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When actor J.K. Simmons was approached about playing the father in "The Music Never Stopped," he was reluctant. "Ever since 'Juno,' I've [always] been offered the role of The Dad," he said, recalling his breakout role.
But then he read and fell in love with the script. "It's one of the top 10 screenplays I've read," Simmons said.
"The Music Never Stopped," directed by Jim Kohlberg and written by Gwyn Lurie and Gary Marks, is based on a case study by author and neurologist Oliver Sacks. It's the featured film at the Salt Lake City Gala, which screens at 6:30 and 9 p.m. at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center.
In books such as Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks translates the mysteries of the brain into layman's language. "The Music Never Stopped" is based on Sacks' case study "The Last Hippie," which documents a man suffering from the effects of a brain tumor that prevents him from remembering what has happened to him since the late 1960s.
In the film, parents turn to a music therapist to help them connect with their adult son, who is in a hospital with a brain tumor 20 years after becoming estranged from them. The film explores a generational cultural clash, while it celebrates the rejuvenating muscle of music. In "The Music Never Stopped," the father learns that his son re-engages with the world only when listening to the music of Buffalo Springfield, Bob Dylan and The Grateful Dead. That comes as a shock to the father, who believed rock music poisoned his son's mind.
"I believed these people existed as fully realized human beings," Simmons said. "It is a great story of redemption and the power of love."
The film is about "one of the unexplored universes, the brain," Kohlberg said.
He's a first-time film director, though an experienced stage director who has produced several films. He relied on the quality of the screenplay, and the cast, with Julia Ormond (as the therapist), Lou Taylor Pucci (as the son) and Cara Seymour (as the mother). "If you have good material, you let it speak," he said.
Kohlberg and Simmons identified with the son's choice of music in the story, but admit to their own culture clashes with their children over a new generation's music, as if the story of the film is coming full circle.
"I can't get my head around rap," Kohlberg said.
Simmons added: "I believe those two words — rap and song — are antithetical."
'The Music Never Stopped' screenings
Friday, 6:30 and 9:30 • Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Salt Lake City
Saturday, Jan. 22, 3:15 p.m. • Eccles Theatre, Park City
Sunday, Jan. 23, 9 a.m. • Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City
Tuesday, Jan. 25, 6:30 p.m. • Peery's Egyptian Theatre, Ogden
Saturday, Jan. 29, 6 p.m. • Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City