True, teenage Luca lives underwater with his fish-finned family, but when he steps out of the water and into an Italian fishing village, he becomes a human boy in the very recognizable 1960s, a time period fixed by the pop music that is frequently blaring from tiny portable radios.
I’ll say that in the inception of it, when I imagined the movie early on, I felt like with the genre of movies like Stand by Me or Breaking Away, there’s something about summer where you do need that radio on and that these songs become part of the background.
Even in terms of the plot, we have sea monsters under an island, and we’re like, “Actually, it would make sense that this is a time where they haven’t been discovered yet.” Scuba wasn’t so popular at the time.
It was actually our sound designer, Justin Pearson, who put it on one of our playlists, and the first time he’s like, “Do you want to listen to this?” I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” There’s a little bit of romance in there.
My mom was a big opera and classical music person, and I had a nice playlist of opera to think, “What are the ways that we can use that?” There’s such drama.
This plays over the montage when Luca and Alfredo are building a ramp for their makeshift scooter, and it gives the scene a great, lighthearted energy.
We considered options, and thought, “Do we want to keep it in the ’50s and early ’60s?” But the more I thought about it, there’s just something so special about that song.
It’s been really fun to see it being used in our trailers, which is not something I ever thought when we chose it.
Edoardo Bennato also did an album called L’isola Che Non C’è, which is “The Island That Doesn’t Exist,” or Neverland, from Peter Pan.
Then I love how it wraps up as he parks his Vespa, which our animators absolutely knocked out of the park.
Honestly, we tried out many songs and they were working, so it goes a little bit into what you can get the rights for and what you can’t.
And “Fatti mandare dalla mamma,” which is actually, again, more of a romance-y kind of summery song: “Tell your mom to send you to get the milk,” so you can see me.
We tried so many on this one and we wanted energy, because it’s one of those moments in the movie where they’re trying hard to train and the relationships are getting frayed.
And if you look it up, the zither player is Anton Karas, from the soundtrack of The Third Man.
This is Mina again, and it’s a cover of Gene McDaniel’s “Lonely Town,” which is kind of a melancholy note to send the movie out on.
I remember having conversations like, “Well, if I had exactly that feeling in a song that talks about friendship, even better,” but the ones that had that were either more modern or didn’t quite give me the same emotion.
There was also another one by Rita Pavone that I absolutely loved and it was very quirky.
That sometimes will make your decision for you because you’re like “Someone is going to look up the lyrics.” It might be a little strange.