Actor Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, 12 Years A Slave) will be playing the young version of Brian Wilson in the forthcoming feature film Love & Mercy.
Due this December, the flick also stars Elizabeth Banks, John Cusack and Paul Giamatti, who will help tell Wilson's and The Beach Boys' story while mostly focusing on the the '60s and the '80s.
Dano recently sat down with Rolling Stone to talk about his role as Wilson.
"I'd thought I knew something about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys ... you know, you hear the music everywhere, you read a few articles, the usual stuff," Dano said. "I knew the songs that everyone knows and knew that Brian had lived a troubled life. But it wasn't until I read the script that I realized the extent of this guy's struggle; it was a real 'holy sh-t' moment."
Dano avoided meeting Wilson until well into the filming process by design.
"I wanted to hold off on meeting him for as long as I could, because he's a much different person now then he was during the Pet Sounds era, and I was really intent on channeling that particular person," Dano said. "I wanted to form my own impression first. You hear the energy in his voice during those Sixties session tapes, and it's like, let me see how I can get close to that first.
"Brian is in the music. It might sound weird to say this, but I felt like the truest sense of who this guy was, and is, can be found in the songs. I wanted to really learn how to listen to him first. Plus I was learning how to play the piano and sing, and that was going to take a while. I'm not kidding, playing and singing to those songs he wrote made me feel much closer to him than meeting him early on would have. I'm glad I got to know him that way before I got to know him personally."
Dano acknowledged that many of the harmonizing scenes don't include live voices, and that Wilson's actual recorded voice would sometimes overtake his own during scenes.
"I played and sang 'God Only Knows' live on the set when we filmed," Dano said. "My second day of filming, I had to perform 'Surf's Up' over and over. It remains one of the best days I've ever had a film set. Have you ever tried to play that song, by the way? It's incredibly hard. Thankfully, we only did two minutes of it, and not the whole thing, but it's tough. I simplified a lot of the left hand work on the piano. Brian's left-hand work is pretty complicated."
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