Success can be measured by various metrics. Success is ultimately a personal thing. What I consider to be achieving success in my career may differ from what someone else in the same career considers success. And the routes to achieving success can be long. When we look at Hollywood for every tale of overnight success, there are many more tales of grinding before eventually finding the sliver that broke through. Dreamin’ Wild, a biographical picture written and directed by Bill Pohlad, tells the story of two Donnie and Joe Emerson, who, as teens in 1979, self-produced an album that didn’t take off, only for someone to discover it almost 30 years later and get the record the buzz it never had, a re-release, and the boys the chance at the tour they never got. Only they are now men with nearly 30 years of baggage.
This is a biographical picture, but it is also a work of narrative. In that regard, you have adult Donnie (played by Casey Affleck) sharing the screen with teen Donnie (played by Noah Jupe) a few times and even interacting. They seemed to get a lot of collaboration with Emersons, their voices appearing throughout the film, and even appearing themselves at the end, which I find interesting because Donnie doesn’t come across as the most sympathetic character because he displays the traits of a toxic artist in the way he berates Joe (played by Walton Goggins as an adult and Jack Dylan Grazer as a teen). It was trying to show that he carried a need to succeed because their father, Don Sr. (played by Beau Bridges), invested in his music and lost most of their farm because of it, and also how lack of communication about how Don Sr. actually viewed success in his children controlled Donnie’s life. It did lead to a good moment of resolution later in the film, but I was struck more by an earlier scene. Before Donnie started berating his brother and before we knew about Donnie’s worries about Don Sr.’s monetary investment in his music. It’s when Don Sr. sits the boys down and asks them if they are serious about music, a few lines stuck out to me.
The first was, you have to “exhaust the body to free the mind.” This one niggles me because not every artist works the same way, and this idea can be counter-intuitive for some artists. Some creatives need to take walks. Constant work can actually hinder creativity for some. Some can find creativity by doing other tasks.
The second was, “make me proud.” That is a tough one. It was so nice to see a father on a farm supporting his musically inclined sons. My father was from wine country in Northern California and was in a band, and that was definitely not the case for him. But the scene implies that for him to be proud, they need to succeed, but to 17-year-old Donnie, he probably could have been clearer about what success meant, and then perhaps he might not have been such a toxic artist and could’ve just enjoyed the music more and playing it with his brother. And maybe neither Donnie nor Joe would’ve felt the need to send Donnie to LA alone, which was the main catalyst for a lot of their angst, but perhaps they still would’ve, and perhaps if he didn’t go to LA, none of the events that ended up happening in this film would’ve transpired, butterflies flapping and all that.
The teen Donnie and Joe played by Noah Jupe and Jack Dylan Grazer are the standouts in the film, Grazer looking particularly like a young Goggins.
Dreamin’ Wild will be in Theatres August 4th.
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