One of the big challenges for me is that there is already iconic music associated with this piece. Messé continues, “I wrote him back saying I’m not a fan of modern musicals either… I sent him some of the songs I was working on and he became interested.”īased on his descriptions and a graciously shared private demo, the music for Amélie will feel familiar for Broadway (think swelling choruses and narrative lyrics), while still true to Messé’s personal background and style. Additionally, he reached out to director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who, as he deadpans, “hates musicals.” Since then, Messé has been working closely with Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Craig Lucas and lyricist Nathan Tysen, while also returning to the original text for inspiration and approval.
Amélie eventually became the agreed upon title, much to Messé’s delight because, “it deals with so many of the themes…the way the past affects the present, how people connect in the world, all these things that I love.” A team of producers approached Messé about working together, searching for project with a built-in audience and immediate name recognition. The process began in 2009, shortly after Hem completed the music for the Public Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in Central Park. “I wrote that imagining that scene where Amélie and Nino are speaking between the door,” he says, “So I’d already written a song for those characters, but then it took years and years to get the rights.” In fact, a longstanding fan of the film, Messé even divulges that the Hem song “Half Asleep,” from 2007’s Home Again, Home Again EP was actually influenced by a certain scene in the movie. Messé is not a stranger to the Academy Award-nominated romantic comedy. “Isn’t that exciting?!” he exclaims just a couple of days after he officially announced the news on Hem’s Facebook page. But these days, Messé is right where he thought he would be, as the composer/lyricist working on the Broadway adaption of the film Amélie. But that was before the now-famous story of how his band Hem completed its lineup though an ad in the Village Voice it was before the folksy Americana group released its many beloved albums, including this year’s emotionally riveting Departure and Farewell. He name drops less-than-famous musicals of the decade like William Finn’s Falsettos and Adam Guettel’s Floyd Collins, and professes his admiration of Stephen Sondheim, all of which seems to substantiate his air of expertise in the field. Back in the ‘90s, Dan Messé thought he would compose theater music full-time.
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