Musician and actor Rudy Mancuso experiences synesthesia — a blending of the senses that enables some people to hear colors or taste sounds. In Mancuso’s case, everyday noises transform into layered rhythms and melodies, whether he wants them to or not — an experience that can be beautiful and frustrating. The multi-instrumentalist and former Vine star explores that dichotomy in his debut film Música, which he co-wrote, directed and stars in.
The majority of the scripted film is autobiographical — 10 years of his personal experiences boiled down into a three-week scripted cinematic timeline.
“Everything from the situations perpetuated by Rudy, myself, to the condition, to the Brazilian-American experience, to my mother playing my actual mother, to me playing my actual self, it’s all as authentic as I could make it,” Mancuso tells KCRW.
In the film, Rudy is a puppeteer who performs in the New Jersey subway. His puppet Diego is mustached, middle-aged and has a heavy Hispanic accent, which Mancuso says represents a combination of people he grew up with.
Similarly, the real-life Mancuso also got his start in puppetry, playing keyboard and singing as Diego in Jersey train stations.
The film creatively illustrates Mancuso’s synesthesia through various musical scenes in public places like the diner, the fish market, and the bus. In one scene, he introduces his new-found love interest Isabella to how he hears the world around him while sitting in the park.
“The best way [the main character] could do that is by pointing to different miscellaneous actions in the park like basketball players playing basketball, a group of teens jumping rope, climbing the monkey bars. … As he points to different actions, each one starts to organize itself into some musical instrument and before he knows it, the whole park turns into an orchestration that is led by non-musical sounds.”
He continues, “Although the audience is seeing it, Isabella isn't, which is the reveal at the end of that set piece. … And although Rudy is a little bit down, and it's a bit of a joke, the aftermath, the conclusion of the scene is Isabella telling Rudy, ‘I don't hear it. I don't see it. But I don't need to because I can feel you hearing it. I can feel you see and it's amazing. This is not a hindrance. This is a gift.’”
Mancuso points out that while the film takes some cinematic license, that scene is pretty accurate to how he experiences sound: “Sometimes it's a lot more intense. Other times, it isn't at all. I have been able to control it and cope with it now that I'm older and I've been living with it for so long. I've channeled it through my creativity. There was a time in my life where I didn't have a creative outlet, and these sounds were very tortuous. The film depicts both the good and the bad.”
