Among the 2023 new movie releases hitting theaters this weekend is Maryam Keshavarz’s The Persian Version. The comedy draws from the writer/director’s own life growing up as a young Iranian-American woman navigating one’s complicated identity as she gets ready to unexpectedly become a mother. When CinemaBlend spoke to the filmmaker about the making of the independent film, she shared the story behind getting key songs to soundtrack the deeply personal story. Her comments had me appreciating Keshavarz’s choices even more.
One integral song to The Persian Version is the inclusion of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.” The iconic ‘80s hit not only helps center the movie itself, it played a notable role in Maryam Keshavarz’s own upbringing as she would visit Iran from her home in the U.S. over the summers. As the filmmaker shared with me:
I used to really smuggle ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ just like in the film. And, when we would get past the passport control where they check your bags and stuff, I would emerge, I would pull out the tape and it was such a joyous moment 'cause a lot of that time was during the Iran-Iraq War. Music in particular was a great escape from that. And, I just remember going from what seemed like the gray of the airport to the technicolors [of the song]. I felt like when we danced, everything just became alive. And then also as a kid in Iran, because I would go back and forth, like in the film, every year. I think also we were very influenced by Bollywood because Bollywood was other things that were snuck into Iran during the war.
Isn’t it beautiful how music can comfort us and be important part of our own life memories? Given Maryam Keshavarz’s own experiences with the Cyndi Lauper song, she fought not only to get the song in the movie, but even made the Persian version of the track for a dance number during the movie to exemplify what the song meant to her as a kid. Keshavarz continued:
I also want to show the joy and the unity of all this family even during hard times. Right? [For] the end of the film I thought, well, if we smuggle ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ into Iran, how does it become personified when it leaves? So the last version of it is the Persian Version of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, it has the same song, but it has Persian instrumentation and it has the actress who plays the mother sings it and Persian words and stuff are added into the phrases to the sequence. So it's like a play on east meets west 'cause the whole film has American and Persian pop music. It was a synthesis of both with the last cue of the film.
The Persian Version was one of a host of independent films that premiered at 2023’s Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Among the tons of worthwhile films like Daisy Ridley’s Sometimes I Think About Dying and the martial arts comedy Polite Society, The Persian Version was the movie that took home the festival’s coveted Audience Award, which was previously given to 2022 Best Picture winner CODA, along with other critical darlings like Minari, Whiplash and Fruitvale Station.
This is the second time Keshavarz earned the prize too, the first time being for her 2011 directorial debut, Circumstance, which explored an LGBTQ+ romance between two Iranian women in modern Iran. The movie got Keshavarz, who identifies as bisexual herself, banned from the country. The filmmaker, who is surely no stranger to taking chances with her filmmaking, also told CinemaBlend how another big song made its way into the film on its shoestring budget. In her words:
We had to get a lot of permissions, permissions everywhere and a lot of begging. ‘Please, we have no money. Can we have your song?’ Especially Wet Leg. Man, that was a hard one. Like it was the number one song of like 2022 or something. When I first heard that song I was driving in L.A. I pulled over and I was like, ‘who is that?’ Like, I had never heard of them. This song has to be the opening of my film. And everyone's like, ‘Yeah, whatever. We're never gonna get it’. I'm like, ‘Oh, we're gonna get it. I'm gonna write the most amazing letter to these people’. And I wrote a letter about how important the song was and what it was like, it completely encapsulated this girl's journey against her mother and against society, and we didn't have very much money and they said yes!
After speaking to Keshavarz about the story behind these songs in The Persian Version, I definitely cherish their places in the film so much more. There’s really a personal story behind how both “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” and Wet Leg’s “Chaise Lounge” became part of the movie and it really amplified its messages and many great sceens. You can grab tickets to The Persian Version, now playing in theaters.
