Although his name isn’t in its credits, the late David Bowie was a big inspiration behind director Greta Gerwig‘s new movie version of the classic novel Little Women.

Gerwig, star Saoirse Ronan and score composer Alexandre Duplait spoke about the role Bowie played in the the film’s acting and music in an interview with Variety.

Gerwig says she played Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream” over and over to Ronan during a scene in which they watch the book Little Women being printed. Ronan says she always thinks about the song when she watches the movie and compares her character, Jo March, to Bowie.

She also says that, like Gerwig, she loves Bowie. She calls him, “Somebody who was so androgynous and fluid and was a real game changer” and describes his music as being “from another stratosphere.”

Desplait described the instructions he got from Gerwig in their first conversation: “I want the score to be like Mozart…but Mozart meets David Bowie.”

Despite the movie being a period piece, Ronan calls it “totally rock and roll. What [author] Louisa [May Alcott] did was revolutionary, and it was a very rock and roll move for a girl to write this book about her sisters and get it sold and keep the copyright and have it be one of the most successful books of all time.”

Today would have been David Bowie’s 73th birthday.  He was born on January 8, 1947 and died of liver cancer on January 10, 2016.