Ewan McGregor On Co-Starring With Daughter Clara In ‘You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder’: “It Made Me Very Proud"

Brave is the man who will sign up for a real-life father-daughter road movie set in the aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, but Ewan McGregor has no regrets about pairing up with his eldest child — by his first wife — for You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder, which screened as a tribute to the actor in Karlovy Vary. Set in a dreamlike American West, and very far removed from the specifics of the McGregors’ own personal situation, it finds a reformed alcoholic dad trying to reconnect with his offspring after collecting her from hospital. She thinks they’re off to visit an artist friend of her father’s, but the truth is that, in a bid to absolve himself of many years’ worth of guilt, he’s taking her to rehab.

Directed by Emma Westenberg, it is a narratively light but emotionally intense journey, focused on a co-dependent and somewhat competitive relationship that, if left unchecked, will only end in tragedy. This fragile equilibrium is reflected in the title, a kind of one-line monostich reflecting the way young people rebel against their elders by throwing their behaviors back in their faces. Says Clara, “It’s that sense of saying to your parents, ‘Well, you did it, so I’m gonna do it too — bigger and better.” Distributors are wary of the title, but McGregor defends it with a passion. “I love it,” he says. “I think it can mean whatever the viewer wants it to mean. I love mysterious, poetic titles.”

DEADLINE: How did this movie come about, and what effect has it had on your relationship as father and daughter?
EWAN MCGREGOR: Well, Clara can talk about how it came about, but, for sure, there’s me in it and there’s Clara in it, and there’s our relationship in it. It was born from Clara’s experience, and my experience, and it made me very proud that she was able to take — and that she decided to take — a painful experience and turn it into art. I was very impressed with that, and I was very moved by the script. That being said, the characters in the film are not entirely ours, and the storyline is invented. This isn’t an event that happened, but it’s loosely based around our experience. And it’s changed us because it was an amazing thing for Clara to ask me to do. It was an amazing experience to do together, and it was just wonderful to have that time together.

Clara, you came on board first?
EM: She wrote it. I mean, she created it.
CLARA MCGREGOR: Yeah. I’m a producer on it. I came up with the idea, and my producing partner, Vera Bulder, and I got a writer [involved] named Ruby Caster. We wrote the script with her, attached Killer films, our producer Greg [Lauritano], and got dad involved

So there was no package deal?
CM: No, there was no package to begin with, really. It was just us writing a script.

Has it changed your relationship in any way? It’s a very intense movie…
EM: I think, yeah, in a positive way. It was really bonding. And also, I think that, whenever you can have that kind of perspective on [divorce], it shows there’s a lot of healing there. So, it was very special to spend that time putting ourselves into those scenes. However, the movie is about a father and daughter who don’t know each other very well, and that was never us. We never [had phases where we] didn’t see each other for years on end, so we didn’t, like, meet on set and go, “Nice to see you again!” [Laughs] It wasn’t like that. No. But, at the same time, you can’t go through something like this without it touching you. I was just a very proud dad every day. I had the easy job of just turning up and somewhat playing myself and watching Clara as the producer, being very proud of the way she was handling herself as a producer, with the crew, and as a creator and also as an actor. It was the first time I was able to sit very close up and see her skill as an actor, which was wonderful.

What kind of director is Emma Westenberg?
CM: Emma’s amazing. I’d known Emma for a while before we started shooting this, and I’ve always loved her vision — the music videos and the short films she had done were just so eccentric, and elevated, and different. She was just great on set. I mean, she allowed us the room to improvise, to play, to go off script, all while keeping everyone together on set and being this very great pillar. But there was also a lightness to the days with her.
EM: She’s an artist, y’know? I feel like she’s really an artist and she has an absolute style of her own. She has a courage, um, and a lightness, which is, which is really exciting. I mean, look at her choice of DoP, Christopher Ripley. This is his first movie. I mean, he’s a f*cking brilliant cinematographer, but when you’re a first-time director, there’s a secure feeling to having really established people around you. Emma could have chosen a really experienced cinematographer, but she did a much braver thing, which was to have another new talent there. And so the film feels very new and original.

Ewan, when did you realize your daughter wanted to act?
EM: I don’t really remember. It happened sort of gradually. But I’m not surprised. It’s such a wonderful thing to do with your life. I’m a great advocate for being an actor because it’s given me so much, and I still get so much out of it, you know. It’ll never stop giving, in a way. And so, I’m happy that Clara is [now an actor], but I’m also very proud of the fact that she’s a producer as well. I dunno, maybe it’s to do with how the industry has changed, but I’m just so impressed that she’s making her own work. I believe in [acting] as art, and I believe in it as what we do. We put ourselves in front of a camera, or in front of an audience, and we find something in us that we then pass through the camera, or through the audience, into people’s hearts. It’s a wonderful thing to do.