Bret McKenzie Interview

Bret McKenzie Interview

While on our #MuppetsMostWantedEvent trip we had a few extra minutes to spend with Bret McKenzie who is the songwriter for The Muppets Most Wanted. He is the musical genius behind all of the songs in The Muppets Most Wanted and started the interview off with this quick answer.

To get the interview started we asked, “How much time did you spend on the set?” Bret McKenzie replied, “I was on set, hanging out, ’cause I didn’t really spend much time on set. And the day I got there was, that was the very last shot of the movie, so all I saw was them doing a silhouette of Constantine. [LAUGHS] Blog about that, guys.” What a great way to start the interview, but I was of course a little worried that we wouldn’t learn much at first. But after a few more questions I quickly learned a lot about the songwriter Bret McKenzie, his creativeness and his love for his work.

His song Man or Muppet won an Oscar recently, so we asked Bret if their was any pressure to meet that standard again on his musics. His answer was rather surprising to me at least, “Yes, there was pressure because of the Oscar. However, there’s always a downhill, so I had to get on the job and forget about that.” Not that you can ever truly forget about an Oscar, but because it is his job, he has learned that you have to have hills and valleys and just give it your best.

To do his job James and Nick Stoller sent him the scripts and they are lots of fun filled with great ideas. But then he had an idea about the first song  “We’re doing a sequel,” um, they had the original idea then I just started looking through the history of bad sequels and qualities of sequels and there’s so many. And there was one lyric, the–– the first song, the first lyric in the song, um, [SINGS] “We’re doing a sequel, that’s what we do in Hollywood, but everybody knows that the sequel’s never quite as good,” that is, felt like a great start to the movie ’cause it lets the audience know that it’s a, first of all it’s a sequel and then we–– we know that it’s possibly not as good as the last one. [LAUGHS]

***Be sure to listen to the video to hear him sing it to us at 1.07 to hear him sing!! 🙂

And it’s, you know, like that’s the way they wanted it ’cause he wants kinda the audience can’t but help go, “Oh is this gonna be better than the last one? Let’s see what they do.” So we kinda let them in on that. And then, um, and that’s what I love about the Muppets is they can do that, you can, the Muppets can turn to the audience and look straight at camera and talk to them about how they’re making a movie, and, um, yeah there was one lyric in that I just went through and looked at bad sequels and the qualities in them. Like there was one lyric that Ralph the dog was gonna sing that, uh, was in the soundtrack but not in the movie where he goes, um, [SINGS] “We’re doing a sequel, how hard can it be? We can’t do any worse than the Godfather III.” [LAUGHS] So yeah it was a bit of a zinger so we took that one out. But then I like how Piggy can talk about how “there’s no need to disguise,” um, “the studio considers us a viable franchise,” there’s some fun, it was really a fun song to write, yeah. It was good.

******He sings again at about 2.40 of the audio.

He gets a lot of  inspiration from Flight of the Conchords for the songs on the Muppets. Because that is how he learned how to write comedy songs so he still uses the same techniques which I found very interesting. When it is time to write the songs, the scripts come with an idea for a song, and then he gets creative. But he also works with the talent to adapt to the person’s talent  or pitch if he needs too. For example, Miss Piggy’s ballad with Celine Dion was his idea to ask to get the two divas together and make it work. And it worked perfectly with the story line so it was emotional, comical and a great fit. Because he is the songwriter and producer of the songs making changes on songs is an easy fix if it isn’t working. Like with Tina Fey her pitch and the orginal doo wop song just wasn’t a good fit. But the end result was a masterpiece, in my opinion. Ricky Gervais had a sort of failed pop star experience back in the 80’s so his song worked about perfectly because of his history and he is a good singer so it worked for them.

When we asked him if he had a favorite song, he said that he writes the songs and sometimes they don’t turn out the way he thought in the final film. But the music in The Muppets Most Wanted all worked together greatly and he thought the opening was pretty funny which allows the movie to get off to a great start. But his favorite is “I’ll Get You What You Want” brackets Cockatoo and Malibu closed brackets, uh, which is–– is the frogs, the bad frog trying to woo Miss Piggy.

He went on to explain his thoughts about that great song in the paragraph below.

BRET MCKENZIE :    And it kinda comes out of left field and it’s a genre that I have a–– a, I really love, that kind of early ’80s Lionel Richie Michael McDonald Doobie Brothers sound, um, you know, like I keep forgetting, uh, all that stuff. And so I was trying to get this bear, it’s kind of, it was kind of fun to make a Russian frog sing like as Michael McDonald might sing. I don’t know if you got that, if that came through, but…it’s also quite disco.

When Bret McKenzie gets writer’s block he turns to YouTube and goes into the ’70’s and ’80s songs and of course power ballads. Then he looks at old clips, Irving Berlin songbooks, old kinda Broadway which are all great eras to listen too.

At 10:25 in the interview we  asked him if he would you care to sing a little bit of the “I’ll Get You What You Want?” And of course he obliged our request which was a very surreal experience.

10:25

BRET MCKENZIE :    I would love to, yeah. So, ’cause then when we, it’s just on Satur-, on the weekend we filmed a music video for that and I’m in this white linen suit, I’m gonna cut together me singing this love song to Miss Piggy, so hopefully that will be done in about a week, but, um, yeah that’s, that was probably my favorite song to sing. Um, and it goes [SINGS], I wish I had a piano but, it goes [SINGS] “baby stop right there, let me clear the air, baby look into these eyes, let me apologize. I know what you’re thinking of, you’re thinking where is the love? well baby, baby love ain’t gone. It’s here where it belongs.” Chord strings, [SINGS] “I know what you’re waiting for. You don’t [STARTS CLAPPING] need to wait no more, I’ll give you anything you want,” oh you guys you’re not a very enthusiastic audience are you? [LAUGHS] Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah oh right I lost you. Yeah. Um, yeah that’s one of my favorite songs, it’s fun. Yeah.

We all have our favorite Muppet character right? When we asked Bret McKenzie what Muppet would he be his response was hilarious and included an impression to make it even better!

BRET MCKENZIE :    I would probably, um, it’s tending to be one of the two old guys, ’cause they get a lot of the best jokes, um, it’s between them and Animal for me, yeah. Yeah. Animal’s great. My new Swedish Chef I’ve got Kers and Swedish Chef is a guaranteed laugh at home. If I do a Swedish Chef impression, I mean no matter what the situation, trying to get kids to finish dinner, they’re, it, something about Swedish Chef, you know, [IMITATES SWEDISH CHEF] Snoop du beshdabeers. [LAUGHS] You don’t need to be on a, I mean, everyone can do a Swedish Chef, and the kids just, kids love that character. Fair enough he’s pretty fun.

We loved the song Together Again, and asked who’s idea it was to have it repeat from the original Muppet song. Surprisingly enough if was James Bobin’s idea to include it into the latest Muppets Caper. We as bloggers have quickly made  it the latest hashtag because we were able to see this great movie twice and listened to the soundtrack numerous times. So now the official hashtag is #againagain 🙂

We had a great interview with Bret McKenzie and enjoyed learning about him as well as the stories behind the songs. He is a very creative man that has many talents!! Before we left we of course had to have our group picture taken with him to prove it really happened.

 *Disclosure: I received an all-expenses paid trip to Los Angeles for the #ABCTVEvent and #Disneyevents in exchange for my coverage. All opinions are 100% my own.