Editor’s note: This story contains real-life details about Milwaukee musicians Mike and Claire Sardina that could be considered spoilers for the new movie about their lives, “Song Sung Blue,” in theaters Christmas Day.
A Neil Diamond biopic is not coming soon to a theater near you.
But Milwaukee’s Lightning & Thunder are heading to the big screen.
It’s the latest inconceivable chapter in the wild story of married musicians Mike and Claire Sardina. He was Lightning, she was Thunder, and together they performed in a Neil Diamond tribute act (that also touched on Patsy Cline, ABBA and other artists) from 1989 until Mike’s passing in 2006, frequently gigging at the Wisconsin State Fair, Summerfest and other spots in the Milwaukee area.
Their journey included a magical performance with Pearl Jam, the loss of part of Claire’s left leg in a tragic accident, and a musical passion and hard-fought perseverance captured in the 2008 documentary “Song Sung Blue” (available to watch on YouTube) that earned the praise of Diamond himself.
Nearly 20 years later, that documentary, and Lightning & Thunder’s story, has inspired an Oscar contender that’s in theaters Christmas Day. Also called “Song Sung Blue,” the biopic from writer/director Craig Brewer (“Hustle & Flow”) stars Oscar-nominated movie stars Hugh Jackman as Mike and Kate Hudson as Claire. Hudson has already earned a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.
“I am leaning into this probably more than [any project] I remember,” Jackman said about promoting “Blue” in a Journal Sentinel interview at Kegel’s Inn in West Allis on Dec. 2. In Milwaukee, that included attending a local premiere, with Claire in attendance, that Jackman himself had proposed. Jackman also served hundreds of scoops of frozen custard at Kopp’s, donated money and instruments during a visit to the Milwaukee High School of the Arts, sang “Sweet Caroline” with Claire and Milwaukee band 5 Card Studs at Landmark Lanes – and more.
“I am really proud of it,” Jackman said of the film. The actor signed to Brewer’s movie before a screenplay had even been written because he loved the documentary so much, eventually watching it 10 times.
“This is a love letter to the thousands of people that don’t become (big stars) who are great musicians,” Jackman said, suggesting Brewer’s treatment “was one of the best renderings of the power of family … and the way we show up for each other in tough times and our resilience and love and the love and power of music, and if that’s your calling, the need to get out and do it.”
“It is such a winner,” Claire Sardina said fervently about the new movie in a Journal Sentinel interview from her winter home in Arizona. When she first saw it at a private screening with her kids Rachel and Dayna (played by Ella Anderson and Hudson Hensley), “we bonded and hugged each other and bawled our eyes out.”
“I couldn’t believe it,” Sardina said of being contacted by Universal Pictures (which is releasing the film through Focus Features) about interest in a Lightning & Thunder biopic. “I was dumbfounded. Why us? Really? This story is going to be a major motion picture?”
“I was in shock.”
It’s understandable that Sardina may have been shocked – the subjects of “Song Sung Blue” make it different from virtually every other major music biopic that’s ever been made – but the story of Lightning & Thunder is remarkable.
The real-life love story of Mike and Claire Sardina, featured in ‘Song Sung Blue’
Born Claire Stingl, the youngest of six children in a working-class Milwaukee family, Claire was swept up in Beatlemania with her siblings in 1964 and began singing when she was three, said her older brother Jim Stingl, a retired Journal Sentinel columnist.
“Her level of enjoyment in the music was somehow deeper than what I had seen in my other siblings,” Stingl said. “The rest of our family doesn’t have that much musical talent.”
Mike, on the other hand, was the son of a jazz guitarist. Mike served in the Vietnam War as a “tunnel rat” – a traumatic experience Jackman said he heavily researched for his portrayal – and became an alcoholic and drug addict.
Mike ingrained himself in the Milwaukee music scene beginning in the ’70s, most notably as guitarist for accomplished local R&B group The Esquires and a collaborator with local Buddy Holly impersonator Mark Shurilla, who died in 2012. (Shurilla is played in Brewer’s “Blue” by “Sopranos” star Michael Imperioli.) Mike was sober when he met Claire, and remained sober for 25 years until his death. They connected through a mutual friend in 1987, after Claire had sent an audition tape to Mike for a band he was in.
Claire remembers first talking on the phone with “this low voice man” while sitting on her waterbed at home, prompting her to see one of his gigs.
“I was fascinated,” Claire said of watching Mike perform for the first time. “I said, ‘I have to tell you, I love your voice. You are so very talented.’ … He paused for a minute and said, ‘You are more beautiful than I ever imagined.'”
That band collaboration didn’t work out – Mike briefly moved to Florida soon after. And Mike’s wooing was not initially reciprocated – Claire was married, divorcing her first husband, Rachel and Dayna’s father, when Dayna was a baby.
“In 1989, I was a single parent of two young children on welfare … ready to move from one place to the next when I got a call from Lightning,” Claire recalled. “He said, ‘I am coming to town. How do you feel about being Thunder and we can get some music together?'”
“On April 11, 1989, I picked him up from the airport and we went to Ma Fischer’s for our first business meeting,” Claire continued. “He looked at me … took a puff of a cigarette, blows at my face, points at me and says, ‘You watch my smoke.’ … I started falling for him right there and then. This business meeting became more than business by the end of the night.”
Claire quickly fell for Mike, and so did her daughter, Rachel Cartwright, who currently lives in Wisconsin Dells and refers to Mike as “Papa.” She was four when Mike came into their lives. (Brewer’s adaptation condenses the timeline of Lightning & Thunder’s story, with Rachel already a teenager when she meets him.)
“He meant the world to me and he took the best care of us and paid the most attention to me even though he didn’t have to,” Cartwright told the Journal Sentinel. “I had a very close and special relationship with him.”
Mike and her mother’s relationship, Cartwright said, “was a fairy tale.”
“They loved each other deeper than I had seen people love each other,” Cartwright said. “Every moment of every day they spent together. … They worked together as a team to build their entire life.”
A Neil Diamond tribute act draws crowds
Lightning & Thunder was a relatively rare tribute act at the time in Milwaukee, said longtime local concert promoter Peter Jest, who has an autographed Lightning & Thunder picture on the wall of his club Shank Hall, placed there at Mike Sardina’s insistence.
“Him choosing Neil Diamond music was perfect,” Jest said. “It did attract a lot of generations. And Mike especially was a good self-promoter.”
Together Mike and Claire turned Lightning & Thunder into a solid business, making $1,000 a gig, double their mortgage payment in the ’90s, Cartwright said. They were such a local live show fixture, they even got married at the Wisconsin State Fair in 1994. At the Milwaukee “Blue” premiere Dec. 2, Jackman and Brewer gave Claire an engraved, permanent State Fair Park bench in Lightning & Thunder’s honor.
“I was born singing … but never did I have a man that taught me so well,” Claire said. “(Mike’s) number one love in life, maybe even over me, was being an entertainer, a true entertainer. … His showmanship, I learned from him.” She continues to share that showmanship, lining up a gig when she’s in town around the holidays Dec. 30 at Paulie’s Pub and Eatery in West Allis.
“(People) could see our charisma, they could see our love for each other coming through our performances,” Claire said of performing with Mike. “They could see the joy that we had in entertaining others.”
“Whenever I hear a Neil Diamond song, I think to myself, Neil Diamond sounds a lot like Mike,” Stingl, Claire’s brother, said. “He was so good and so immersed in being Neil Diamond.”
“He was a high energy kind of guy, just sociable, and what you saw on stage was very much the way he was,” Stingl added. “He loved the spotlight and performing for people and kissing the fans and all the stuff that went with it, and Claire certainly was sort of the same way. I think they were kindred spirits that created not only a musical act but a love story on the stage that people really connected with.”
Among those that forged a strong connection: Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder. Vedder or someone from his team saw Lightning & Thunder play a Summerfest gig on July 7, 1995, the night before Pearl Jam kicked off a two-night stint at the Milwaukee festival’s Marcus Amphitheater. At 1 p.m. July 8, Lightning & Thunder got a call requesting they join Pearl Jam during their encore, Claire recalled, with Vedder himself coming out, sitting on a stool to sing along to Diamond’s “Forever in Blue Jeans,” while Mike hammed it up with his signature sequin-jacket-waving move.
“Next to my wedding to Lightning and the birth of my children, it stands out to be one of the greatest moments of my life and my musical career – until Hugh Jackman,” Claire said.
A documentary is born, and tragedy strikes
The fan who had the greatest impact on Lightning & Thunder was Greg Kohs, director of the “Blue” documentary.
The Philadelphia-based filmmaker was in Milwaukee in the early ’90s covering a Harley Owners Group event for Harley-Davidson at Wisconsin State Fair Park when he thought he heard Diamond singing. A huge fan – “Diamond’s music is a trigger to me of sentimental, beautiful memories,” he told the Journal Sentinel – Kohs was convinced Diamond had shown up as a surprise performer and radioed his crew to track him down.
That led Kohs to a stage where Lightning & Thunder was “performing for a bunch of leather chap-wearing bikers dancing to ‘Sweet Caroline,’” Kohs recalled. “It was the most unexpected scene you could imagine. Their passion and love of what they were doing, just immediately, I wanted to share it. I just wanted to share that feeling with other people.”
Kohs ended up filming Lightning & Thunder for about 10 years, oftentimes around gigs in Wisconsin covering Green Bay Packers games for NFL Films.
“They performed with the same passion and energy and love of Neil’s music whether it was one person in the audience or thousands like at Summerfest,” Kohs said. “That was absolutely beautiful, and I connected with that as a filmmaker and a fellow artist.”
When tragedy struck Claire, “that’s when I really amped it up,” Kohs said. “I wanted to not just share their story, but help them.”
The Sardinas needed all the help they could get. On May 10, 1999, Claire was gardening in her front yard when a driver lost control of a car and struck her. She underwent multiple operations within the first 48 hours and became a below-the-knee amputee.
“In her prime she was taken down,” Cartwright said. “The flowers that were coming to the room were endless, the notes and the cards and the love that she received at that moment when she was hurt is what brought us through.”
But for the first time, Mike “couldn’t be Lightning,” Cartwright said. “It was really hard for him to go on and have the energy and excitement as he did before without her by his side.”
“She would not get out of bed and was so depressed. Before she lost her leg, she was rolling along pretty well making ends meet,” Stingl said. “But we were used to making due. This was not surprising that my sister survived this horrible accident and she came back. … There have been challenges for her throughout her life, and she has always responded with resilience and with joy and with hope.”
“Everything happens for a reason,” Claire said. “Sometimes I feel like God put me on this Earth to help others that are in my circumstances, being if they are disabled or down people, because a positive outlook on life is what has gotten me this far.”
Lightning & Thunder managed to make a comeback, but tragedy struck again. Mike, who had a history of coronary problems and even underwent a quintuple bypass surgery, fell and hit his head, passing away several days later on July 27, 2006, at 55.
“Once Mike passed, I felt like this was going to be an important document of someone’s life,” Kohs said of his documentary. It was completed in 2008, with music licensing approval from Diamond himself, who met Claire backstage before a Bradley Center concert that November.
From bar band to major biopic starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson
Kohs’ documentary earned two major prizes at the Slamdance Film Festival and made the rounds on the film festival circuit. After that, “we all thought it was over and everything was done,” Claire said.
Except there was what would become a pivotal screening of Kohs’ documentary at a Memphis film festival in 2009. Only six people were in attendance, Kohs said – but one of them was Craig Brewer.
“I saw a lot of myself in [Mike and Claire]. I saw a lot of my daughter in Rachel,” Brewer said. “I saw … that there is a toll to being an artist when you’re expressing something from yourself to entertain others, that there’s a lot of work that goes into it and a lot of mental anguish attached to it, especially when, for whatever reason, you can’t do it anymore.”
“This movie, it’s about surviving and about prevailing and trying to pull yourself through a difficult time,” Brewer said.
About 11 years after first seeing Kohs’ documentary, Brewer was turning 49, the same age his father was when he died of a heart attack. It made Brewer realize that “if there is a project that is important to you, now is the time to do it.”
“It was clear to me it was ‘Song Sung Blue,'” Brewer said. “I had to do what I could to convince everybody in Hollywood this is a movie people needed.”
The problem was no studio or buyer was convinced, Jackman said – except for Universal’s Focus Features, which recognized the story as “a musical ‘Rocky’,” Brewer said. Crucially, Brewer had convinced Jackman, who in turn suggested casting Hudson. But it might have been Mike Sardina himself who convinced Jackman to sign on to “Blue” more than anyone.
The actor cited a moment in the documentary when Mike, during a difficult financial time, turned on a stove not to cook, but for heat.
“I am determined, I am a hard worker, but I would have moved on to something else,” Jackman said. “Mike’s artistry was very particular and he stood by it, to his detriment at times. … That sort of doggedness and that sort of belief in his own artistry, no matter what, and also how we can rescue each other … that I learned a lot from.”
The most important people who needed convincing about Brewer’s biopic were Claire and her kids. All of them, and Mike’s daughter Angelina (played in the movie by King Princess), served as consultants as Brewer wrote the screenplay. They also were on set for over half of the film’s shooting days late last year primarily in New Jersey, Cartwright said.
Jackman expressed gratitude for items of Mike’s that Claire gave him almost every day on set.
“It was so beautiful,” he said, and praised Cartwright as “really, really helpful, still very much the glue of the family.”
Among Cartwright’s insights was a moment not captured in Kohs’ documentary, between Mike and Rachel right after Claire’s accident, that Brewer dramatized to become one of the most harrowing scenes in his film.
“Think about telling a story about your own life to a filmmaker who may take anything you say and run with it,” Brewer said. “It’s a very vulnerable place to allow that kind of exploration in your life. … We cared so much about them and we wanted them to feel comfortable experiencing whatever was happening on the screen.”
“The cast and crew and all of the workers welcomed us with open arms and they made us feel like stars in our own right,” Claire said. That care manifested in multiple ways, from meticulous recreations in the Sardina home – “Walking into that fake house was definitely one of the most surreal experiences,” Cartwright said – to Hudson bluntly telling Brewer he would regret cutting two scenes considered for the chopping block due to time constraints. (Both scenes made it into the final cut, Jackman said.)
As “Blue” begins its journey to Oscar and box-office-hit hopeful, Claire and Cartwright have had one incredible experience after another, from being surrounded by celebrities at the New York premiere, to reconnecting with old friends, to Milwaukee native Oprah Winfrey singing the movie’s praises, a recognition of her mother’s story that lifelong fan Cartwright long dreamed of.
‘Song Sung Blue’ Milwaukee homecoming a special full-circle moment
The best experience to come from “Blue,” Cartwright said, “was to show this work of love to all of our family and friends (at the Milwaukee premiere). … That night really meant everything.”
“I always felt the day we bring the film back to Milwaukee, that was going to be our most important day,” Jackman said. “It means a lot to have Claire and Rachel and Dayna here. … That’s incredibly special. … And also to honor this town.”
“I was on cloud nine,” Claire said of celebrating “Blue” in her hometown. “It’s going to make Milwaukee and Wisconsin proud. I believe it already has.”
Kohs was among those at the Milwaukee premiere.
“They have all made a beautiful film,” he said of Brewer’s adaptation. “It just tickles me. I’m so freaking happy.”
And if Mike were alive to witness what his life story had inspired, he would have been “ecstatic,” Claire said.
“Mike’s wish was for us to be in Vegas someday,” Claire said. “I think he would have thought this is greater than Vegas.”
“But he has also been present throughout this,” Claire added. “He was my soulmate, and he has been my angel.”
“I adore him still. I always will.”
This story was updated because an earlier version included an inaccuracy.
Contact Piet Levy at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.