Gary Clark Knows the Power of His Work With John Carney

There are few things in this world that excite me like a John Carney movie. Once captivated me and still breaks me to this day. Sing Street will always have my heart, and now, his latest Flora and Son has risen up the ranks.

His collaborator, Gary Clark, seems to know that there is magic in working with John Carney. In speaking with Clark, we talked a lot about his collaborations with Carney (the two worked on Sing Street together before Flora and Son), and it is a partnership that clearly works (and works well). When I asked what it is about working with Carney that continues to bring him back to this collaboration, Clark said that “if John calls me, I’m there.”

Clark went on to talk about what makes working with Carney so special and why it is a process that makes fans so excited about his work, as well. “Who else makes films that allow you to write songs for such amazing characters? They’re not strictly musicals as well. They’ve got a lot of songs in them. They’re really movies about the power of music,” he said.

What Clark understands about writing for Carney’s work is writing for the characters: “When you do that, you kind of have to get into their head and their story and what they wanted to sing about what they wanna talk about. And so that was a good grounding, I think for writing for characters.” Throughout our conversation, it showed exactly why his music works so well with Carney’s style of directing these movies about the celebration of music. Carney’s movies are about why music is so powerful, and paired with Clark’s soundtrack, it is clear that their collaboration is a match made in heaven.

You can see our full conversation here:

Flora and Son is on Apple TV+ now.

(featured image: Apple TV+)