Belle and Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch revealed his first feature film this past weekend at Sundance, God Help the Girl. The film, a musical about a whimsical summer spent in Glasgow between three new friends starting a band, took more than 10 years to make. "Sometimes you just want your life to turn into a pop song," Murdoch said as he introduced the film.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Murdoch shared that he and Belle and Sebastian guitarist Stevie Jackson had talked about making a film together, especially after their experience with making music videos. But this film turned out to be more formal with a fictional narrative. The film is centered on Eve, a tormented girl. RS asked Murdoch where the inspiration for this character came from, considering there are similar narratives in Belle and Sebastian songs.
"I don't really know, it's something that I guess came through natural to me from a young age when I was writing the Belle and Sebastian stuff," Murdoch said. "I don't know if it's the person you desire, or it's the person you want to be, like a shadow of somebody from your youth. It was suddenly either writing about a girl like that, or writing from her perspective, so maybe a little bit of both."
Beyond filmmaking, will there be a new Belle and Sebastian album soon?
"Yes, we've been writing in Glasgow and we will start the record in March," Murdoch said. "I hope it will be out by autumn. If not, we will have failed. One of the things I wanted to explore - this might seem a bit facetious, but we have this thing called a Eurovision Song Contest. For example, Abba won in 1974, and that's how they got their big break. And that was really the last great song from Eurovision. Since then it's been kind of a train wreck, but it gives you a window into every little country, and it's the only time that Europe gets together for this big party, and now, especially now, we have all the Russian block, eastern block countries, it's all shifted to the East. So in a sense, I remember saying to the band, I want to do an album that one song feels like it could be the Cyprus entry for 1974. And then next song would be the German entry for 1989, or something like that. You might not see that in the finished songs, but somewhere that's been an inspiration."
