I feel like I have to ask you a little about Interstellar specifically. Christopher Nolan said he talked to you about the score before he even gave you a script. Is that true?
Well… [Laughs.] Chris came to me about two years ago and he said, “I won’t tell you what the movie’s about, but I’ll write one page of something, and you give me one day and write whatever comes into your head. Are you up for that adventure?” And of course I said, “Yes.”
So he gave this envelope with this beautiful typewritten fable, really, about a father and a son. And he knows me well enough and he knows my son well enough. I mean, he knew he was pushing all the right buttons. I wrote this… I responded by writing a piece of music which was really a love letter to my son. I stuck to the rules, I did it in one day and phoned him about nine o’clock at night and said, “Chris, I finished it. Do you want me to send it over?”
He goes, “No, could [I] come down?” And he came down, sat down on my couch. I played it to him. We get to the end of it and I say to him, “Well Chris, what do you think?” And he goes, “Well, I’d better make the movie now.” [Laughs.]
“If you think about any sci-fi movie there’s an inherent nostalgic quality about it…”
“Well, what IS the movie?” And he started describing this vast canvas of space and science and humanity and finally I went, “Hang on a sec, hang on a second. I’ve just written you this tiny, humble little piece, this very personal corner,” and he said, “Yes, but I now know what the heart of the movie is.”
And so, that’s where we started. In a funny way, we never let go of that, and I realized during the conversation, and as we were working, if you think about any sci-fi movie there’s an inherent nostalgic quality about it, and then the nostalgia drifts over into being incredibly personal somehow.
I think the bigger we got, sonically, visually, ideas-wise, the core was always, what’s our place as human beings? Who are we? Who am I? Who am I in relation to my children? How can I see myself not through the eyes of my children?
Did you answer the age-old questions of “Who am I?” and “Why are we here in the universe?” with the score to Interstellar? Because that’s awesome…
No, I didn’t. I don’t think I did. But I do remember sitting there for a good month pondering the questions Chris just threw out and threw out and threw out, randomly. It would be nice if we could figure out a way to consolidate the theory of quantum mechanics, time and gravity… which, after two months, I went, “Okay, I’ll write a love theme.” [Laughs.]
It sort of worked! It sort of works because it gives you a sense of wonderment. I think one of the things we lost in movies to a large degree is wonderment, and looking outwards. I mean, we’ve gotten really good – especially Chris and I, in Inception or even in the Dark Knight trilogy – [at] looking inside and being really psychological and all this sort of stuff.
But at the end of it, it isolates you. As a person looking around, widening your gaze. It helped… If I could just do that. If I could go back to when I was a kid sitting at night on the lawn and staring up at the stars, I thought, “That’s a good place to start.”
That’s nice…
I mean, I come from a scientific family. My dad was a scientist. I remember the joy of celebrating invention, celebrating science, celebrating what we could do, celebrating intellect. Chasing down an idea could be the best car chase ever that you’ve never seen on the screen.
“I think one of the things we lost in movies to a large degree is wonderment, and looking outwards.”
Did that first piece of music end up in the movie? Is there a particular track on the soundtrack?
It’s all over the movie. It’s actually commonest thread. And in best Christopher Nolan fashion, the original demo of me playing it just by myself is the first thing you hear in the black when the movie ends. So the first thing is last.
Did he warn you about that, or were you surprised?
No, no. Not really. When he said, when we were talking about the last reel, and he said, “But remember, we cut to the black, we’ve got to go back to day one.” Of course it made sense. Of course it made sense because… I don’t know. It just made sense.
There is a singularity that goes through this score, whereby even though there are hundreds of musicians on it, at one point or the other I played every single note that these musicians play. There was version of the score that was completely performed on synthesizers, etc. in my computer. So every note had been played by one human being, which is very different. It’s a completely unified emotion.
Everyone but Chris and me was saying, “So you guys are basically done?” and we kept, “No, we’ve still got this idea. We want to go to this church in London, [where] there’s this wonderful amazing pipe organ, and we just want to experiment.” Between the two of us we had sort of made this pact that we were going to go on an adventure and just try these experiments, and if we only came away with one note it would be a success. But it turned out it was just fantastical experience over there.
I’ve been a fan of your work for a long time, and I’m curious if there’s a particular musical cue that you’re particularly fond of in your career, whether it’s a big theme or a small moment.
You know, it sort of changes?
Yeah.
I could find flaws with all of them, which is a very German thing to do. You’re never happy. In fact I figured out we don’t actually have the word “happy” in the German language the way you have in English. But that’s besides the point.
Today, if you asked me, I would probably “Time” from Inception. Just because I like how simple it is, how sort of geometrically it works really well. I think it’s good writing and it’s good design, and I think it does the things I want it to do, which is create emotion without ever telling you what you’re supposed to feel.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
