Lost Issue: The Composer Guy

by Mike Shapiro

Mike Shapiro: You mentioned in your last interview that you see the '60s and '70s films as a sort of artistic pinnacle from which film music has subsequently fallen. Do you see the predominance of sound effects that's arisen since that time has contributed to that change?

John Ottman: That's a soapbox issue for any composer these days. I could talk an hour about that... I mean, I just wish in the middle of a mix, we could just stop a moment and all go into a room and watch the best films of film history, and just listen to the mixes. Have the sound people sit there and watch, and then look at them in the eye, and say "Now what did you want to do with this movie that we're working on now?" The proof is in the success of films in the past. Films like Star Wars, Psycho, Lawrence of Arabia -- hundreds of them -- are the obvious example of how music is the driving force... If music's there, it's there for a reason. The effects are there to basically have us believe a scene. If you shoot a scene of a car going by, then all we need to do hear just enough car to realize, "This film was filmed in sound." Unless the car engine has something to do with the storyline, it's just a car engine, for God sakes. In Cable Guy we're cutting back and forth between Matthew Broderick racing to a different location where Jim Carrey was. It was an intercutting sequence, and the music's job was to tie all that together. And every time we cut to that !*#%@^ Jeep, it's all you can hear -- the music was gone for that moment and back again -- until the thunder claps. It completely defeated the purpose of the music. I think many of the sound effects people are so focused on their millions of sound effects, they often lose the big picture.

MS: Anything else anecdotal that's worth reciting about the experience?

JO: Like one of the Sony music executives told me, "John, this is one of the best baptisms you could ask for."

MS: So this was your hazing.

JO: Right. So I can handle it all, knock on wood!

MS: So other than your commitment to Bryan, have you had any interest in your editing? I hear you've turned down some notables.

JO: Don't remind me! Yes. Ridley Scott, Paul Verhoeven, Danny DeVito, Renny Harlin to name the ones that come to mind. Yikes, am I nuts?!

MS: No comment. So, you've also been involved in a live adaptation of Snow White. Can you tell us a little about it?

JO: As I was finishing up Cable Guy, I was beginning preparations for Snow White in the Dark Forest. That's why I couldn't be at the Cable Guy final mix. The Snow White people liked the idea of temp-scoring the film with original synth renderings as it was being constructed, so it was a repeat experience, keeping up with an ever-changing film and completing renderings in time for a multitude of test screenings.

MS: So you were writing...

JO: I was writing as they were editing. And this film was re-edited, and re-edited, and re-edited. Fortunately, although they kept changing the cuts in Snow White, I had seen an early assembly of the whole film, so I knew basically where I had to stop and start in terms of developing the score. This score is 75 minutes in a 90-minute movie, so it was very important to sort of see a rough assembly first so I could design themes around characters and create a master plan of how they could all converge at the end.
This movie reminds me of a film that came from the '70s, not that it's a great film, but because it's very basic filmmaking. So I scored things in a very traditional style, where there are strong themes and motifs that come around. Snow White's mother has a motif, so when Snow White remembers her, we hear that motif. Snow White has her own theme, Claudia (played by Sigourney Weaver) actually has three themes, one when she's talking to the mirror, before anything happened, one for after she's become evil, and one that represents her as whole from which the two sub-themes are drawn. Also, there are motifs for her that have nothing to do with her theme, like when she's doing something overtly evil. Then there's a love theme created between Snow White and the outcasts, which are basically the dwarves in this film. So those are the major themes.

MS: How did you spot the film?

JO: Spotting was a joke, of course. In Suspects we didn't spot it because I'd already temp-scored it, so when spotting date came we just looked at each other and nodded, and that was the spotting day. With Cable Guy the spotting session was watching the movie with my temp score. "Yep, that's fine, that's fine, more here, etc." So spotting was just confirming that the temp score was correct, or discovering it was off here and there.

MS: But even still when you're getting the scene, how do you decide what scenes get music and what don't? Or did you work on that in advance...?

JO: Well reading the script helped... and, like I mentioned before, being a film editor, I had a sort of sixth sense, having seen all the dailies, all the rough footage, of what was going to go and what was going to stay. I was pretty much able to predict if there was a scene coming after the scene I was scoring, whether it was going to stay or not, and I sort of, keeping that in mind, knew where the film was going before it happened. Fortunately it seemed to work. Of course I tweaked it as it became more and more of a final product.

MS: Do you think the director or producer were aware of this, or that they thought any film composer could handle...?

JO: I don't know. That's why it's always bad to start new precedents because it opens the can of worms. I hope no composers are required to do what I had to do.

MS: Back to Snow White. Now this is a dark twist on the story, almost perversely so, so what was the idea for the musical approach, both from the director's standpoint and your own? And, to back up a step, how did you get involved in the project?

JO: I guess once again, it was The Usual Suspects. They wanted a dark, rich score, but also something that wouldn't be the typical. In other words, they didn't want people to say, "Oh, that's a Williams score or an Elfman score." So being a new guy, that was perfect, since not too many know who the hell I am anyway! But, besides, I think I had a good meeting with them... I totally fell in love with the script -- it read like a composer's showpiece, a real tapestry of music. And when I met Dawn Soler at PolyGram music I told her I was all over this movie. This was exactly what I wanted to do, because my ongoing dream is to do a Dances with Wolves sort of sweeping score. This wasn't exactly that, but it was dark and I sensed it had the leeway to let me do a sort of Romantic score. So it ended up being a little bit horror-like, and more creepy than I thought it was going to be, and it didn't really translate exactly to the script. But it was a musical showpiece for any composer, because the music had to carry this movie. There were some problems with the film, so the music had to be the element that drove it. There was pretty much agreement on all parties. The producers seemed to be of the more aggressive camp, wanting me to hit things a little bit more on the head than the director did.

And Sigourney wielded some power in the film, saw the film temp-scored with my score, and so she was able to make some comments on the score as well, and wanted some of the hits subdued a bit, and wanted to make sure we didn't make her character too dark. So she kind of pushed the score back in the direction I had originally wanted.

MS: Do you know if she liked the score?

JO: We played her a couple of cues, and she seemed to like it.

MS: Film composers never get to meet stars...

JO: Yeah. I met Carrey -- a really nice, amazingly talented guy. Unfortunately I couldn't be there when the music was presented to Sigourney, my music editor got to do that. She played it on a boom box in front of her.

MS: How would you differentiate this score from Suspects?

JO: Well Suspects, although in a sense, romantic, didn't have any sort of real romance in it, whereas this does. Suspects was more difficult to ride the fine line, where this was easier because anything went on this film; it's complete fantasy. That's why I had a blast scoring it because I was able to really feel uninhibited and "go for it," in the words of the producers, which they used all the time. "Go for it" is totally what a composer wants to hear. Basically it was one of the most fun assignments I've ever had, because I had a real feeling of freedom on the movie; there was very little interference. I got to write the score I wanted to write, and record it... and much of this is some of the best stuff I've ever done.

MS: You worked non-union, recording in Seattle... How do you think it compares to doing it locally?

JO: Well, I have to first preface by saying that the union players in L.A. are amazing, and I valued their talent on Cable Guy because they were able to adapt to changes immediately. I totally fell in love with Seattle, however, and the Seattle Symphony players, and the church there, and the acoustics, and the whole creative environment was unequaled. We could break rules, overdub to our heart's content, etc. So it was a blast. Any time you travel somewhere there's already a sort of easing of tensions, because you're going to a new city. On top of that, Seattle is beautiful, it wasn't rainy, it was sunny, we got to record in this church, and the moment I heard the first note on downbeat I was flabbergasted. We didn't use any processing or reverb as we monitored... basically we used the room mics and it sounded amazing.

With the film's low music budget and 75 minutes of full symphonic music to record, a union recording would have been impossible. We had four days of recording and they wanted me to cut down the orchestra by 20 musicians. From my experience with Suspects, I knew if we cut the string section to half, I could keep all my brass and woodwinds, and overdub strings on each cue three times, making 22 sound like 66. My recording engineer had his doubts, but we set up for it -- we used a lot of tracks because we wanted the room ambiance. I think I sold my engineer on it when we were done. But what really shocked me was that even on the first pass with a total of 22 strings it sounded almost acceptable, and that's how amazing the acoustics of that room are -- and how good my engineer, Tim Boyle, was too.

MS: 22 strings total? Not violins?

JO: Total. So by the third pass it sounded, needless to say, fantastic. Also to save money, we had the same musician play harpsichord, celeste and piano -- which are usually playing together in every cue. So we basically had to go through the score two more times to record his stuff.

Of course, not everything on the soundtrack was done by the Seattle group. There's this whispering effect on one of the tracks. I recorded my voice eight times on a multi-track and whispered evil gibberish, and sampled it. So it sounds like this demented chanting. I realized, though, that I needed it to be syllabic, so on one track I did "Sea Shells by the Sea Shore," which you can hear if you listen carefully!

MS: What were the time constraints?

JO: Well, just like Cable Guy, in the last three weeks before we had to record, they substantially changed the film and 75% of the score had to be rewritten to accommodate the cut, and I had three weeks. It was a huge process to squeeze in. In fact, we were writing the choir lyrics the day before we left for Seattle. And it's funny, I don't have anyone who does that for me; so I'm sitting here in my studio, I'd written all the choir parts already, but I'd never really decided what the lyrics were going to be. I don't know much Latin, except the basic phrases you hear all the time in these scores. I sat down with my assistant and we strung together a bunch of bullshit Latin words and it sounded great!

MS: So you had two months in total, of which three weeks was reworking 75% of the music.

JO: Right. Because the structural revisions were so substantial in Snow White, I was writing 3-4 minutes a day. Some of it was revisions, but most of it had to be completely revamped. The scenes were completely re-arranged... a cue would run across four scenes, and they'd take those scenes and put them in different parts of the movie.

MS: So that wasn't the period between the two films?

JO: The moment I was off Cable Guy, they wanted to test-screen Snow White in a week and a half with as much of my music as possible. I got about halfway through it for the first screening.

MS: Were you happy with the overall outcome?

JO: It was the first time I actually was happy with what I'd written upon hearing it on the first pass. I think it was the best time I've had scoring a film. And then we added the choir, and I know a big smile went across my face! One casualty though was in the final mix, out of all that music, of all cues, my favorite one was axed and replaced by a cue from another scene. It worked, but now the cue will only be heard on a CD. The cue's called "The Awakening." The director thought it too sentimental. Call me a sap!

MS: So we can hear it on a soundtrack album?

JO: Because it was non-union, they can afford to release a score. I'm holding off trying to do it myself or with PolyGram until we see if the film's released. If the film's released, then the CD should be an automatic thing.

MS: What are your hopes for the film?

JO: I don't know how the film's going to be received. Often a composer's score goes down with the ship, or occasionally you can stay above the film... I'm hoping the latter happens of course! Um... that is, if the ship does sink. The final mix is really, really good. The music mixer had a great instinct. So, no matter how the film's received, the score is very present.

MS: Now that you've done these three full feature scores -- two of which seem to have been brutal in some way or the other -- do you miss editing?

JO: Well, I miss the power and control of editing a project I'm involved with, but I don't miss the invisibility. I'm gearing up for Bryan's next movie, which I will be editing and scoring again. I have this trepidation about my name disappearing from the landscape for a long period of time because of the long editing process, but I just have to accept that.

MS: The sense I was trying to get was... you made this big shift in your career from going from editor to composer, because this is what you wanted to do more. Having gone through these trials by fire, do you feel happy about that decision?

JO: When it's all said and done, I love scoring films. I mean, like with any intense field, you ask yourself, "Is this all worth it?" You have no life to speak of, but then again, I don't anyway! So the moment I have a break of more than four weeks I'll be depressed again because I won't be working. You can't win! But because this all happened so fast to me, every single day I thank my lucky stars that this is happening. I don't take it for granted at all. But, it's not for the weak of heart or faint of stomach. If you're prone to ulcers don't get into film scoring!

MS: So what's coming up with Bryan Singer?

JO: Well the last time I mentioned something that was coming up it never happened and I was on hold for three months waiting for it. So if anyone wonders what happened to me between The Usual Suspects and Cable Guy, I was basically "unavailable," twiddling my thumbs waiting for this supposed film to happen. Then they pulled the plug and I was basically s-o-l. Then after Snow White it happened again. Our next film together was supposed to be filming now, so I was once again declared unavailable for any projects. Then the film was delayed a couple weeks, then a month... now mid-February. So once again, I'm kind of on hold -- as of this interview. Maybe by the time this is printed, I'll be working on something between now and February.

But I'm looking forward to working with the Suspects team again. You know, it may be a smaller budget movie, but to me it's often more fulfilling because it's something different, more pure and remembered -- we hope. So hopefully it'll be worth the wait.

MS: What's the nature of the project?

JO: A very, very, very extremely dark movie based on a Stephen King story called Apt Pupil. It's about a strange boy who's obsessed with World War II and the Holocaust, and discovers a Nazi War criminal living nearby and blackmails the guy to tell him all the things about the Holocaust that the public may not know. And being a typical Stephen King story the tables begin to turn, and pretty soon the kid is being blackmailed by the old man. It's got dream sequences and is like an open book once again for me. (I'll make sure those dream sequences exist so I can write long cues!) Oh, and I'll be making my cameo as a high school band conductor.

MS: I understand you're an associate producer on this as well.

JO: One more title for me, mainly symbolic. [laughs]

MS: You received the British Academy Award for best editing on Suspects, but were you disappointed that Suspects didn't get a nod from our Academy, given that other aspects (e.g. Chris McQuarrie's script) did very well?

JO: Naw. I didn't want to win anything! [laughs] I came close on the editing, but as for score I knew I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell being this new guy that came from nowhere. Oh! But I did win an award for best score. The Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy and Horror films' Saturn Award. I totally forgot to mention that! [laughs] I was up against Danny Elfman, Howard Shore and James Horner. It was a funny evening when I was presented that award. My parents were there, and as a kid I would drive them nuts playing the "Klingon Battle" from Star Trek over and over, day in, day out. So when I got up on stage, I had a little tape player I was going to hold up to microphone and play the "Klingon Battle" and apologize to my parents publicly. The irony is that the presenter for that award was George Takei! So he got a kick out of that as well. It was even funnier because I had attended a Star Trek convention (hey, I admit it!) a year before Star Trek: The Motion Picture and recorded George Takei speaking about the film, which was the most Earth-shattering event to me in world history at the time. And I had played that tape in my parents' house as well.
 
The other biggest highlight for me this year was I got to meet Jerry Goldsmith, whom I worship. He was sitting behind me...there were two tables at the BMI dinner, and my back was to Jerry -- we were literally two feet from each other. But I wouldn't turn around because I couldn't conceive of talking to him. His white suit was glowing as if he were some unearthly presence. But Richard Kraft, my agent, knowing full well the situation, sat me down next to him when his wife left to restroom and said, "Meet Jerry." I basically had three minutes to fill him in on my life since birth... I don't think he knew what hit him. I left the table knowing that his head was spinning...I think I spoke so fast he was barely able to make sense of anything I had to say. So if Jerry's reading this I apologize for sounding like a complete buffoon. The biggest shocker was that he told me that he liked my score to Usual Suspects. That just blew my mind. Of course I immediately said, "Well, there's a lot of you in there." And he very kindly said back, "There's a lot of you in there too." I floated out of the dinner, buzzed on more than wine.

To be Continued...

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