Nicholas Britell - 'Jay Kelly' [LIVE]

32:09So I wrote this, I wrote a piece, I can play a little bit of it, it's actually really, it's sort of impossible to play on one piano because it's actually six pianos but there's this sort of motif in the big short where you hear this piano going kind of like

32:29So at this sort of, and then it's like,

32:36it's this sort of like building of layers. And then what happens is, which is impossible to play on the piano, is I took the recording of, this goes back to even like hip hop sampling, I basically took my own recording of the piano, sampled it, and then played it two times as fast and then four times as fast on top of it. So while that's happening, it's actually doing this incredibly complicated kind of like, you know, multiple time scales. And then underneath that, there's another melody comes in, which is this sort of...

33:17So this is all going on...

33:22And there's a sort of, I think this was the beginning of some of the explorations of like dissonance that I did a lot with Adam where I think Vice is probably the furthest we ever went with that. But there's a bit of it in Don't Look Up To. And I think there's a sense of like, what's the farthest you can go with sort of putting in a wrong note somewhere to make a point about something emotionally. Thank you.

33:52So the big short was out in 2015. The next year was something called Moonlight. This was the first of numerous collaborations between you and Barry Jenkins. How did you guys cross paths? And is it true that at the time he hired you for that movie, which again went on to win the Best Picture Academy Award, he had not actually heard any of your music? So this is crazy actually because I didn't know that until we were on our Beale Street press tour. The way that we first met was that Jeremy Kleiner had sent me, actually we were at dinner, this is what it was, we were at dinner and Jeremy started telling me about a movie that they were producing called Moonlight and he said the script was so beautiful and then he started to cry.

34:41It was he was just so moved by it and I said you know Is there any way I could read this script sounds unbelievable? So he sent me the script and I read it and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever read and I remember saying to him it felt like a poem it just felt like a work of poetry and I said is there any way I could meet Barry, you know, just just for a coffee or something and He said yeah, you know Barry's down to meet up with you and so we met up at the Ace Hotel in downtown LA, and what started as just like, you know, coffee or something turned into like a three-hour, we opened up a bottle of wine, and we talked about just movies and music and life and everything, and we talked about ideas even for the movie for Moonlight there, and that conversation started, and it was just really incredible talking to someone where it felt like we really had this immediate connection in that way.

35:39Fast forward three years or so, I guess, three, four years, and we're on the press tour for Beale Street, and we're doing a podcast, actually, and Barry says, you know, I never had heard any of your music when I hired you. And I was like, how did you hire me? Didn't Jeremy send you any examples of my music or anything? He's like, no. He's like, we just had a really nice conversation. and from from that point on i know you guys would uh you know as you said a lot of conversations i think it's important to note that it seems like part of the reason you chose not to be a concert pianist and chose to do film composition specifically is that it involves at least the way you choose to do it and insist on doing it this direct collaboration between the filmmaker and yourself and in this case I know it involved you know not just conversations but sending him playlists of things that were potentially springing off points for things right how did this conversation on Moonlight evolved to the point where you were talking about specific instruments that you wanted to emphasize on this score and also a specific style which is something that I had never heard of before, but I think it's obviously key to this great score.

36:59It's something called Chopped and Screwed. Can you explain what that is? Yeah, absolutely. So Chopped and Screwed music is a style of hip-hop where you take a recording and you slow it down, basically, and when you slow it down, the pitch goes down. But it doesn't just go down, it actually gets richer, and it's like you're pulling the music, you're making it wider, you know? And so every note is like more. It's an incredible sound when you listen to it. And that concept is present in, you know, in hip hop itself in a lot of ways when you're sampling something. But Chop and Screwed is a very overt version of this, really pioneered, for example, by DJ Screw, you know, really the pioneer of that.

37:44And in the first conversation I had with Barry, he brought up Chop and Screwed and he said, this is what I want to do. This is an idea I have. Were you already familiar with what that was? I knew of the concept generally in hip-hop, but I was not at all an expert at this whatsoever. And Barry was basically like, you know, let's dive into this. So I was, you know, like conceptually, I knew how I could do that. But Barry, Barry is such a fan of Chop and Screw. I remember at the time he was only listening to Chop and Screw. He was listening to music that wasn't Chop and and screwed and chopping and screwing and just listening to that.

38:19So he was, like all his music was like slow and low. And like, it was beautiful. It was actually amazing. He had all these amazing playlists. And in that first conversation, we had this idea, you know, of saying, well, what if I was gonna write you a original score? And he knew from the first moment we met, he said he wanted a classical kind of score from Moonlight. He said specifically, I am imagining like an orchestra for this. So we had that conversation of what if we had an orchestra and what if I recorded my own music for this and then we took those recordings and then we chopped and screwed those recordings and that was the score.

38:55And so that's what we did. Now there's one of the most beautiful and moving moments in Moonlight in large part because of the music is when Mahershala Ali's character Juan teaches Alex Hibbert's character Little how to swim. Can you share how that particular scene which probably for a lot of people is the first scene that comes to mind when they think about Moonlight evolved musically into what is now known as middle of the world. Absolutely. That was, this is actually an amazing story for me in my own career, I guess, because I think there was something about the nature of creative process. I mean, I think every movie you're learning, every artistic project you're learning, you know, it's anytime you think you know what you're doing on this stuff, you are faced with a situation where you realize there's still so much more to learn.

39:48And in that, there was an interesting example. I'll show at the piano a little bit. We'll do a little. Thank you. So basically, that was a scene where there's a, the main theme of the movie is Little's theme. That was a piece that I initially had called a poem because I was inspired by that idea that felt that the script felt like a poem, the movie felt like a poem, and the sort of motif in that piece is this...

40:17that's sort of like the symbolic motif for the character of Little, and the piece was this sort of...

40:43So this motif, I felt was a great starting point for the scene that we're talking about, where this is the moment where little is learning to swim. I felt this was a sort of a beautiful childhood moment that could be something that is distinct from what happens later in the film in a sense, sort of, you know, that last moment of childhood, let's say. So I was doing something where I was going to bring in a full orchestra, and I was going to do it in a different key, and it was going to be with clarinet, for example, and it was going to be sort of in like F major, and I was going to do this sort of

41:26sort of

41:29I was going to do this whole thing, and it was going to rise up, you know, I thought it was very beautiful. I did a big demo with orchestra sounds and everything, and I played it for Barry, and he was just like, no. No, no, no, not at all. I was like, whoa, okay, wow, like, what are we thinking here, you know? And he said, this is, this is a baptism, you know, this is a spiritual baptism. This is, this is not that feeling at all, you know? This is the, so it's almost a totally different way of looking at it. This is like the first day of the rest of his life, you know, and and I and I think it's such a powerful thing because realizing A, that a very logical idea of the theme, you know, is, you know, could be a great idea on paper.

42:17Maybe the, you know, maybe the piece is even pretty, but doesn't mean it's right for the scene. And he said spiritual baptism, so I started thinking, okay, maybe it's in D minor, not F, you know, it's like, so we're here. And, you know, he was sitting on my couch, and I just remember this sort of, I was like, well, what if I took these like arpeggios, and I wanted it to feel almost like, maybe it's almost more of like a storm feeling or something, you know, and you take these arpeggios, and I just started playing I put a violin sound on the keyboard to evoke that kind of violin sound I started doing these arpeggios this sort of like...

43:00So I started just doing this...

43:14And I sort of went on there from this whole...

43:33You know, it just kept going and going and going. And so when I finished, Barry was just like, this is it. Keep going. This is exactly what I'm going to do. It was like doing it in real time. You know, it just all came together in real time. I think it was such an important lesson for me in a sense because so much of this is about, it's not just the piece, it's about the idea, you know, and maybe that links back with what you're bringing up with these sort of conversations. So, you know, there's infinite possible scores for a movie. There's so many different ways that every composer might approach a film, but the sort of beautiful meeting point of a director and a composer talking specifically what they can do, that unique vision, that's the thing that I think we're trying to bring out.

44:24And that's what makes something feel, Barry talked about this very specifically, he would say with Moonlight that, you know, it's the specificity of Moonlight that makes it universal. Wow, thank you.

44:42I think it's also something that not everyone gets, but you certainly got that sometimes it's as important to not have music in a scene as it is to have music accompanying it. That was, I think, in evidence with the final scene in Moonlight, right, where we've got the character Black sits in Kevin's apartment, and you guys did not have any music until the very end of that, right? And then there's music that takes us out and actually interestingly that you bring up that scene because there's that scene connects to the first scene when they're on the beach together and that's an example of another scene where I had initially put a big piece of score and this there's something this is just one of the things that I feel is a recurring theme and being a composer is you can write a piece of music for a particular scene and it can be amazing it can be perfect you can watch the scene and it just feels amazing.

45:40It feels like everything's happening. The director feels it's great. Everything's great. And then you go watch the movie in a run and You're and as you get closer to that scene, you're dreading hearing your music and you know immediately that there should be no music in that scene and It's one of those fascinating things about movies is that they're they're long form, you know Every the micro is its own thing in the macro is its own thing and you really have to you really have to watch movies and run to know if music should be in a particular place. Now you're going to notice it. You're going to notice the music.

46:15You're going to be hypersensitive to it no matter where it is. But I guess the question I have is, should the audience be aware of the score? That's a good question. And I've thought about this a lot. I think in theory, the music is something that should be like, honestly, like every part of a movie. I mean, I think every part of a movie should be subconscious as we're watching it. You know, we should be completely lost in the movie. I think if it's functioning at its optimal level. That being said, I do think for me, some of my favorite movies, and obviously I'm biased and I'm a musician and I'm saying, but some of my favorite movies, the ones when I'm totally clocking the score the whole way.

46:55You know, I mean, I'm a pianist because I noticed the music in Chariots of Fire. But I think that if you think about watching Star Wars, for example, I think you're noticing the music. E.T. I mean, there's so many great examples of the music. So I think it's kind of an and. One last Moonlight-related question. I mentioned that Moonlight won the Best Picture Oscar, as did 12 Years a Slave. The circumstances under which Moonlight won the Best Picture Oscar, people might recall, was one of the craziest moments in the history of live television or award shows, which is something that I cover year-round for a living.

47:32I've never seen it. I don't think I'll ever see anything like it again. They announced accidentally the wrong winner at first and then correct it. Nicholas Bertel was one of the people along all the Moonlight folks. Once Jordan Horowitz corrected the mistake, the Moonlight folks went on stage alongside the La La Land folks, who again now you guys know the history of Nick and and and George the whole I mean Damien Chazelle and Justin Hurwitz and all these guys so there was always a nice rapport between the two films but that's a bit of an awkward situation what do you remember about how that all went down it was so crazy I remember thinking La La Land won and I had been nominated for the score that the year so we were sitting, the composers were all kind of sitting together, I think we were sort of on the left side.

48:25I remember we were all standing for La La Land and there were these sort of TV producers with the cameras in the middle of the floor there, and I just remember one guy was just like waving his hands like this. And I remember thinking, I actually remember thinking to myself, you know, look, they just won Best Picture, let let them speak. Like it's okay, you know? Like that's my gut feel. And then we really didn't clock what was happening at all, but someone was like, you guys won. And I was like, what? And then they were like, no, no, no, you guys won. Moonlight won. And then I sort of started seeing what was happening and I looked at my wife and I was like, do I just go up there?

49:11And so I was like, I'm going up. So I just, you know, they don't tell you what to do. We all just, so we all, I went up and it was incredibly confusing. And actually I think the most, there's some photography of me looking unbelievably confused and out of place. And I think, I just remember thinking to myself that I thought that like, I still didn't believe it. You know, it just, I was sort of like, is this actually correct, you know? But it was, and it was, I mean, that was, it was very, like none of us, none of us could comprehend that for the longest time yeah oh that's crazy okay so 2017 the year after moonlight you had uh battle of the sexes which was a about the billy jean king bobby riggs tennis match and and you approached that in an interesting way you had an upright piano for bobby riggs stuff you had a steinway grand piano for billy jean you also co-wrote an original song which you've done a number of times in this case with Sara Bareilles if I dare but then around this time I believe sort of in that same neighborhood not long after Big Short I believe Adam McKay who we mentioned gives you some indication that he's going to be involved with a television series as well yeah how did you find out about Succession so we were we were finishing Big Short and I I remember Adam said that there was a TV series with HBO that they were working on about sort of like billionaire media mogul family.

50:45And I really didn't know anything about what the show was about, but I'd always, I mean, I'd always loved HBO shows ever since I was a kid. And, you know, and I'd never done any television before. So I was totally into it. And he sent me the pilot script and I thought it was fantastic. And then in one of those sort of wonderful experiences that in hindsight I didn't even fully appreciate at the time, Adam said, well, we're gonna be shooting the pilot in New York and you should come to set and just get a vibe. And so I went to set and it was actually the day they were shooting the scene in the dining room between Logan and Kendall when Logan is basically just intimated to Kendall that he's not going to let him be CEO.

51:36And Logan says to Kendall, you know, do you want to hit me? It was that scene. So I'm just like sitting there watching this happen. And I remember just absorbing that atmosphere. And there's something so special about being able, especially as a composer, to be able to go to set, even if briefly, because I think, like in all these things, we're trying to figure out the feelings of things. That's really what I spend my time doing. And the thing it seems that you picked up on right away was that this was a dark, dark comedy. Yes. And so that, but also coming back maybe to the neuromusicology that we were talking about earlier, playing funny music or music that we associate with funny does not necessarily actually make something more funny.

52:35And so I wonder if you can talk about how this applied to your approach to what I think was the, from what I read, the last thing that you did in terms of composing music for the first season of Succession, and that is the title theme, which is the 90 seconds that opens every episode, the thing that you won an Emmy for, that became a crossover hit that's been covered and all kinds of things. A hundred years from now, when we're all gone, people are still going to be playing. I'd love it if you could share how that came together. So it was interesting because like you're saying there's this question of what is the tone of something?

53:23And I think I think that's probably the main question I ask myself on any project these days is really what what kind of tone are we in? Because like I was saying before with the different possible ways you can score something, you know, you can completely change the feeling of something with the chords you're using and with succession there was this feeling of the seriousness the gravitas which was this question of what's the music that the Roy family would imagine for themselves? That was sort of question number one. But there is this humor and this absurdity to the show and I do agree that almost always funny music, music that sounds funny isn't funny, it actually just makes things sound kind of dorky.

54:08And for me, I felt like if there was a way in, especially with this show, it felt like the music being really serious would make it funnier actually so like fully lean in to like almost absurdly serious music and then I saw the dailies and I saw Jeremy rapping to the Beastie Boys in the back of the Mercedes going to work and I was like oh maybe there's this like oversized hip-hop beat or a huge bass that's like mixed way too loud and you're right The way it all came together really was I had, in that time when we were shooting the pilot, Jesse came over and I showed Jesse, I'll go to the piano on this one.

54:54All right. So we were sitting in my studio and I remember pulling up like a string sound, like a string sample sound, and I started playing these dark chords and Jesse was really into it. And the chords were these chords. It was...

55:20So I was playing those chords and he was like, this feels really good. And I remember there were a few different things that I had put together to show him as ideas. I even had these like weird, there's a scene in the pilot where someone comes into the Waystar Royco office to sage the office. So I was like, maybe there could even be a weird zen bell or something like that. I don't even know. And actually, I think there is some zen bell in the pilot. We stopped using that after the pilot. But basically what happened was these four chords are actually a sort of classical progression that used to be used in many pieces in the classical era when you'd have sort of like a culminating moment in something.

56:06You'd have something, everything would come up and then there would be this sort of, you know don't like you know you know do something and and um i use that as a starting point of thinking okay we're gonna have this dark chordly classical sound and then i actually just started writing the whole score working on episodes i mean um we did the pilot it was later a year later we were working on the episodes and i never had the 90 second sequence and so I'd already recorded score with orchestra, done all these different things, and then finally HBO said, okay, there's this 90-second sequence. And I had this idea of this sort of the windy melody, this sort of...

56:48You know, that sort of... And that was sort of the beginning parts. And then I said, you know, I'd already recorded the orchestra, so I said, well, what if I sample my own orchestra? And so those huge string sounds are actually part of the score that I've been writing in earlier episodes. This sort of, you know, that sort of stuff is in there. And then, but I didn't know what to do after that. Where does it go? And this is why it's so interesting having a window of time when you can really experiment with ideas, is because at the end of episode one, I had written a melody which was like this, this sort of.

57:45Sort of, you know, and I was thinking, well, what if that was the middle of the thing? So this sort of like, so then I took, I started writing this sort of.

57:59That became the sort of middle. And then I put it all together, made the bass huge, and those are 808s in the bass. And I remember sending it in to, there was a huge email chain with Jesse and everyone on it. And I felt very strongly about it. I was like, I really think this is great. And I remember saying to my wife, I was like, you know, if they have notes on this, I'm just not even sure what I'll do, because it just feels really good. And I remember sending it out, and I said, you know, here's my idea, you know. and Jesse was amazing. He just wrote back, reply all, and he said, you know, I think the only thing to say to this is fuck yeah.

58:33That's awesome. Thank you. That's great. That's great. And as succession aficionados will know, as you say, you know, this is also omnipresent in the underscore, right? Throughout the series, it kind of works with each other. And then the other thing I think people need to know is that with Succession, you approach these four seasons as essentially a symphony, right? Can you explain what you meant by that? So this was something that Jesse and I talked about after, I think it might have been during season one, but it was definitely when we were going into season two. I remember thinking to myself that how do you give each season a character?

59:21because I wanted to make sure that each season, even if we were winking back to where we had been, I wanted to make sure that we were always pushing forward because if we just kept using the season one music, it's going to get, it's just not going to be the right thing. It's going to be boring. You're going to feel like you're always in the past. And I said to Jesse, you know, maybe we could think of each season as a movement of a symphony. You know, so for example, like in a classical symphony, the first movement would be like an allegro movement, which is maybe really up-tempo. Season two would be perhaps like an adagio, like a slower movement, where it's more meditative and thoughtful, and at the time that I proposed this, you know, Kendall was going into this very meditative sort of place after the end of season one, really introspective.

1:00:10The season three would be maybe something like a scherzo movement, which would be in three-four time or something like that. It would be more sprightly. And actually, interestingly, scherzo comes from the Italian for joke, so there's something to that, too. And then the fourth movement, there's lots of different ways of doing a fourth movement in a classical symphony, but it could be a presto movement or something really fast. It could be a rondo movement where you're going back to an idea. So that was more of an open question. I didn't know that it was only going to be four seasons and that this metaphor would work perfectly with the show.

1:00:43But that was just an idea that we had, And I think it helped us think with like long lines about like what the whole scope might be. And Jesse and Adam were always so supportive of this idea of like, no, we have to, you know, really, it can be fully written out music for every single episode. And I think people should know, like, you know, they might think that TV, you know, you come in, you write the theme and you leave them a few pieces of music to put where they want. And then you're out of there to go do other things. you have described it as more like 40 or whatever movies. Oh, yeah. This was like doing 39 movies.

1:01:22Yeah, because every single episode, we would approach it like a movie, and it was a monumental amount of work. But, I mean, just incredible. Right down to the end credits are different for, I believe, every episode, playing right into the HBO-themed music. It's just amazing. Amazing and also don't think that other music related things that pop up in the show do not trace back to Nick Bertel because You might recall the rap L to the OG By oh there look at that we got a jersey That I Believe not only was composed by but it was the initially performed by Yourself is that true? Oh my god, okay that I worked with Jeremy early on to try to figure out how to line up the rap with a performance.

1:02:22And I didn't know that we were even doing this in the show. I didn't know that there was going to be a birthday hip-hop show for Kendall. And I was trying to figure out, like, what would the music be? and Will Tracy and McKay wrote amazing lyrics. And, but it was sort of like, how do you actually wrap this up? And I remember talking to Jeremy, you know, he was like, well, how should we do this? And I was like, well, you know, here's the lyrics and we just sort of, you just sort of do it, you know? And he was like, well, could you do it and show me, you know, just to see a way to do it? And I was like, I will do this if no one ever hears this.

1:03:08so that recording has been deleted but all credit to jeremy strong because he he fully owned that and made that work you know i mean that's all that's all jeremy and you know hats off so there are there are a million great nick bertal projects that we could talk about but i think what we'll do just uh given the the hour is i'm going to focus on about five more and go deep with with you on these if that's all right so here we go barry jenkins you're back with on if beale street could talk now this is one of the great another oscar nomination for you by the way just a beautiful beautiful piece of music and it starts with him giving you a few instruments that he has in mind right and then you guys find identify a missing ingredient Can you explain what that was?

1:04:04So the initial thought that Barry had for Beale Street was, I remember I had read the book and then I read the script and he just said that he was hearing brass and horns. He was like, I'm hearing brass and horns. I remember I went off and I started experimenting with brass and horns and I wrote quite a bit of music and showed it to Barry and he really, really was into it. but this is another one of those examples where just because a piece of music works doesn't necessarily mean that it's right for the movie. And what we discovered was I think the sound of brass was very direct and felt very tragic in the movie and for Barry Beale Street is about injustice but it's also about love and the music was missing that feeling of love.

1:05:00And what we figured out was that if I took the music that I'd been writing for brass and started playing it with cellos, immediately it felt right to us. And that's what happened. So I remember there was a day where, I can show the chords, I can play the chords here. There were a few pieces of that score. there was the um there was a motif this sort of that was one of the melodic motifs this that was from a scene in the script where Tish and Fani have been able to rent an apartment for the first time and um there's a scene where it says they were shouting to the sky with joy and so I was I wanted the music to have the shape of this sort of upward motion so that was this and there were many brass chords that I've been doing there was this sort of these sort of taking that melody and I was doing all this with brass and then I started doing these things with cellos and then there were these chords that I had been doing with piano, actually.

1:06:16And the piano wound up in the score, too. But I recorded these chords with cellos. So it's, you know, five...

1:06:48And then the melody goes.

1:06:53So it just fits right on top.

1:07:00And with the cellos, I remember sending Barry these, just solo cellos playing these together. And I think Barry said he was like in a car, and he like pulled over. It was like, and that was the way in for the score. It was that way in, yeah. Before you get up, can I ask you about the number from that movie that I think everybody comments on and particularly loves this bit over the scene in which Tish describes the day I realized Fani was in love with me. This is called Agape. That's Agape. That was that we were. Exactly. So that's Agape. And then what happens is I took these brass. It's mostly flugel horns, but there's some piccolo trumpets.

1:07:38And it's this sort of, you know, this.

1:07:44It's like multiple, you can't play it really that well on the piano, but basically it's all, so that's all happening while underneath there's a flugelhorn playing that melody. That's fantastic. Yeah, thank you.

1:08:05Back with McKay on Vice that same year. let's just say you have if Beale Street could could talk you have Vice and you have Succession all starting or coming out in 2018 and in one of the most insane years ever for anyone um that reminds me of like the fact that Spielberg had Jurassic Park and Schindler's List in the same year this is the composer equivalent of that but with with Vice we'll say that that along with Beale Street were both Oscar shortlisted in the same that doesn't happen somebody having multiple on the shortlist but regardless the thing that I found just the most interesting is Vice is a film about Dick Cheney we know about Dick Cheney's heart problems yes when you guys are sitting down to figure out your reference point for or you know jumping off point for Vice what did you suggest Well, Dick Cheney notoriously has these, famously notoriously has heart problems.

1:09:04That was a literal element and a metaphorical element in the film. One of the ideas that I had early on was I had seen years before Bernstein talking about Mahler's Ninth Symphony, and Mahler had had heart problems at the time. And I don't think he talked about this himself, but Bernstein was theorizing that there's this rhythm in the percussion, the beginning, where his theory about it was that it was Mahler sort of musically signaling his own arrhythmias. And that concept of an arrhythmia, like a malignant heart rhythm, was something that I started talking to Adam about, like how might we incorporate this?

1:09:49And what happened was early on, Adam then, I mean, I think he already thought this was the way to go, but he basically said to me, you know, I want you to write a symphony for this movie. And we had this feeling that, like, the music could be both heroic and totally broken and distorted and, you know, dissonant at the same time, sort of like a broken heroism in a sense. and that was in a sense how we approached the square for vice. That's great. The King was 2019, a very good one. Cruella 2021 during the pandemic at Disney, different kinds of projects. But 2021, you went back with Barry, but for the first time to long-form television, a limited series, The Underground Railroad, something that took 20 months of your life.

1:10:47A lot of work. A lot of work. And, you know, we've kind of gathered or discussed that sometimes there are jumping off points with Barry, with Moonlight, I think Oceans were a reference point, with Beale Street, Subways. With the Underground Railroad, what was it? Well, there were actually so many. There were so many different things. There were times where I went down to Savannah, and we were on set figuring out the sounds of some of the on-camera music. And there was actually sounds of, like, insects in nature that became a part of just the elemental forces of the world. There was this feeling, I think, of elemental forces that went into it.

1:11:33I mean, that project was so immense. I think I'm still kind of like, you know, yeah, yeah, like processing it. And drills, right? Oh, yes, we had drills. There was a sound of a drill that we were in our in a in a production office and we heard a drill outside and we did a voice memo of it. And yeah, the idea of earth, the idea of digging, those were elements of it. There was a lot of sonic exploration. that was another project where every single episode in the story every single episode it's it actually feels like you're going into almost a different planet so that was another huge undertaking of it wasn't like we could say that the sound in episode one was going to be anything like the sound in episode two so in almost every episode we had to say to ourselves well maybe we have to rethink everything we're doing so we're doing your people are picking up I'm sure there's a lot of Jenkins to McKay to Jenkins to McKay.

1:12:34We're back with McKay on Don't Look Up 2021, another Best Picture nominee. And what's interesting is that of all the things you've done with him, what you said is that this one was the toughest assignment. Why was that? Again, what was interesting, and that was, I don't know if this is what you're referring to, but during that project, I had bought a new house. And the movie is obviously about climate change. and while we were scoring that project my my roof leaked and I was inside the movie basically because I was dealing with like it was the most rain that had ever fallen in one hour in the history of Central Park I think it was like nine inches in an hour or something like that and it all went into my house while we were recording remotely during the pandemic in London with an orchestra and I was like guys I gotta give me five I gotta figure something out and I was like I had a tarp up in the and it was like pushing water off it it was it was insane so yeah so that was and we'll note that you also contributed to a uh Oscar shortlisted song on that along with Kid Cudi and Ariana Grande called Just Look Up which is one of the funniest songs you can imagine it's so uh I think you have to kind of uh initially hear it in the context of the film to realize just how cheeky it is, but it's a great song on its own as well.

1:14:02You go from there back with McKay to Winning Time, the drama series 2022. And then the second to last thing I'm going to talk to you about here is Andor, which is from Tony Gilroy stepping into the Star Wars universe. I know Tony's got some background in music, but also Star Wars for a half century has been and associated with John Williams. And I would imagine that it's a little daunting to have to step into that universe. And while the master, thank God, is still with us, you're gonna be, you were gonna be entering that, those big footsteps in a way, but also I know that you kind of figured out that it wasn't quite that.

1:14:48Can you take me into the mindset of and or? Yeah, I mean, John Williams is, I think all of our hero in a way. He's just one of the most inspiring musical figures of the century, of the past century really. And I think I was lucky in the way that I came into the Star Wars universe because in the first conversation I had with Tony Gilroy, he said that he didn't want the music to have anything to do with that sound world. And I think as an initial starting point, that was very helpful because we wanted it to have a feeling of that universe, of that galaxy, let's say, but we didn't want it to have a direct reflection or, you know, referral to it.

1:15:34And so we were able to start with, like all these projects, we were able to start with the feelings and the story and, you know, what's the sound of Ferex and what's the sound of Coruscant and what is the world that's in front of us and and how do we make that sound? And I think that for me, there's a incredible kind of yearning scope and sweep to Star Wars, which is one of the things I think we all love about it. It's just this epic, vast canvas. And so I think I wanted, in my own way, that music to have a feeling that it could get there if it was earned on our part, but the starting point was actually light years from that.

1:16:14it was really like you know I started out with almost like a kind of retro future you know analog synthesizers and uh like I was writing you know this sort of like dark you know club music on Morlana and things like that which ended up recurring as a pop track you know Nyamos that we wrote for for the rest of the for the for the whole you know galaxy that they were all listening to this piece. And it's just unbelievable because I don't know if you were asked to do this or if you took it upon yourself to do this, but the arrangement of the main theme for every one of the 12 episodes is different.

1:16:51It's different, and that was, that initially was a fun idea, and then I thought I was crazy, and I was like, why did I do this to myself? At like episode 11, I'm like, why am I doing this to myself? It actually came out of a conversation that I had, I was trying, you know, to come up with a theme, with a main title theme for for Andor, I had done all these different arrangements of the theme. So for example, I had done a big full orchestra version, and then I did a very small version, and then I did a version with intimate strings, and then I did a ver, you know, there were all the, then I did one with a huge beat under it.

1:17:27And I remember kind of going through these in my studio with Tony, and I was just like, I like all these, like I don't, there isn't one that's the one. And actually, I think there was something about not just using the full orchestra theme as the theme that felt right to us for what we were doing with the show. And so, you know, it might have been Tony who just said, well, what if we just use all of them, you know? And so I had a few ideas. That got me up to like episode five. And I was like, okay. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach, is a filmmaker who you did not know before this. No. and he was an admirer from afar, I guess, and reached out and said what to you?

1:18:11We met up in his office in New York, and I had been a fan of his for, I mean, I guess his whole filmography, really, and it was one of those great conversations where from the very beginning, I think, you know, you can tell when you're with someone who completely loves movies. you just have a different kind of conversation and it was so clear that not only was he good at this but he loved it and I think the longer I get to this the more that really matters he knew right away that he said I want this movie to have a the score that's really a part of the movie you know he wanted it to be something that had a voice and he said that there it could he wanted something that felt like it it harkened to that sort of the you know the way movies used to be made that kind of a feeling, which kind of links to one of the reasons we recorded with analog tape, and how did people used to do these, what's the movies that we grew up loving, you know, and I was very inspired by that first conversation, and from there we started talking about the score, what it might be, and this was about the previous year before he started shooting, and so because we started so early, I wrote a few themes, and he came over to my studio, I played them on the piano, and then they invited me to set so I went to Italy and I'm actually in the scene at the tribute I'm sitting next to Billy Crudup.

1:19:39But I mean and one of the things that you know back in LA a few days ago I was doing a SAG interview with the actors from that movie and they were all saying Clooney and Laura Dern, Billy Crudup and I guess I forget I'm blanking on who else was was with Adam Sandler how do you forget and they were all saying it's such a rare treat to be able to have at least a chunk of the score present what know the score before they perform the scenes because it can inform yes as music did during the silent era when they would play piano or whatever on the set it gives them a sense of what they're a part of exactly it's a different it's a very different thing and I guess now that we've talked about so many of these his you know I'm seeing connections in my own past now that I'm not sure I was fully aware of before this conversation but I think the idea of being on set the idea of being around what the movie is and what it's becoming is something that you absorb and I remember that there was this amazing dinner we all had in this farmhouse in Tuscany and there was a piano there.

1:20:52George Draculius, our music supervisor, was like, Nick you gotta play some of the themes, you know, we're here, so, and I'll play a couple of the themes, I'll play a little bit just of J. Kelly. The themes that I had at that point, I remember I played the chords, these were this sort of, the J. Kelly theme were these chords.

1:21:24And there was this melody that was a...

1:21:57And then it can go into this sort of alternative version, which is this.

1:22:24That's the alt that it sort of goes into, you know, and the other theme I had at that time I remember I played was the cinema theme, we call it the cinema theme, which was this sort of...

1:22:57That was one of the other themes. And so, you know, I was playing all these on set, and just very quickly you start feeling like you're figuring this all out together. And I've never done that before, where I was playing my own score on set during the movie. Yeah, it's unbelievable. Wow, beautiful.

1:23:20And just I think people should know that your creativity, I mean, who would think of this, but in those scenes in the film where Jay Kelly literally walks into his own past, what did you do with the music? So I don't think this would always work, but basically I took the melody and I played it backwards, but I wrote it out backwards, so it's not like the audio is reversed. it's actually the notes themselves and when I reversed the notes it actually sounded really interesting and I started using that as a concept sort of a way into this idea of him going back into his memories. And the just the music there at the tribute at the end it's it you can't I cannot imagine and I know this is a thing you've done with students and people who have come to learn from you that you know you can watch a scene without any music and I'm not saying it wouldn't still be a beautifully made film or whatever but it is impossible to imagine that hugely emotional powerful ending of Jay Kelly or the rest of it for that matter without the beautiful work that you did and so I know that I know that I went long tonight but I did it because it's not, and I thank you for rolling with it, but it's not every night that we get, you know, to hear, and not just hear vocally, but at the piano from a genius and a master and somebody who's going to be doing great work for many, many more years.

1:24:56So thank you to you for coming, and please join me in thanking Nicholas Bertel. Thank you so much, Scott. Thank you, Scott.

1:25:09Thank you.

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