All the details on The Day Michael Grew Wings

So one day I get a call from Charles Newman, the music supervisor for the film All These Small Moments. He says Melissa (the brilliant director of the film) has an idea for a video and would I be interested. I was oh so interested. So I booked a flight and stuff around a date we were all hoping would work but weren’t sure. Brian had jury duty earlier that week. Molly Ringwald has more important things to do and could just decide ‘never mind’ at any moment. Charles suggested I write a little cello part to help fill out the performance and says he knows a guy. I say hold on, I KNOW A GUY TOO! So I call Ward Williams, cello genius and longtime Brooklynite and he is just as enthusiastic as me.

So the day finally comes and it’s just as dreamy and surreal as you’d expect. everybody is super nice and professional, they actually know my song and have worked out the harmonies I emailed them. Pros being pros. And here I am trying to contain myself despite getting bombarded with blue steel like this all day:

Brian D’arcy James, Molly Ringwald, and Renee the studio owner who was prob the most interesting person there.

Seriously how charmed do you feel and you’re just looking at the photo? Just a sweet, sweet guy. Molly was great too, but I must say you can tell when somebody has been famous for so long that it’s a part of their every instinctual interaction. You can see the toll it’s taken, how there’s an invisible barrier around them that they had to put up decades ago and have lived with ever since. It’s amazing she’s as normal and nice as she is. I envy the professional success but I don’t envy that burden.

So we rehearsed for a few hours, then started filming takes. I think we did four takes and ended up using the last one. We had started at 10 and were done by 3. Lots of small talk about kids visiting colleges and music preferences (BDJ is a big Gabe Dixon fan). Everybody said goodbyes and disappeared out the door, each back into their own charmed, complex lives.

The director Melissa Miller Costanzo and me, just joshin I guess. Renee back there like photobombing is still a thing.

You won’t be shocked to hear it was one of the better days of my life. So grateful to everybody involved for making it happen, especially Melissa and Charles. Never even dared to put something like this on my bucket list and ended up crossing it off anyway. What a world.