75 years ago, John Dillinger mesmerized the country when he robbed scores of banks across the Midwest, escaped from jail twice and murdered a number of people. Dillinger is the subject of “Public Enemies”, a new film directed by Michael Mann and starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. And the film's score was written by Elliot Goldenthal, who'd already won an Academy Award in 2002 for “Frida”. “Public Enemies” opened a couple of weeks ago, but Elliot Goldenthal joins me now, and I'm pleased to welcome you back to our show.
Thank you, Leonard.
You once said that you're attracted to the chronicle of the outsider.
Yes.
Do you see John Dillinger as an outsider?
Well for a while he was an outsider; then he quickly became an icon. What attracts me to him is the stark contrast between coming from dust bowl America and basically being dressed in prison fatigues and coming from, you know, a little better than Midwestern-Auschwitz kind of an environment, to immediately being a fashion pin and visiting Chicago, which is basically a new shining city with arguably some of the best architecture. Arthur Sullivan, etc. etc., and his detail of millinery and choice of tie-tacks and shoes and everything and practically in one day and being a rock star Robin Hood type of figure almost immediately. Also the fact that he was an anachronistic figure; that he was sort of the last of the cowboy type.
You mean, modernized Jesse James.
Exactly.
As opposed to Al Capone, who represented a different kind of criminality.
As opposed to syndicate-type of guys which relied on mechanization and getting money from the races. The numbers, for example. They can make more money in working the numbers every day than Dillinger, you know, two years’ work. So he was faced with a whole different world that type of criminal was used to.
Now, thinking about writing a score, do you do all that kind of research and think about the life of this person? Or are you responding more to the images on the screen?
Well, in the final analysis, you have to respond to everything on the screen. But to have that sort of analogy, or have that format of thinking – dustbowl versus gleaming city – and everything that urbane-type of environment that took in sophisticated symphony orchestras, as well as a kind of Roy Acuff kind of dustbowl Americana.
Well, it's a transitional time; we've gone from the roaring ’20s into the Depression, but a lot of that roaring ’20s stuff lingers, at least, for part of society. And when you, I asked you whether you rely on the images – are you already writing themes before the film is cut, or do you wait until something like a working cut is put together before you really start thinking seriously about it?
Well, with an exception of ‘Bye-Bye Blackbird’ – Diana Krall cut had to arrange that before the movie because she had it sing it on camera, so that was a pre-record.
My other considerations were just working on experiments that I can show Michael Mann, to institute ideas that I had. But everything came together rather fast; he's a workaholic, so practically the day after he wrapped in Chicago there was plenty of material to – you know, the editorial staff prepared a good deal of stuff for me to crack.
Well films these days are pretty much being edited at the same time as they're being shot, so you could probably get a real good sense get a rough cut. And you'd worked with Michael Mann before on “Heat”.
On “Heat”, 13 years ago prior to this.
But that's a big gap. Has he changed a lot? And does he does he have an input? Does he say to you, ‘Elliot, I really want something slow, and I want a little Berlioz here, I want a little Beethoven here’?
Yeah, from time to time he may say something like that. But I think he wants things to be surprising. I think at one point he mentioned he wanted a deranged Guy Lombardo, and at one point he mentioned Mahler, but usually you have to, you know, present them with stuff and be prepared and changing every day, because that's the way he works. You never walk through the same river twice with Michael Mann.
Well, you also come up with certain themes that you reprised through the film; they are meant to evoke certain kinds of repeated emotions?
Yeah, the themes that survived were themes that evoked a dolefulness as well as a sense of iconhood.
Well, there's one theme that reminded me very much of a jazz classic; I’d like to play it for you. Two versions. And then we sped up something that you did 3x to get at least a little closer to that tempo.
Well, the scene that I was doing was very Americana. He was in a car and you see the trees and rustling by and it was a safehouse that it was going to. Any reference to John Coltrane there was totally unconscious; the application was in another stylistic arena. Maybe a series of four or five notes, but any listener that finds enjoyment with that, I'm with them. I'm with them.
Well, there is a fair amount of jazz because there's Billie Holiday throughout the score. Do you choose when he turns on the radio and we hear Billie Holiday – is that something that you chose as part of the score?
I think that was something that Michael and I were completely in agreement with. I can't imagine a more perfect singer to represent American music than Billie Holiday.
You know, Friday is the 50th anniversary of her death; I've been thinking a lot about Billie Holiday recently, and she really does set the mood here. And you also have blind Willie Johnson.
Yes. I think Billy's first recording was in 1931 with, actually, Benny Goodman.
And Dillinger's, what, 33 or so when he really bursts on the scene?
Yes.
Now what's the difference between scoring a movie from composing a piece that's written to be a standalone?
I don't understand your question.
Well, if you, I mean, you've written symphonic pieces, you've written things that have not meant to serve a movie or be background music of some sort or another – in the end, is composing composing?
Yeah. In the end, in collaboration forms in the cinema, you have to think about, you're just one component, or sometimes you're the stand-in-front component. But, you know, the situation dictates it. It's no one – you don't come in there to dominate a movie; you come in to make the best movie, you know? Sometimes you have to step forward, sometimes you have to support everything else, including acting, the pace, the cadence, the lighting, the story, the situations between characters… There's no one thing. For example, leitmotivs; people talk about that a lot, but it's not really one of the most important things. It's just so many things to adjust to in cinema
Some composers for film almost seem to be telling us what we should be feeling at any given moment; you don't seem to do that. You seem to be much more of the, set some kind of a mood and then let the actors tell us what we should be thinking. That must be a conscious decision on your part.
I really trust the actors and, you know, I'm there to support the performance. I'm there to support what what's behind the eyes of an actor, to pin spot, to elucidate the decision-making process that turns the key to the next scene or the next event.
So when you're doing “Frida” it's – you're thinking very differently than when you're doing something like this or when you're doing a video game like “Final Fantasy”. Again you're thinking totally differently? I mean, in the end does it all wind up Elliot Goldenthal?
Yeah. Yeah, it all winds up me, but different thinking processes and different muscles you're using. Writing for cinema has similarities because you're dealing with fixed time; when you're working on a symphonic work or operatic work, you don't have that problem; you know, you can write an adagio for 45 minutes. In film you have to be eloquent or be invisible for 11.124 seconds.
And they actually give it to you that way? I mean, they say this, you have to write a piece of music that goes exactly 70 seconds?
It has to be. Yes, absolutely. You know, film travels, you know, 24 frames per second and things don't always line up on the round numbers, so you have to be – you know, you have to create time as being malleable not as fixed.
Do you try to meet the actors get a sense of what music might be appropriate?
No, because the actors do that job and it comes across rather clear on the on the final.
Now you've been in a relationship with Julie Taymor who is a director among other things, and directed some films; done an awful lot of theater. Does music play a role in your relationship?
Yes. Every day we're working on something new. We’re working on “The Tempest” right now and that's a very difficult challenge because the music is built into the Shakespeare; the meter in this particular work – Shakespeare wrote fabulous lyrics for some composer in the future, hopefully many times over and over, to write his or her take on the scene. And hence there were many pre-records in this particular film that I had to compose, and now the hard, double-hard work is writing a full score including the songs to “The Tempest”.
Well, ‘Twelfth Night’ now is being performed, or was it is it just over at the Delacorte and they came up with a lot of songs and pretty much a score, as well. I guess Shakespeare does lend himself to that more than many playwrights because they may have been singing some of those things in his performances.
Absolutely.
Now you also did with Julie Taymor you did “Frida” which you got an Oscar for.
Yes that was a special treat because it allowed me to delve into Mexican regional styles of music. The reason I say ‘regional’ is, you can't say ‘Mexican music’ because it's so varied. As well as in a classical world as well, where Diego and Frida came from; the sophistication of Mexico City as opposed to the multifarious musical styles that filtered in.
Right, well, they were in doing this sort of thing that you see in northern Mexico when they were hanging out with Leon Trotsky and some of the other important political figures of the time, and most of the great artists and working in Rockefeller Center and that must have been a lot of fun.
Must have been a great time.
I meant a lot of fun writing the music for that, thinking about that. With Dillinger you have a very concentrated period with Frida you had a story that covered a couple of countries.
“Frida” was a film for a film composer as – it was like Teflon. It resisted most types of music. When I wrote for a solo guitar, a guitar that had an instrument that you can actually take into bed with you since Frida spent so much time in bed.