Suncoast is an emotional exploration of grief and trying to understand that pain. Doris (Nico Parker) is trying to be a regular teenager in the midst of her brother dying, and while we’re sobbing, we need music to help us, right? That’s where Este Haim and Christopher Stracey come in.
The duo worked together to provide the score for Suncoast, and in talking with them, it is clear why they work so well together. One of the first things we talked about was crafting a song for a specific character and how that works for the story overall. “I think as composers, when you have a movie like this that’s already so emotional and a tear-jerker, the last thing you wanna do is kind of buy into that musically too much,” Haim said.
She went on to talk about understanding what their jobs are as composers. “We weren’t gonna do a circus theme; we’re obviously not gonna do that. But I think we were really conscious of not telling the audience how to feel because there was already so much of that on screen. And I think that’s definitely something, I think in our approach to everything, Stray and I are super conscious of not basically not treating the audience like they’re dumb. The audience obviously has emotions and they can understand, you have to trust that they understand what’s going on on the screen. And it’s our job basically to just make it beautiful and to really just try and uplift what’s happening on the screen. There were definitely times where we both got emotional without any music, just watching it without it.”
For Stracey, it was about the support. “It is an emotional thing. I mean, definitely we’re there to support, we’re not there to push and lead and stuff like that.”
The power of covers
As we continued talking, we started to get into our shared love of covers. There is nothing quite as fun as having a different take on a classic. When I asked about what songs they’d like to make their own covers of, Haim had a lot of suggestions, especially at the end when we talked about Bruce Springsteen and she said she’d cover “Atlantic City,” my favorite of his songs.
Still, she had some over options: “I mean, picking one? I’ve always wanted to do a cover of it’s called Legend of a Cowgirl that I love. I just love the song so much and I just feel like it’s like ripe for a cover.” And honestly, if Haim wants to do it then go ahead and do it because her work with Stracey is some of the best!
Suncoast is available on Hulu now.
(featured image: Hulu)
