Weird: The Al Yankovic Story looks poised to become the most beloved satirical biopic of the decade. The film is a realization of the movie promised in a fictional trailer posted to Funny or Die in 2010, and was written and directed by Eric Appel, who helmed the original short. Although original Yankovic actor Aaron Paul has been swapped out for Daniel Radcliffe, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story delivers on the promise of the original Funny or Die production.

Co-written by Eric Appel and "Weird Al" Yankovic himself, the film features true Yankovic-style off-the-rails comedy and is chock-full of both references to, and performances of, Yankovic's music. "Weird Al" himself re-recorded a number of his classic hits for use in the movie. To blend Al's music with the film's at-times-hilarious underscore, sound effects, and more, Yankovic and Appel turned to a team of top-tier sound designers and re-recording mixers including Tony Solis.

Related: Daniel Radcliffe Is Worried About Reactions To His Weird Al Movie

Re-recording mixer Tony Solis spoke with Screen Rant about working closely with Yankovic and Appel and the unique creative freedom he had on Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.

Tony Solis Talks Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al Yankovic and Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna

Screen Rant: It felt to me like your job was more heavily involved in the comedy of the film than on other projects, just because you're juggling a lot of really funny sound effects, music, and visual audio gags. Would you say that's the case?

Tony Solis: The simple answer for that would be that both Eric Appel and Al were very just, "Have fun," and were very open to all of our suggestions on the stage. Stopping music here, or pumping up these effects, or just completely cutting out everything that let a moment live on its own... Both of them were just so willing to have us play and have fun. That's what made it an absolutely unique process for me.

Usually, I'll get into a film, and we'll have everything set up, and we're just pushing or pulling here and there, be it a drama or an action movie, or a horror movie. But with this, they were just, "Do whatever you want, and we'll say yes or no to it." With that, it just opened up this world of like, "I can be a really big creative part of this, more than I ever have on almost any other film I've ever done." They want you to take all the risks that you want to take, and nothing is off the table.

If I didn't laugh at something, then Eric and Al would be like, "Why didn't Tony laugh? What would make it funny? Should we cut the music there? Should we cut this? Should we add this?" And moments like that, where anybody who was on the stage, be it our supervising sound editor Anthony Vanchure, or Jamie [Kennedy], our picture editor... like if we didn't laugh at stuff, it would be like, "All right. What did we do wrong?" Because if we've seen the scene 100 times, but we're still laughing, that means it's good. If something's not landing right, then, "Okay. What can we do with audio, with the sound, to punch it up?" Having that amount of playful access was just a completely unique process. Which was very Al of this to be, honestly.

This may be hard to answer without spoilers, but are there any scenes that you can point to where you felt like you had particular input, or that are a good example of that back-and-forth?

Tony Solis: The trip scene... that scene was a full-on audio sonic assault. We all had really strong input on how that was going to play out. Where we pushed and pulled, how big we were going to get, and how it builds, and all that stuff. I'm not going to get into any spoilers, but that was one scene where they were just like, "Well, you have a ton of sound effects to deal with. What would you do to make sure that everything lands right?"

And then, the other major thing of the whole movie was all the live performances. Al's and Eric's note to me was just, "Make it feel authentic to wherever they are. If it's outside, make it sound outside. If it's inside in an arena, make it sound like that." That was all on my shoulders. "How do we make that super authentic?" And that's where the technical knowledge and all that stuff takes over.

Al re-recorded all those parody songs, and he did that for the purpose that we could mix it in Dolby Atmos, so it's a big surround sound movie. He was able to give me all the individual stems of the music, of all the songs that played in the whole movie. That gave me access to weave the music into making it right for the space, making the accordion sound awesome, and making drums and bass and all of his vocals sound exactly right to the space.

Obviously, I was really anxious because Al's a musician and this is his music, and he's just sort of like, "Yeah. Do the thing." I'm like, "All right, well let me not upset him, first of all." He was just so stoked about everything I was doing with his music, bringing all of those older parody songs into the modern sound, I guess, and bringing it into a huge space. You're literally sitting inside of an accordion for some scenes. It's pretty ridiculous. I have a new appreciation for accordions after this movie. Trust me. I'm a musician myself, and I'm just sort of like, "Oh, accordions? I guess they're onto something there, because this is a great instrument."

I was going to ask if you were a musician. Was it a challenge to go from more traditional music mixing to doing something that's going to work in a movie theater?

Tony Solis: I've done a lot of music mixing in my career that has a surround, immersive element to it. The really fun challenge of this one was that we have these re-records of 80s songs, for the most part, [but] to fit the tone of the movie, I wanted things to feel "now" and modern, but not make it not sound like a Weird Al song.

If you're hearing "Like A Surgeon", you want it to sound like "Like A Surgeon", but how do I make it feel like it's a current song? Like, if you were watching another music biopic or a big musical performance. That's why Al did all the stems. He knew that I was a musician myself, and I could respect his music. He just said, "Make it sound good for a movie. Make it sound good for a theater."

Mixing in a really big theater that we were in, that's what I did for every performance. I would mute everything and just listen to the music, and make it fit right first, and then put everything else [in] - the ambiances, the sound effects.

It's no secret that Daniel Radcliffe is not actually singing in this film. How concerned were you with things like nudging the audio to make his mouth fit the performance? Or was that something that you didn't even worry about?

Tony Solis: If something was happening on screen that was a musical performance, especially with Daniel, we spent a lot of time on the technical side of things - volume automation, EQs, and compression - [to] make sure it was sounding like he was singing into the mic right in front of him. That was all taken into account. There are several scenes where you see Daniel on a mic and move his head away; I just grabbed a fader, and I would just face him, and make it feel... that's how I would trick the audience into, like, "Okay, we know that that's not Daniel singing, but when he moves his head, the volume dips." It compresses more, it does all this fun stuff, and it's just to keep you in the moment. My biggest goal was to have you not really question - not who was singing it, but just that it was coming from that moment.

Al was pretty adamant about that from the very beginning. I think his temp version to me already had a bunch of little volume rides, so I was just like, "All right. We're going to do this at a higher level. Let me make it super authentic to the space." And with my technical background and his artistic world, we just sort of brought that all together into making it work. I've seen the movie a million times, and there are times where I forget, honestly, and it's like, "Oh yeah, that's right. Daniel didn't sing in that part." Maybe on set he did, and that's why the sync is so good, and we nudge some lines here and there, but Daniel did a great job on set of lip-syncing perfectly, so it made it a lot easier to sell it. They filmed it in 18 days, [so it's] insane that they were able to get all the coverage that they did, and as good as they did. It just gave us more freedom to play with it, and not worry about sync and stuff too much.

"Weird Al" has such a wealth of content. Are there any Easter eggs or little things in the film that may reward careful listeners?

Tony Solis: I'd say during the LSD sequence we hid parts of "Eat It" in the sound design. Our sound designer Mike James Gallagher did a great job of putting the sonic circus together for us. I found out that the main sound effect from "Beat It" is just a single note on an old Synclavier, and he actually owns one, so he just recorded the notes, and they're in there. They get snuck in, and they pop up here and there for people who are kind of paying attention to what Rainn Wilson's character is saying during those scenes, and understanding what's starting to happen. That's when we start to sprinkle in that stuff. People that get it are automatically like, "Oh, that's so rewarding to find that little Easter egg."

And then the other one, one of my favorites, was before "Like A Surgeon". Since he is in a hospital, if you hear the heart monitor in the background, it's actually in the beat of the song, and it actually counts off the song after a while. It's in there the entire time, but then once the song kicks off, you realize it was always part of the song. That was just a complete happy accident that just ended up being in the right time. We just nudged the last few a little bit, and it kicked off the song so well that we decided that when we went back, we actually played up the heartbeat monitor a little bit more. Just to push it to get you to realize what's happening.

The movie is filled with Easter eggs of his career already. There are little moments of dialogue where you're already going to find, like, "Ah, they're about to get that! Oh, never mind. Ah! Oh, okay." That was rewarding for me, watching it. When I got sent the rough cut when I was offered the movie, within 10 minutes of watching it, I was like "Yes. I'm obviously going to do this," but I kept watching it. I was like, "Oh my God, this was written so well. It's so clever. There's all this stuff hidden everywhere." Everything that happens throughout the movie, it's ridiculous, but it all fits the tone. People thought that it would be like a really well-made Drunk History episode, or something like that, but it ends up being a legit amazing quality movie. It's a legit movie, and I think that speaks more about Al and his career.

People think that he's just a parody dude, but no. Working with him on this, I have so much more respect for the man. He's a genius at what he does. He knows what he's doing. Him writing this with Eric, I just have that much more respect. There's a reason he is who he is, and for him to make this movie is putting it on display for everybody that either loves him already, or doesn't know him and is now discovering him. It's just such a joy.

About Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Quinta Brunson and Daniel Radcliffe in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
Quinta Brunson and Daniel Radcliffe in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

The unexaggerated true story about the greatest musician of our time. From a conventional upbringing where playing the accordion was a sin, "Weird Al" Yankovic rebels and makes his dream of changing the words to world-renowned songs come true. An instant success and sex symbol, Al lives an excessive lifestyle and pursues an infamous romance that nearly destroys him.

Check out our other Weird: The Al Yankovic Story interviews here:

Next: Why Daniel Radcliffe Doesn’t Actually Sing In The Weird Al Movie

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story premieres November 4 on Roku TV.