How did you meet Elliot?
I asked Gary LeMel, the head of music at Warner Bros. and his team including Doug Frank, because I didn’t have a lot of money for “Cobb” and wanted a big sound. ‘Who is the person out there who nobody knows about yet? Who’s got the goods? Who’s the person I won’t be able to afford in five years that I really should know about? You know me; I’m a little nuts and love to work with passionate people.’ Before I could get the whole sentence out they said, “Elliot Goldenthal,” just like that.
Elliot and I started meeting; meeting is another word for drinking. So I played him some gospel music because I grew up with it. There’s a song in the film that the young Ty Cobb sings because I usually put some music in the script that becomes part of the whole thing. I said, “This is not a very beautiful hymn, but it has got these weird gothic lyrics. It’s called ‘There is a Fountain Filled with Blood’.” He heard it one time and said, “That is a gorgeous hymn,” and so he started singing it back to me at different tempo. I found my guy and he built the score around multiple interpretations of that hymn which became a Confederate elegy, these sort of haunting voices from across the river, something out of the backwoods of Georgia, and it just took a brilliant ear and a talent to hear that and then turn it into altogether something different. Not to mention all the other cues he did. We started with a church hymn that triggered everything.
When your film is scored, what do you want it to do for your film?
In the case of “Cobb”, which has such a gothic and southern attitude reflecting the ultimate southerner from the 19th century character, I was looking both for those southern gospel roots and something gothic at the same time. I wanted the audience to feel that this was kind of a gothic opera, even though it was about a baseball player. That’s the sort of thing that a director can ask for and many composers just scratch their heads, but Elliot just took off with that; he ran with it like crazy. It’s a haunting Confederate elegy throughout and then it gets very gothic in the third act and very big as Cobb’s inner life explodes in front of him.
Were you instrumental in getting director Neil Jordan and Elliot together for the first time?
I knew Neil Jordan because he stayed at my house in New Orleans when he was shooting “Interview with the Vampire”. I was on a much shorter schedule and budget than he was, so he had his score to “Vampire” done already and “Cobb” was already in the can and mixed. He was unhappy with his score to “Vampire” and Gary LeMel said, “Listen to this,” and played him the score from “Cobb” on a tape because the film hadn’t come out yet. Neil was so knocked out that he called me from Ireland and said, “I’m just crazy about your score. What do you think of Elliot?” I said, “I think Elliot can do anything, but what’s your time limit?” He said, “I’m going to start all over and need a score in four weeks,” or something that was insane. I said, “I can’t tell you if Elliot can do it that quickly, but I can tell you he can do it. Getting him to do it that quickly is your problem.”
Why did you decide to take an operatic approach when scoring for Cobb’s character?
Operatic with a small ‘o’, but it was a big orchestral, emotional, melodramatic piece. I wanted to declare to the world, right off the bat in that movie, this is not “Bull Durham 2”. It’s an utterly unrelated movie about other issues. Before the picture even starts we’re hearing sounds that are going to tell us that. In the opening there’s this strange singing – which is Elliot, by the way. When you play the title sequence there’s a voice going [Shelton makes a very strange vocal sound]. I swear to God, it’s Elliot. You have to tell the audience right off whether it’s going to be Wagnerian or Ray Charles. It helps the audience settle in tonally. Then you can take them on a wild ride.
How did you communicate with Elliot to get the kind of score you wanted for your picture?
I like to get close to the composer, hang out with him, stay up late, have drinks, listen to things in progress, and make adjustments. I just don’t go off and wait till the composer comes back to listen. It’s like working with your cameraman or actors; it’s a very organic relationship in which the director has to trust the composer and communicate the best he can, given that none of us speak musical language, really, except composers and musicians. Then it’s a matter of both directing and trusting, then getting out of the way.
You always have a temp score, which is a curse to composers because they think the directors fall in love with their temp scores, and you tend to temp score with the greatest music in the world, so now you hire a guy to come in and in four weeks give you Bach, Mendelssohn, or Irving Berlin, and it must all be new, fresh, and original. You know, it’s an impossible task. Elliot came out here many times, but I went to New York where he was recording and just stayed there for several weeks, for all the sessions. He’d call me up in the middle of the night and I’d be at the hotel, then meet him somewhere and he’d have a new idea. I’d listen and either like it or not, but he’d just keep working. It was a terrific working experience. I’m so proud of the movie, but sorry nobody saw it. It terrified people and didn’t get a wide release.
I think this terror reflected an intense drama that made its mark.
People are afraid of real monster movies; they want cartoon monster movies. This is why in the history of film we get terrified when there’s a real human monster who behaves in ways that are truly terrifying. “Godzilla” and “Mighty Joe Young” don’t really scare you because you know they’re not real; but if you have a human monster, audiences have trouble.
Especially if the human monster is a reality and a hero.
In the end I wasn’t finally passing judgement on Cobb. I think he is who he is, and we all make heroes out of whoever we want to make heroes out of. I don’t think that’s changed in sixty or seventy-five years. We excuse monsters from being monsters if they entertain us and serve us in certain ways. That’s not a pleasant message for audiences to take out of the theater, but I think it’s true.
Do you think Elliot captured Americana heroism in turmoil or the powerful and destructive character of Cobb throughout his score?
Yes, I do, and he also made an elegy out of it as well. There was a loss, this guy; for all his brilliance there is a sense of loss and deep sadness here. He dealt with issues that are hard to understand: the murder of a parent; a deep family lie. These are rather significant things that Cobb dealt with and his way of dealing with them was to become the greatest baseball player of his time, never resolving these particular issues that are very American.
Did Elliot’s ‘composition as collision’ or his contrast of different styles here create the perfect musical character for “Cobb”?
Yes, because in that way it was a musical version of what I was trying to do with the script and the directing, which was to create these tonal shifts that the movie would take where you watch this monster unfold. At the same time there would be these wild rides down the mountain, moments of dominating a baseball game, and the enormous sorrow of having family not wanting to speak with you. All of these are rather risky tonal changes for a narrative. Elliot found musical corollaries or inventions that defined these numerous elements, yet it was musically whole. It was organically whole as music, but it was fed by many different rivers. There are a wide range of styles from gospel music to this gothic opera.
I wish Elliot had been nominated or acknowledged for it, but we just didn’t get a big enough release to have people see it. I know people who see the film talk about it. The movie was controversial. I think musicians have responded to it, which pleases me.
What do you particularly find unique about Elliot?
His range and his sense of adventure in trying things, which I like because I do that as a director. The obvious example is the use of his voice. When we recorded the title sequence, while we were still in the recording session, Elliot said, “I have this idea that we need voices over.” Well, that was not part of the original idea. I said, “Like what?” Then he started singing out of some hollow in eastern Kentucky, a howling sound. I couldn’t believe it was coming from him and I said, “Let’s try it.” He tried it; we put it on top of it, and we both loved it. That’s a real sense of musical adventure, to just stand up in front of a microphone and sing after you’ve just had the New York Philharmonic lay down a gorgeous and exotic cue. I love Elliot’s sense of adventure.
Did Elliot’s film score satisfy your vision as a filmmaker?
Very much so. I was very happy with the music in “Cobb”. For someone to take an unknown hymn, which I had affection for and had written into the film, and turn it into something it never was, shining lights on that hymn from so many sides of it that it became everything from elegiac to operatic, is more than a director could hope for in a score.
Would you hire Elliot again?
Absolutely, in a New York minute. I had a great time with Elliot and I really can’t wait to do it again.