If it wasn’t for Stuart Murdoch’s visit to a faith healer during the early ’90s, his band Belle & Sebastian may have never existed. The adored Scottish indie-pop outfit released their first album in 1996 and rapidly established themselves as their generation’s version of The Smiths but it was only the lead singer’s recovery from chronic fatigue syndrome that made it possible.
“When I visited the healer, it felt quite innocuous,” Murdoch tells The Post. “But a couple of weeks after, I had what you might call a nervous breakdown. I became mentally unstable for a year after, but subsequently, I started to improve. It felt like demons were coming out of me.”
It’s one of the main personal experiences that informs Murdoch’s first feature film — “God Help the Girl” — a musical that opens Friday. The plot revolves around a fragile character named Eve (played by Australian Emily Browning), who slowly addresses her own demons — chiefly depression and an eating disorder — by forming a band with her friends.
Some of the details might be different, but Belle & Sebastian fans will have no problem spotting the parallels between art and reality. “You can’t have a film about someone with chronic fatigue syndrome,” says the 46-year-old. “It’d be too boring.”
The idea for the project first came to Murdoch in 2003 and it was first realized as a soundtrack album that came out in 2009. At long last, it’s finally made it to the big screen and marks a promising directorial debut for Murdoch. There could have been more in the pipeline, but Spike Jonze beat him to the punch.
“About four years ago, I came up with a concept about a girl who has a computer, which runs her whole house,” he continues. “The computer becomes her mentor. But then, Spike came out with ‘Her,’ which is basically the same premise but with the gender reversed.”
Even with movie big-wigs pushing to attach him to another film quickly, Murdoch decided to return to recording with Belle & Sebastian, who have an album due out next year.
“I don’t want to attach myself to just anything,” he concludes. “The band still comes first, but when we write songs now, I find myself wondering if there’s a film that could go with it.”