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Thanks for attending Mr.Danna, it is an honour to interview you, here at ScoreMagacine.
Thanks.
You are a composer who’s generally interested in multicultural music, where you often approach your scores with diverse and imaginative ethnic instrumentation and arrangements, a fact that creates a non-typical and particularly interesting result, especially when combined with ‘traditional’ western music composing means, such as a symphony orchestra or the piano. Where does the true power and charm of ethnic music reside in your opinion? What attracts you, and the potential listener, to it?
I guess I don’t consider divisions in music like that. It’s just music. It’s like a director casting a film and looking for actors; you just look for the best person to say what you need to say with that character. In the case of musical instruments, you look for instruments that say what you need to say and bring the associations you want to use. In my opinion, there’s no such thing as ethnic music anymore. There’s just music, musicians and instruments.
Of course, it depends on the kind of the movie as well, but if you had to choose, which kind of ethnic musical elements off the three major ones do you personally prefer? Middle Eastern, Indian or African, and why?
It depends on what I’m working on. They all express different things. It’s like asking if you like red, blue or green. It depends what room you’re painting or what picture you’re painting or what kind of car you’re buying. They are all just different colors that are equally valuable. They are just choices that you need to make at any given moment.
What’s that which often inspires you into not directly and merely emphasizing or musically rephrase what one already sees on screen, but to look further for elements that situations or characters define instead?
I think audiences are much smarter than they were two or three generations ago. I think people are more educated and are more intelligent viewers and listeners. They can already see what’s on the screen. They don’t need to have that repeated. It’s more valuable to say something different. Music can communicate something else while the drama is communicating what it’s communicating.
In your beginnings, when you were studying music composition at the University of Toronto, in Ontario, Canada which were your musical references and inspirations, ambitions, aims and thoughts for the future? Were you calculating cinema as a way of expression since the very beginning or did that come in later?
It was completely an accident of fate. I studied what I was interested in, which was ethnomusicology; early music. I ended up writing music for theatre at the university. That’s where I met Atom Egoyan, who was also involved in writing theatre pieces. So that is how I accidentally fell into writing for film.
Did you study classical composition or did you do some studies or courses particularly on film music? What important persons, events and teachers would you say that they marked those earlier years of yours?
I never studied film music at all. Back when I was studying music, there really weren’t programs like that outside the major centers of film making. Now, there certainly are but back then it was very different. It wasn’t considered a proper stream for a composer to end up in. As far as the most important, I had one composition teacher in particular who helped me to analyze what I was doing. It kind of set up a pattern of thinking as far as when one is writing. I certainly don’t write anything like him or in his style and I’m not sure he would even say he likes what I write, but I think I learned a great deal from him as far as a process. His name is Walter Buchinski. And then, I think my very first piano teacher had such an enthusiasm and love of music that I think that’s something that got me off to a really wonderful start.
In Toronto you studied with Atom Egoyan with whom you worked at the beginning of your career. Do you believe that to initiate your career with Atom has marked your position in the industry as composer who is particularly able into creating dark and disturbing worlds?
I wouldn’t have written my life script any differently as far as who I would first work with as a director because right at the beginning I was challenged to go beyond the mundane and the predictable and certainly to raise the bar to a challenge beyond what standard film music was doing, especially at that time. Atom approached it more as theatre than film as we know commercial film. That was the perfect place to begin. Certainly, the darkness is part of his world. I think it’s a lot more complicated than that, but his films have gone places very bravely and obviously the music has to go there with him.
Atom Egoyan’s “Exotica” was a very successful project with your Genie Award-winning score, where you combined Middle Eastern and South Asian musical elements into the whole. What pushed you into that direction and how was it working on that project?
I think “Exotica” was a film about obsession. I figured the best way to capture that mood was to follow my own obsession, which was Middle Eastern and South Asian music and culture; to travel and record random musical things that I found and come back into my studio and make something out if it, which is what I did. It was a very exciting and personally meaningful project for me. It’s one of the films I look back on as my best work.
Another different effort was in 1997, with Mira Nair's "Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love" where you utilized non-Western sound sources like Indian music, electronics and general sound effects all through a minimalistic prism, pushing your limits once again. How did you become attached to the project and what do you remember from this collaboration? What inspired you into the particular musical approach?
Mira had seen “Exotica” and she loved the score. She wanted something for her film which was set in an historical time period. She wanted something that combined native folk and classical instruments of India along with the more contemporary sound of Electronics. So it was her call.
Shifting areas again for John Greyson's "Lilies" (1996), you moved into another new musical direction when you write a Latin vocal mass with Gregorian and other early musical influences, performed by England's premiere male choir The Hilliard Ensemble. How did you decide to do this, was it any similar temp track to the movie or no-score at all during the shooting? How was it working with Greyson and what was his opinion on your musical take for his project?
It was a concept that I came up with and the director, who had been a choir boy, found particularly exciting as well. There was no temp track as I recall. Probably now some eight years later, that would not be the case. Therefore, the music would not be so imaginative.
In Gillies MacKinnon's "Regeneration" you created a very dark and brooding score from where you used a very large orchestra, coupled with a solo vocalist, coming in contrast to you usual work of new age and world musical references. How did you decide to do this and what do you firstly think when you remember that project?
That’s one of the very favourite films that I’ve worked on. I found it a very moving story with immaculate acting. There’s something about that period and that particular event of World War I that I find personally very emotional. I didn’t want a score that would draw attention to itself in an inappropriate way. I wanted something that was basically an elegy for the dead of that war. I guess in a sense it’s scoring the poetry of the two poets. I wanted something very simple that they would love to honor their memory in a respectful way.
1999 was a very busy year for you when you scored four features, including Ang Lee's "Ride With the Devil", Atom Egoyan's "Felicia's Journey", "Girl, Interrupted", with a very sweet and intimate score, and 8mm which had a particularly dark, moody and rousing ethnic score…How did you come up with such a tight work-line? What do you remember off those projects and the very year?
One of the challenges of working on films in post production is that schedules change all the time. This month, for instance, I had to finish two films within two weeks of each other because both their schedules moved. As a film composer, you have to be able to deal with that and roll with the horrific schedule changes as they happen.
Speaking of Ang Lee, what happened in 2003 with “Hulk”? Any chances of working with Ang Lee again?
About "Hulk" score, it just happened that the producers were frightened due to the audacity of our work. It was not a typical superhero film, and the music couldn't be planned in a very commercial way. So the panic spread among them and they hired Elfman. The fact is that some parts witten by me were respected in the final cut, so you could heard some sounds that remind of my own style.
I would love to work with Ang again. I feel that, with “The Ice Storm,” we made one of the great films of the Nineties and it has one of the great scores of the Nineties. Ang and I are friends and I would love to have the opportunity to work with him again.
Coming to your latest features, Atom Egoyan’s “Where the truth lies” for which your provided a brooding, dark and mysterious orchestral work along with some electric guitar and even jazz noir elements. The score, in fact, as a mirror of a movie with a lot of the key elements and personal characteristics of Atom Egoyan’s work, seems to reflect the old noir classic cinema spirit. Which were the musical references you had for this work and what do you think of the final result, both film and score? Was it a pleasant experience when working on it?
I didn’t have a specific reference or references in the music. The noir films I’ve collected in my subconscience over a lifetime, those really were my reference. It’s a world and a sound that we all know. What I really love about it is it’s a very cinematic world. It’s a world that really only exists in movies and yet we all know where that place is, what it looks like and all the rules of it. Like all of Atom’s films, it was a joy to work on and exciting. I love the way the score turned out. We recorded in London and it’s the best orchestra I’ve ever had. I just love the sound that we got.
The explicit sexual scenes of the film (Where the Truth Lies) haven been more criticized than all the violence scenes together. Here we have a double morality. As a musician, how do you try to reflect both perspectives, sexual and violent? Do you try to be explicit or do you prefer to score in a more subtle way?
I think it depends on the scene and the context. Sexual and violent scenes can have so many different roles in a film, whether it’s to shock, explain a story point or show a relationship. There are so many roles they can have to you need to analyze what the purpose of that sequence is in order to write music for it and it will be different every time.
Here at ScoreMagacine, we had an advanced listen to your new score for Bennett Miller´s “Capote”. How did you become attached and what was it like working with a relatively young director like him for the first time?
The producer, Caroline Baron, had worked with me on “Monsoon Wedding,” so we knew each other from there. Bennett Miller, although he´s a first time feature film director, he has a large body of work within the commercial industry so he´s an extremely knowledgeable and sensitive director; one of the directors with one of the greatest understanding of music of anyone I´ve worked with. So it was by no means working with a young director.
Your score for this is a very smooth, subtle and intimate work where sweet and soft piano solos constantly lead, on top of a gentle, small string orchestra. At times, we felt it was romantic but most of the duration it has a very sad, melancholic but at the same time a soothing tone, reminiscent of your previous works on Hearts in Atlantis and the soft strings´ passages in 8mm. Where you influenced by these and possibly any other previous works of yours as well, when writing this?
I try to completely start with a blank slate and not think of any other music but just think of the film, what it requires and what would be the solutions to the problems of that particular film. This score is really about Truman Capote´s internal world. It´s scoring his inner emptiness, in a sense. The emptiness you see reflected by the landscape and the washed out colors of the cinematography is also reflected in the score with the static, almost frozen quality of some of the music. That´s where I think the sense of melancholy comes from. His external world full of socializing and fame is easily apparent on the screen, but the internal world is really what the film is about.
What do you have to comment about your other upcoming projects, Terry Gilliam´s “Tideland” and Deepa Mehta´s “Water” as experiences, movies and your scores? What should we expect from their musical side? How was it working with such a great director as Terry Gilliam?
“Water” is a beautiful film which opened the Toronto Film Festival. It´s a score I went to India to record, so it has Indian folk and classical instruments as well as a large orchestra which I recorded in Europe in Bratislava.
“Tideland” is an outrageously fun and disturbing look into the mind of Terry Gilliam. I worked on the film with my brother Jeff and we absolutely loved the experience. Terry is an exciting and inspiring person to work with. It was a very fruitful collaboration and I think it´s a wonderful film.
What are your confirmed upcoming projects, any other plans for the future?
I just finished a film call "Little Miss Sunshine" which is a comedy starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear. In this film, I worked with a band, so it was a very interesting film gig in that it´s this very odd folk rock band called Divochka. It was a very different experience. I´m also about to go on to Billy Ray´s film "Breach." Billy and I worked together on "Shattered Glass" so I´m very excited to work with him again.
Thanks a lot, we appreciate your input and we wish you all the best for the future.
29-june-2006
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