Okay, I'm here sitting with Mr. Elliot Goldenthal, Oscar winner, Oscar-winning composer. And we're here sitting down talking about his newest work, “The Tempest” with director Julie Tamor. But to start off things, I guess, I'm sure you've been asked this all the time, but what got you started in music and like how did you find music and get into the visual, I guess visual arts of music?
Well, if music was a person, if music was an entity, it found me, you know? It found me because it took pity on me realizing that that's the only thing I could do. [laughs] Everything I was miserable at. I can't even drive a car. I'm a dum-dum when it comes to most things. Dyslexic, pathetic. And so music is at least something I can have a respectable time with in terms of visual aspect of that.
In general, my personality gets attracted to narrative or dramatic forms. So when it comes to music, theater, that includes ballet and opera. And the cinema was very important. The reason I say cinema, not film, is because when I was growing up in New York City, in my teens, there were two quote-unquote art house theaters that used to play classic movies, American stuff that was rarely shown, or Japanese cinema, you know, Italian, German, etc., etc. And I was exposed to composers like Bernard Herrmann and Nino Rota and so many great composers internationally that I said, Oh, that's really cool. That's something to aspire to, to be a part of in one's professional life.
And at what point, like, how old were you when this was all going on?
In my teens, high school time. And I just went to NYU Film School, put up a little message on the message board that I'll be willing to write music for free as long as they can pay musicians. So I did as many student films as possible, just to have a feeling for the language, have a feeling for the limitations and get my feet wet at that point. One thing led to another and here I am.
And you do not only films, but opera and ballet. And what are the major differences between scoring for, I guess, a live theatrical experience versus a film where you have pre-production, production, post-production, and where everything is kind of on the screen live, on the stage live? Do you prefer that or film? You love one more than the other?
No, no, I like going from one to another because it keeps me on my toes. It breaks up a feeling that you're in – it jostles you, it jostles you. I like that. The major difference is working with fixed time or malleable time on the stage in opera. You can write a thing that you think is three minutes long or five minutes long, but it can be three minutes and sixty seconds, fifty-nine seconds, it can be whatever. It can change depending on the soloist, the conductor, the feeling in the audience. Writing movie music is – you have to sometimes express with tremendous character one second, two seconds, ten seconds. That's the melody. You have to hang the whole movie on a ten-second melody. Working with fixed time is a whole different set of variables as a composer.
Do you like to get – I know some composers like Ennio Morricone and Hans Zimmer, do you like to get started in pre-production and look at the script and compose ideas? Do you like to see finished footage before you start getting ideas and stuff like that? When do you like to come in in that process?
Well, it changes for me because if, for example, on “The Tempest” there's six, seven songs and “Frida” was another number of songs that I had to compose. In that case you have to write the songs before you see any footage because they have to rehearse, they have to prepare it and sing it on screen many times.
In this particular case, in general, I'd rather see things really late, and if it's just composing, I'd rather see where the editor and the director at the studio sometimes have their tussles and back and forth and back and forth. With the “Interview with the Vampire", there was another composer I was replacing because the other composer had a previous commitment, so I had to do the score in like three weeks. And that was the best experience in terms of that because there was no futzing around with the editing and the scoring. It's coming out June 21st and that's all that's at. That's the fixed time.
Do ideas flow faster when you're that tight for time or are you kind of in a panic scramble mode at that point?
No, it's more of a reflexive process over a reflective process. You have to respond immediately. It's probably a better way even though you wish you would change this or that, but in general I think it's the best way for me, my personality, not to have a lot of time on my hands.
So you collaborate with Julie Taymor. You've worked on almost everything that she's done with film-wise. How important is that building of the relationship between the director and the composer as you and Julie? I mean you know her probably very well by now, and you've worked with her many times and does that make each... For “The Tempest” versus say, like, “Titus”, was it easier? Did you able to know what she was talking about? Did you guys have a better workflow?
I think in the communication area it's never a problem. I did five movies with Neil Jordan for example. I don't think there's a formula; it turns out that the first movie and the third movie with Neil was easier, more of a flow. I wish there was a clear answer to that. It always seems like you're starting for the first time. The only thing that's improved is, you have a trust, mainly coming from the director. ‘I know that Elliot somehow will figure it out and make it work because he made it work four or five times.’ You know, I can see that. But it's eternally difficult. Every project you start up it has its problems; so many problems involved. I wish it got easier!
So like with “The Tempest” for example, I guess talk about “The Tempest” working with a very dialogue-heavy film where score could very easily get tangled up with the dialogue and the characters. How did you manage to still do what the score needed to do without tripping over the words?
Not only there's a bunch of words, but they’re Shakespeare's words. What do you think, you're some sort of a Shakespeare? There are words that are spoken in meter, whether it's iambic pentameter or other meters that is very, very structured in a musical form to begin with. And Julie is very, very, very strict on having the actors speak in verse, speak in time. So in that way I have to work around and support the dialogue in a way that illuminates the language, shines a light of the language that lets you hear it. Somehow try to uplift the meaning without intruding into performance. Sometimes it's like dancing between the raindrops, so to speak.
But yet try to establish a character, almost an atmosphere like you want walked into a room and it has a certain lighting and it has a certain feel, a certain feng shui. That's the way the score functions in that respect. But there's a lot of songs. There's six or seven songs. So I can establish the thematic material, the motives that I can use elsewhere, the themes in those songs.
And I guess similarly, you work with Michael Mann on “Heat” and “Public Enemies”. And Michael, I guess he always has a lot of songs in his movies and I'm sure he picks them out. How do you make your score – which, I always love with “Heat” and “Public Enemies”, your score work in that soundscape. It feels like the songs and the score work together to create the era or the time and the characters. So how do you just fit yourself between all those songs that he picks out?
Well the most extreme case was with Julia on the last movie, “Across the Universe”, where you have 32 Beatles songs, which myself and T-Bone Burnett and Teese Gohl rearranged, so to speak. There's no word for it. You’re stripping it down and starting anew. But in between all those 32 songs, I had to write nearly 40 minutes of score; that's like having a job being the second chef. One guy or one lady provides the meal, the other one is cleaning the palate between. So it's two different functions.
On “Public Enemies” and “Heat”, it was mainly providing the dramatic impetus behind the story. The songs kind of help you ride over the bumps. I'm the one that has to amplify the bumps.
When you start working and everything, in terms of inspirations, seeing films and growing up, do you still have inspirations that you pull from? Favorite composers or other film composers, but classical composers too, that maybe define you, that you say would probably be part of you?
Absolutely. I'm defined by everything new I hear every day. It's constantly changing. The list of being inspired by world music, hearing this singer from Eskimo, Inuit singer, or this person from Pakistan, or whatever, Japan, it's constantly expanding. I'm a real, real enthusiast when it comes to music. Whether it comes from the CBGBs in the 1980s and ’70s or New Orleans in my country here, it doesn't matter. If you provide me with an alphabet, I can start from A and work all the way down. It'll take forever.
If I had to cross, to be obvious, but if I had to cross Louis Armstrong and Igor Stravinsky in a test tube, I guess you had the perfect influence right there.
You worked under Aaron Copland, right?
No, I studied with principally John Corigliano for seven years and Aaron Copland in roughly the same period when I was in my early 20s.
What was the most important thing did they teach you about, not maybe just on paper how to do something, but maybe about just being in this kind of lifestyle? What did they teach you?
A composer should go where he or she is wanted. Whether it's a little theater troupe somewhere in your neighborhood, a little grassroots street performance or something. Go where your music can be played. You can write little bagatelles or string quartets and put it in your drawer and never hear it; it's kind of sad life in that way. In general they're embracing of the new arts such as cinema, such as forms of contemporary music and popular and unpopular music. Enjoy composing unpopular music.
I like to ask composers this; I always get good responses. If you had to pick any film ever made with no disrespect to the original composer that you could re-score and re-do your own interpretation, what would you pick?
The first thing that comes to my mind is “Giant”. I like to score very much but I think having a non-orchestral big 19th-century sort of orchestra representing that psychological story taking place in the southwest. I think there's another way to do that. No disrespect for Mr. Tiomkin, and I thought the score was really great on his own, but somehow the matching and the super-contemporary quality, contemporary for all times in a sense, it feels like modern America. It doesn't feel like Europe somehow. So I'd like to do that.
That's a good choice. Is there any, looking back on your past works, is there one that stands out as a favorite experience of yours or maybe one that you wish you could re-do if you had the chance to do that?
Yeah, “The Tempest”. Every time I get to work with Shakespeare and Julie Taymor, I'm a blessed man. You know, composers including myself have a tough time sometimes composing for things that are disposable culture, and you end up watching these scenes like a thousand to five-thousand times – inane dialogue and people shooting at each other with guns and car chases and stuff like that and you go to bed feeling kind of hollow. When you compose something to Shakespeare's dialogue, you go to bed feeling really lucky that humanity is somehow unveiled inch by inch, and the poetry in everything is being hoisted upon your consciousness and your subconscious. So any opportunity for that is something I'm really happy about.
When you say scoring car chases, people getting shot and makes you hollow, are you saying that you drain yourself emotionally and put that into music on the screen?
No, no, no. I'm saying that it doesn't enrich you. It just reduces you to the slime balls that shoot each other up in the streets and add to world misery.
Are you working on anything right now that's coming up?
Yes, I'm working on a movie with songs, driven by songs called “The Transposed Heads”, which is based on Thomas Mann's novella he wrote in 1947, which is a love triangle that's comedic, erotic, philosophical, fantastical, and takes place in contemporary New York City and then shifts back to mythological India. So it should be a fun ride. I'm serious.
It sounds like a very huge task to jump from that sort of atmosphere, those two different atmospheres. Is it daunting?
Everything is daunting. Everything is difficult for me. Only thing is relatively early is easy, when you have no time and you have to do something really fast.
I guess it's true. That's all I have. I want to thank you so much for doing this. It's a great honor to sit here and talk with you.
By the way, I'll give myself a plug. If you enjoy the music on “The Tempest”, it's on the Zarathustra music label and you can get it at stores starting on the 14th of December. If not, you can get it on the “Tempest” website. You'll be directed where you can purchase it.
All right. Well thank you so much Mr. Goldenthal.
Okay, thank you.