Listen to Your Heart

Article first published as Screenwriter/Musician/Actor Kent Moran Talks About Listen To Your Heart on Blogcritics.

This past Sunday, April 24, the Lifetime Movie Network premiered Listen To Your Heart, a film about an aspiring musician falling in love with a sheltered, hearing-impaired woman in New York–and the complexities involved with that relationship. The film will be replayed this Friday, April 29, at 2 PM EST (as well as Monday, May 9, at 8 PM EST and Tuesday, May 10, at 12 AM EST). The film stars Kent Moran, who also served as producer/screenwriter/composer/second unit director, as well as agreeing to discuss the film in this new email interview. In addition to discussing the many aspects of the film he was a part of, we also discuss the film’s success at numerous film festivals, its popularity on Netflix (Average of 106,997 ratings: 3.9 stars [as of April 21]) and working with a talented cast that included Cybill Shepherd. My thanks to Moran for his time and thoughts, as well as to Joy Phillips for helping arrange the interview.

Tim O’Shea: You wrote the music for the film, I am curious, did you develop the music after you wrote the plot? Or were they developed in parallel? I think part of the movie’s appeal is how well the script and music compliment each other.

Kent Moran: Thank you. Most of the songs I wrote specifically for the film and I wrote them into the script. I knew when I wanted songs to happen in the film. Some songs I wrote while I was writing the script and others I wrote after and then plugged them in. Still Worth Fighting was a song I had written before the movie and then realized that it fit well. Fight For You was originally written as a different song to be played when Danny interrupts the dinner party that Ariana’s mother throws for her, but after the film was edited, I decided that it didn’t work there and re-wrote it, slowed it down, and put it over the later montage where it now plays.

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