Passion can be powerful and uplifting, but also dangerous. In “Song Sung Blue,” Wisconsin native Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman) has a great passion: the music of singer-songwriter Neil Diamond. Sardina has been wanting to emulate Diamond for years, but is stuck as a small-time impersonator. Mike prefers to go by his stage name “Lightning,” something which provokes ridicule even from his fellow impersonators. However, a fellow impersonator named Claire (Kate Hudson) comes to like Mike and the two hatch a plan to start a Neil Diamond tribute act.
Eventually, the two fall for each other and they come to be known by their stage names “Lightning and Thunder.” As their popularity grows, however, life’s complexity begins to wear them down.
“What I loved [about Mike] is, at the beginning, he wants to make people happy, yes, but he meets Claire and thinks, ‘Oh, Claire is going to help [my career],’” Hugh Jackman said during a Q&A with Hudson at a screening in New York. “And then you see, by the end…he’s just like, ‘This is all about you.’ That journey of love and of realizing when you stick by someone else, when your focus is someone else, it’s so powerful. That’s what I love the most.”
Mike Sardina is a real person, as is his wife Claire, and they really did perform as a Neil Diamond cover band called Lightning & Thunder in their home state of Wisconsin. And they really did gain enough popularity that Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder asked them to open a show in Milwaukee. Much of their story was covered in a 2005 documentary also titled “Song Sung Blue,” on which the film is based. Though the real story takes place over the course of about two decades, the movie compresses that timeline.
Much of the runtime, naturally, is dedicated to Lightning and Thunder’s songs, which run the gamut of Neil Diamond’s career, and which Jackman and Hudson perform very well. One of Mike’s predilections is his love for Diamond’s more obscure songs, in particular “Soolaimon” from his sixth album “Tap Root Manuscript.”
“They really committed,” said Jackman. “They were artists. It had [to start with] ‘Soolaimon.’ It had to be ‘Soolaimon’ because that was the vision. They were true artists in their own way.”
Kate Hudson agreed. “They really believed in their act,” she said after the screening. “They believed in each other. This was their passion. What we talked about a lot was, for every one successful famous artist is a thousand artists just as talented who haven’t had the opportunity to actually reach that kind of fame.”
Jackman and Hudson were keen to work on a story about lifting up those sorts of scrappy underdog artists. Craig Brewer, who directed the film, worked closely with Jackman to find someone who embodied Claire. Jackman eventually saw Hudson perform on CBS Sunday Morning to promote her debut album “Glorious” and became convinced that she was the one.
“During the show, [I called Craig] I said, ‘Kate Hudson is Claire, Claire is Kate Hudson,’” he recounted. “I think [she] signed off on Tuesday.”
Though the film is largely a two-hander between Jackman and Hudson, it is her performance as Claire that stands out. In one tragic development, Claire sustains an injury that derails their careers. It is during this period of time that Hudson really shines. Jackman almost fills a supporting role, both in the narrative and as a star, during the middle chunk of the film.
“There’s something about Claire and Mike’s drive that they have to be on stage,” Hudson said. “Anybody who loves something kind of goes, ‘God, I wish I had that courage to do the thing I love the most.’”
This is a film about having faith. Mike believes in the power of Neil Diamond, and Claire believes in the couple’s ability to lift each other up in their lives and in their art. It is also a meditation on how crucial art and artistry is to people’s lives. Mike and Claire were serving a community, after all. They filled a need because people were craving something to believe in, and people loved them because their passion for Neil Diamond’s music was so overwhelming.
Jackman received a phone call from Diamond after he had seen an early cut of the film.
“He was very emotional,” he recalled. “He was crying [as was] Katie, his wife. It meant a lot to them. They knew the story. He had never given his catalogue to a movie, but he just gave carte blanche [to ours]. He just loved everything about Mike and Claire’s story.”
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