‘Being Heumann’ Composer Francesco Le Metre Interview

For composer Francesco Le Metre, the brief when first discussing Apple Original Films‘ disability rights drama Being Heumann with director Siân Heder was to capture the spirit of its subject, activist Judy Heumann, through music.

With his score, he says, he was aiming for something “honest and intimate” — not “too big or too cinematic” — that reflected Heumann’s “personality, her drive, her humanity, but also at the same time, the impact that she had on the community.”

One throughline to the score was the sense of a “call to action” — the “big punk rock,” DIY spirit of the ’70s, which Le Metre captured through drums. “We had to deconstruct the drumming a little bit, so we played very unconventional grooves, and then also the strings,” he explained in conversation at Deadline’s Sound & Screen Film. “We performed the strings with a guitar pick instead of col legno to convey the sense of punk rock and, again, the DIY spirit of the movement.”

Strings also helped, Le Metre said, to capture the sense of Heumann as someone with drive and racing thoughts who was moved to act fast. “I worked on a lot of string textures, kind of like these short phrases that were bouncing one to another. And I did the same thing with the melodic writing. When it came to her humanity as well, instead of writing a straight melodic line, I had small motifs interweaving into one another, to represent her thoughts or impulse.”

Being Heumann marks the Sicilian composer’s first collaboration with Heder, the director behind another inclusive disability-themed crowd-pleaser in Apple’s groundbreaking Oscar winner CODA. Ruth Madeley stars as Heumann, who in 1977, led disabled activists in an occupation of San Francisco federal offices, refusing to leave until the government implemented landmark disability-rights protections.

Others in the cast include Mark Ruffalo, Dylan O’Brien, Madeline Delp, Rob Delaney, Ray Fisher, Michael Patrick Thornton and Daniel Durant. Heder directed and co-wrote with Rebekah Taussig, adapting Heumann’s memoir. Producers include Heder, Kevin J. Walsh, David Permut, John W. Beach and Kevin Cleary.

The film premiered at TIFF in September before being released in select theaters and on Apple TV this month.

Watch the conversation with Le Mitre in the video above.