Junip's José Gonzalez Scores Ben Stiller's new film, 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty'

Alyson Camus|December 18, 2013

José González

I don’t necessarily think about the subtle krautrock pop of Junip or José González’s delicate vocals as the soundtrack of a Ben Stiller movie! Nevertheless it will be the case for the upcoming movie ‘The Secret Like of Walter Mitty’, adapted after ‘James Thurber’s classic story of a day-dreamer who escapes his anonymous life by disappearing into a world of fantasies filled with heroism, romance and action’.

Composer Theodore Shapiro, who has scored many Ben Stiller movie in the past, helped the actor pick up the songs for the movie and introduced him to González’s music. The Junip frontman ended up singing 3 songs on the soundtrack, and watching the trailer of the movie, it is probably once again one of these perfect collaborations that becomes essential to the movie, like one of the characters. Shapiro even explained how it all started:

‘He started kicking around the idea of having a voice serve as Walter’s inner voice, and that led to us working with Jose Gonzalez, a brilliant Swedish singer-songwriter who I had been a fan of for a long time and Ben got into as he listened for this film’.

Among the songs, José González does a dreamy and exotic cover of John Lennon’s ‘#9 Dream’, so warm and fuzzy you want to wrap it around your ears. The second song is another cover, and an unexpected one! José covered Ryan Adams’ gorgeous piano-string ascending ballad ‘Stay Alive’ and he has even released a video where he seems to parallel Ben Stiller’s character in the movie.

Then there is the original González’ song, used for the trailer, ‘Step Out’, a song with a melancholic start that goes all inspirational-bombastic on us with powerhouse soaring choir that probably is meant to give you the strength to climb the Himalaya like Ben Stiller’s character… oh yeah and there is St Vincent’s vocals in this choir… But wait a minute, there was a 2010 documentary entitled ‘The Extraordinary Ordinary Life of José González’, so I guess he could relate after all!

‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ opens in theaters on Christmas day, and the soundtrack is due on December 17th through Republic Records and Brushfire Records.