Hey guys, I'm Randy Unger and this is a very special edition of “Unger the Radar”, where we talk all things film. And with me today is Academy Award-winning film composer Elliot Goldenthal, of the new Gloria Steinem biopic “The Glorias”. The film focuses on the life and times of women's rights activist Steinem. Elliot, good evening. How are you?
Hi, Randy. Hi.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
So the film is great; I loved it, I loved the performances, I loved everything about it, especially the score. Tell me what attracted you initially to the project.
Well, all of Gloria's life. And I kind of knew peripherally, I can say, a distant friend through the last 20 years, 30 years of my life, Gloria was. And Julie was reading her book called My Life on the Road. And that was kind of almost a stream of consciousness, a journey through her whole life. It's not a biography so much as it is, you know, thoughts on during her travels throughout her life since she was a little girl.
So basically a journal, a diary of sorts.
Yes, yes. So Julie was very excited about it. I read the book and then they got into the – Julie wrote the script and it was very, very exciting to watch it unfold. But in cinema and movies, unless you write prerecords like I did in “Frida” and “Titus” and things like that, you know, for dance sequences or a choreographer purposes, you know, your score – I like to wait until the last minute. So when Julie has an assembly and a director's cut, then I get really busy.
Okay. That's great. That's great. That's great. So like many of your other films, there are many musical styles represented here. What is it like juggling so many styles and tones in one score?
It doesn't feel difficult as long as I find a constant. You know, when a life takes place from 1930s to the present, you run into all sorts of stylistic and chronological development of the musical forms in America. So it's nice to have it represented in some form or another. And the various composers had their own strategy. Nino Rota had a certain flair where you can feel his personality in every period he writes in, but it reflects the periods. In this movie, it keeps going back to a magical realist place, which is a bus, a Greyhound bus, on a long, long stretch of highway. It looks like big-sky America somewhere. And that bus is able to bring in various Glorias at different ages, from a little girl to a college-age girl to a mature woman to an old woman and have them have conversations, all four of them, reflecting on various events that haven't happened or happened in the past. So it's kind of like a “Twilight Zone”-y kind of thing. So that gave me a constant to go back to.
And I find that a very, very simple device is the most American sound, from at least the 1940s to now, is the amplified guitar. We heard it in early jazz records during the 1930s with a gentleman named Charlie Christian up and through the rock ’n’ roll era, etc. So, something about a Greyhound bus and a long highway, I can't separate it from the amplified guitar, long, long lyrical chords.
So the bus is basically the theme or the driving force of the film, it seems, and definitely the score.
It turns up throughout the movie, and that's very helpful to me because this way I can have the sonority, the sounds that are used on the bus: guitar, harmonium, accordion, hammered dulcimer, glass harmonica. All those things can be weaved into other chronological events in the movie from the ’30s to the present.
So how easy or how difficult is it to connect the music to the visual?
Well, let me back up a bit in saying that it's always good to have a motivic material. That's whatever form it is, whatever it sounds like, it's based on a tight little structure. The best thing at all times was Beethoven's Fifth. He created that little kernel of musical idea. He created a universe where you think it's not there, it's there. At the end of his symphony you hear [hums] There it is. You wouldn't recognize it, but it's all over the place. And I try to aspire to do similar things in a movie, where I find a theme that gets manipulated through modified repetitions and variations throughout the movie. It takes one into a more cogent space.
Interesting. Wow. That's a lot. This is good though. Good answer, good answer.
It’s the Goldenthal lectures!
Talk to me a little bit about your working relationship with Julie.
Yeah. It's not unlike every other director I work with on multiple projects. For example, Neil Jordan and I worked on five movies. Michael Mann, two movies. The late Joel Schoenmacher was three movies. And, you know, when you get a dialogue, the element of trust is very important.
Right.
But I can't overstate that every movie is a clean slate. Everything is completely different. All the formulae that you might have had for former projects is thrown out the window, and you have to start from scratch. That's where it's the same.
Julie and I lived together for years and years, so the element of having one’s roommate, or one’s husband and wife, in you know, in a quotient there, creates the opportunity to, in a relaxed manner, to discuss the project, you know, 24 hours a day if necessary.
But it still comes down to Julie or another director has to hear what I’m doing, react to that, and it’s the same process of collaboration, negotiation we have with every project.
So how important is collaboration and teamwork for you, for the creative process?
In film it's essential. Because in a movie it's a director's vehicle. The word ‘collaboration’ is a very funny word because obviously you collaborate with the director. However, there's performances on the screen. So you collaborate or interact with, let's say, Helen Mirren or Tony Hopkins or whatever, you know, and you see the actors thoughts through their eyes. And they kind of invite you in to the type of music that will either enhances scene or repel you and distract. So that's a collaboration. Another collaboration is with – Julie or any director works with an editor. And the speed of the cuts of the edits and the environments, the set dressing, and all of these collaborative elements inform me.
And I really love that. You know, as opposed to writing symphonies or string quartets or whatever, you don't have anything to hang your head on.
I'm curious – so were there any challenges in writing the score for “The Glorias”?
Yes, I mentioned that, and that was trying to find a unifying musical imperative when you're going through so many periods of time.
Okay. So that was, you would say the main challenge.
Yes. Yes. In the past, some movies that will remain the same, like it's 1990 or 2000-whatever. And some movies change; like, “Interview with the Vampire” had many, many, many periods from four- or five-hundred years of time. So that gives you something to hang your hat on. Still, you have to have the constant that makes you feel you're in the same movie with the composer.
Okay. So for “The Glorias”, what do you hope audiences take away from it and the music?
Well, her message of human rights. Women's rights is human rights. And the most important thing the movie brings for me brings across is the idea that listening is the most important thing. You have to, you know, just sit down with a host of people you, you are either in conflict or unharmonious with, but you have to listen. You have to take it in. And also the notion that she says, we are all linked in this world, not ranked. Linked, not ranked.
Okay. So you've had an obviously very long and illustrious career. Who are some of your musical influences?
Well, Randy, I was lucky enough to grow up – you know, I was a teenager in the late sixties, so I went to Woodstock. So I was exposed to all those groups; all those various stylistic approaches to rock, for example. And I grew up, I was lucky enough to grow up in Brooklyn, New York, where a short subway ride gets me to hear Miles Davis and Dizzie Gillespie or John Coltrane or Mingus, and also gets me to the New York Philharmonic, to the ballet, the opera, so just physically where I lived I had so much beautiful stuff swimming around me at all times.
And I grew up in a housing project. When I open the window I hear salsa, soul music, polka, whatever. So the splendor of hearing different styles of music and watching different dances is a lucky thing.
Yeah, to be exposed by so much great art – there’s nothing better. So I'm curious, what do you look for when picking projects?
They usually find me. You know, it's usually a lucky thing where the project and myself find each other, you know? I look for the intent and the aspiration of the director usually. If I have a feeling that the director is really passionate about the work and the project, there's a beautiful, clean motivation there – it's not just monetary or just a number of likes, so to speak – it’s an aspirational connection.
Like a personal desire to get this done.
Personal desire to have the subject matter be illuminated.
Definitely. That's true art. So yes, you mentioned earlier the late, great Joel Schumacher, and you were one of the many composers to tackle the character of Batman. I'm curious, what was it like working on those two films?
Well, the first one was successful, the second one wasn't. And the first one was a lot of fun. And Joel Schumacher's imperative with those movies is to not take it too seriously. To make it, you know, not disposable culture, but to make it fun like the comic books were. You know, a sense of you're in there to enjoy yourself. And his approach was very, very, very colorful. And the characters were very delineated. Like, the zany characters were zany. The villains were villainous and very clear, etched characters. And “Batman Forever” was a great, great project to work on. It had so many very urban landscapes to work with and neo-deco art and color and flair. And “Batman and Robin” was less successful. And I have a feeling everyone knew it wasn't quite adding up, but everyone put their best work into it and tried as hard as possible to bring it past that finish line.
Not a great film, “Batman and Robin”, that's for sure. But the music is very, very strong.
No, but “Batman Forever” as a film had stood out as being an alternative, a reasonable argument to the same material as that film. You know, it’s a comic book.
It's a comic book in motion, for sure. I'm curious, did you ever have any conversations with Danny Elfman about that? Was it sort of like a passing the baton? What was that relationship like?
Well, I had friendly conversations with Danny, but not about Batman. I think there was a new Batman, there was a new Batmobile. I think Warner Brothers wanted from Danny and me to have big orchestral scores. And sometimes both of us were influenced by late 19th-century orchestral composers like Wagner, in the sense of brass, boldness.
Very dramatic.
Dramatic and in a sense almost operatic in that sense. And also, when I got the O.K. to do the movie, I didn't go back and listen to Danny's scores. I enjoyed them when I heard them originally but, in retrospect, the similarity is that the large orchestral approach, and also because of the zany characters in that, we both had a chance to expand our repertoire with comic material, comic composing.
That's great. I love to hear that. Anecdotes from some classic films there. And another classic film – well, at least in my opinion, I wanted to ask you what it was like working on 1993's “Demolition Man”.
[laughs] You’d consider that a classic?!
I like – I mean, it's a fun movie going back.
I enjoyed reading the script and I enjoyed working on it. And it's a similar situation as in Batman in the sense that it had opportunity to work on a big, big score with a lot of comedy in between. And then I had a futuristic element also. And that was an interesting part of my career because, right after that, I remember doing “Heat”, which is a very challenging score to work with Michael Mann, who is very, very particular and very fastidious in the way he works. And before that, I worked on a little movie called “Drugstore Cowboy”, which gave me the opportunity to be kind of surrealistic and a kind of less wide-audience commercial.
Okay. That's great. And again, yeah, the genres, the styles, they're all over the place. I love it, though. You still find a way to focus all that energy. So I love it.
You know, “Demolition Man” was a lot of fun. Going back and listening to it, and I enjoyed working on it. And Joel Silver produced it. And I remember him saying, How many musicians did this particular composer had on this movie? And I said, I don't know, 80? So I'll give you 100. Do something. Do something about 100 musicians.
There you go. There you go. I love it. So are there any other upcoming projects, stuff you're working on now that you could discuss?
Well, it's always, yes, “The Glorias” soundtrack. I just released it digitally last week, but it's coming out in a few weeks on vinyl and as well as CD. But I'm working on classical stuff that I enjoy; personal work. One is a song cycle for an orchestra in Krakow, Poland, based on a beautiful poet, this woman, Barbara Sadowska, who talked about the difficulties in living under totalitarian regimes. It's not fun like “Demolition Man” on the outside to talk about, but it's dear to my heart.
That's great. That's great. So yeah, Elliot, I want to thank you so much.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you so much for your time. This was amazing. “The Glorias” is now out on Amazon Prime. It's really great. It's a fantastic film about Gloria Steinem. It taught me a little bit about her life. So if you're curious about her and her cause and what she's done and accomplished, it's really wonderful.
She's still going strong.
For sure. And Elliot, the vinyl, when is that released? Is there going to be a digital?
I don't know. It just went out to be pressed and all of that. So within a month, so it should be out before the new years.
Okay. Well, Elliot, again, thank you so much. Congratulations on everything. And everyone watching, thank you so much. I'm Randy Unger. This has been “Unger the Radar”. Thanks for watching.
Thank you, Randy.