You’re listening to East Village Radio. I’m your host Devon E. Levins here, every week playing the soundtrack hits. Morricone Youth is the show every Sunday from 2-4 p.m. eastern time, and we have a very special show for you today: in-studio guest composer Elliot Goldenthal, a New York city resident, and Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning composer for – nominated many times and won both for “Frida”, is that correct?
That’s right.
Here to discuss, promote, his latest score for “The Tempest”, which was released last month, the soundtrack at least. And we'll go through that, a Julie Taymor film which has a lot of interesting, I guess, collaborations of various people that I believe you all know. And so we'll get into that. But we just heard a couple of the nominated scores for the Golden Globes this evening; the 68th Golden Globes is tonight out of Beverly Hills. And we heard “The King's Speech” from Alexander Desplat; ‘The Liberation’ from A.R. Rahman; ‘Alice’, we heard that version, ‘Reprise’, number 5, that version from Danny Elfman, “from Alice in Wonderland”. Actually, ‘Liberation’ from A.R. Rahman was from “127 Hours”. ‘Dream is Collapsing’ from Hans Zimmer; “Inception” is also nominated, maybe we'll get to that later; and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's ‘Pieces Form the Whole’ from “The Social Network”. And so welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.
Beautiful day. 34 degrees seems balmy.
Yeah, after the last week. And it's bright. They had the shades down here a few minutes ago, which is pretty unusual just because the sun is just coming straight through.
So we just heard also there some film dialogue and some music, which you did from an early film, “Blank Generation”.
“Blank Generation”, 1978.
And that's you actually on trumpet, you said.
Yeah.
You play— you’re a multi-instrumentalist?
No, I boiled it down to only playing the eraser and the delete button at this point [laughs].
You play the recording deck.
That's right.
But you – even the most recent when you're on keyboards, right?
Yes, keyboards. Yeah.
That's your main instrument, or…?
It is. That's the only thing that hasn't deteriorated. But I can at least keep one eye on the film and, you know, sort of nestle it in my grasp.
I’ve seen there’s photos all over the Internet, obviously, and you’re on guitar.
I don’t really – no, no, no. I can compose for it. I understand the endless infinitum of sound possibilities and boxes and things. But in terms of actually picking up one, it's not in my making.
I was originally in – ‘raised’ is a strange word. I existed there in Red Hook and then later in in Flatbush. But, you know, for the first 25 years of my life, I was Brooklyn, you know?
You reside in Brooklyn now, or are you in the city?
No, no, no. I live right around Union Square for the last 20 years or so.
Great. Do you go back?
I did. I did. I went back to Red Hook, the projects there on Mill Street, and I was revolted. You know, I had that same feeling in my pit in a stomach that I would be trapped forever. Like a nightmare of being trapped in a glass box and you can't get out.
A lot of people don't leave their neighborhood their whole life.
Most of the people that I knew when I was growing up left the neighborhood in a box [nervous laugh].
Right. So how did you get out of the neighborhood? How did you discover music?
By process of elimination, I was just discovered that I had abilities in music, particularly on keyboards and trumpet. And I had the willpower and love of love of music. Wore out all my records and, you know, it was just I had the thing that I wanted to go out and do it. And that's the only thing I could do. And I had the ability to move people. That's a hard thing to quantify or to learn. But that that was something that I recognized I had to contribute.
Was there a piano in your apartment?
Yeah, there was a, you know, horribly-tuned piano. That's good because I still love things that are out of tune completely, except the A flat key, which is perfectly in tune. And it was just like a black sheep on the piano.
So that was that was your first instrument. And did you take formal lessons or…?
I did later; I learned everything by ear until I was 16. And then I went to a high school in Brooklyn in Coney Island, Coney Island of the mind. And John Dewey High School had a wonderful musical program. The way they structured their education is that you could do anything you wanted. You can even sit in a corner and do nothing as long as you can pass the Board of Regents. And they had private teachers that you can do independent study. So I concentrated on music. So my day was seven hours a day, music. And then I studied or brushed up on my academics just as tweak by, you know, on test time.
At that point, did you meet, like, Aaron Copeland and those people? Was that more later when you were in Manhattan?
I met Aaron on a scholarship to a music camp when I was in high school and I met him in Tanglewood. And then through that, I met him later through a gentleman is no longer with us I used to work for – Victor Basso was his name. And I met him in, like – let me recall 1974, ’75. And I knew him until he died like 1990 or something like that.
You kept in touch.
Well, yeah, he become my sort of an informal teacher. And I actually used to stay at his house and sleep there, make his breakfast and do his laundry and things like that.
Where is this?
Yeah. On Croton-Harmon in New York, like the old days, you know, just, you know, just show up and do the grunt work and, you know, spend like two hours or whatever. During the course of the day playing through his pieces with him. He was a rather old gentleman and I was young and slow. So we were made for a company those two hours a day when we went through the literature.
Right.
And he critiqued my pieces, etc, etc.
So you were studying just everything, not just composition? How to make coffee.
Yeah. Playing and whatever.
Yeah.
How he behaved in a public setting. He's towards the end, his short term memory was kind of fading. And to see the resilience he had and his thinking on his toes and just to fake it and getting through the thing, it was amazing.
And so from there, that led – how did you end up at Manhattan School of Music?
Well, yeah, I was a double major starting in 1972. And I studied with John Corigliano and he was my principal teacher for seven years every Wednesday.
And he was through the school?
Yeah. They had an arrangement where it was in a classroom setting. You had class for music theory and things like that, sightseeing, sight singing and sightseeing and all that. And the private composition teacher, they only had like seven students. And they arranged for a particular day, and you do your work and you get either kicked out of his house because you're not prepared or welcome.
So it's a little more formal than the Aaron Copeland experience.
It's a little more formal, but still it's still very much the old days, you know, going to a person's house and sitting in his living room and maybe a lesson was in one hour. Sometimes it was three hours. Sometimes it was five minutes.
Right. Right. So at that point, people weren't going to school to learn how to score or anything, right? You were just learning, arranging and composition, classical-based.
Absolutely. Classical-based. But their attitude, John Corigliano and Aaron Copeland and Leonard Bernstein, which was around that period, they all embraced other medias. So don't get stuck on writing string quartets; if a ballet comes along, if an art exhibition installation comes along or rock, you know, whatever. You know, we're very...rock and jazz and all that 12-tone music. It doesn't matter. But I was lucky to be very, very interested in cinema. And I took one class with Nino Rota at the same time. He came to the Manhattan School of Music. He wouldn't talk about film music, but he just finished an opera. And there was a theater here called Thalia and the Carnegie Hall Cinema. And they put on world cinema. So the Japanese cinema, the Russian silent movies with Prokofiev and Shostakovich and all that stuff. You know, I said, wow, there's another world out there.
So through Manhattan School of Music, you all of a sudden had exposure to all kinds of crazy visiting guests, speakers and access, I guess.
Also in the ’70s, you know, I was very, very broke and I just wanted to compose. And John Corigliano said, you know, a composer just has to go where they’re wanted. And where I was wanted in the theater and alternative avant-garde to a sort of dance performances in people's lofts.
Right.
You know, so, you know, that kept me professionally going and not professionally wealthy or anything. You know, it didn't even pay the rent. However, it was commission pieces and things I can structure an evening around.
Were you ever in a band situation?
Yes. I was in various rock bands. But as a lead vocalist and a keyboard, sometimes trumpet, mainly blues-oriented, but with a little dissonant elbow thrown in.
Anything released or?
I don't know. Probably. You know, we cut albums, but I don't think that stuff exists. I'm looking for it.
Any names of bands or anything like that?
Yeah. It's a very, very fertile time in rock as well. I remember attending Woodstock Festival. You know, I was just a wee little lad.
You were there.
And to hear Joe Cocker singing, it was a little help for my friends. I was carrying a watermelon through the mud, you know, climbing over people's faces. I was sleeping and then all of a sudden it rained and I was, you know, what's the point in bringing back all this liquid? And then later to have the opportunity to arrange and work with Joe Cocker in “Across the Universe”, who was, you know, instant flashback LSD revisited.
All right. So you're listening to Mr. Elliot Goldenthal, the guest for this afternoon here on Morricone Youth East Village Radio. And we're located at EastVillageRadio.com on your internet dial playing soundtrack hits as always. And maybe should we play a little something? I had something from what at least is listed on IMDB or on the internet as being one of your first scores. I have a sort of another pretty rough version of “Cocaine Cowboys”.
No, I wouldn't …
Keep that out. All right.
So “The Butcher Boy”, something from we also haven't really gone through. I mean, maybe just briefly, we can throw in some of the some of the work that where you started with things like “Blank Generation” and “Cocaine Cowboys”. And then “Drugstore Cowboy” was probably a big one for you. “Interview with the Vampire”, “Batman Forever”, “Alien 3”, “Frida”, and more recently “Butcher Boy”, “Cobb”, “Titus” and then what we'll eventually discuss his latest, “The Tempest”. So if there's a particular track…
‘Francie Brady Show’.
I had that picked as well from. 1997 Neil Jordan film.
[‘Francie Brady Show’, etc.]
You're listening to more Coney Youth here on East Village Radio and in-studio guest Mr. Elliott Goldenthal, and we just heard four tracks. Or, three, three compositions that he's done throughout his career. We're sort of not going chronologically. And that just there was from “Titus”, ‘Arrows to the Gods’. That's a Julie Taymor film, right?
Shakespeare. And before that is “Heat”
And then the theme to “Heat” is that performed by Kronos Quartet?
Yes.
Michael Mann. And before that, “Butcher Boy”. Neil Jordan. So it's pretty diverse selection there, which is sort of indicative of your career and what you do, right?
Well, it sounds diverse to other people, but it's, you know, just my right hand to me.
It's what you do.
It's sort of what you're talking about. You have to go find what you're looking for. And if your interests are diverse and your opportunities are diverse…
It's a reactive art. And, you know, you live in, you listen and then you, you know, screw it up in your own mind and come up with, you know, washing machine, you know, looking in and seeing the clothes roll around and spin with soap and detergent. And that's the way I love.
How did you get your first scoring job?
Well, it was a “Blank Generation”. And it was a gentleman, a German producer, Uli Lommel and Christoph Giercke. And they wanted me to do two movies for one price. They paid me two thousand dollars for two movies, and I realized that wasn't enough to pay for the studio and the orchestra. But at least it was something. And Andy Warhol was involved with his movies and Carol Bouquet, which recently was working with Luis Bunuel. And it was an interesting crowd. And Richard Hell and the Voidloids. But the problem was the director didn't have a clue, Uli Lommel. And we're all in this kind of walking around like on the walking dead or something. No one at the helm and doing our own thing.
You know, was that one of his first films directing? Because he was an actor…
He was an actor in a Fassbinder.
So now he decided to direct.
He did a movie called “The Tenderness of the Wolves” in Germany, and it was fairly good. And based on that, we all had hope that something can be reasonable. But it wasn't. It was a fiasco.
And then it seems like there was a pretty big gap, at least for film, until “Drugstore Cowboy”, right? So were you doing a lot of theater in the ’80s?
Tons, tons of theater in the ’80s and tons of chamber music, string quartets, brass quintets, sonatas for bass and various instruments, and things that were practical enough to get played. Carnegie Hall, Recital Hall, things like that. And lots of theater, alternative theater in the Lower East Side and at the time in Brooklyn.
And then Gus Van Sant enters the picture somehow and you're back to scoring in the late ’80s?
Actually, simultaneously, Mary Lambert, who just directed ‘Like a Virgin’ with Madonna at the time, she made Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary”.
Oh, that's before.
No, just same time. And Gus Van Sand heard my music to a piece I did with directed by Julie Tamer at the time called Juan Darien, which is completely in Spanish and Latin. And it was very it was performed here at Music Theater Group, St. Clemens Church on 46th Street. And it was a very, very successful little piece, 90-seat house. And Gus heard the music and he wanted something completely alternative from Hollywood. So we got to work on “Drugstore Cowboy”.
When I got there, he didn't want anything to be pre-composed. He wanted me to improvise the whole piece in front of him in the studio.
So how was that?
It was great. You know, we had homemade samples and, you know, so 90 percent is me on keyboard just watching the movie in front of Gus and composing.
What kind of keyboard is it? It's very different in sound, like in comparison to what we just played, obviously. What is that? It's kind of a unique sound.
It was a thing called Voyetra. There was various moves.
There was just a lot of a lot of technology at the time.
A lot of analog stuff and some beginning of sampling.
Yeah, that's the end of the CD. The words were Shakespeare's last words that he ever spoke, we think, as a working actor. And Tempest was his last play, and he wanted to release himself from the theater. Also sum up the play, the meaning of the play, which is about freedom and forgiveness. And that's it.
This is – it wasn't supposed to be a song, but Julie finished the film and said, I need seven minutes for an end title music. And I didn't record Helen Mirren reading reading that. Because it's usually done in the theater when the actor looks at the audience and makes an apology. So in this particular case, Helen, she's not a singer. So I thought of Beth Givens and her work with Porter's Head is so brilliant. She has a wizened voice, sort of a cracked voice in her low register. Just so expressive and beautiful.
Had you worked with her before? Did you know her?
No, the closest I came is working with Liz Frazier with Neil Jordan in that world of British outside of the mainstream singers.
And also on there, I mean, you sort of have a who's-who of great musicians, at least guitar players on that. You have Page Page Hamilton of helmet fame, amongst many other things. Mark Stewart, who is known at least downtown New York for his work, founding Bang on a Can. But he plays with Fred Frith and Paul Simon. Like he's all over the gamut.
Ornette Coleman and Ben from Secret Machine.
And then Ben Curtis, right? He was a guitarist for Secret Machines. They’re no longer around, but I know they're still doing other projects. Is he still in? I know somebody left and they have a replacement. T-Bone Walk, I guess known for Hall & Oates and the Saturday Night Live band when GE Smith was a part of it. So there's a lot of people.
He's a very soulful bass player.
That's one of his last recordings, maybe?
I think maybe his last.
Yeah, because he passed last year, early last year, unfortunately. And then you're actually on some of the keyboard tracks, at least you're credited that way.
Yeah, yeah. Many layers.
Steel Cello here at the beginning is a weird sample taken from a solid body cello. It's an S900 sample that was taken in 1992. So it has a weird quality, a ghostly quality.
Okay. So we'll play the end titles, ‘Prospera’s Coda’, from the film “The Tempest”, a Julie Taymor-directed film, and the most recent released soundtrack of yours. And we'll start with that and see if we can get into some other music off of “The Tempest ”while we're discussing it. And then we'll be right back again.
[‘Prospera’s Coda’ etc.]
There were three tracks there. We just heard ‘Hell is Empty’; before that, ‘High Day Two-Step’, and started with ‘Prospera's Coda’, with Beth Gibbons on vocals of Portishead fame, amongst other things. And that last track, ‘Hell is Empty’, has a lot of guitars. I think I was reading in the liner notes for this you started to record it in your apartment?
Yes.
The guitar tracks or the whole thing?
The guitar tracks. All the cockroaches left town.
Your neighbors are cool?
I don't know. I'm living in a dream world.
Right. It's pretty soundproofed in there. Yeah, it sounds like it's in a cathedral or something.
No, we actually recorded it and re-amped it. We took the amps and played it in the ballroom in Manhattan Center when the ballroom was empty. So we have that distance and all the acoustic charm you can have.
Do you spend an entire day doing that?
Yeah.
It's a whole day process or even longer?
The engineer Brandon Mason and Joel Iwataki, they were in there setting up the amps. It's a big, big room, the Hammerstein Ballroom.
Right. And you're basically close-miking and putting mics in the back, mics all over the place?
Yeah. Like a deca-tree kind of thing.
And they're physically there doing it or that's the track you recorded originally in your apartment?
No, we recorded it originally in my apartment.
And then you just re-amped it in there?
It was too claustrophobic. It's just like a pneumatic drill in your mouth.
So do you do a lot of work in your apartment with the actual recording?
I do, but I prefer the Manhattan Center because it's flexible. They have various rooms, various from an opera house to the, you know, just the bathroom sound good, the hallways and the elevator sounds good.
Right, right.
Oh yeah, and we figured out who, well, Benjamin Curtis is now in the band School of Seven Bells, right?
That's right. Wonderful.
Which, they're out and about. I think they were just on making sort of like the late night circuit recently. And again, that was, so Mark Stewart, one of the questions I had was who was doing the hammer-ons there? And I was wondering if it was Paige or if it was Mark Stewart?
No, it was Mark who tuned it various ways. We recorded it with different strings and different techniques. But, you know, it's all miraculous that his fingers weren't bleeding. On occasion he had to, you know, whip out band aids and things.
He's the one that came in heavily in that big part too, right?
Yes.
Where you would stereotype Page Hamilton of being that person, but actually it wasn't.
Yeah, Page paid the higher distorted dentistry stuff.
How did you meet up with Page?
He was playing with Branca, Glenn Branca. And we were, I was looking for various guitarists that think about, isn't about notes so much, but textures and over distorting on amps. Not afraid to do so. And Page and various other musicians, four or five musicians, worked with and experimenting in 1994 in preparation for the movie “Heat”.
Right. So he was actually on the track we heard earlier.
Correct.
From the main title from “Heat”.
That's right.
So you've been working with him.
Steadily.
For almost 20 years or something it sounds like, right?
Yes.
And that was another thing when I was listening to that, I was wondering if you were familiar with like Reese Chatham and Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth and all that stuff.
Sonic Youth, brilliant. And Glenn Branca, you know, has to be someone out there that has the courage to do what he does. And that's great.
You friends with those people?
Well acquaintances I guess, but not friends. The problem is in my business, I'm either so busy trying to create something or licking my wounds afterwards. So I don't get out much.
Are you primarily doing the work out here or is it a lot in California?
None in California really. The last time I worked was on “Public Enemies”. From time to time I did a few scores in Ireland. Dublin to be exact, but mainly in New York City. I'm weird when it comes to my hours. I start like 10 o'clock at night and work until 7 in the morning. It's just different schedules. It's a different lifestyle.
What number of films is this, collaborating with Julie Taymor?
Five. And then I did five with Neil Jordan, five with Julie, two with Michael Mann and three with Joel Schumacher. I love to work with some of the earlier directors like Gus Van Sant. I had a good time working with him. It would be nice to work with him another time. As well as David Fincher, who we did his first picture, “Alien 3”.
“Alien 3”, right. So that's the only one you've worked with him on?
Yeah, I had a great time.
When you're collaborating with people more than once, like for instance Julie, do you sort of create that relationship, the director-composer relationship, like the Fellini-Rota, Leone-Morricone type…
Hitchcock-Herrmann.
Do you think of it that way?
You know, it all comes down to, every project is so completely different. You're solving, you know, 24 frames per second. Obstacles and tasks and there's no, it's all difficult. It doesn't get easier. The only thing that you have with multiple collaborations is the area of trust. You can say, I don't know, trust me, let me record it, you know.
Right, it gets easier.
And then it's up to the director really to, you know, you have to have one person overseeing the whole project, otherwise it's maddening.
How many theater pieces or works did you do with Julie?
With Julie, over 15, 20.
15 or 20, that was a big part of the ’80s.
Yeah, Juan Darien is the most significant thing, as well as my opera, Grendel, that was performed here in Lincoln Center Festival, you know, like three years ago, I guess. And also in Los Angeles, at the Music Center. I was very, very happy to have, you know, well-attended, beautiful-performed opera. Mainly Eric Owens, who sang the lead, he was just phenomenal.
Right. Are you doing anything for the Spider-Man production?
Spider-Man, no, no. I was originally in the whole mix of stuff, Bono and Edge, and we went to south of France to discuss all working together. But my hunch was to be better served as a cheerleader, and you know, seriously, because those guys have a rather set way of working together, and they work real, really hard. And I'm very individualistic myself. I don't work in collaboration as a composer, so it would be a strange thing. So it's better that I can be helpful in the ear, you know, on the side.
So you are sort of around?
Yeah, yeah, friends, more friends than anything else. I think it's best.
Right. Okay, well why don't we play one more Off the Tempest, ‘O Mistress Mine’, which is at the...
Speaking of Spider-Man, he's playing Spider-Man, he's in a group called Carney, and Reeve Carney.
He has an actual performing band too?
Yes, called Carney.
Called Carney, okay.
His brother and himself, it's a wonderful band, and they're often down here on the lower side playing. Look them up, it's wonderful. It's on the Interscope label, I think, his work.
Okay, so this is ‘O Mistress Mine’, and the singer on this, the vocalist, is Reeve Carney, who, he stars in “The Tempest”, well he's in “The Tempest”.
No, he's in “The Tempest”, playing a young lover, and he stars in Spider-Man, and he has his own group.
He has his own group, Carney, and he's also Spider-Man on Broadway.
And once again, it's Shakespeare's lyrics.
Right, and that's part of the thing you had to do on this, right? You had to adapt the lyrics to your music, or surround it.
And the drama. There was an original song here, it wasn't – Shakespeare didn't intend any song, but Julie thought that young lovers needed more screen time. So we borrowed one of his lyrics from Twelfth Night, a character called Feste, sings it in a sort of a pervy way to a young lady, and this way seems more natural, young lovers.
[‘O Mistress Mine’ et al.]
‘The Floating Bed’ was Lila Downs.
She’s a New York person, you were mentioning.
Yeah, she’s all over the world, you know? She has a wonderful band and she’s beautifully and perfectly bicultural. She’s from Oaxaca, and she speaks the native languages over there, before Spanish, Zapotec, as well as perfect English. Her father, I believe, is from the Midwest somewhere. But, she’s a wonderful vocalist, wonderful collaborator. I enjoyed my association with her.
How did that collaboration come up? That’s something you sought out, or…?
Yeah, I just heard her down here, lower east side somewhere. Maybe it was at Bar Blue or something like that, she was singing. It was a perfect voice with what I had in mind. She appeared in the movie and sang the tango that I wrote for the two female lovers.
So that was a big score for you right? That was the one you won both the Golden Globe and an Oscar that year.
Yeah. I was nominated many times, and I’m usually bent on just enjoying the party and losing. This time I felt I was on Novocain because when you receive something like that, you have to talk to billions of folks and it’s a scary thing. I felt like “The King’s Speech”, you know? [laughs]
All four times, however many times you were nominated…
Four times.
Did you have a little speech kind of ready just in case? How does that go down?
You don’t expect it. The first time was “Interview with the Vampire”, and I was sitting there. And one of the cameramen, when they announce the winner, before my name, I was sitting on the aisle. And I say, “Am I sitting on the aisle for a purpose?” Conspiracy theories! And he put the camera in my face and said “Congratulations!” as if I’d won, you know? And I didn’t; Hans Zimmer won for “Lion King” that year. It’s funny. So I said, “Why did he do that? That’s not fair!”
Faked you out.
Faked me out! Whatever it is.
But if you did have to get up there and say something, you were at least sort of ready to do so.
In “Frida’s” case, I remember thanking all the wonderful folks in Mexico that I worked with, etc. etc., and then I got hate mail from Americans. It’s amazing!
It must be a surreal experience, right, when you actually hear your name and you’re walking up there…
Yeah, you know, it’s somewhere between heroin and Novacain, you know? You know you’re there, but you’re not sure whether you’re looking at it from a rewound tape of life or something; you’re not sure.
Did they perform your music?
Caetano and Lila sang the nominated song from that movie. And it was very funny, because Caetano decided not to attend the rehearsal that morning. And that morning they were recording the rehearsal because they had bomb scares and it was like the first or second day of the Iraq War. So I had to sing it!
Oh, at the rehearsals?
Yeah. It was...
But you’re a singer. You sang in some of the pieces we’ve heard.
I wouldn’t – I can sing, but I wouldn’t pay to see me.
So today happens to be Golden Globes day. In a few hours it’ll be televised all over the world, I guess. And you’ve been nominated for Golden Globes many times as well. The only time you’ve won is for “Frida” as well?
Yes, that’s correct.
How’s that experience? I guess that’s pre-Oscar. Same sort of thing?
No, it’s different because it takes in television, other things. It’s less formal, less prestigious.
It’s a little more fun.
I don’t know. It’s a long thing to sit through; whether you win or not you have to sit there.
I guess the fact that you won that gives you a little of a heads-up that you won the Oscar. You might get that speech a little bit prepared.
No, it makes people more aware of your work. That’s it.
You just mentioned “Interview with the Vampire”, which the first one you were nominated for. But I read somewhere that you got kind of thrown into that last-minute.
Yeah. The composer who was working on it, he did do really good work, but Neil Jordan needed a lot of changes. But then the composer was unavailable, so I had to do it, the whole score, and I had three weeks in which to do the whole thing. And it was sort of reflexive process as opposed to reflective process. Every second I had to compose something, and know the next day, basically, a 90-piece orchestra’s gonna play it. And that’ll be the thing. In a way it was refreshing because there was no time for the director to second-guess anything.
And then it was well-received, obviously, because…
Yeah. I had a good time, and it was a very good thing for me, because the movie was chronological depending on the age of the vampire. Since you have 400-year-old vampires and you can, you know, have a sort of feeling of arcane music played on ancient instruments, and stuff like that.
And Anne Rice books were huge around that time, anticipating that film. Huge stars in it, Tom Cruise, everybody was in it.
Imagine if it came out now, we’re in a vampire…
People probably wouldn’t understand it. “Vampires don’t do that…” OK, so, you have any picks for tonight? Any buddies you’re rooting for?
No, I don’t know. I kind of root for everyone, but I don’t know who’s nominated. Although I heard a movie… I heard “The King’s Speech” and I loved the movie very very much, and I think the score was appropriate for it, as well as “127 Hours”. And Trent’s work with Atticus on “Social Network” was wonderful, especially the first forty minutes of it. It was just spectacular. So I don’t have any clear favorites for this one.
What about predictions? It is gonna be “Inception”?
Maybe “Inception” or “Social Network”.
I like the Trent Reznor, it’s pretty different from the other four in tone and everything else. Do you know Atticus Ross?
Yes, yes.
He’s a programmer, worked with Barry Adamson?
Wonderful work, especially the way he gated the percussive-sounding instruments, which came across very clean and very simply wonderful.
Any things you're working on now? You're excited about any projects coming up for the new year?
I'm working on a group of songs for a project for a movie called “Transposed Heads”. Hasn't been financed yet, but I want to do my work and get it out of the way. It's based on an erotic sort of comedic philosophical love triangle by Thomas Mann. But it was his last novella in 1946. And you know, Julie and I will try to get that accomplished this year. I have ten songs; I want to contribute like 15 to 18.