Nick Hornby has become that rare breed of novelist so omnipresent in popular culture as a result of his work’s frequent adaptations to film that we scarcely realize just how normalized his brand of protagonist has become in our day-to-day understanding of “the everyman.” In the case of his 2009 book, Juliet, Naked, the everyman in question is represented by two beings on opposite ends of the music spectrum: the listener and the creator. Duncan Thomson (Chris O’Dowd) falls into the former category in his worshipfulness of the latter, Tucker Crowe (very fittingly played by Ethan Hawke, all washed out around the edges as he is).
So obsessed with the now defunct musical output of Crowe is he that when he receives a package in the mail from a friend containing unfinished demos from his Juliet album called, aptly, Juliet, Naked, he is livid to find that his longtime girlfriend, Annie (Rose Byrne), has listened to the CD first. A telling sign of his lack of consideration for her as anything other than a live-in decoration that occasionally cooks and weighs in on the opinions he nerdishly puts forth on his fan website for Crowe, she is made to feel even more like just another object of the house when Duncan demands batteries at once so he can listen to the CD on his Discman (remember, musicphiles care not for your digital life), prompting her to placate him by extracting them from her own vibrator. Of course, this small detail, too, indicates Annie’s extreme dissatisfaction with the relationship. But it is something she chalks up, ultimately, to wasting the past fifteen years of her life, an admission she makes to Tucker himself via email when he personally reaches out to her to compliment her on her scathing review of his demos–the very one that has thrown a further wrench of late into her rapport with Duncan.
That Tucker has only opted to release them into the world for a bit of extra cash as he lives rent-free in his ex-wife’s guest house so that he can at least be of some use in helping to take care of their child, Jackson (Azhy Robertson), further speaks to his passionlessness for music over the past twenty-five years, the last time he performed or had a record out–specifically Juliet. And the subject of passionlessness is something that Annie can also relate to on the professional front, herself a curator at a bizarre museum in the small town of Sandcliff, where the mayor insists upon such niche exhibitions as “Summer of ’64.” Elsewhere in her life of ennui and malcontentedness, she has increasing regrets over the fact that she and Duncan mutually decided never to have children. Now, in her advancement toward middle-age, she finds herself aching for the type of unconditional love that can only seem to come from a child (what a myth that is, however).
As Tucker and Annie bond deeply in their epistolary fashion, Duncan finds himself enraptured by Gina, a new adjunct professor at the university where he teaches. That Gina provides the reaction he wants to the Juliet, Naked songs only further incites him to sleep with her. When he tells Annie to make himself “feel better,” she finally finds the courage to kick him out, opening the door to further forms of communication with Tucker, who mentions that he’ll be coming to London to be present for the birth of his first grandchild via another child he has, Lizzie (Ayoola Smart), from yet another mother–he has a total of five children from different women, as it were. Because yes, papa was a rollin’ stone indeed.
Annie isn’t made fully aware of the extent of Tucker’s true life’s work until she meets him at the hospital after he’s had a heart attack (“brilliant” they tell him, having a heart attack in a hospital) and, accordingly, stood her up for their rendezvous at the Tate Modern. Lizzie, who has just had the baby (though in the novel, this thread of the story goes a bit differently), has also taken it upon herself to call every child and mother in Tucker’s life to come visit him.
The awkwardness and unprecedentedness of the situation overwhelms Annie, as she decides to leave almost as eagerly as she showed up to finally meet Tucker in the flesh. Not so quick to let her go, Tucker offers himself (and Jackson) as an exclusive consolation prize by inviting himself to her house in Sandcliff, where an inevitable run-in with Duncan is assured.
That director Jesse Peretz, who is no stranger to transforming the work of English authors into a cinematic experience, saw his debut with 1997’s First Love, Last Rites (a film that places equally as heavy of importance on its soundtrack) is an undeniable help to a movie so grounded in reverence for music specifically and art in general. As an incensed Duncan puts it to Tucker after he is belittled for his obsession with the “goodness” of the demos, “Art isn’t for the artist any more than water is for the plumber” (at the end of the movie, we see Tucker has a song called “Water for the Plumber” on his new record, just to get even more at Duncan’s goat). No, art is for the person who absorbs it, even if the artist isn’t always fully cognizant of just how much this is true. For yes, in truth, the majority of the artists we have still decided to deem among “the greats” were doing it for largely masturbatory purposes as opposed to the pure motivation of “wanting to create something for others.” And yet, that’s arguably the most bizarre element about art as a concept, that the person making it is doing it primarily to establish their own emotional coping mechanism and mode of survival, and the person ingesting it is appreciating it because they have gleaned their own resonant meaning from that.
To that point, one imagines Tucker Crowe to be the older, less edgy version of Reality Bites‘ Troy Dyer (Hawke performed his own vocals there, too), the lead singer of a band, Hey, That’s My Bike, that might have developed a cult following if only Troy had the marketing skills and motivation. But, on the other hand, at least Troy’s seed is as lazy as he is–the same of which can’t be said for Tucker, equally as devil-may-care in terms of who he might end up with after a show, but not so fortunate as Troy on the childless front.
Laziness, in fact, is what Duncan accuses Tucker of in his refusal to make new music, declaring, “The problem with people like you is that your talent comes too easily and you take it for granted.” He doesn’t seem to believe this so much anymore when Tucker finally does release new material, only for Duncan to lambast it in his jealousy over the obvious inspiration behind the upbeat tone of the record, balking that love doesn’t suit him and he’s got a drum machine on it for fuck’s sake.
As an overt foil for another Rob Fleming in terms of embodying the semi-emotionless musicphile (and audiophile, in Rob’s case), Duncan’s only redeeming quality is in his ability to at least somewhat apprehend that he’s a complete twat–something having consummate musical taste perhaps only adds to. And, at the very least, it is his alienating obsession that leads Annie to happiness after so much time spent mired in drudgery. For that is the mark of any Nick Hornby narrative: redemption through and after suffering. If only it could be as such in real life.
