‘Greatest Beer Run Ever’ Musical Composer Dave Palmer Talks Emotionality of the Piano Score

Awards Daily talks to Dave Palmer, music composer for The Greatest Beer Run Ever on Apple TV+, about the importance of the piano score and how real-life tragedy inspired one of the film’s most memorable musical pieces.

When you think of movies about the Vietnam War, a thoughtful piano score isn’t always the first thing to come to mind. In most Vietnam movies, the war has been musically narrated by Creedance Clearwater Revival and revved up with dangerous strings. But piano is what director Peter Farrelly asked of composer Dave Palmer.

“When he first asked me to do it, I didn’t know what the musical context would be,” says Palmer. “He likes to use a lot of licensing, so I knew that there would be a lot of period-era-appropriate licensing and maybe he’d want me to do orchestral stuff around that. But our first actual meeting talking about Beer Run, he referenced piano things, solo piano in particular. And he hadn’t seen Beginners, so it wasn’t coming from that. That’s just what he wanted.”

So while Farrelly and his crew were filming in Thailand, Palmer started sending him music.

“A fair amount of that music that was just off the top of my head in the house ended up in the movie, which made my job a lot easier! We were on the same wavelength.”

The Piano is the Emotional Anchor of the Film

The Greatest Beer Run Ever follows Chickie (Zac Efron), a good-time hard-drinking merchant seaman, who decides to pick up a merchant job to Vietnam just to share a beer with his military friends, to show them that everyone back home is thinking of them. Often, the piano music offers a glimpse at Chickie’s center.

“To me, I felt that the piano pieces musically were the emotional anchor of the film. I knew [Farrelly] wanted simple stuff and knew the kind of stuff he didn’t like. I kept that in mind. All of the licenses are really putting you in the time and evoking the emotions of the time, but the piano stuff is serious. Even though Pete puts a lot of humor into everything he does, the movie is also very serious. The piano helps with that.”

Palmer says that Farrelly is very adamant about following your gut as an artist, and that’s exactly what the composer did—and it usually paid off. When Chickie and Arthur (Russell Crowe) are driving to the amo dumps together in a scene toward the end of the film, the piano score was inspired by real-life tragedy.

“A really close friend of Pete and mine passed away while he was filming in Thailand. I knew Pete would want to know, so I sat down and just spontaneously created this piece of music to send to the family, sort of my gift to them. I knew Pete would want it and I never intended for it to be in the film at all. It was a dedication to our dear friend and that piece of music is exactly what I played, and it’s the complete piece and it’s in the movie. He loved it and he put it in, he cut that scene to it. It’s one of the only times in the whole movie where it’s just score. It’s a really poignant moment in the movie.”

Slowing Down ‘Cherish’

Palmer also musically pays homage to the Association’s 1966 hit, “Cherish,” a song that has resonance for Chickie as well as Farrelly.

“[Farrelly] loved ‘Cherish,’ and we discussed that song so many times before he started filming. He knew he was gonna put it in the helicopter scene. I said, ‘You know what would be fun? If I slowed it down and made it languidly beautiful.’ It’s a very beautiful song in its original form, but I thought if it was made slower—that melody’s so beautiful and you really hear that it’s the melody as opposed to the chords and harmonies going by—I thought it would be really cool. That’s actually two pianos.”

To create the slowed-down “Cherish,” Palmer played the chords on one pass and then the melody on the second pass that could be controlled with the mix. He sent it to Farrelly, and once again, did not think the director would do anything with it—and then it ended up in the movie.

While Farrelly asked for piano as the main theme, there were two specific scenes where he asked Palmer to do something a little different.

“When he’s escaping in the jungle and when they’re going through the streets during Tet at night, those were done completely different. None of it is associated to piano at all; it’s a lot more functional to the scenes and Pete wanted that. He really wanted the original score to push the feeling instead of a licensing in those scenes.”

So Palmer created tension with some low drones and basic brass and string arrangements. At this point in the composing process, Farrelly was editing the film in Ojai, where Palmer also lives, so they were able to collaborate back and forth in the same complex.

“Ultimately, we brought real brass players and real strings players in when everything was completely locked. That was a journey that Pete and I went on together. Those pieces really wrote themselves.”

Pete and Palmer on Broadway?

After the more dramatic Beer Run, Palmer and Farrelly are working on something a bit lighter for their next collaboration: a musical adaptation of Farrelly’s 1998 comedy There’s Something About Mary. Will there be a song for the iconic hair gel scene?

“We are almost to that,” Palmer says with a laugh. “Right now, we’re concentrating on a three-part thing, where it’s the franks-and-beans moment, to put it as politely as possible. There are some really great songs. It’s very clever, and Pete has been really painstaking with it. He’s really poured himself into it. It’s the first time he’s ever written songs, and as a musician and songwriter myself, I’ve been impressed with how quickly he’s taken to it. The way he’s adapted to it has been pretty amazing. But yes, we do have a few early ideas for that scene. We have a decent amount of songs, but we still have quite a bit of work to do.”

The Greatest Beer Run Ever is streaming on Apple TV+.