[WORKSHOP]
With the sci-fi classic turning one, screenwriter and director Juel Taylor speaks on the role music curation played in the film
The music was one of the most fun parts [of making They Cloned Tyrone]. It has a narrative function. There's a curated quality to the diegetic songs that influence people, an uncanny valley element. The mind control songs are obvious examples. When you hear the song “I’m So Tired,” you know someone wrote this song with a very distinct purpose. On the underground, men are fighting to a song called “Kill a Motherfucker” and you realize this song that influences violence was having real-world applications at the beginning of the movie, too. Then they change it like, let's pacify these men, and they stop fighting and start hugging each other. This is a much more over-the-top example of curation and influence, like you see with the fried chicken place, grape drink, the beauty salon, the church. The satire is more apparent in the music.
If I were making a drug dealer in a lab, what kind of music do you think he would listen to? Fontaine don't listen to trap, just funk and ’80s R&B: Al B. Sure!, Blackbyrds, Alicia Myers. It mellows him out. It's evidence of personality drift.
That's detail stuff, but it's a storytelling element. Using the music to give you a clue: That's what Fontaine’s job is but not necessarily who he is. The music definitely helped establish the tone.
—As told to John Kennedy
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