How Golden Globe nominated ‘Remember Me’ came to be
‘Can you write us a song that can mean one thing with a certain arrangement sung in a certain way, and mean a completely different thing with a certain arrangement sung in a certain way? Basically can one be a gift where you are taking something and can one be giving a gift?’
Can you write us a song that can mean one thing with a certain arrangement sung in a certain way, and mean a completely different thing with a certain arrangement sung in a certain way? Basically can one be a gift where you are taking something and can one be giving a gift?
LOS ANGELES – FilipinoAmerican Robert Lopez and his wife and composing partner Kristen Anderson-Lopez bagged a Golden Globe nomination for their original song “Remember Me” from the Golden Globe animation nominee “Coco.”
Robert, who is the youngest of only 12 people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award or EGOT and the quickest (10 years) to win all four, is partly of Filipino descent through his father. His paternal grandfather was Filipino and his paternal grandmother was Filipino and ScottishAmerican.
He and Kristen won an Oscar for “Frozen’s” “Let it Go.”
The Lee Unkrich-helmed film, “Coco,” produced by Pixar and Disney, is based on an original idea by Lee and co-directed by Adrian Molina. It follows a 12-year-old boy Miguel Rivera (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez) who dreams of becoming a musician and is accidentally transported to the land of the dead. It also stars Gael Garcia Bernal as Hector Rivera and Benjamin Bratt as Ernesto de la Cruz.
Robert talked about working on the song, “Remember Me.” He said, “While we were working on this, we knew it was very important to us culturally, first to be authentic. It was Pixar’s mission to create an authentically Mexican film. But you bring a lot of your own personal experience to whatever you are doing, and while we were doing this, my grandmother passed away, as well as my mother. I sang the song at both of their funerals. So it was very important for me to create something and Kristen too, because everyone deals with this problem, this issue of how do you say goodbye to your loved ones and keep their memories alive?
“It was just very emotional and healthy for us to be able to pour our own feelings about our own family and to be able to celebrate this year and put my mom’s picture on our ofrenda (offering) and Kristen’s grandparents, grandma, on an ofrenda. It was just a beautiful way to celebrate the memory of these people. As we talked about them and shared their details and their stories, it was like they were there. So it’s such a beautiful thing. We are really happy that it came into our lives and not just because we got to work on a great movie, but because it enriches our lives.”
Kristen added, “It has made our family and it has given us a way to remember and feel like we don’t lose them permanently. Today as a side note, this afternoon after we leave here, we have to put down our cat. Our cat is dying of FIP and his legs stopped working this morning, so that was another fun thing that happened this morning. So again, it gives our kids a sense that we now have a ritual. Now, we even have a song to sing, that when we are sitting around remembering them, we have a way to bring them back.”
Kristen recalled how they started to work on the tune. “Lee Unkrich said can you write us a song that can mean one thing with a certain arrangement sung in a certain way, and mean a completely different thing with a certain arrangement sung in a certain way? Basically can one be a gift where you are taking something and can one be giving a gift? We listened to a lot of Mexican music and Bobby sat down at the piano and he wrote this tune that was just very, very simple and we were like, I love that tune.”
Robert continued, “So we had gotten this tune and we got the emotional version. But as we were writing it, we would try each phrase of it in the up tempo version, so that I guess the idea being that it would be this guy’s signature goodbye song, saying goodbye to all of the audience, but also particularly to the ladies in the audience and that he would have all this charisma and say, you know each night we are apart. The same song, every line had to work from a very sincere, dedicated father, to his daughter that he had to leave.”
Kristen recalled, “We polished it together. Usually, we are very much building it to-
gether. In this case, he really built the tune and I really built the lyrics.”
So are there any dead artists or persons that they would like to meet. “I would have loved to meet my grandfather,” Robert revealed. “He was Filipino and I have a picture of him. He just looked so charismatic and cool that I wish I had have gotten to know him. He was a good looking guy.”
As for Kristen, she said she would have wanted to meet her Swedish grandmother. “She came as a single mother to this country and she had to raise two boys and owned a bakery. They learned to play the violin and became very musical. I suspect it came from her.”
As for the challenges of working as husband and wife, Kristen pointed out, “What is interesting is that the hardest thing that we have faced, is when I had to leave to work on another project without him. That was the hardest, because it was a project that I had done years before we started writing together, but they called me and said ‘Hey, we are going to Broadway.’ So I had to leave him holding the bag for a lot of our other projects. It was tough. It was abandonment. I felt guilty. So that was actually the hardest. We are really great when we are working on everything together. When we have outside forces that are not aligned, that is when we have the hardest conversations I would say.”
Do they see their children following in their footsteps?
Kristen said, “Our 12-year-old daughter just did a demo. I don’t know if you know but my sister wrote the songs for the ‘Frozen’ short film on Olaf. My sister Kate Anderson is the lyricist for the ‘Frozen’ short that came out. My sister just asked my 12-year-old to sing in a demo of a new project that she is working on. Then this morning, Bobby was working with our eight-year-old daughter on a little song that she wanted to write. So it’s very much the fabric of both of our families, it’s the creation and songwriting in particular.”
“But they are free to go into anything they like,” Robert stressed.
To which Kristen added, “But I would love for them to take up medicine. If either daughters did, I could turn to them and be like, ‘I am feeling really tired, can you check my endocrine levels?’ That would be great!”
I would have loved to meet my grandfather. He was Filipino and I have a picture of him. He just looked so charismatic and cool that. He was a good looking guy.