Paul Feig Talks About Ghostbusters And The Music Of Spy

During 2015 CinemaCon, Comicbook.com had the chance to talk to Paul Feig, who is the director of Spy and the upcoming Ghostbusters movie. Feig gave an in-depth talk about the music of Spy, as well as answering why now is the right time for a female Ghostbusters movie.

ComicBook.com: Congratulations on Spy. Everyone who has seen it has loved it. Fantastic cast, had to be fun. You have a very big future coming up.

PF: Yeah, it’s nice!

ComicBook.com: Ghostbusters: What can you say?

PF: Starts filming June 15! Four funny women.

ComicBook.com: We’re going to see a universe with that. Will we see more than one from you?

PF: I have no idea. I’m gonna do my one and then see what happens.

ComicBook.com: Speaking of more than one, how about a Spy sequel?

PF: Yeah, I’m hoping for that! I’ve got these great spies, I’ve gotta put them on new adventures.

Why is now the right time to do a female Ghostbusters?

PF: Why is now a good time to do a female Ghostbusters? Because it’s 2015, that’s why! I don’t even look at it as men and women. I have all these funny people that I work with and most of them are women. I just want the funniest people in this movie.

Can you talk about the music in Spy?

PF: Yes! Oh my goodness, it all started when Teddy Shapiro came on, who is an amazing composer. I had never worked with him before, I said, “The only thing is you have to start composing music the minute we start cutting the movie, because I want to start cutting to your music.” What happens is, you tend to template with music from another movie, then what you have is called a template. You fall in love with music from another movie and then you just end up having a composer copy that music and it just cuts everybody’s creativity off. So, Teddy, the minute we started cutting scenes we started sending them to him and he starting the music for us. It was this great, kind of, back and forth where he drove us and we drove him. That’s where I feel like the music was such a character in the movie.

I wanted an opening theme song that was very legitimate for a spy movie and not something big and not funny. Like to say, “this is not a spoof! This is a spy movie and you’re gonna have a great experience.” We didn’t know who’s gonna write it, and then Teddy said, “well, can I just take a crack? I have an idea.” And I go, “Okay, sure Teddy… Write a song…” And he comes back with that song and it just blew us away. For me, I think it’s like an Oscar contending sort of song. But then we didn’t know who was gonna sing it. So, we went to all the top names and all the top names are waiting to do a Bond movie. Everyone can’t do it because they’re waiting to do a Bond movie. It’s like, there’s only one person that’s gonna do a ******** Bond movie! So, then, we’re kind of like, “Well, who are the people that want to do it?” We had four or five singers that sent their stuff in through the record companies. I was watching all the videos and then I came across Ivy from the band. I was just blown away by her voice, also she’s just gorgeous, such a show person and all that, so I was like it’s just a done deal.

And then for the end credits song… I like the end credits to be fun and I don’t want to waste a single frame. Movies exist on cable now and every time you’re on cable, you come across those white titles on black, just rolling slowly with some s****y song playing, and that’s like five minutes of your movie! I like to create these really fun end credits where there’s stuff going on and we have a great song. We were doing a test screening and my music supervisor Erica Weiss always puts music from her iPod on for the crowd to come in to. I heard this song and I grabbed her and I was like, “What’s that song?” It was Bad Seed Rising by a band called Bad Seed Rising. I said, “that’s our end credits song!” So, we bought it. Little did we know it’s by a band that’s like, the mean average age of them is 15 years old. I remember, we did this thing the other night at the party, this guy comes up to me he said, “Thank you, my son is the drummer.” So I said, “How old is your son?” He said, “He just turned 13.” So, we got the youngest end credits band ever.