involvement with its making, although Ledbetter was relied upon for the 1980s portions. The cast and crew maintained that nothing in the film was a "Hollywood" embellishment and that everything was intended to be as truthful as possible. Conversely, Landy's son Evan felt that his father was unfairly portrayed. Some minor inaccuracies were noted by critics, a number of which relate to the minimal coverage devoted to Wilson's family and collaborators. Ledbetter said that Landy's treatment of Wilson "was even worse" than the film portrays. Love & Mercy premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2014 and was released by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions on June 5, 2015. It grossed $28.6 million over a $10 million budget and received positive reviews from critics, with Dano's performance garnering significant praise. It was nominated for two Golden Globes: Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture (Paul Dano) and Best Original Song ("One Kind of Love"). A soundtrack album that includes the original score by Atticus Ross was released on August 14, 2015.

Plot The film alternates between the 1960s and the 1980s. The early timeline begins with a young Brian Wilson suffering a panic attack on an airplane. After recovering, Brian convinces his brothers Carl and Dennis to let him quit touring with the Beach Boys and instead focus on composition and studio work. Despite his father and his cousin Mike Love's criticisms regarding the lyrics and production, Brian completes the Pet Sounds album. It is a critical hit, but sales are underwhelming. LSD is supplied to Wilson by a coterie of hippies who praise him as a "genius", and his mental health subsequently worsens, beginning to hallucinate voices. After the success of a new single, "Good Vibrations", he fails to complete the album Smile, his would-be masterpiece. As Wilson's bandmates are left to finish a simplified version of the album, now titled Smiley Smile, he learns that his father has sold the publishing rights to the Beach Boys' songs without their permission. This timeline ends with Wilson apathetic and detached from life. In the 1980s, an older and heavily medicated Brian Wilson meets Melinda Ledbetter, a Cadillac saleswoman. She begins a relationship with him, but is disturbed by the controlling influence Wilson's therapist and legal guardian Dr. Eugene Landy has over Wilson's life. Eventually, she disengages from the relationship, but not before, with help from Wilson's housekeeper Gloria Ramos, providing evidence to Wilson's family that Landy has been made a beneficiary in his will. This leads to a restraining order being taken out to prevent Landy from seeing Wilson, who begins a new and more appropriate course of treatment. A few years later, Wilson bumps into Ledbetter again while walking across an intersection. They eventually marry, and Wilson completes Smile as his own solo album.

Cast

Production

Pre-production

A theatrical film adaptation of Wilson's life, titled Love and Mercy, was first proposed in 1988, and was planned to star William Hurt as Wilson and Richard Dreyfuss as Landy. It derived its title from Wilson's single, "Love and Mercy" (1988), which appeared as the opening track to his debut solo album Brian Wilson. While the project stagnated in development hell, the Beach Boys were eventually featured as the subject of two made-for-TV dramatizations: Summer Dreams: The Story of The Beach Boys (1990) which was widely derided for their historical inaccuracies and The Beach Boys: An American Family (2000) which Brian Wilson harshly criticized. Rolling Stone reported in 1999 that Melinda hoped to organize a Wilson biopic which starred Jeff Bridges. In 2006, the Wilson biopic project was briefly revived, and was to have included involvement from producers Mark Gordon, Lawrence Inglee, Jordan Wynn, and David Leaf. Nothing further was reported. As film producer/director Bill Pohlad cultivated an obsession with the 1997 box set The Pet Sounds Sessions, he became interested in Brian Wilson's life while eventual producers John Wells and Claire Rudnick Polstein were attempting to make a Beach Boys film. Love & Mercy is the second feature directed by Pohlad—decades from his previous—and was financed with his own money. After the film was formally announced on June 23, 2011, information about it remained relatively scarce until its unveiling in September 2014.

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