Being the Ricardos

Aaron Sorkin’s latest covers some of the inside story behind the classic sitcom I Love Lucy. It presents a short and tumultuous period around September 1952, offering a behind-the-scenes view regarding Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’ relationship, both as business partners as well as in marriage. Their daughter, Lucie Arnaz, had extensive input on both script and casting.

As one might expect, the trailer’s music is all about extending and playing with the theme music for I Love Lucy. Originally composed by Eliot Daniel as a favour to the show’s producer, Jess Oppenheimer, the song would become one of the most recognizable television themes of all time.

In a relatively rare occurrence, Sorkin specifically commented on the use of the music in the trailer, noting that he was happy in the end that the editors ignored his direction not to “lean into I Love Lucy”. At the same time, the trailer doesn’t quite advertise the connection to Lucy either—at the beginning, we only hear the percussion. At 0:16 we get a few synch points in a row, with the guitar strum followed by a lighter opening, and a pen tapping to the beat; the rhythm really gives it a drive and vitality that otherwise would have been missing. An accent note at 0:19 is matched on screen with a trombone—music has always figured pretty heavily in the show; it’s no surprise given that the film is set to include four musical numbers.

By 0:30 we’re given a full view of what appears to be the band that has been playing the soundtrack music the entire time—Desi Arnaz and his orchestra, at Ciro’s. Another synch point—a close up at 0:32 on a trumpet valve—brings up back out to various scenes involving the cast. The harmonic rhythm picks up here, as does the drama and the frequency of scene changes; notice the extra synch point at 0:44 as the newspaper hits the ground, presaging a rapid montage of scene changes in double time. All this synching of image with scene gives the impression that the video was cut to the music—or it the other way around? The montage leads to a blackout at 0:47 as the music ends, for a moment.

Crucially, the dialogue in this brief reprieve for the music focuses more on the front-facing show business; director Jess Oppenheimer (Tony Hale) declares “action” on set; we hear the squelch of grapes in glorious high-definition, black and white footage; by 0:57 the music starts to come back, first with a building, cacophonous crescendo to match the audience’s applause. Finally, at the tail end of this, the film’s title card, much in the style of I Love Lucy, hits our eyes. Further, we hear the full theme that was hinted at for the past minute, re-recorded in high-fidelity glory.

Being the Ricardos arrives in theatres on December 10th for a short exclusivity window before its release on Prime Video on December 21st.

— Curtis Perry