Original subtitles

[CLICK OF A DIAL FOLLOWED BY STATIC]

"The Unknown Known," the story of Rumsfeld, Donald Rumsfeld--

wow, what a subject matter.

What a character.

There's nothing I like about Donald Rumsfeld.

Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are my two least

favorite people in the world.

But this is Donald Rumsfeld's story,

and I'm going to score it.

I tried to find a very simple leitmotif, a melody,

and we established it like this.

[MUSIC - "MAIN TITLES"]

Real sweet.

Very simple guitar.

And here's my melody.

And can we pause for a moment?

What I like to point out here, and then we'll play it again,

is that I'm intentionally not starting

the melody, which is going to be a very simple melody--

(SINGING) da da da da, da da da da, da da da, da da da.

(SPEAKING NORMALLY) Notice that I'm not

starting on the downbeat because that's how

we're used to hearing music.

You hear an introduction.

It goes, (SINGING) dun dun, dun dun, dun dun, dun dun,

and then [INAUDIBLE] and 4 and da da, da--

(SPEAKING NORMALLY) so listen where

I start this because this wasn't an accident.

One more time please.

[MUSIC - "MAIN TITLES"]

So there, it started in a rather odd place,

which is unsettling even if you don't know

why it's kind of unsettling.

It just didn't start where it felt like it should start.

Now, I'm taking this very simple theme

and letting it evolve into something that--

what is-- what is going on here?

There's a mystery to it.

The ostinato begins, and we've got

just a simple minor key melody that I'm building.

And this is going to get dark, and this

is going to go places that are not happy places.

B section because it's a full melody with an A

and a B section in a very traditional way.

And it ends in a classical (SINGING) da da da da

da, da da.

OK, let's hold it there, and I'm purposely

ending it in a way that might be in an opera

or a piece of Mozart.

So this first statement is getting a melody.

We don't know quite where it's coming from.

We don't know what it's exactly saying,

except this isn't necessarily going to be just a happy story.

It's not so much, how do you write a theme

for what is Donald Rumsfeld?

That would just be a villain's theme.

That would be Darth Vader.

So we can't be on the nose.

In other words, I can't go, Donald Rumsfeld, (SINGING -

"THE IMPERIAL MARCH") dun, dun dun, dun-dun dun.

(SPEAKING NORMALLY) That's the way I feel,

but that's on the nose.

So a better way to do it is to lay out

something-- no, this is a film.

It's a documentary.

I'm not going to tell you who it is.

It's about a man talking openly about his life.

But I'm trying to say here that, yeah, it's all these things,

but there's something going on here,

and I'm just going to hint at it here in the beginning.

I'm just going to give you a little hints of it.

OK, this next queue, starting to mess it up a little bit more.

Same motifs.

[MUSIC - "MARIMBA FOGHORN"]

There's an ostinato that's reminiscent of--

(SINGING) dun dun dun dun, dun-dun dun-dun dun.

(SPEAKING NORMALLY) This is my second leitmotif

that I use in the score.

And bringing in marimbas because I

used all of my marimbas in this score,

which is another reason why I thought

it'd be fun to play, which is, of course,

is another way that you save money

when you don't have a lot of budget,

is use things that are lying around in your house.

A little bit of drama.

Now, I'm starting to create some rhythmic action that's

unsettling, but still in a traditional way.

There it is again, but I've just come out of a descending

pattern that got--

purposely got all messed up at the bottom,

like it was trying to do something chromatically nice,

and they got lost.

They started playing the wrong notes.

Still keeping the same pattern going,

but I keep mixing up the rhythms. (SINGING) Dun

dun dun dun-dun, dun-dun.

Dun dun dun 1 and 2 and 3, 1, 2, 3, bom, 1 and 2 and 3.

(SPEAKING NORMALLY) Also a rhythm that's hard to count,

and now, we work our way down to the cello.