Watch: Trailer For Indie Drama ‘Norman’ With Soundtrack By Andrew Bird

Hear The Song “Hospital” From The Score Below

For his sophomore feature film, director Jonathan Segal has rounded up quite the array of talent both in front of and behind the camera. To help tell the story penned by Talton Wingate, he’s got veterans Richard Jenkins and Adam Goldberg to slot into supporting roles around his young leads Dan Byrd (“Cougar Town“) and Emily VanCamp (“Brothers & Sisters“) and to power it all, none other than Andrew Bird has written an original score. The result is “Norman” and it promises to be a quietly affecting drama about the pain of adolescence.

The story centers on the titular Norman, your typical high-school nobody whose teenage life is made more difficult by the death of this mother and his father’s battle with stomach cancer. Enter Emily, the rare girl who knows Monty Python sketches, who begins a relationship with Norman, understanding the difficulties he’s going through. The trailer for the film below starts out as your average indie, high-school comedy but then goes into interesting directions, promising something a bit more emotionally honest and insightful than we usually get in the genre. It’s certainly took us by surprise, turning out to be more moving than expected.

Rounded out with tunes by The Blow, Chad VanGaalen and Wolf Parade, the movie will hit theaters on October 21st and you can pick up Bird’s score on October 11th. Synopsis, trailer, tracklist, poster and the song “Hospital” are all below to give you a taste of “Norman.”

Norman Long is a high school loner, a self-aware and darkly funny teen who’s just trying to handle his daily existence. In the wake of his mother’s sudden death, Norman must now also deal with the reality that his father is starting to lose his battle with stomach cancer.

Norman, depressed and angry, unintentionally gets caught in a lie that he, in fact, has stomach cancer. Soon his complete distortion of the facts spirals out of control. Part coping mechanism, partially as a way to feel closer to his father, and to a certain degree to prepare others for his possible suicide, Norman begins to imitate his father’s debilitating physical symptoms, dramatically affecting his life and the world around him.

Emily, a magnetic girl with one of those rare enchanting smiles, gets caught up in Norman’s fabrication and struggles with her deep rooted romantic feelings in the face of Norman’s “impending” death. Ultimately, Norman must confront a burning set of conflicting emotions as he struggles to define his relationship with his father, his love for Emily, and ultimately who he will be as a young man.

“Norman” Soundtrack Tracklisting
1. Scotch And Milk
2. 3:36
3. Arcs and Coulombs
4. Hospital
5. S.O.S
6. Nice Hat / Exit Sign / Angelo Speaks
7. Medicine Chest
8. Kiss / Time and Space / Waterfall
9. You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son
10. Cancerboy Strikes Again / Monsterstream
11. Rabid Bits of Time
12. Build Up To the Fall
13. Epic Sigh / the Python Connection
14. Bridge
15. Night Sky
16. Afterspeak / Things Come To a Head
17. Darkmatter
Hospital by AndrewBird