EXCLUSIVE: Producer Grant Heslove and Screenwriter William Monahan Talk Brining to Life The Tender Bar

Based on the memoir by J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar tells the story of J.R. as he grows up on Long Island surrounded by his mother and her family. Directed by George Clooney, Producer Grant Heslove and Screenwriter William Monahan joined Clooney in brining this tale to life.

We sat down with Heslove and Monahan to talk about how the film came to life, the music, the challenges, and so much more. Check out what they had to say below.

I’m curious to know Grant how exactly you found the book and how did you sell it to George? What did you tell him that made him instantly be on board as well?

“Well I wish it was that easy. I read the book when it came out about 15 years ago and I loved it. And I called George and I said, ‘Let’s go after this book.’ And we went after it and we didn’t get it. Then it went into development in various places and various places. And then cut to 15 years later, I got a call from Ted Hope, who was then running Amazon, and he said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this script. Nobody’s seen it. Literally we just got it last night. We want to send it to you guys, see if you’re interested in doing it’. And so they sent it, we read it, and that was it. It came back to us somehow. But it was because of the screenplay that this guy wrote.”

William from your point of view, how did it enter your life and why did you determine it was a good fit for you?

“Well, I’d read the book when it came out and I thought it was remarkable in many ways. Most first books by first time authors they tend to throw their backgrounds and families under the bus, use them for material and sort of mythologize themselves. You can go to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, or anything in the 20th century, but this book by J.R., it was about a guy who loved his family and whose family loved him. And I thought, this is great. When it came around and Amazon asked me to do it, I said yes immediately. And it was just really good fortune that Grant and George were in a state of readiness. It was very happy circumstance.”

You can read the rest of our interview below. The Tender Bar will hit Prime Video on January 7.

Photo credit: Amazon

For you William, what were the main challenges of translating J.R.’s memoir into cinematic language?

“The main problem always is is you’re looking at a 400, 500 page book and you’ve got to bring it in about one 115 or 120 pages. If you had done a straight adaptation of the book, you would’ve had to have the kid, a teenager, and the young man. And so one of those had to go, and it had to be the teenager, I guess. And try to make the young boy work with the college-age kid was the way you had to go with it.”

What about the main assets?
“The book itself is just a mine of riches. I grew up at the same time. I think J.R.’s three or four years younger than I am. And so we did the same thing. We were journalists in New York at the same time, I come from the same sort of background. Less farting and septic, but same sort of background with very tough literate, Irish uncles. And it suited me. It suited me to the ground to do it, but it was a great challenge because a lot of people loved the book and you don’t want to screw up so great many assets.”

Let’s talk about the must. Grant, the music in the film is almost its own character and really helped set the overall tone. Was that a deliberate choice?

“Before we started shooting we had decided that we weren’t going to have a lot of traditional score for the film. We normally work with Alexander Desplat, who we love we just love to work with him. But as soon as the film started we wanted to put people in the period.”

How involved were you and Clooney in the song selection process?

“When we were shooting, even when we were shooting, George and I would just walk around with our phones and just play each other songs and say, ‘How about this one? How about this one?’ And that’s basically how we did it. Then when we started to see cut scenes, we would just take our iPhone and put it up and listen to it with the scene on. Then we got a great music supervisor who once they told us, ‘Well, you can’t afford all those songs.’ Then we said, ‘Okay, well, these are the kind of the songs we want.’ And then the big ones, the big ticket ones, the ones we couldn’t live without, the Paul Simon and the Jackson Browne, and some of those, that’s where we spent our money. And then the rest we had to do a little wheeling and dealing.”

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity