Featuring Original Music By Dan Mangan and Jesse Zubot
Varèse Sarabande Records will release HECTOR AND THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on November 10, 2014. The soundtrack features the original score composed by Juno Award winning Canadian musicians Dan Mangan and Jesse Zubot
“I did something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time and that is to have a singer-songwriter score a film,” said writer/director Peter Chelsom. “I think these days they are as much, if not better, melody makers than a lot of composers. Because it’s a fable, it needed a strong identity, a ‘through line’. I wanted themes that became songs and songs that became themes, rather than the usual film score.”
“Peter likes music that ‘almost isn’t there’. He used that term a lot. The kind of crucial but subtle treatment of music to film,” explained Mangan. “He also likes music that keeps a film clipping along so it never feels slow. That seemed to be a lot of our work on the film – keeping it moving but giving credence to the important moments.”
Dan Mangan is a two-time Juno Award-winning musician who has sold out theatres across Canada, toured the U.S. with The Walkmen, Decemberists and Okkervil River; had two performances at Glastonbury and multiple trips to Australia. The folk singer’s album, Nice, Nice, Very Nice, was shortlisted for the 2010 Polaris Music Prize; won iTunes Album on the Year in the singer-songwriter category; took home a trio of CBC awards; and was named XM The Verge Artist of the Year. His next album, Oh Fortune, won Mangan the New Artist of the Year and Alternative Album of the Year at the 2012 Juno Awards. For HECTOR AND THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS, Mangan collaborated with his Dan Mangan + Blacksmith bandmate Jesse Zubot.
HECTOR AND THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS tells the story of Hector (Simon Pegg), a quirky psychiatrist who has become increasingly tired of his humdrum life. As he tells his girlfriend, Clara (Rosamund Pike), he feels like a fraud: he hasn’t really tasted life, and yet he’s offering advice to patients who are just not getting any happier. So Hector decides to break out of his deluded and routine driven life. Armed with buckets of courage and child-like curiosity, he embarks on a global quest in hopes of uncovering the elusive secret formula for true happiness. And so begins a larger than life adventure with riotously funny results. Based on the world-wide best-selling novel of the same name, Hector and the Search for Happiness is a rich, exhilarating, and hilarious tale from director Peter Chelsom, starring Simon Pegg, Toni Collette, Rosamund Pike, Stellan Skarsgard, Jean Reno and Christopher Plummer.
“Jesse and I worked a ton on the opening sequence, which called for the film’s most epic bit of music,” said Mangan. “By contrast, the Jude theme was a more subtle result of an assignment from Peter. He asked me to write a song for my newly born son, Jude. I’m very glad he asked me to do that.”
TRACKLIST
1. Vessel (Extended Film Version) – Dan Mangan + Blacksmith
2. Cumulonimbus
3. Jude In The Mountains
4. About As Helpful As You Can Be Without Being Any Help At All (Instrumental Version) – Dan Mangan
5. Prayer Flags (Hallucinations)
6. Cumulonimbus (Newport, ’63)
7. Room Service – Parov Stelar
8. Tic Toc
9. Agnes/Corked
10. Jude
11. Cage Rattle
12. Serelem – Abraham’s Seed
13. Ticky
14. Allah’s Holiday – Ted Lewis & His Orchestra
15. Prayer Flags (Reality)
16. Terminal
17. Baresco’s Carjack
18. Jude In The Booth
19. Never Loser – Abraham’s Seed
