The Smiley Smile Message Board

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GLnLUWwc7I (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GLnLUWwc7I)

I get goosebumps watching this scene. For starters, it is a brilliant overview of Brian Wilson working on a song from start to finish. And the accuracy of the musical process - we hear the beginning attempts at finding this new sound...warts and all. In the beginning the instrumentals sound sparse, the flutes sound off in places. But over the course of the scene the song gets more and more intense and pieced together.

The vocals-only moments are mind-blowing. I'll never forget the first time I saw this in the theaters and I heard Carl's part, then the harmony "Gotta keep those a lovin good vibrations happenin" - it floored me that I'd never heard those before, and the first time I'm hearing it is in this beautiful recreation that I'm watching in a feature film in a theater. We are so blessed as fans.

As a commenter on YouTube said: "The guy who plays Mike Love looks more like Mike Love than Mike Love does." and it's so true! Each actor seems to perfectly embody the person they're portraying.

The cinematography during the first cello scene is so cool - the 360 pan around the studio. Dennis goofing off but also a possible foreshadow of his venture into piano/music. The shot of Carl is a perfect recreation of his Smile era studio shots. Paul Dano is so convincing when directing the cello players - you completely forget that he isn't Brian Wilson in that moment (and this happens so often in the movie).

This scene/movie is the closest we'll come to going back in time to be a fly-on-the-wall during one of Brian's sessions. Anywho, I'm done gushing.

Fun (kinda sad?) fact (that I don't think has been mentioned here): Paul Dano's Riddler character in the new Batman movie was somewhat inspired by his Brian Wilson character in Love & Mercy. Matt Reeves (director of Batman) : “That character, he’s caught up in his artistry and he struggles to communicate with those around him,” Reeves said of Dano as Wilson. “That was spiritually connected to the idea of this isolation that the Riddler felt. The Riddler is a product of our time, the way that people become isolated online and retreat to mental activities that substitute for not having contact.”

I saw The Batman in IMAX and Dano's parts were unbelievably disturbing - but it goes to show how talented Dano is, to pull off such a role.

I actually thought the casting of Mike Love was very good in An American Family, perhaps better (though the movie overall is infinitely worse).

I read somewhere that Bruce Springsteen spent 6 months working JUST on the song Born to Run. Imagine going to the studio every day for 6 months just to work on ONE song. Over and over again. You'd get sick of it before it's even completed.

That's putting it mildly.  No studio flute player of the era would've ever sounded that bad!

It's definitely a cool scene, but...whoever clipped the scene for that YouTube channel upload missed what was perhaps one of the best scenes in the film, and one of the most telling and revelatory scenes too. A scene which carried over into the band's dynamic for decades.

That's the scene where Brian is at the piano playing some of the GV riff, and he asks Mike if he had any ideas for lyrics. The instant reaction from the actor playing Mike when he's asked is absolutely brilliant expressive acting, and it's brief but very important to the story. It's as if Mike at that moment was getting what he was hoping for and wanting, to be a part again of the creative process for the band, and it was with a riff or a song that had enough of the bluesy, R&B roots that Mike and Brian used to dig in the 50's and early 60's...in essence something in Mike's wheelhouse that he could run with. For all of the happenings since Brian quit regular touring to devote more time to writing and cutting records, here was Mike and Brian getting back to collaborating on a funky R&B style riff.

And it's a truly awesome scene. Kudos to the actors, and the set designers for setting the scenery just right. Since it's not in the scene above, go back and watch it again where the entire scene is available.

And it's ironic too how some of the usual naysayers and "fact checkers" were out in full force in the months leading up to the movie's release, in some cases spreading false info about the historical accuracy and lack thereof in some leaked scenes, trying to suggest certain scenes in the movie "never happened" when in fact they did, and trying to throw dirt on the entire film after production stills came out showing a car on the beach that wasn't the authentic woodie wagon from the Surfin Safari cover. And beyond that, some of this nonsense, maybe worries that the character of Mike would be portrayed as an unlikable ogre or something, almost jeopardized the soundtrack as well.

In truth, the movie was pretty much on-point for a lot of it, it was an extremely well-done piece of film for film's sake no matter the subject matter, the cinematography, soundtrack, and mixing/editing overall were stellar, and the naysayers as usual lost another round. The character of Mike was actually played pretty much straight down the line and fair after all the worries it would be a hit piece.

I always find myself singing "The Boy From New York City" along with this part.

My favorite thing about this scene: it's when you realize that Banana has more dialog in the movie than does Al Jardine!