Original subtitles

[FOREBODING MUSIC]

Filmmaking, as a collaborative art, how seriously

should it be taken?

Well, that question applies to every part of filmmaking.

Should films be taken seriously?

Should any part of cinema be taken seriously?

Is it all just light entertainment

that doesn't take itself seriously?

And since the 1900s began and films began,

that's a question that's been going on and on and on.

Film music is just as important-- no more, no

less-- than filmmaking.

So if you believe that filmmaking

has value and filmmaking can be important,

then the music can and is as well.

So your job as a composer is exactly that important.

It's however important that you take the subject of cinema.

When I started watching the movies,

I'm guessing I was around 5 or 6.

Because I remember the first movie that scared the crap out

of me and kind of started a bit of a lifelong obsession

was a movie starring Peter Lorre called

"The Beast with Five Fingers."

Now "The Beast with Five Fingers"

was a horror movie from actually the '40s or '50s.

But this Peter Lorre character became a lifelong obsession

with me.

And oddly, the hand that was pursuing him-- because that's

what it was about.

It was the hand of a pianist that he

was instrumental in killing, this pianist.

Then he was haunted by the hand that continued to play

the piano and-- whenever he was alone--

would come after him.

And it would be climbing up his shirt.

And he would be pulling it down.

It was always going for his neck.

And anybody who knows their classic films--

Peter Lorre, who I identified with greatly,

was better than any actor has ever

been in terms of showing angst and the pain of a situation

and the horror of a moment when the hand was going up.

And I loved it.

That had me.

And I couldn't have been more than six years old.

Because it started lifelong dreams

of being pursued by an amputated hand.

And if you look around my studio,

you'll see I'm obsessed with hands.

I collect hands-- hands that are human,

hands that are not human, anatomical hands, wax hands,

real hands, mummy hands.

And so the things that frighten me are now the things

that I stayed obsessed with.

But I also noticed there was a great piece of music in there.

Now I learned later that this was

Max Steiner doing the score.

The Steiner score was magnificent.

And I didn't know who this was.

But I began noticing music but not really paying attention.

I didn't know the name Max Steiner.

When I was about 11, I saw "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

And "The Day the Earth Stood Still," of course,

was scored by Bernard Herrmann.

And this time, I noticed the music.

The music-- something moved me.

It grabbed hold of me.

And I actually went and checked who wrote the music.

And I got to a point where, by the time I was an early teen,

I'd go, oh, I'll bet that's Miklos Rozsa.

I'll bet that's Korngold.

That's got to be Korngold.

And I was getting proud of myself

for being able to hear the styles of different composers.

And it all started with my infatuation with Herrmann.

Now the irony of my infatuation with Bernard Herrmann

is many people will agree that his best work was

done for Alfred Hitchcock.

But at this young age, I had not seen any of it

and couldn't see it.

Because the first movie that came along at the theater

that Herrmann would have scored that Alfred Hitchcock directed

was "Psycho."

And for all my life, it's the first movie my mom said,

no darling.

I don't think that's a good idea.

And my parents never had any idea what I was seeing.

I mean, I was seeing--

the week before-- "The Head That Wouldn't Die,"

where the scientist reaches into the mutant's room

and gets his arm yanked off.

And then you see the bloody trail of his stump

go down the stairs before he dies.

And then another creature reaches into his neck

and pulls out some jiggly thing and throws it on the floor.

And there's a close up.

These are the movies I grew up on.

So for my mom to suddenly be aware of what I was seeing

was like, what do you mean, Mom?

You never even ask me what I'm going to see.

And I realized that there was a difference.

Because there was a lot of press for "Psycho."

And the press all said sexual.

"Psycho" is sexual.

And suddenly, a lot of us kids had

the brakes put on for the first time in our lives.

And so it took a while for me to be able to get into.

Finally, I guess when I was 16 or 17

and started to look more back into film history--

oh my god.

It's like I already loved Herrmann.

But "Psycho"-- this is the best score

I've ever heard in my life.

[ROUSING MUSIC]

And then "North by Northwest" and then "Vertigo"--

and it's like this is the most amazing use of music

in a film I've ever seen in my life.

And then, of course, going all the way back to,

you know, his earliest work with "Citizen Kane."

So the one that was already a demi-god for me

became a god at that point.

I grew up paying attention to the music of Korngold

and a lot of the classic composers

who were excellent narrative storytellers.

They came out of the late 19th, early 20th century tradition.

And that's literally who they were.

They were German composers that were

drafted to try to figure out in 1930, what is a film score?

And what can you do with it?

And they were lucky enough to get guys

like Korngold and Franz Waxman and Steiner.

They were all classical composers

out of this era of very narrative storytelling music.

Because that was the music that was leading into that period--

the music of Tchaikovsky and so many other composers that

was the beginning of narrative.

You listen to music, and you can hear stories.

That was the tradition that they established.

The first two scores, the big ones--

"King Kong," "Bride of Frankenstein."

It's amazing to go and watch and listen to those scores again.

Max Steiner with "King Kong" not only figured out what to do.

And you have to understand if you're watching this,

nobody had done this before.

He was figuring it out in his head from scratch.

There was no tradition to follow to say, how do you

synchronize music to film--

this relatively new medium--

and make it work for a narrative?

And he was inventing on what he knew.

And when "King Kong" starts moving

and his music moves with King Kong,

that seems like nothing now.

Of course.

You hear that all the time.

But back then, it was extraordinary.

It was establishing an idea which

would last for the rest of the century

and is still around today.

And what Franz Waxman did with the "Bride of Frankenstein"

was to go this great, effusive, mysterious melody and score

that built and built and did such a beautiful job

of bringing in this tragic, dramatic, melodramatic-- sure,

why not--

but mysterious element of bride of Frankenstein

and what she was.

And it's an incredible score.

The bride of Frankenstein!

[SOARING ORCHESTRAL MUSIC]

And thank god John Williams-- in the '70s, who was a student

of this music--

brought to life again in the '70s into the '80s and helped

bring back the whole idea of a big narrative orchestral score.

Because that's really what he did with Star Wars,

was to re-establish, as a genre, a big, orchestral, melodic

sound.

It dates right back to the original composers

in a beautiful but original way.

I'm not saying that he was copying them because he wasn't.

He had his own style.

But he was illustrating exactly how

the masters would take a thematic narrative

and weave it into a score.

And on the other extreme, you have contemporary music,

which can be extremely effective, where

there's no melody at all, but there could be a motif.

And the motif says a lot.

The most minimalist beautiful way

in recent history I can think of would be Mica Levi in the film

"Under the Skin."

I love that score.

And I love her compositions.

But so simple and so basic and so primitive and so effective.

[FOOTSTEPS]

[TENSE MUSIC]

Sometimes, the whole point is to make a statement

and not be obvious that we're saying this or this.

We're saying, just giving you a feeling.

How does that make you feel?

And that's what you want to do.

You want to go, I'm not sure how I feel about this character.

I'm not sure if this character is good or bad.

Maybe they're both.

And you can do that with the music

purposely, this kind of ambiguity

that maybe it's telling a story, maybe it's not.

And again, I think that's one of the beautiful things

about composition is that gray area when you're

telling a story that really can be interpreted different ways

and intentionally so.

Because you don't want to give up your hand at that point.