Aside from his younger brother, Jeff, Mychael Danna has had another very significant collaborator – filmmaker Atom Egoyan. From 1987 through 2005, Egoyan-Danna collaborations have included the films “Family Viewing”, “Speaking Parts”, “Montréal vu par…”, “The Adjuster”, “Gross Misconduct”, “Exotica”, “Felicia’s Journey”, “The Line”, ‘Ararat”, and “Where the Truth Lies”. From among this list of great films, “Ararat” (2002), about the Armenian Genocide of 1915, stands out as an unparalleled work of art. Danna’s heartbreaking score for this unsettling film was recorded in Armenia by Armenian musicians performing on indigenous instruments, lending the score a unique depth of feeling and an authentic sense of geographic color. Mychael Danna’s compositional voice stands apart from the traditional Hollywood sound. Far away from Les Angeles’s chaos, Mychael lives amid a serene Canadian landscape of water and trees, where his music thrives on his fresh, creative energy and unique sensibility. Why film music as a career? It was kind of an accidental thing. When I was growing up, a film composer wasn’t really a career path in the sense that now it is kind of a viable option. In fact, even the university where I studied music now is offering film music courses, which are becoming more and more popular on university calendars today. When I went to school for composition at the University of Toronto, that wasn’t really an option, and certainly the local film industry at that time was pretty small and Los Angeles was a long way away. It wasn’t something that people really thought about. While I was at school, I wrote music for all kinds of different things and places – from advertisements and industrials to theater. That’s where I met Atom Egoyan and then did my first score for a small National Film Board of Canada film that he was doing called “Family Viewing”. How do you approach a project? The most important thing is to take a lot of time to think and talk to the director before you write a single note. It’s really important to come up with a concept – to really let things kind of form together, especially in the subconscious, which I feel is a major part of the creative process. Watch the film, talk to the director, and try to understand the underlying themes, or what is required by the film, and also what the director is trying to say so that you can help through music. I generally start by trying to figure out what instruments to use, where the music is placed, and how hot and how cold it is. But sometimes I get ideas that just jump into my head right from the beginning. Of course, there’s this whole new and destructive element of the temp score. It kind of screws up the whole composing process because a lot of your choices seem to be made before you even come on to the film, and half of your work as a film score composer is getting people to stop listening to the temp score. Quite often filmmakers feel it’s a compliment to temp with your own stuff, but I find that’s even more disturbing and confusing. It actually doesn’t tell me anything. I turned down a film last week because the director was very attached to the temp score, which I felt was a wrong fit, but they had already made their decision. It’s what they wanted. That was unfortunate, because, if they had brought the film to me without the temp score, I probably would have done it. It was a well-made film and I liked the story. Temping is one of the two very disturbing current film trends that work against film music. The other, while we’re on the subject of bad things happening in film right now, is the incessant editing and changes that go on way past the date when they should stop. That has really made it difficult to make a good score. What sort of storyline or genre suits you or your style best? That’s a good question. For every composer, there is an ideal sort of setting that inspires him. Not everybody is lucky enough to be able to find or be able to work in that setting because people are cautious, and once you’ve done one, say, a romantic comedy, you’ll be doing them for the rest of your life – whether you want to or not. But, for me, the films that I really get excited about, inspired by, and are reflected by my best scores are the films that have layers of meaning, that have subtext. These are complicated films in the sense that they may have paradoxes and contrasts in what is on the surface and what is going on underneath. Those are the films that I find most fun to score, and, I think, I’m best at. You’ve collaborated with Atom Egoyan on several projects. What is your relationship with him like, in comparison to other people with whom you’ve worked? Well, I’ve had a long relationship with Atom. We started out together. I learned about film scoring with him, and he learned about film-making with me. It’s a very special, treasured relationship, one where I’m trusted, and that means I get the most excited. Atom trusts me more than anyone. He gets excited when I get an idea and encourages me to follow it. It’s very inspiring. So I’ve done some of my most interesting things for him. The other long-term relationships I’ve had are with Mira Nair and Ang Lee. With Mira, I did “Kama Sutra” and “Monsoon Wedding”, and now I’m starting her new film. I think I’ve been able to do some nice stuff with her as well. Ang Lee and I have worked on three, and perhaps I’ll call “Hulk” a half. I think when somebody comes back to work with you again, it’s a sign of trust and a sign that they enjoy your work. That’s inspiring. You want to try and preserve that. Tell me about working with Denzel Washington on “Antwone Fisher”. I expected a first-time-director experience, and it quickly became apparent that that was not what it was going to be. The man has spent his whole life in the filmmaking process – on the front line, as an actor dealing with directors, and obviously he is one of the greatest actors alive. And all he did was take his extraordinary skill and sensitivity toward acting and apply it to music, and he because a fantastic director of music. It was a really fun experience. He would say things like, “I don’t know anything about the music end of things,” and few weeks later, he’d be saying, “You know, I think that in take three the oboe was more in tune in bar eight.” He really bowled me over with how quickly he picked up the technical side of the music process. His whole understanding of pacing and rhythm as it applies to acting was totally applicable to music. Sometimes he would show me something he wanted me to do by acting a scene in two different ways, a couple of times scaring the hell out of me, reliving a scene from “Training Day” in my little studio, as I cowered in the corner. He’s a very smart, savvy filmmaker, and he just happened to be on the other side of the camera. You can tell by his performances that he puts a lot of thought into what he does and a lot of thought into what a good film is and how to make a good film. His directing is a natural extension of that, and I think it shows in the final product, a very beautifully crafted film. What challenges does being in Canada present to you in terms of getting US projects? It’s definitely a handicap in some ways. But, I think it’s an advantage in some ways, too. It’s an advantage to my work. I think I write better music because I live here. I’ve worked in Los Angeles, and I find that it’s really impossible to live in that city and not be aware of what everyone else is doing and what everyone else is thinking. And, you know, it’s only human to be affected by that. For the kind of work that I’m probably best suited for, it is best for me to live like I do in the middle of nowhere. I live in the woods on a lake, which kind of makes my whole worldview a little bit different. It just frees up my mind. It takes pressure off of me in a sense and probably makes my work a little more original, a little different. The disadvantages are obvious. Obviously, it’s hard for me to take meetings immediately. For Denzel’s film, I relocated to Los Angeles for six or eight weeks. I’ve done that several times. It’s something that I adjust to when I need to. I worked on “Girl Interrupted” from here and hardly ever came down to work with James Mangold. I would send him MP3 cues that he would put up on his end, and we’d discuss them on the phone. It was very efficient. He’d press Play at his end, and I did the same. We’d watch it, and he’d give me his feedback. Then we’d both put down the phone and go back to work. What has influenced the creation of your sound? I grew up and started working and continue to work far from the center of American filmmaking. I think that’s the biggest thing right there. I’ve discovered how to make film music without any help or instruction – without any influence, really. I didn’t even watch films very much when I was growing up. How about musical influence outside of films? As you can tell from my body of work, ethnomusicology is a huge passion of mine. I love traveling and meeting and working with different musicians from different cultures and different places. It’s a real excitement for me. It’s something that I’ve tried to bring into my film music and make valid and reasonable and artistically intelligent as added colors and choices. That’s one of the most exciting things for me. Would you explain your use of ethnic sounds intertwined with a pulsating percussive synth sound in “Exotica”? Why did you choose to give your music that Middle-Eastern edge? The Club Exotica in the film is supposed to be kind of otherworldly. It’s not supposed to be a typical bar in your town. There’s supposed to be something very odd and a bit twisted about it, but also something enticing and very elegant and beautiful and sexy. I think the atmosphere of the film has a sort of tangible quality to it that is very important to the effectiveness of the film. And I think that my musical choices were really a big part of that. Most of your projects are serious and intense, but “Bounce” is a different story. It seems like a natural transition, though. How as it breaking away from your more offbeat style of movies? The interesting thing is that I found it a lot more difficult. I don’t know if there’s something perverse about me as a human being, but I found it really difficult to write lighter, more fun music. I don’t even think I want to think about that too much. I found the experience really difficult and challenging. I’m glad you think it worked and was effortless, but – believe me – it wasn’t. What I liked most was the edge it had. It wasn’t a typical love story or light drama with soft string melodies. You held to your sound and dared to take a different approach. I respect that. Well, thank you. I think that a lot of American filmmaking is very afraid of that kind of color, that darker element. Studio executives criticize it. They don’t think that it’s an attractive emotional choice. “Bounce” was a film where the director wanted to play up some of the darker elements of the story. And there is some very dark stuff in that film, but the studio typically will want to gloss over that kind of thing and make the music kind of happy and fun. That’s a conflict that I deal with a lot. I found it very interesting that on the “Bounce” CD cover, for instance, every single picture is of somebody smiling. That’s no accident. And I find that really absurd, so I’m probably not very comfortable with those sorts of films. Which one of your own works are you most proud of? That’s a tough question. It’s like asking a mother to pick her favorite kid. I love “Monsoon Wedding”, and I think part of the reason that I love it is because of where it came in my life. It’s a really brilliant film, and I think the music really works. Believe it or not, I wrote that score in only one week. Then I got on a plane and went to India for seven days to record all the instruments there. When I came back, I mixed it for a week. So the whole score took three hellish weeks. At this same time, I was engaged to an Indian girl, so we went to India together. It was just like we were living the movie. For sentimental reasons, “Monsoon Wedding” is way up there. “Ice Storm” is way up there. “Exotica” is way up there. “Ararat” is way up there. Those are probably the ones. “Regeneration” is one of my favorite films that I’ve ever worked on, although no one’s ever seen it. What is the most rewarding aspect of your career? The most rewarding moments I’ve had are when I do things that are really unusual and that nobody else would have thought of and they work and are good. Those are hard moments to come by, and they don’t happen very often, but once in a while they do. When you mix together instruments that shouldn’t really go together or never have been together before and it works and does something really profound in the film, that’s a huge thrill. And just working with certain musicians can be a thrill. Going to Armenia, for instance, and recording an Armenian choir in a sixth-century church in the middle of nowhere [for “Ararat”] was a thrill. It was just unbelievably moving to be recording something by candlelight in the country where the song was written twelve hundred years ago.