How did you meet Elliot?
We met up at my place in northern California. We discussed him doing “Sphere” and spent a lot of time talking about baseball because we’re both fans. I had heard Elliot’s work to “Alien 3”, “Michael Collins”, and 'Fire Water Paper'. Also, I knew his agent Sam Schwartz; we were talking about Elliot and out of that discussion he set up our meeting.
When you have a composer score your film, what do you want it to do for your film?
It helps you see things that are there because it underscores it in some way. It moves your attention in certain directions and underscores emotional and sometimes psychological aspects of a film.
Why did you decide to hire Elliot to score “Sphere”?
Sometimes you have to meet somebody to connect with them. If you’ve heard some of their work you get an idea if this person is on the same wavelength of what you want to do in terms of that particular film. I felt that when we just talked in general. A lot of times you’re taking a leap of faith. Sometimes you’re working with unknowns and sometimes you’re with people who have done a lot of work, but it’s still a bit of a guessing game. Sometimes you hire a cinematographer to work with and you’re not sure that you’re ultimately going to see eye-to-eye. That will always be a challenge, right? The same thing applies to music and other aspects of it.
I was comfortable that we shared a similar sensibility and I wanted the piece to be musical, but at times for it to seem like you’re really not sure if it’s music, sound, or what it was, but somehow it affects you in a certain way. I think Elliot’s understanding made it possible so we could accomplish that.
There are a lot of different elements that weave into the story of this film. What approach did you want Elliot to take when scoring this?
For it to be that combination of elements. Sometimes I said, “We want some scoring here because we need to help certain things emotionally and psychologically to come about.” But that doesn’t mean you want it to be just melodic, or you don’t want it to seem like it’s just film music in a scene. You want it to get in there and to get under your skin, to have some kind of effect, but your ear won’t necessarily know how to pick it out as music. It is, but it’s got other elements working for it. There’s a complexity to it; it becomes ultimately almost subliminal and psychological.
In this movie you had to have a talent to do something like that because of the elements involved, especially the unknown element that tied everything together and was behind what was happening.
The whole movie ultimately is just a mind game; that’s all it is. It’s not an action film; it’s really just a mind game. It’s awesomely our subconscious beginning to affect our conscious mind, so therefore what’s real and not real becomes an issue. The music needs to be sort of transparent in a way so it doesn’t define something so clearly, but adds to that kind of sense of ambiguity. You talk about that in musical terms and, what does that mean.
When working with Elliot on “Sphere”, how did you communicate with him about the score you wanted?
Well, we had that discussion just in broad strokes of what this movie represented. He couldn’t rely on just melodic passages; he had to find ways, sounds, and instruments that we’re not used to, so when they’re actually playing our ear doesn’t pick it out as music. He really had to use is ability, understanding, and knowledge of instrumentation, etc., to create this kind of score which I think at times is extremely complex.
We would talk on the phone and he would send me little temp pieces of music that he’d been working on and ideas that he was thinking about. Ultimately he worked at a great disadvantage, as well as I did, because the movie had to meet a release date. Unfortunately so many elements of the film were coming in so late in the game that I never had a chance to really digest the scene with all these opticals finally put into it. Elliot had to actually score certain aspects without anything but just a blue screen. I’m talking to him saying, “This is supposed to happen and it isn’t happening here, now this is going on and this is happening.” He had to try and write to those elements, which were sometimes blind at that point because we were racing so fast to deliver this for a release date, which is truly preposterous, but let’s not get into that.
Isn’t it an art of a unique talent for a composer to write music to blue screen?
Yes, of course. It’s an art, but it’s complicated and it’s not the best circumstances to be working in.
Elliot has to have a fantastic imagination to score a film like this without seeing it some of the time.
It’s very hard. I would never advocate it. You say, “Let’s get a guy who knows how to score things to things that are not on the screen.” That’s not the way to work and I really kind of vowed, I’d never make a movie that has to meet a release date, period. I think it’s always detrimental in the final analysis because no one has the chance to evaluate too many elements.
Did he surprise you with what he came up with?
I think what he came up with was sensational work for it. I thought he did his job extremely well. What I always live with, in terms of “Sphere”, is that I never thought that I got the chance to really finish the movie. I think that I short-changed us in the psychological aspects of it so that the line between real and imagined is much more blurred than ultimately what is on the screen. In the end it became more defined than it should have been; it should have had a complexity that I could ultimately get to, but I think the music was right on the money.
What did you find unique about Elliot Goldenthal?
Especially in today’s world, there’s so few people that are so trained and have such an enormous musical background. It’s as if his training is such that not too many people have the background that Elliot has. I think he’s got an enormous musical understanding for all kinds of music as well, and for him to be so adept at sound, instruments, what they’re capable of doing, and how he can take this thing and twist it in a certain way to create a unique sound. So I think he’s got a very complex understanding of music. At the same time, you think that he would be this incredibly serious and dry person, but he’s not because we talked about baseball, laughed, and had a great time; yet he’s obvious a real serious student of music.
Did Elliot’s film score satisfy your vision as a filmmaker?
Very much so. I think his side, in terms of what the music was, I thought was really right on, but ultimately with the pressure we were under to finish the film I don’t think I ultimately accomplished what I needed to.
What was your original intent on this film?
To me this movie was supposed to be a mind game. It needs to cross the line between what is real and what is not to the point that it becomes blurred, and you realize that these people are completely lost and not even able to determine what is real and not real anymore. A lot of the music Elliot did had these psychological twists and turns to it; he found the sound for it. There were instruments that sounded like they were part of the inside of these characters’ habitat. This created feelings, moods, and all of the things that the characters faced in this film.
Is it possible you’ll hire Elliot again to do another film in the future?
I sure hope so.