How many projects have you worked on with director Julie Taymor?
It must have been more than thirteen over a period of fifteen years. I actually met her in 1980. She was friends with the German producer Christopher Giercke. Christopher said in a very cynical German accent, “You ought to meet Elliot. His work is just as grotesque as yours.” [laughter]
Over the years, have your creative styles developed together as a team through the projects you’ve worked on?
I think there was a cross-inspiration, the height of which would have been Juan Darien, where I had in my mind a way to do a requiem mass colliding with a carnival. I wanted to do carnival music as an oratorio with no sets or anything. Julie read the story and she has that ability to create mythic theater, create these objects and tell these stories that are so powerful, that in working together we created a new form of theater. Yes, we’re extremely influential to each other.
You’re scored music to plays like The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and more. What is your attraction to scoring Shakespearean projects?
It’s the greatest! You sit there in rehearsal day after day, and in performance night after night, hearing this incredible language. Every time you hear it, more and more of the language gets revealed until a point comes when you memorize the whole play. What kind of luxury is that? I’d almost pay to do that. First of all, Shakespeare shouldn’t be read; it should be heard. It’s a privilege to accompany something like this.
Did scoring Julie’s stage production of Titus Andronicus serve as a basis for scoring the film “Titus”?
There was very little music that was left over from the stage play that’s in the actual movie. Film has all kinds of different needs; so does theater. In that way they’re completely different. The sense of editing, close ups, and perspective is much different in movies; the themes don’t hold.
Also, the art direction is different; you’re dealing in real places as opposed to a simple stage setting. You have to take the film in a different direction. On the stage, very often I’d use music in transition. In the movie, I’d often underscore entire scenes under language, so the music has to be very simply without being simple-minded. That’s very difficult because Shakespeare is basically a rap artist, a musician himself in that sense that his music or words have meter, and meter is rhythm, and rhythm is music. You’re scoring to something that’s already music, and it’s very difficult. It takes a lot of sensitivity to stay out of the way of the performance.
So you always have to take the drama into consideration for your music to work with the dynamic of it?
Absolutely. The drama is the driving force of the play. There’s a sense of camaraderie to all of Shakespeare’s words. You can’t just come in and invade musically; you have to figure out a way to be supportive and it’s extremely difficult when you want the words to be clear. Eventually I succeeded in doing this with a lot of hard work.
What was “Titus” temp-tracked with?
It was temp-tracked with most of my music from other pieces. They used “Drugstore Cowboy”; it has some “Demolition Man”, some “Interview with the Vampire”, “Alien 3”, and “Michael Collins”. Julie wanted it to be my music because she felt that at least it’ll have some flavor to it.
From the results of all my interviews, I now know that the temp track to “Titus” was your most difficult obstacle in scoring this film. Explain what happened and what it took to overcome it.
On the outset it seems logical that if you would temp with your own music that you’d be familiar with what you had to do. But the problem with that is, if it’s something that’s perfect, you don’t want to repeat it, so you have to do something different. It was a disaster in that way. If it’s something that’s not working at all and it’s your music, then that doesn’t get you anywhere either.
Also the obstacle is when the music editor and the director, in this case, really really likes what’s there in some cases, and it’s you – your own music. It’s very, very difficult to say, ‘Yeah, but I can go another way’. The reaction was, ‘But don’t go another way; this is perfect.’ I say, ‘Well, I can go another way.’ That’s a very, very delicate situation right there. It took a lot of work, tons of work to overcome this. Hard work. Julie and I have done over thirteen or fourteen productions together, but none of them has been as big or as important as this one.
How do you work with Julie in order to get the results she wants?
I often play a theme on the piano and then I’ll play a theme again with MIDI so she can see it with picture. I’ll lower the volume and raise it; she’ll say, ‘I like it up to here, but from here you might want to consider playing something faster now because you have two slow pieces in a row.’ There’s a lot of analysis that goes on between us.
Is it unique having the opportunity to deal with “Titus” since it was being made and you were around all the time?
It is the hardest project I’ve ever had to do because I’m dealing with such high standards in every department. Bill wrote this incredible play. I think that it’s Shakespeare’s – although it’s one of his most maligned plays –it’s really genius, a masterpiece. So you have to try and live up to that. You feel kind of foolish writing music with that language. You feel like, ‘Sorry William, I’ve got to do this, but…’ Julie’s work is so amazing and there’s also Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange’s work. It’s just the high standard where you feel very humbled. It’s very difficult to stay out of the way of great things, so you don’t distract it and mess it up.
During the filming of “Titus” did you have the opportunity to create a mockup or anything for Julie while she was filming it?
Yes, there’s some marching in the opening title sequence that I recorded, which was left over from the theater that was played live during the shooting so they could mark it to some of my music. Also, there was some whacked-out big band jazz that I recorded, which was danced to in one of the scenes. Actually, I was on the set quite often.
How much music was involved in scoring “Titus”?
My original estimate is probably about two hours of music in a two-hour-and-twenty-minute picture. It takes in such a large, vast picture, and the art direction also breaks down the notion of period. The music has a large opportunity for almost the whole spectrum of the type of music I do in the cinema.
Can you please explain the fine details of scoring “Titus”?
We scored the film at Abbey Road in London, England during the month of August. There were between seventy to eighty players for the entire session, plus a choir of forty to seventy voices when we needed it. This was primarily a male choir including eight female voices, as well as using a boy soprano and a female soloist. I’ve been composing the score on and off for around six months. The longest cue in the score was at the end of the film and, if unbroken, it lasts around ten or eleven minutes. This is the end titles. The shortest cue is thirty seconds long and was this little transition between the fly scene and the dungeon scene.
My conductors on this project were Steve Mercurio and Jonathan Sheffer; each one conducted half of the score. A lot of the orchestral material I orchestrated together with Bob Elhai. A lot of the orchestrations I did with my own pencil; also a lot of the big band and rock material I did myself as well. In the long run Bob and I orchestrated this score half-and-half.
Can you explain your themes in “Titus”?
There are themes of nobility, redemption, chaos, retribution, and compassion. The characters are in those situations; it’s not strictly leitmotif-driven like in Wagner. There’s also a great deal of American-influenced music, jazz-influenced music, along with orchestral.
Has Julie’s approach to “Titus” or her directed influenced your writing or composition here?
Very much, because of the art direction in particular. It transcends period and happens in many periods at the same time. You’re in no time whatsoever. One could have a 1957 Chevy ride alongside of a chariot, or some futuristic-style weapon could be next to a Roman-style crossbow. When breaking down the notion of time, it further focuses you on pin spots: the dilemma of the cycle of violence and pain that hasn’t changed, that nothing has changed and never will. I would get subconscious ideas when Julie was directing the film, but I wasn’t writing then, because you never know until you see everything on that screen what you’re really in for.
How do you approach scoring a film that has a timeless existence?
You’ll hear music that seems to be part of our time, but also seems to be reaching back to something ancient. I looked at a photographic print of the first etching that was done from one of the earliest productions of Titus Andronicus, which was around 1601 or 1602. It shows a character named Tamora, Titus, and a few of the other characters. Tamora is the Goth queen and she’s dressed in classical Roman costumes. We’re talking about a seven-hundred-year difference right there. Even back in Shakespeare’s day, the look of Titus Andronicus wasn’t completely contemporary or completely ancient; there was a mixture. It seems like a contemporary piece for all times that alludes to the past.
What new life will your composition give to a modern-day version of Titus Andronicus?
I just want to support and enhance what Shakespeare, Julie, and all the great actors have done in the picture. Julie and I are American; everyone interprets things based on your experience. In the art direction you’re seeing things that seem jazzy, and the music when played with those elements, plus the direction, really worked. The characters that come out are acting in such a way where a specific type of music really works. As in “Interview with the Vampire”, there are unique characters in this film. Titus represents the older generation in the film and his music has an orchestral nobility or approach to it. The younger king, or character Saturninus, his performance, costume, the way he acts and where he’s living, seems to suggest something around the 1930s when Mussolini’s architecture is featured in the movie. It suggests an era of jazz. The younger characters, Chiron and Demetrius, almost suggest skinhead, hip hop, punk, a contemporary thing. Their music feels rock-based and almost hip hop-driven; this feels very comfortable with them. Then you have a sense of all this horror and violence, but you don’t see much violence; you see the results of violence, and that there’s this sense of yearning for more compassion and a Judeo-Christian sense of charity, so some of that is represented in the music.
What was the highlight when composing “Titus”?
When I came up with the breakthrough for the opening: 1M1, the first cue in the movie where there’s the opening march with a huge orchestra and chorus. That was a difficult cue. Also, when I solved certain other problems by finding emotional ways of doing things which didn’t seem emotional on the outside; but when I played emotional music to it, it really came to life.
Do you think your score to “Titus” has more diversity in the styles of music you used than any other film you’ve scored before?
I think it sums up everything I’ve done, with an inclusion of a twisted take on American swing music.
So you have brought new life to Shakespeare in the way that you’ve approached this with non-period musical styles.
What period should you do? What is it supposed to sound like? Roman? What does Roman sound like? I don’t know what Roman music sounded like, other than a couple of horns, trumpets, or flutes surviving from that period. I don’t know what they were listening and dancing to. Should it be Elizabethan because it’s Shakespeare? Should it sound like 1940s Hollywood? I don’t think there’s and traditional or real way you should do a Shakespeare film.
When scoring for Shakespeare you deal with a lot of comedy, tragedy, murder, lust, jealousy, power, betrayal, incest, adultery, and many perverse situations, like in “Titus”. Do these complex emotional situations attract you to scoring Shakespeare?
Yes, because you can’t score every scene as the way it seems. Every score is sometimes the way it doesn’t seem, and you have to be very careful in choosing the right thread because there are so many mirrors happening at the same time. There is so much of this type of variation of extreme human behavior that he knows so well, that he’s putting totally under a microscope, but in a play form for us to devour. As a composer one has to be careful in choosing, at all times, when there is four or five of those adjectives that you describe happening all at once, which one to choose. That’s what makes it very difficult in Shakespeare. What’s easy in Shakespeare is to do transitions; to go from place to place with trumpet and drums or the hunt or heralding places in or heralding places out, but when you get into the inner dialogue or the nitty-gritty of what Shakespeare is all about, it’s extremely difficult to get into that language. You have to be so courteous as a composer to try to enter into that world. It’s very difficult because he’s provided the whole thing, the music, the words, the psychology, the history, so you can think and talk about it for days and days. You can’t get too chummy with the dialogue in Shakespeare.
There’s a point in “Titus” where the wagon pulls up with Anthony Hopkins’s hand and his sons’ heads in these jars. Hopkins falls back laughing and says something like, “Have I not another tear to shed.” It really gets to the point of, How much can one person take? There becomes a breaking point and the character has just gone over the edge.
Yes, but then Shakespeare does a really tricky move. At the end of that scene he has the daughter take the hand and put it in her mouth. What happens in that situation is that the audiences always laugh. Then you go, ‘Why did Shakespeare do that to get a laugh?’ Because he always laughed and Shakespeare challenged us and put us in the same position that Titus was in about five minutes before. He made the audience laugh at horror and it’s absolute genius – absolute, unequivocal, dramatic genius. He plays with the audience so much with this ‘seeing horror as entertainment’ and ‘seeing horror as the horror that you can’t possibly smile at’. He is so skillful in how he presents this.
What opened the creative door for you to discover or compose the final eight-minute cue ‘Adagio’?
It was temped with the final cue in “Michael Collins”, but I didn’t want to repeat myself. It’s very difficult because I think the final cue of “Michael Collins” is really effective. The thing about this cue is that it has an elusiveness; it seemed like it was in one key, but it was in three keys at the same time. I wanted to do the same, but instead of it feeling like a loop, I wanted it to feel more like a linear development, but without strain to many key areas in the final last section. I wanted it to stay in the same set of pitches in the final last section and build, build, build, slowly build, then get to a climax, and then have a coda that’s very reflective, almost peaceful, and it gives us closure to the whole movie. It was very important to me and also for Julie to have a sense that the audience could sit there and take it in. For about eight minutes the audience sits there and reflects about human beings. I didn’t want it to be an ugly thing. I wanted it to be a liberating thing in the sense that people could think, even if it’s so slight, that there’s a little bit of hope. Maybe it’s just one little boy with one little baby. Maybe that is the only hope, or maybe there is hope in every little boy and every little baby and every little girl; maybe there is hope there. I wanted to open that door just a little bit, so that when you leave the theater you don’t see it completely in a negative way – that life is totally screwed up.
Through this cue did you discover another side of your film composing ability?
No, I don’t think so. It’s just, sometimes you’re allowed to do it in longer or shorter versions. It’s like it’s part of me; it’s not anything foreign to anything I’ve ever done. It’s just that I had the opportunity to extend music for eight minutes at the end of a movie while people are still paying attention.
I think original cues like ‘Adagio’ show a composer’s will to take a risk or try something new. Is this what fueled your need to push the envelope here?
I just tried to heal people at the end, after Shakespeare took everyone through this violent, sad, lamentable tale. I think that I had to get down to something that had some sort of poetry or some weight to it at the end.
It’s quite a difference walking out of hell into heaven.
Right; if you got that feeling, it’s great!
Because of your very close relationship with this project, do you think “Titus” is the best film you’ve ever scored?
I think every film score that I do is the best film score that I’ve ever composed. I will say that in terms of strong film scores that I’ve composed that “Cobb”, “Michael Collins”, “Butcher Boy”, “Drugstore Cowboy”, “Alien 3”, and “Titus” are the ones that stand out.