How did you get the job to score this?
Once again it was a Warner Bros. picture and Gary LeMel was the head of music of Warner Bros. He suggested to Michael Mann that he might consider me for this film. He did and I got the job.
What’s it like working with Michael Mann?
If he worked with me for two months, he would keep changing things for two months. If he worked with me for ten years, he would keep changing things for ten years. The positive side about Michael Mann is that he encouraged a great deal of experimentation and I did a lot of experimenting with choirs of guitars, using six, seven, or eight guitars, tuning the strings all to the same note. Let’s say one guitar would all be tuned to an E, while another guitar would all be tuned to an F. I’d create melodies and rhythmic things with guitars and then have the orchestra play with it; this was something that I had a great deal of pleasure experimenting with. However, Michael’s nature is to tinker with stuff forever.
Did Michael encouraging you to experiment open any new doors or give you the opportunity to learn any new scoring techniques?
Yes. The investigation into ‘guitar orchestras’, a type of work that composer Glen Branca was working with, which was basically detuning multiple or five to eight guitars with all kinds of alternative tunings. After hearing this I started to develop my own personal spin on it which had nothing to do with Glen’s music. Using this was similar to when the string quartet was codified by Haydn; other composers started working with that form. The form of the guitar orchestra to me became very important in other films like “In Dreams”. So the experimentation paid off and that was the most fruitful thing that came out of it.
Also on “Titus” I used some aspects of the guitar orchestra as well. Also in “Heat” when I worked with the Kronos string quartet and guitars, it eventually had a direct relationship with the music that I did in Neil Jordan’s “In Dreams”. I think that was a very interesting form that I might want to go back to in a concert hall setting.
How did he communicate his needs to you?
He hears something and he’d love it and say, ‘That’s great.’ Then he would come the next day and say, now he wanted to change it. At one point I changed it – at least I said I changed it, but I played the same piece. Then he said, “I like what you did yesterday better.” By the end of the project I felt like Kurtz from “Apocalypse Now”.
Did Mann want a city-type, guitar-based, ambient-type score for “Heat”?
Yes, but combined with a lot of dramatic orchestral music as well.
Didn’t the score evolve from ambient-type rock into a full-blown orchestral climax?
There were both rock orchestrational-based climaxes and orchestral climaxes happening in different portions at different times. It was as if I was using the rock instruments orchestrally. There was also a lot of experimentation with tape loops, sampled loops, and also string quartets with guitars.
Wasn’t it difficult using all these techniques and instruments if Michael was changing things all the time?
At one point Michael insisted on hearing a tape of a cue that we did yesterday, but Matthias Gohl didn’t bring it with him because he didn’t think it was going to be relevant. Michael got really mad at Teese and me and said, “No, you’ve got to go back and get it.” It was at another studio clearly across Los Angeles. We had ninety orchestral musicians that had to wait because Michael insisted that the tape come back, so they waited for what would be equivalent to an hour and a half.
Instead of waiting around, Steve Mercurio got the idea that, ‘Why not play some Wagner or something?’ So we went and got the Libestodfen from “Tristan and Isolde”, so the musicians could have some fun and play some classical music.
There was an EPK crew there. I think it was Entertainment Tonight that was taking pictures of me. So they were in there while we were doing Wagner and the girl came in who was interviewing me and she says, “Oh, my God, Mr. Goldenthal! That’s one of the best cues I ever heard!” And it was Wagner, right? So I said, “Yeah, and Michael rejected it!”
How did you feel about the results of your work here?
I didn’t feel it was represented in the film and I didn’t feel it was represented on the CD either. Teese tried to represent me as much as possible, but Michael in the end did it the way he wanted to do it. Let me also stress that there was never anything personal between me and Michael; it’s just that he keeps going and going and changing and changing.