HUSAVIK, Iceland — On a recent Monday, in the backroom of an
empty seaside hotel here, a group of locals gathered anxiously around a
computer livestreaming the 93rd Academy Awards nominations, waiting to discover
whether their campaigning had been successful.
اضافة اعلان
A little after 1pm came the good news, and the residents
heard the name of their town said in an American accent one more time:
“Husavik,” a song from the Netflix film “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of
Fire Saga,” was nominated for best original song.
The song gets its name from this tiny coastal town — which
is also home to the film’s main characters — and for weeks, residents had been
working to get the song an Oscar nomination.
“I teared up” on hearing the news, said Orlygur Orlygsson,
37, one of the campaigners gathered in the hotel. “The film gave Husavik
worldwide recognition, and we wanted to do the same for the song.”
Yet he was still shocked by the nomination, he said.
Among the 2,300 people living in this harbor town perched on
Iceland’s northern coast, Orlygsson may be the highest-profile fan of “Fire
Saga.” He owns a cafe called Ja Ja Ding Dong, named after a silly song from the
film. And in February, when “Husavik” was one of the 15 tracks on the Academy’s
longlist for best song, Orlygsson started the campaign to persuade Academy
members to nominate it.
“Fire Saga” tells the story of two musicians from Husavik,
played by Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams. The pair — who are “probably not”
brother and sister — are selected by default to represent Iceland in the
Eurovision Song Contest after a ship carrying more prominent Icelandic singers
explodes.
Off they go into the world of “neon lights and billboards,”
although in the end they discover that there’s no place like home. “Husavik” is
their Eurovision act, the film’s triumphant climax.
When the film arrived on Netflix in June, critics weren’t
impressed. Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for The New York Times that
“this over-egged farce whips slapstick and cheese into an authentic soufflé of
tastelessness.”
But fans of the Eurovision Song Contest — which attracts 200
million television viewers each year — embraced the film in a pandemic year
when the actual contest was canceled for the first time since its inception in
1956. And once the residents of Husavik began their online campaign, thousands
of those fans spread the word on social media.
The campaign features a fictional Husavik resident named
Oskar Oskarsson who, in a video posted to the campaign’s website, raves about
the town, where the only thing missing is “another Oskar.”
In the tongue-in-cheek video, a woman pretends that a fish
is an Oscar statue and residents leave gifts for elves to help with the
campaign.
“The people of Husavik are very excited,” says the
campaign’s website.
The video has been viewed up to 200,000 times across YouTube
and social media platforms, the organizers said.
The actor in the video is Sigurdur Illugason, a local house
painter who is now performing in the musical “Little Shop of Horrors” at the
Husavik theater club for a masked audience of 50.
Kristjan Magnusson, the mayor of Husavik, said the
campaign’s main value was to lift the spirits of people in the town.
“The fun of coming together for a big project is the most
important thing,” he said. “The rest is a bonus.”
Molly Sanden, who sings on the track for McAdams’ character,
praised the people of Husavik for rallying behind the song.
“The campaign shows the town has the heart and spirit the
song is about,” she said in a telephone interview from her native Sweden.
She said she hoped to visit Husavik as soon as the pandemic
is over to see the mountains, Northern Lights and sea gulls described in the
song’s lyrics.
The lyrics could apply to most of Iceland’s coastal
communities, and the song’s demo was written with Husavik as a place holder
before the film’s director and producers visited Iceland to decide on a
location to set their film.
“I first heard a demo of the song when we were driving
around Iceland scouting for locations,” said Leifur Dagfinnsson, who manages
the local production company True North, which worked on “Fire Saga.”
The initial plan, he said, was to find a town on the
southern half of the island near Reykjavik, the capital, to save money on
transportation. Husavik is closer to the Arctic Circle and had never been the
location for an international film production.
But the strong demo featuring Husavik tipped the balance in
favor of the northern town.
“Husavik is easier to pronounce than other Icelandic town
names,” Dagfinnsson said.
That gave it a clear advantage lyrics-wise over
Stykkisholmur (Stikk-is-hohlm-ur), a town that he said “would have made sense
from a budgetary point of view.”
Widely predicted to win best original song is “Speak Now”
from “One Night in Miami” or the Golden Globe winner “Io Si (Seen)” from “The
Life Ahead.” Also nominated are “Fight for You” from “Judas and the Black
Messiah” and “Hear My Voice” from “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” the third
Netflix film in the category.
Win or lose, “Husavik” is now part of the fabric of the town
here. The local soccer team, the Volsungs, blasts the soundtrack before
matches, and the children’s choir regularly performs the Icelandic part of the
song.
Savan Kotecha, an executive producer of “Fire Saga,”
co-wrote the lyrics to the song using Google Translate for the Icelandic lines
and Google street view to get a sense of the town.
“It didn’t occur to me the song would come to have a special
meaning for the people there,” he said in an interview. “Now, in all sincerity,
we want to win for Husavik.”
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