In a trippy movie about overpowering drugs, you need some off-the-wall needle drops. And right from the opening credits, you get that.
"Spiderhead" is filled with smooth '70s rock songs that are best categorized these days as "yacht rock."
From Michael McDonald to Hall & Oates, the music contributes a numbness to the madness happening on-screen. Reese and Wernick said the idea was also to make it so the inmates were hearing the same music.
"The music wasn't originally written into the script," Reese said. "We were rewriting the script and we were in a conversation with Joe Kosinski and Eric Newman, our producer, and Chris Hemsworth might have even been in on the meeting, and we wanted the music to be something that was playing, not just for the audience, but also for the inmates within the scenes."
"So we thought it really had to come from character, what does Steve listen to? Or what does he force his inmates to listen to?" Reese continued.
It was in that meeting that the idea for a yacht-rock soundtrack came up.
"We felt Steve has this funny sense of humor and that he legitimately would love yacht rock and force everybody to listen to it. Almost like hell's playlist," Reese said. "So then we started the fun search for songs."
Reese said he insisted on having the Poco song "Crazy Love" be what plays at the end during Jeff and Lizzy's escape as well as Steve's death.
The screenwriters said there was a large budget for music clearances and every penny was needed — especially for the Supertramp classic, "The Logical Song," which opens the movie.
"That one is super expensive as it turns out," Reese said.