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Greetings! ScoreKeeper here with an absobloodlylutely cool interview with film composer Clint Mansell.
Before weaving sonic tapestries for Stygian filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, Clint Mansell was the guitarist and lead vocalist for the British electronica-punk group known as Pop Will Eat Itself. Tenure with the band led him to Darren Aronofsky who hired him to score his debut feature film PI in 1998. Since then, Clint has scored Darren’s other two films REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000), and most recently, THE FOUNTAIN (2006) which is currently in theaters.
Mansell has also scored a fair collection of films outside of his primary collaborator including KNOCKAROUND GUYS (2001), SONNY (2002) for Nicholas Cage, SAHARA (2005) for Breck Eisner, DOOM (2005) and SMOKIN’ ACES (2007) which is set for theatrical release next year.
I’ve always admired Clint’s work, especially for Aronofsky’s films. He undefines the defined and proves that film scoring is not merely a set of rules to follow but rather an unpredictable creative journey that collaborators take together with the collective desire to tell a remarkable story.
Let the unschooling begin!
ScoreKeeper: Clint, thanks for taking the time out to talk with me this evening. I find it fascinating to talk with composers about their earliest experiences scoring for films. Your first scoring endeavor was PI (1998) for Darren Aronofsky. Can you talk about how you and Darren met leading up to him hiring you for that project?
Clint Mansell: We had a mutual friend who knew Eric Watson (Darren’s producer) and who also knew me. They had worked together on video projects for bands and things like that. Eric had said to her that he was working on this script for a director and writer trying to get this film made and they wanted to use electronic music in the film. But they really didn’t have a real idea of how it would work. She suggested they talk to me. I was an electronic musician at that point and really that’s how it came about.
The truth of the matter was I really fell ass-backwards into the job. If Darren had maybe known somebody who slightly scored a movie before, he may well have gone with them just because of the experience…Having said that though, that’s not particularly one of Darren’s traits.
SK: What sort of things did you and Darren talk about during your first few meetings?
CM: I was living in New York at the time when I met with Darren and Eric and we just talked about music and films and just a little bit of ‘get-to-know-you’ type things. We talked about music we liked, and films we liked, and music in films we liked, and music in films we didn’t like. It was just hitting it off on certain points.
It was like 1996 so obviously we were a lot younger then so our influences were a bit more raw, if you like. TETSUO: THE IRON MAN (1989) was a big influence on PI, but aside from the more punk-rock side of things, one thing that we really agreed on that we missed in modern film music at that time was…just great tunes, you know? We just felt that a lot of films that we would go and see, the music would be this type of wallpaper that was really forcing an emotional experience on you without it helping you and embellishing the experience in the film.
We would talk about things as simple as HALLOWEEN (1978) and what a fantastic piece of music that is! It’s obviously a very dominant thing in the film but it brings atmosphere and emotion every time you hear it. It’s a fantastic element in that film! We just sort of bonded from things like that…just having these viewpoints we shared.
SK: Can you elaborate more on how you were introduced to PI and how the music originated?
CM: I got to read the script for PI and we talked about things that we liked. I ended up writing a piece of music on spec based on our conversation, based on what the script was about, and Darren’s thoughts and things like that. It was about a two-minute piece that was quite dark and industrial and brooding. Everybody loved it. Darren loved it. Eric loved it. Matthew Libatique (cinematographer) loved it. This was before they shot anything for the film. It just felt like part of something we were trying to do. It was a real galvanizing element. Strangely enough that piece never ended up in the film but it went from there.
Originally I was just going to do a title theme and then the plan was to license pre-existing electronic music from other sources to use in the film. I guess the reality of the situation was that we had no money, no backing, there was no industry involvement in making PI. So people were kind of reluctant to even take the call to talk about their music.
Every time we couldn’t get a piece of music, I had to write a new piece to replace it. Basically everything just dropped out at the end. We ended up with like three pieces, I think. I had this eight to ten month period where I would be writing music for the film. Having that time and…process, if you like, we figured out a way the music could work for us in the film. It was a huge learning curve for us but fortunately we had the time to do it.
SK: Before you met Darren did you have any desire to try to get into film scoring?
CM: It was always a thought. Back when I was playing in my band in England, we used to take samples from movies and all that sort of stuff. They were a big influence on what we were doing and the dream would be ‘Maybe we could get involved in a movie?’ It just seemed like such a pipe dream and such a long way away that I never had given it too much thought.
SK: Can you elaborate more on your experiences scoring PI?
CM: The experience in general was great! On a personal note, it was the only positive thing going on in my life at the time. I was pretty much homeless at that point. I was actually living in this crawl space above Darren and Eric’s kitchen for awhile. I had moved to New York with no money and it was just really, really painful. It was just a rough part of my life personally. PI was the only thing that was going on so that was actually very comforting in some respects because I had some people to work with and something to believe in. It was also very cathartic I supposed because I couldn’t naturally help my writing experience.
I definitely look back on it with fond memories now even though other things weren’t that great in my life. The actual experience was really good.
SK: As a newcomer was it especially nerve-wracking or did you find it came much more effortlessly that you might have predicted?
CM: We weren’t under pressure, or at least I didn’t feel it. Darren would never hound me although he’s very good an “encouraging” you (laughing). He can be quite forthright in that department which is part of the deal, I suppose. There was such a good atmosphere on it and we all believed in it. I never felt like it couldn’t work. It was working. Things were fitting together. It just seemed like, ‘OK, this is going to be good.’ I never thought it was going to turn out like it did – the success of it. But I thought it was going to be something cool.
SK: Did you find that you were the one bringing ideas about music to Darren or was it more the other way around?
CM: We kick around ideas. I tend to come in with the direction, if you like. Darren will lay out for me the story and the other things that he’s thinking about which I then use as my springboard to bring in things that I think he’ll get excited about. I just respond. Whatever he’s telling me about I just respond to it if I’m excited by it, which I generally am. It’s a very collaborative process between us all really.
SK: Do you find that same collaborative process works the same way today?
CM: You know, it’s pretty much the same as it is these days. I guess what tends to happen – maybe not quite so much with PI because we didn’t know each other as well then – but now we’ll let each other know what we’ve been listening to and what we’ve found and what we’ve seen and stuff like that.
Obviously, THE FOUNTAIN was like five or six years of…development, but through that time of being friends and talking about things you tend just to keep up your interests in similar sorts of things and saying to somebody, ‘Have you heard this? Have you checked that out?’ There’s always a line of communication. I don't think things come out of total left field with each other. It seems to grow quite nicely.
SK: After composing the score for PI, were you then immediately ready to nurture a career in film music or was it still up in the air at that point?
CM: I never even thought about it. It wasn’t until we finished the film. I had moved to New Orleans and obviously I wasn't part of trying to get it into Sundance or getting people to see it. I remember one time Darren had called me and we talked about the film and he said ‘I think you’ve done a great job. I really think you could have a career doing this if you wanted to.’
I had never thought about it at that point. I was definitely interested but I didn’t know how to go about it. I just thought ‘Wow, that’d be cool.’
I think the fact that I didn’t get a job for another two years (laughing) until Darren gave me REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, it’s like, ‘Well, maybe he didn’t know what he was talking about?’
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