With John Carney's Power Ballad now available on Premium Digital and Premium Video on Demand, we were recently able to sit down with co-writer and star Peter McDonald to break down the inspiration behind the critically acclaimed musical comedy that stars Avengers: Doomsday star Paul Rudd in the lead role.
The synopsis reads, "When Rick, a past-his-prime wedding singer, meets fading boy-band star Danny during a gig, the two bond over music and a late-night jam session. But when Danny turns one of Rick’s songs into the hit that reignites his career, Rick sets out to reclaim the recognition he believes he deserves - even if it means risking everything he cares about."
In addition to writing, McDonald also portrayed Rick's friend Sandy in the film, giving him an opportunity to work closely with Rudd. In our extensive conversation, we get into where they found the film's inspiration and how Rudd was the perfect choice to play Rick Power. He also gives us an in-depth breakdown of two of the film's best scenes, including the final confrontation, and how he and the team crafted 'How to Write a Song Without You.'
The cast features Paul Rudd (Ant-Man; Anchorman), Nick Jonas (Jumanji: The Next Level; Midway), Peter McDonald (The Batman; Dublin Murders), Marcella Plunkett (Sing Street; Blasto), Havana Rose Liu (No Exit; Bottoms), and Jack Reynor (Midsommar; Sing Street).
Power Ballad is now available on Premium Digital and Premium Video on Demand!
Watch our full interview below and/or keep scrolling to read the full transcription. Plus, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive content!
ROHAN: The central conflict—an established pop star stealing a song from a working-class wedding singer—is a brilliant setup. Where did the initial spark for that specific concept come from? Was it inspired by any real-world music industry drama?
PETER: Well, I think that story has happened many times in the music industry on many, many different levels, but we wanted it to be able to feel like, you know, it didn't just apply to the idea of a song being taken from you or something, it's just the feeling of injustice that if you think you've got something and it's been taken away from you, that the audience could relate to that. The idea didn't come from a specific incident. We wanted to tell the story of a middle-aged musician, you know, in Ireland, like the milieu of that band that Paul plays in, with Sandy and Binzer, and the hopes and dreams of ever making it in the music business are gone, but the fire is still there. That's what we wanted out of the main character, Rick, and then, we decided, well, how do we show that? So, we came across the idea of what if he had a song that was half finished and somebody used part of it and had a hit song with this. In what circumstance would that happen, and that's where the idea took place.
ROHAN: Paul Rudd plays Rick, an aging rocker from Kansas who has been embedded in the Dublin music scene for 15 years. What was it about Paul that made him the perfect anchor for this very specific, displaced musician character? Did he bring anything to the character that maybe wasn’t on the page?
PETER: Well, he brought so much. He's such a good actor. He is always going to bring levels that you don't necessarily have in your head. You just write as good a part as you can and get the best actor for it. I think the thing about the part is that he has to feel like, you know, he could be a guy living next door to you, but he has a star quality, so you could see that maybe, you know, in his youth with a different, you know, couple of breaks, he could have become a success in the music business, like it isn't just a total dream, that one was never realized, so Paul inhabits those qualities so well, and also we knew that he could take us on the journey of feeling all the injustice and frustration that he feels as that character without losing us, without us ever kind of not kind of staying engaged in in his side of the story,
ROHAN: When you’re writing, how would you describe your approach? Are you writing everything that comes to mind in a scene and then scaling it back, or are you trying to keep a scene as basic as possible before adding additional detail?
PETER: We would be working on the structure of the story initially, we would be trying to see the kind of building blocks of the story, are they sound, because dialogue can often tell you that something's a lot better than it actually is. So, we knew we had to set this up, we had to get the idea of what's actually happening in the film over the line, then go on the journey, and then resolve it, but also within the middle of that, we had to have really a story about how you express yourself through music. What's this song about? What does it mean to Paul, and what's the, you know, using a fancy term, the utility of art, you know, what does he get from this, and often artists can create a piece of work, particularly songwriters, and not really realize what it's actually about until a little bit later, and that was at the heart of the story and then, we start to flesh out the dialogue and the characters, and then, as you do that, it changes again, and you kind of go a couple of steps back, and then, you change it, but it's just so many decisions are made over such a period of time, you can never really remember how you ended up with going, yeah, it’s just you keep throwing it at the wall, and suddenly it starts to become clear.
ROHAN: There’s a great scene when Rick comes to Sandy’s home and it goes from fighting to sobbing really quick. What is it like for you as a performer when you have to come into a scene and within a few moments show the audience who your character is and what he’s about?
PETER: Well, we knew that Paul’s character had to kind of push everyone away, including the person he was most loyal to him. He's almost losing the audience there, you know, and that when he comes back to him, that Sandy actually is pretty good at standing up for himself, and it looks like, you know, it's just going to get worse for Rick, but when Sandy sees just how cut up Rick is, he's always going to be there for him. So, we had to tell that all in one scene, and people always say to me, after having seen the film, they go, "I wish I had more Sandys in my life,” because that friendship, his relationship with his family, his relationship with his music, and how he expresses those things, and those relationships through his music, are what the movie's about, and it's the moment when things start to turn around for him a little bit, and he starts to see a through line. In terms of performing it, I mean, especially if you've written, it's not that different from just performing someone else's writing, in that you're not trying to overthink it, you're just trying to let it happen, and also you're just reacting to what Paul's doing in the scene, I mean, we made stuff up on the day just because of what happened, and when Paul starts crying, and then, I start going, and I start saying no, I'm not going to go there, stop, that all happened on the day. I don't think that was in the script in the same way that it is on the screen, so you're just always looking for opportunities and moments to happen naturally as you're performing, and we'd always say to Paul, if you say something other than what's in the script, let's just see what happens, we can always do another take, so yeah, you just have to carry your mind as a performer.
ROHAN: Where did ‘How to Write a Song Without You’ come from? What challenges did writing that song present?
PETER: Well, we'd written the film, and what the role of the song was in the film, in terms of being a hit song, and what the song was about, and how that side of it plays out in the story, but we hadn't written a song, so we set ourselves up for a fall in many ways, because we had to write a song that filled that brief, that was a believable hit song, that was an earworm, and also a song that wouldn’t drive you crazy, because you're going to hear it a bunch of times. Thankfully we have Gary Clark and John Carney writing that song together, and Gary's just amazing, so is John. John's a brilliant songwriter, and I think we wrote five songs, maybe, and that was the one that got tested. I used to play it to people, I played two of the songs to people and would say, what do you think of these two songs, and let them listen to them, and then engage them in conversation afterwards for half an hour, and then I'd say, can you hum either of those songs, and they were always able to hum, ‘How to Write a Song Without You,’ so yeah, I mean, thank God the song works in film, because if it didn't, the film would be really bad.
ROHAN: Did any scenes change drastically from the way you originally wrote them on the page once you saw how Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas delivered them on set? Especially in that final confrontation?
PETER: Yeah, I mean he really fulfilled the idea that we had of the character, which was we didn't want him played as a villain, we wanted him played as a young person in the music business who's under pressure, who is going to have to do what it takes to stay alive in the game and his perception is processed through that pressure and the need to stay successful and relevant in show business, because you can disappear off the map pretty quickly, and he knows he's at a junction where he's either going to sink or swim, and he was so good at doing that and making us understand why he was making the decisions he was making, but also I think what we had in our mind was this, you know, this is a half song that Rick has, that he never finished, that he never really understood how good it was, but it took another musician of Danny's quality to understand what was in that song and how powerful it was, so in a way the song would never have become what it was without Danny, so in many ways it is a collaboration, and also it's through that process that Rick starts to realize what he was trying to express the first time around with the song, which is what the movie's about.
When Rick (Paul Rudd), a past-his-prime wedding singer, meets fading boy-band star Danny (Nick Jonas) during a gig, the two bond over music and a late-night jam session. But when Danny turns one of Rick’s songs into the hit that reignites his career, Rick sets out to reclaim the recognition he believes he deserves - even if it means risking everything he cares about. From writer-director John Carney (Sing Street, Once), POWER BALLAD is a feel-good story about music, self-respect, friendship, and the price of ambition.