How did you meet Elliot?
I met Elliot really through the offices of a mutual acquaintance. In this case it was the assistant producer of “Golden Gate”, Linsday Law. I assume I must have met him possible through Julie Taymor because she had done some work for American Playhouse, which was a PBS-funded outfit that produced movies for its network – little independent films, some of which had a theatrical life before arriving on television. Julie had done a couple of projects with Lindsay, who now runs Fox Searchlight, and I believe that’s where he met Elliot. The Goldwyn Company, who were co-producers of the film with American Playhouse, were very keen to have an American composer involved. Lindsay’s suggestion was Elliot. I then met him and he responded very strongly to the script.
Why did you decide to hire Elliot?
When I listened to his music it interested me instantly. It has an extraordinary range and a sensibility that you detect immediately. I like the kind of scoring he does because it bleeds over into atmosphere and other areas of a film’s aural articulation. He appropriates different areas and his scores blend into other ways in which the film is articulating itself. I thought that was absolutely fascinating. He also is brilliantly eclectic, which seemed wonderful for “Golden Gate”. It was a film that had a primarily Asian fable woven into something that is more recognizable from American film history, you know, like “The FBI Story”. I thought it was incredibly interesting and very sensuous.
There’s a kind of insinuating quality his music has, where it gets under your skin. He starts with silence and somehow manages to almost imperceptibly set up a presence which then becomes something more musical, melodic, or powerful. His responses to the film were spot-on; he got to the heart of what America is about and what the sequence of music ought to be doing with a fantastic amount of imagination where no rules need apply in a given situation. There was no form that a particular cue should have to take, which was wonderful.
As you know, he was a very particular and unusual way of working which is quite different from the way Stephen [Warbeck] works. Elliot’s work with computers and samples is absolutely integral to the way he actually arrives at a score for a movie. He has the most unbelievably dedicated tem of collaborators. In order just to give me a feeling about what his responses to film might be, he decided to score one passage, which we agreed would be quite long. Elliot came up with something that he certainly would not have been able to describe, nor would I be able to imagine. This involved an extraordinary way of using Chinese instrumentation to a passionate and extravagantly-improvised saxophone solo running over the top with a string brass underneath it that eventually modulated into this thematic statement that was at the heart of the film. All of that was laid out for me in fairly close approximation to what eventually became an orchestral version of the same thing.
One of the things that was completely fascinating about it was the saxophone solo, which was Elliot simply sitting in front of the film playing a keyboard that was keyed to a saxophone sample and improvising to the picture, which I think is a way he works a lot. He puts that down and later, if we all feel that’s what we like and we’re after, he then transposes that improvisation into musical notation that can then be replayed by an incredible saxophone player. This actually happened with his own interpretation, but you got the beauty and passion of the instrument itself.
What kind of score were you looking for in “Golden Gate”?
I was looking for a score that captured the particular quality that the script had, that meaning. It was a very ambitious script that dealt with the struggle of two cultures so that one world informed another. It had a central element of magic and spirituality to it. It also has a counter-balancing humor, which I was not looking for the score to emulate because I don’t like the kind of music that nudges you and underscores something that the film is already doing. But I wanted something that would allow room for that. I was looking for something that casts a spell on an audience and envelops them in a way that the film creates; I call for music to do that a lot. I like music and scripts that have a kind of hypnotic effect.
How did you communicate to Elliot what type of score you wanted?
There is a language for talking to a film composer. It’s a grammar that defines where one will have music in a film and where one doesn’t. Also, we must know where music has its most powerful and effective moments. In other words, one is where the music adds its presence to something and one is where it subtracts its presence from something. Inevitably, the first discussion we had about the film was where I heard music and where I didn’t. It was quite interesting to bind full moments together so the music actually worked its way through a scene and developed into something bedding four or five different things down within a single envelope of music. I also tend to work – this is something apart from the process with Elliot – quite instinctively with temp track. We did it on “Golden Gate”, although it was an incredibly difficult film to find the temp score for.
Did Elliot surprise you?
He did. I’m pretty relentless with a composer in the sense of working very close with them. I have a pretty strong sense of music and it’s not something where I say, ‘Go off and whatever you come up with will be fine.’ I like to discover something new that I didn’t know. Obviously, I have a very strong sense of how a scene should be, but I like nothing more than an actor to surprise me with something I hadn’t necessarily known or anticipated. I particularly like that in the editing process, where often you might have been directing a scene to a particular end, for a particular purpose, and you find in editing that there is some other way of telling the story of that scene that is implicit with what you’ve done, but not with what you were intending necessarily. Stories yield up secrets in that way and I extend that process into the process of composing. The thing what’s wonderful about Elliot is that he has a very particular and unusual approach. It’s very refreshing.
What did you find unique about Elliot?
I think he has a unique approach in a way of coming at a story. It has everything to do with the non-literal aspects of the material, which is why his scores have this capacity to get right under your skin and work on you in ways music does not conventionally work. He responds to elements of a story that are unspoken, unarticulated, and brings a sort of disarming vocabulary of sound and elements that work on you in ways that we’re not used to hearing. That’s what’s extraordinary about Elliot.
Did his film score satisfy your vision as a filmmaker?
Yes, completely, and took it somewhere I didn’t know it could go. The whole thing was a completely wonderful experience for me. He was fantastically supportive and stout in what was a very difficult post-production process for me. Under those circumstances it’s very important that your collaborators and the people you’re working with support your vision of the film, which Elliot absolutely did and in fact made it twenty times stronger.
Will you hire Elliot to score for you again?
Certainly I would hire Elliot again; I think he is incredibly talented.