Mr. Reznor and Mr. Ross, as composers, how do you know when a film a score is working?
Trent Reznor: Having done this for a little while, the best moment in a film score or even with a Nine Inch Nails album, is when you have learned to trust yourself that this is it. You have to trust that this is it, because you can always go further — and often you go further and you fuck it up because you've gone past what was good. You also have to deal with your own inherent laziness and desire for it just to be done, you have to make sure you're not jumping the gun and fooling yourself into that. But as we've learned to recognize… I think you know it’s working when you feel goosebumps. We're in the studio just the two of us, and it’s like, “Okay, this is really fucking good,” and we can't wait for the world to hear it.
Atticus Ross: It’s the bit that you sort of can't put into words. I think essentially, that is what film scoring is, you know, that's the magic of it. It continues to be amazing to see how much music can affect the atmosphere in a room when you're watching a film, what you can do to people and how you can manipulate how they feel. That's the journey of film scoring. And I think our process has always been to focus on: what is the real heart of this story, and what is it trying to say? And if we can understand that and kind of create a musical language to tell that story, we can land the film.
You had one of those goosebumps moments when watching Empire of Light for the first time with an audience. You even teared up watching a particular scene.
AR: We'd worked so fucking hard at that scene — and it’s just a scene where the character is watching a film, all it is the music and the camera on her face. We’d done 15 different versions of it.
TR: Sam Mendes, the director, is a super smart guy and he’s meticulous. You're never not going to get feedback from anything you turn over. And that’s all you can count on: there's going to be some notes, they're thoughtful, but plentiful. And on that film, we’d been putting off that scene because we really wanted to understand the movie that was around it. But we were at the breaking point because there was a constant “You can do better” from Sam. And that did lead to a better result, you know? He was right.
AR: And so in the first screening with an audience, it really landed in the way that we had hoped it would land. It's such a big moment for this character, and like Trent said, those are the times where I think we got it right.
TR: It was very much a moment of: “This is really cool, I’m so glad I’m a part of it.” That's what makes it worth it, those fleeting moments.
“Working in service, working with a finite amount of influence in the final cut is really interesting. It is usually fun, sometimes frustrating. It’s a kind of riddle.”
You mentioned the challenges of fulfilling a director’s vision… It sounds like something you thrive off of.
TR: Yeah, I think when we look at our careers as composers for film, as a parallel path to what we do, outside of that with Nine Inch Nails… Working in service, working with a finite amount of influence in the final cut is really interesting. It is usually fun, sometimes frustrating. It’s a kind of riddle that gets presented, and the first step of that is trying to get inside the director's head, to have a very articulate definition of what's needed. It’s our job to try to land on what that is without ego.
Apparently many directors approach you with a question… David Fincher asked you, “What if Mank sounded like a Bernard Hermann recording from 1935?” and Luca Guadagnino suggested, “What if Challengers had this really loud techno soundtrack throughout?”
TR: Yeah, we look forward to our collaborators giving us that room to interpret. We encourage those starting points because we really feel like our job is to be in service to help them tell the story the way they want to tell it. And in most cases, it’s hard to tell that from the script alone. Even with those starting point questions, we have to coax it out of the directors a little bit and Luca is a great example of that. He’s somebody that really brings the translation from script to picture.
AR: It was challenging with our latest collaboration with Luca, Queer, because you're taken into a world that's surreal, the picture itself looks so unusual, and the world they inhabit feels unusual. We didn't have that when we were writing the music. So when we immerse yourself in atmosphere, it's a little harder. When we finally saw Queer, the first time we saw it fully realized, it was like, “Oh, this is awesome.” But we didn't really have that moment while writing the score, do you know what I mean? It was different to any other film in that sense, because I think the way it looks plays so much into the kind of emotionality of what you take away from it.
Is that emotionality easier to accomplish when you’re working on a Nine Inch Nails album, because by default it’s coming from a personal place?
TR: That’s a good question. The struggle with Nine Inch Nails work for us is from a lyrical perspective. If you're not being honest with yourself, I've noticed you can't fool anyone else into believing it. And it's harder to be honest than I wish it was! You have to cut through bullshitting. There's a lot of facades up that require an unpleasant examination of oneself to get to something that's authentic. Whereas with a film score, the music comes in naturally as a kind of support.
AR: With Queer, when we're nudging you to feel empathetic or romantic or tender towards Lee when he's not necessarily earning that with his actions or what you're seeing on the screen. That's what excites us. I mentioned earlier how much power and influence you can have into the way something feels… And that's what's exciting to us about the process of film. You don't get that with an album. It's a different kind of thing.
Do you feel like you’ve got your scoring process pinned down by now? I know that on your first film, The Social Network, you were very intimidated.
AR: I think if we got to the place of saying, “This is how you do it,” it would be the time when we should stop.
TR: Yeah, I think these days we go into it not as terrified, not as filled with self doubt. But what we don't do is go in and say, “Okay, here's how we do it.” And I’m not saying that with false humility. I just don't think there are rules, and I don't think there is a right and wrong way to do things.
Has your success, including two Oscar wins, two Golden Globes, two Grammys and countless more nominations, impacted your approach at all? Does it put pressure on your creativity?
TR: Fame and success can impact creativity in that when you don’t have an audience, no one's expecting anything, you know? You’re not concerned on that first album about what your audience will like. You’re not thinking, “Well, I have to give these people what they want.” I think today there's a real danger of tuning in too much to the audience. I'm not saying anything that's even remotely enlightened here, but I've learned there was a long phase of trying to engage with an audience, and that certainly plays on your self doubt and your own insecurities. I've learned to tune out a lot of that shit as much as I can and trust my instinct, and know that the only reason I got anywhere in the first place was I trusted my own sense of what was right and wrong and exciting to me. If I tune into the noise, it's not productive.
“Now, we’re trying to be honest with ourselves. Why do we like doing this? And I think it truly is about: let’s work with people that we find intriguing.”
AR: For me, I don't think success is a feeling. I don't “feel” successful. I don't mean that in a ridiculous way, I feel a lot of gratitude for the experiences that we've had. But I don't walk in here thinking, “I'm feeling pretty successful today.” I walk into each studio session and wonder, “Can we get this good today, can we do all the things that we're aspiring to?”
Is it true that your studio sessions keep very strict hours? Every weekday you arrive at the same time and work the same hours, and you’re quite orderly in your method.
AR: We come into the studio at those hours even if we’re not working on a project, just to make music. I think we just feel that sitting around waiting for inspiration to hit isn’t the best.
TR: Yeah, I kind of learned that from Atticus years ago… There’s this romantic idea about living in your studio every minute of the day and just making art. And I'm not saying that didn't yield results at a time in one’s life, but we're at the phase where we’re having balance. When we’re in the studio, we're there to not fuck around, we want to get it done. And then you can enjoy other stuff without feeling like, “I should be doing this other thing.” I've lived that life for a while, and I'll give you a spoiler. It doesn't lead to happiness.
It sounds like a more mature means to your work, rather a romantic ideal.
TR: I think that romantic ideal worked for a 20 something year old person whose knowledge of their own self was what it was at that time. I bought into some of those myths of, you know, I need to be fucked up or I need to be in pain to create… That works for a while, and then it stops working. Now, we’re trying to be honest with ourselves. Why do we like doing this? Why are we doing film at all? And I think it truly is about: let's work with people that we find intriguing, let's see what we could learn from them. It's fun working with people, I would say, who are like us. If we do something, what we like is feeling like, “Hey, we did the very best we could.” That makes us feel connected to something, it gives us a sense of purpose.