“Find the right song, change your past. Find the right person, change your future,” is the tagline for Director Ned Benson’s romantic fantasy, The Greatest Hits.
Benson’s film tells the story of Harriet, a young woman who while mourning the death of her boyfriend, Max, discovers that whenever she hears songs associated with him, she travels back in time to that moment. However, her new ability to slip into the past interferes with a burgeoning new love interest in the present with David.
On April 28, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Benson discussed the making of The Greatest Hits during a Q&A moderated by Director Marc Webb (The Only Living Boy in New York).
During the conversation, Benson spoke about the challenges of getting the music right for a film that uses songs as a driving force.
"[Composer] Ryan Lott worked on my first film [The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby]. We had a great experience together. He comes from a classical music background and is just a very great musician. He also did the score for Everything Everywhere All at Once. We brought him in, but before that I was working with Mary Ramos and DJ Harvey as musical consultants. We were just finding songs that were lyrically helping tell the story, creating the subtext of each of these scenes, and making sure that was really helping the underneath of the film.”
Benson’s other directorial credits include the feature films The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them. He has been a DGA member since 2017.