This is the third film and most experimental score you’ve done with Neil Jordan. Why did this project take you in this direction?
It was very difficult to find a way into this picture, which I believe is a masterpiece as a movie. Not the music, but I believe the movie is one of the top two or three best films I have ever worked on or one or the top ten movies I’ve seen, so I really loved it.
I didn’t have a clue on how to score it. I played Neil a lot of early stuff. He said, “I don’t think you should score this. I don’t think it’s right. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want.” I said, “I want to do it.” I didn’t have a clue on how to do it until I became that character, the young boy Francie Brady. I said to myself, “What if Francie Brady were the composer? What would this sound like? What if that boy in 1963 was a composer on this thing? What would it be like?” That was my in, and then everything came quickly.
Obviously you separated yourself from this character in real life.
It was very difficult. Sometimes you’re so close to a character that you start taking on characteristics. When I was doing “Cobb” I started drinking scotch, and I never drink scotch. Right after that movie I stopped immediately. It started giving me hangovers that listed till 6:00 p.m. That habit is from the character in the movie. While I was doing “Batman”, of course, I was saving cities.
Why did you hire composer Edward Shearmur to conduct this score?
For very practical reasons. I usually work with Jonathan Sheffer and Steve Mercurio. They weren’t available at the time and I was very happy to find Edward, who I’ve known socially, to be a talented composer and a very gracious person. I think he actually mentioned that it would be an honor for him, and he was real excited to do it. He did a great job. The score was done in London and he was living in England at the time, so it worked out very well and I was extremely pleased. I know that in mine and Ed’s case we don’t think of each other as rivals or anything like that. We enjoy what we do.
Your score to “Butcher Boy” starts out like a band that’s lost their mind and then evolves into a religious-type symphonic overture with other styles that seem to come and go.
The religious stuff I had to take seriously because the character took it seriously. The visions were really serious. Neil would joke about me being half-Catholic and half-Jewish, saying, “You really didn’t grow up Catholic enough, so when he sees the Madonna you’ve really got to believe in her.” I said, “But Neil, Jesus had a Jewish mother. I didn’t; I had a Catholic mother.” So we would laugh, but the idea is, How to be serious? You have to make the religious qualities very believable.
Was part of your style here jumping from musical genre to genre instead of keeping continuity like most film scores do?
The continuity was my personality and the interaction I had with Neil. I think that when composers – Philip Glass would be the clearest example – switch from medium to medium, from pop to orchestral, the personality remains the same. I never had any fear of rejoicing with different musical styles. If you listen to a Mozart sonata, in the first five minutes you might hear eight different styles. It seems like it’s classical to us now, but he would use Italian long-line melody style, baroque style, Turkish march melodies, and more of a dramatic approach. Back then it was very natural; to us now it all seems like it’s insane.
Some of your score on this sounds influenced by Juan Darien.
It’s that “Drugstore Cowboy”, “Butcher Boy”, Juan Darien sound. It’s that whole other world. Within the lineage of “Drugstore Cowboy”, Juan Darien, and “Butcher Boy”, there’s a similarity because there’s an aspect of magical realism, and a surrealistic approach to carnival music.
The cue ‘Francie Brady, Not Our Lady’ was very apocalyptic. In fact it reminded me of Strauss.
That’s interesting that you say that. In the movie they’re convinced that the Holy Mother is going to come to this Irish town to save the world from the Cuban missile crisis. During the cue ‘Francie’, this little boy murders this woman when there’s a whole ceremony going on waiting for Mary to come down to Earth. This woman comes in and sees the corpse of the woman that was killed and runs out the door screaming, “She’s there! She’s in there!” and everybody thinks it’s the Madonna. They think it’s the apocalypse. It’s the apocalypse for Francie Brady the character as well because he murdered her and it’s the end of his life in that way.
Did you accomplish what you set out to create for this film?
Absolutely. Neil suggested the lyrics because I asked him, “What is the chorus going to sing?” He said, “What about ‘Francie Brady, not our lady’?”