WEBVTT - Hans Zimmer - Summer Staff Picks 0:00:00.680 --> 0:00:03.640 This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's 0:00:03.680 --> 0:00:08.200 the Thing from My Heart Radio. It's officially summer, and 0:00:08.240 --> 0:00:11.000 that means it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing, 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:15.200 where our staff shares their favorite episodes in our Summer 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:19.160 Staff series. Next up is our producer, Zach McNeice. 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:24.119 Thanks Alec. Whether you're a casual movie fan or a 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:27.800 true cinema junkie like me, the name Hans Zimmer is 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:30.960 no doubt synonymous with some of the most loved and 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:34.760 awarded films of the past thirty years. He's an artist 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:38.360 whose work speaks for itself. So without further ado, here's 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:40.560 Alex's conversation with Hans Zimmer. 0:01:13.240 --> 0:01:16.560 The score of a movie has a way of enriching 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:22.000 a film's emotional journey, from the profound to the playful. 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:25.160 It is often an unconscious part of why the feeling 0:01:25.240 --> 0:01:28.680 of a movie stays with us long after we leave 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:32.440 the theater. My guest today is one of the all 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:38.000 time masters of film composition, Hans Zimmer. He scored more 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:43.280 than one hundred and fifty movies, including Gladiator, Hannibal, Sherlock Holmes, 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:48.080 The Last Samurai, The Thin Red Line, and many many more. 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:52.560 Hans Zimmer's work has earned him an Academy Award for 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:57.520 The Lion King, two Golden Globes, and countless more nominations. 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:01.960 In two thousand and five, hans Zimmer began working with 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:06.320 director Christopher Nolan. It's become one of the most celebrated 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:11.520 partnerships in movie history. For Nolan, Zimmer has scored the 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:17.640 Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Inception, which features this 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:23.840 song time. Hans Zimmer's work spans an eclectic range of 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:28.240 feature films, television, and documentaries. I wanted to know whether 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:33.119 his scoring process is different when he works on animated films. 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:37.000 All directors are different from each other. But I once 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:39.520 was invited to a dinner party and at the end 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:43.560 of the table sat Terrence Malick and Vana Hatsuk. You know, 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:47.120 everybody's talking at the long table, and then suddenly everybody 0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:51.280 stops talking, and it's just the two great artists chatting, 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:55.079 and they're arguing about which Q and Lion King is better. 0:02:55.639 --> 0:03:01.120 You know, these two admirable auteurs are arguing about Lion King, 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:05.320 you know, about a kid's movie. So the weird thing is, 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:08.400 you know, I can talk to Tarry Mallik about animation, 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:11.480 and I can talk to Tom mcgrass, our director on 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:16.360 Boss Baby about Thin Red Line, you know, and in 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:20.240 one way or the other, it's sort of the same thing. 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:22.560 Other than that, you can get away with a lot 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:26.480 more animation. I find, you know, you and I in 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:30.440 a peculiar way, we give life to something that doesn't 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:33.000 have life. I mean, it's, you know, the whole point 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:37.320 about animation, especially now with CG, where things have gotten 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:41.120 so refined and they can do such amazing things, but 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:43.800 the one thing they can't do, they can't really truly 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:47.120 breathe life into it, and so ultimately that the only 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:51.480 real performance is the actors and the musicians. And for instance, 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.080 what we did on the last Lion King movie. You know, 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:55.920 we did a remake, and I thought, wh am I 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:59.040 going to do a remake, And I thought, everybody knows 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:01.920 the tunes. Everybody in the orchestra noticed the tunes. All 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:04.600 my musicians and know the tunes. I'm going to spend 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:08.600 a week pretending I'm recording little cues, and in the 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:12.720 last two days I'm literally going to make it about okay, 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:14.880 We're going to run the movie from the beginning to 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:16.800 the end, and you're going to just hold on for 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:18.960 dear life, and we're going to recall the whole thing 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:21.760 as a performance, because I wanted to have that, you know, 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:24.240 the thing that you get in a live performance, the 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:27.080 thing you get in a theater genius mixed with fear 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:28.200 and catastrophe. 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:32.000 Well, we've had people talk to us and they have 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:35.440 careers and whatever, editing or or what have you. And 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:39.000 I'm curious, not in a relationship, let's say with Nolan, 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:40.640 where you've made a few films with him, or you've 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:42.680 made a couple with Nancy and this is two boss 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:46.159 babies and so forth. But on your maiden voyage with Nolan, 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:49.120 does he send you the script and you start to 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:52.600 get in conversation with him the type of score he 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:55.919 wants and you start to like riff little things before 0:04:56.240 --> 0:05:00.240 or do you only really get concretized about it until 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:01.279 you see cut footage. 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:04.320 Let's talk about Chris and my working method, and I 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:06.680 think we set off on the wrong foot right away 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:09.600 because he wanted me to do Batman, and I kept 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:12.880 saying I don't want to do Batman, and Fanny, he said, 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:15.520 why don't you do Batman? I said, I know how 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:18.000 to be the dark Night, but I don't know how 0:05:18.040 --> 0:05:21.719 to be Bruce Wayne. And he said, that's easy. Get 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:24.080 a friend and to be the other character. You don't 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:27.159 have to be schizophrenic. So I ask my friend Jameson Howard, 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:30.560 who is one of the most elegant composers in the world, 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:34.320 to be light and let me be my Germanic darkness. 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:37.400 And then I was working on something in Los Angeles. 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:40.640 Chris was shooting in London, and he has a way 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:44.800 of being very persuasive. He's going, well, yes, I got 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:48.120 this shot of Batman standing on top of a building, 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:51.120 and I don't quite know how to get him there 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:53.520 because I don't want to temper it. But is there 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:55.960 something that you can just I mean, it doesn't have 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:59.160 to be good, just give me something that gets him 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:02.080 up there. And so the first time James and I 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:05.840 saw the movie, it had all our rotten little demos 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:08.800 in it. But if you go to something like Inception, 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:12.520 I remember Chris phoning me and he's going, hey, do 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:14.400 you want to come down to the beach with the kids. 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:15.880 Is that how he puts it? 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:17.599 He's stuck, yeah, yeah. 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:19.640 When he needs the music for his movie, let's go 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:22.000 down to the beach with the kids. Well, I think 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:24.040 that's great. I'm gonna try that. I'm gonna call Spielberg 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:25.960 and say, let's go down to the beach with the kids. 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:30.960 But it worked. He realized that this idea of the 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:35.040 different times in the different dream states was very complicated 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:37.760 to an audience, and I said, look to a musician, 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:40.360 it's the easiest thing, because that's what we do all 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:42.839 the time. You know, you have a bar and you're 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:46.000 divide it into four quarter notes, and you can divide 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:50.360 that time off the four quarter notes into eight notes, 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:53.159 et cetera, and you just keep dividing down and play. 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:56.839 You're always playing this time. So I think at the 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:59.680 end of the day, it doesn't matter if the audience 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:05.640 ever gets the intellectual conceit of the movie. But just 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:08.479 think of me like a river and the audience is 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.680 on a little boat, and I take you downstream with 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:14.440 the story. And sometimes it's going to get a little rocky, 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:16.560 and sometimes it's going to get a little boring, but 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:18.840 you sort of know you can trust the river to 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.000 take you on this journey and take you to the end. 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:25.560 So Chris loved that, and we do think very similarly. 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:28.800 I mean, I remember him phoning me from Iceland, so 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:31.920 I hadn't seen any footage, right, I just about read 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:36.280 the scripts. He phoned me from Iceland. He's explaining the scene, 0:07:36.280 --> 0:07:38.360 which is and then you have to hit this shot, 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:41.040 and then this, and this is the most important scene 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:44.280 in the movie. Our lead character is basically seeing his 0:07:44.360 --> 0:07:47.200 whole family through the years, and he's starting to cry 0:07:47.240 --> 0:07:50.200 at a certain moment. You know, I have to be poignant, 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:52.320 and I find you. Said to Chris, Chris, I don't 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:55.520 think I can just do this. I don't think I 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:58.680 could wing it without some footage. And I remember all 0:07:58.720 --> 0:08:02.000 these cuts in my head. And he says, our sense 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:04.920 of time, our sense of aesthetics seems to be very similar. 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:08.560 Just write it, send it to me. If it doesn't work, 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:12.240 i'll send you the picture. Well, unfortunately it worked. Yeah. 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:14.840 I phoned him. I said, how is it? He goes, well, 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:17.520 it's within two frames where I can go and adjust that. 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:21.200 So then he finishes shooting and I'm going, Okay, show 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:25.600 me the movie. He's going, you know, it's going really 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:30.920 rather well. You know, you imagining my movie and writing freely, 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:34.520 At which point I started to just send him pieces 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:38.560 of music without telling him what they were for. I 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:41.120 wouldn't write anything on them. I just send him music. 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:46.480 But I very strongly, having read the script, knew what 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:48.640 they were for. And I was praying and hoping. There's 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:51.480 a shot in there where Marion Cottier is on a 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:55.240 ledge and her shoe drops just so, and I was 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:57.640 so hoping that this piece I sent for him was 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:00.520 going to end up in that spot. And then months 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:03.760 down the road, when I first saw it, there it was, 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:07.920 and he absolutely got it. So we have this language 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:12.040 without words, because I think what is really important with 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:16.360 music is that to me, it's an autonomous language. I 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:19.400 am speaking to you in English, which obviously is not 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:23.320 my mother tongue, as you might detect from the horrible accent. 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:25.520 But if I were to speak to you in a 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:28.839 couple of chords, I feel unsafer ground and I feel 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:32.240 more articulate. So that's how Chris and I kept working. 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:34.960 We kept coming up with crazy you know. We did 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:38.320 a list, for instance, for Interstellar, of what are the 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:41.920 things we haven't done, you know, and we would cross 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:46.000 off big drums, or I did that one, big horns, Oh, 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:48.280 we did that one. And then Chris said, what about 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:53.320 pipeworgan and that became that, you know, because, as he 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:57.440 said it, this is a movie about space and rockets 0:09:57.480 --> 0:09:59.600 and all that stuff. I mean, I saw the shape 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:01.839 of the par argument at the same time I saw 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:06.000 the afterburner of rockets, and I thought both are fabulous 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:07.280 pieces of technology. 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:10.600 Now with Nolan, do you feel that your task is 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:14.400 to help them understand and help yourself understand what they want? 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:17.440 Have you ever had conflicts with director where you said 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:18.760 I don't agree. 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:20.520 How much truth would you like? 0:10:20.640 --> 0:10:23.040 Well, I mean my rule on this show is I 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:23.600 don't want. 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:24.760 To ruin my career. 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:28.800 Your career can't be ruined. What I'm asking is are 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:31.120 you there to perform what they want? Or do you 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:32.080 consult with them? 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:36.000 The director has to trust his composer, and ultimately the 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:39.559 composer needs to go and buy into the direct decision. 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:44.040 But music is indefensible. I can write you something and 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:46.679 play it to you and I think it's the greatest 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:50.080 fucking thing. And I just answered every question you ever 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.560 had about your character or whatever, and you don't get it. 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:57.400 It doesn't resonate. So there's no way I can sit 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.680 there and explain to you why you should like it 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:03.840 and either resonates or it doesn't. That's number one. The 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.959 other thing is I like working with directors who spend 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:10.040 a minimum of time talking to me about what music 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:12.520 they want, because as soon as they start talking to 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:15.600 me about what music they want, my mind goes off 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:19.640 into that thing of going My job is to do 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:23.240 something that they can't even imagine. My job is to 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:26.280 knock their socks off. My job is to do something 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:30.360 that is so beyond anything that they could do because 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:32.880 otherwise said do it themselves, and you know, and it 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:36.040 makes me rather redundant or it makes me a musical secretarime. 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:40.880 Do you think that someone to use a more celebrated example, 0:11:41.160 --> 0:11:44.280 because everybody knows the story about Alex north composition for 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:45.280 a Space out of Sea? 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:45.800 Yeah? 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:49.240 Do you think that someone like Kubrick lunged in the 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:51.760 direction of the classical repertoire because he knew what the 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:54.080 music was. He didn't have to wait for somebody to 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:57.600 write it there? It is extant, it's real. I know, 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:00.240 I want, you know, fun carry on with the with 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:02.760 the vienna and this and that, just play the Blue 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:05.960 Danube and he doesn't have to rely on anybody do 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:08.160 you find that there were some directors who they just 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:09.719 don't want to keep that control. 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:13.040 Well, well it's not sad, you know. I mean, first 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:15.400 of all, I should let you know that Stanley Kubrick 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:18.840 was the first director that ever fired me, what film 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.760 Full Metal Jacket, and Vivian, his daughter, took over. But 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:26.640 it became this weird, strange thing. So I was really 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:30.520 I mean I was maybe eighteen nineteen, and but as 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:33.200 soon as I was fired, in other words, because I 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:36.360 didn't know how to do what he wanted me to do. 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:39.880 Because Stanley Kubrick knew everything, he had studied drumming with 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:43.120 Gene Kruper. He just wanted me to be his musical secretary. 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:46.439 And I'm not very good at that. Take dictation, yeah, absolutely, 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:49.080 take dictation. I mean I would get these tape sent 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:52.679 drumming with ten fingers on his tabletop and go, well, 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:56.640 get a drummer to do exactly that, and you know, 0:12:56.720 --> 0:13:00.480 so that didn't work. But then once I was officially fired, 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:04.080 I would get these phone calls where he would go, 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:07.200 I think Vivian's in a bit of trouble. Can you 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:09.480 go up there and see if she's all right? Or 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:12.880 he'd go what do you think of Dolby Stereo. I'm 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:16.160 eighteen years old, you know, I have no idea. I'm 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:17.600 talking to Stanley Cooper. 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:19.840 How did you end up? I mean, you're eighteen years old. 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:22.839 How does an eighteen year old Hans Zimmer wind up 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:26.280 within fifty miles of Stanley Cooprick? How did that happen? 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:31.079 Anton first has designer who knew me. They were shooting 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:34.560 for Metal Jacket in the docklands of London, and I 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:37.160 knew Vivian, who then took over, and so I was 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:39.960 really helping Vivian and a son. And then years later 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:42.560 I ran into Vivian and I was just on my 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:44.800 way to London. She said, oh, you really should go 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:47.920 and see Dad. I'm going Why would I go and 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:50.880 see you? And she goes, no, no, no, He's always 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:54.640 talking about you. Whenever movie comes on television that you did. 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:57.839 He's always saying I found him. I was the first 0:13:57.880 --> 0:14:00.360 one who gets he forgets the other part, you know. 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:02.160 And it was really busy and I had to go 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:05.200 down to Australia from London, so I didn't go and 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:09.000 see him because I thought that Stanley Kubrick is beyond 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:14.160 his immortal you know, because he was Stanley Kubridge. And 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:16.640 I get to Australia, I get to Sydney and the 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:20.880 guy who's picking me up from the airport coincidentally was 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:23.720 a chap who I'd met on Full Metal Jacket, and 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:27.640 he's got a really sad face. And I realized that, 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:31.400 you know, Stanley had died, which was inconceivable to reach sure. 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:35.720 And I learned, don't say no if somebody says, hey, 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:39.000 come on over, interesting, you know, you come over. And 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:41.920 I learned a lot from him. I learned vast things 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:42.440 from him. 0:14:42.600 --> 0:15:04.360 You know, this is music from the film Chappie. Han 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:09.040 Zimmer discovered his musical talent very early in life. Another 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:12.520 one of our guests who took music seriously at a 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:17.280 very young age is classical pianist Long Long. He was 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:21.840 a musical prodigy, winning his first competition when he was five. 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:25.520 Long Long and I spoke before a live audience in 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:29.160 New York City in twenty nineteen. He talked about his 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:33.040 father's skepticism of playing in competitions. 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:38.200 He discouraged me to do competitions, and I was like, wow, 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:41.120 did he say why? Yeah, he said that you're too 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:44.080 crazy about being number one. And you are not really 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:46.680 focus on what you should be, you know, learning the 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:49.240 repertoire and to He said, do you want to become 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:53.960 a great musician or you want to just win the prize? 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:56.520 And I said, oh, I said, is that not the same? 0:15:56.640 --> 0:15:58.880 I said, what's the different? I said, if I don't 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:01.280 win a prize, how I'm going to become a great musician. 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:06.320 Here the rest of my conversation with celebrated pianist Long 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:10.720 long A Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:14.800 hans Zimmer talks about how he went from playing dingy 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:19.440 clubs around England and making coffee for composer Stanley Myers 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:22.680 to realizing what he wanted to do for the rest 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:43.080 of his life. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:45.920 friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:51.840 the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:56.520 I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.840 This piece is from the film Twelve Years a Slave. 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:15.399 Hans Zimmer was born in Frankfurt, Germany. He's largely self taught, 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:19.520 and even as a child, understood a strong connection between 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:21.040 music and mood. 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:26.280 Well, my father died when I was six, and I 0:17:26.560 --> 0:17:28.879 already played the piano, and I enjoyed playing the piano. 0:17:29.119 --> 0:17:32.800 But my father died and I realized the only thing 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:35.280 that made my mother happy, that put a smile on 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.320 her face was when I played the piano. So I 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:41.359 sort of took on that bird, which then, of course 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:45.680 backfired because at school I was appalling in everything other 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:48.960 than playing music. I got thrown out of nine schools. 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:52.920 Ultimately I ended up in school in England, a fabulous 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:56.240 school called Hertwood House. You know, it was a choice 0:17:56.320 --> 0:18:00.000 to go back to Germany or hang out in Swinging Lundon. 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:02.879 So by the time of eighteen, I was in the 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:05.320 back of a fort transit van going up and down 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:08.600 the m one playing every workingman's club and every city pub. 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:12.879 There's the eighties. It was crazy, it was amazing. There 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:16.320 was a company called Working Title. They were making music 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:20.280 videos and one day Channel four, new television station, came about, 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:23.359 and Working Title decided, since we don't know how to 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:26.560 make movies, that's okay, they don't really know that, but 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:30.440 we'll do something called My Beautiful Laundrette, which was a 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:34.800 young Daniel da Lewis, and it was an extraordinary anti 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:40.840 thatcher Rite gay Cross everything you know amazingly, It's just 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:45.240 mind blowing when nobody saw it coming, and Daniel kisses 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:49.560 this Indian boy and you could feel the jaws of 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:53.520 the audience hitting the floor and I loved it. 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:58.439 So Kubrick and that introduction through full metal. When you're 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:01.720 eighteen years old, had you worked on any films or 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:04.560 you've been close to any film sets or studios before that? 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:08.960 Yes, yeah, no, no, absolutely. I had a mentor Stanley Myers 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:11.040 that the man who wrote the music for The Deer 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:15.840 Hunter brilliant man. And so Stanley had this coffee machine. 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:20.720 He loved his Italian espresso. He had bought an unbelievably 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:25.120 complicated coffee machine. And so my job was to work 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:28.959 the coffee machine and Stanley would show me how to 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:33.520 write for orchestra. And her first day was Stanley Myers 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:36.840 and Nicholas Rogue sitting there looking at a scene. In 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:41.160 the morning, I was making coffee and they're both going, 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:43.919 we have no idea what to do, And by the 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:47.840 evening they'd come up with a mind blowing, beautiful solution, 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:52.679 musical solution. And I realized this idea of that you 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:55.520 have nothing, and that you make something out of nothing, 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:57.600 and that it is just a conversation and you just 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:02.080 you just breathed the picture in and turn it into notes. 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:06.840 That was a fantastic adventure. And then Stanny and I 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:09.399 had a little studio and Stanny was very good friends 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:12.879 with the producer Jeremy Thomas, who phoned me up one 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:15.800 day and said, would I mind coming in on Saturday 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:19.800 because he had a Riti Sakamoto and Bernardo Bertulucci coming 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:22.720 in to have a look at what Richi had done 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:26.080 on the Last Emperor and would I just go and 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:29.760 run the tape machines for them. So they piled into 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:33.159 my little studio and it turned out that there was 0:20:33.359 --> 0:20:38.320 a profound lack of communication and Bettu Lucci had recut 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:43.240 the Last Emperors as flashback, while Sakamoto had scored the 0:20:43.359 --> 0:20:48.040 previous version, which was all in chronological order. And the 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:51.199 other thing was Saka Roto's idea was that he was 0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:55.479 going to play Banado the stuff have his friend Koji 0:20:56.280 --> 0:20:58.760 recorded at Aby wrote, and he was gone because he 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:02.800 had a tour start the following day, and so nothing fit. 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:07.280 So David Byrne from the Talking Heads was the other composer, 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:10.320 and Kong Su, who was a Chinese composer but had 0:21:10.440 --> 0:21:14.879 studied in Berlin, was another composer on it. So the 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:19.520 Chinese composer could only speak German, so I was useful 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:22.800 in this case. And Jeremy said, can you just go 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:26.200 up to Happy Road and just sort of sort this out? 0:21:26.400 --> 0:21:29.720 You know, we called the orchestra, and I had no 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:33.840 idea what four M, you know, fifty one whatever. Something 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:36.200 that was in Real for was now in Real two, 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:38.000 but I'd never heard and I didn't even know what 0:21:38.200 --> 0:21:41.600 scene it was supposed to go. And Bernada would go, 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:44.159 why is it getting quiet in the middle of a shot? 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:48.400 And I'm like tap dancing furiously coming up with excuses 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:52.119 to sort of not put the blame on Ritisakamoto. It 0:21:52.119 --> 0:21:57.080 really wasn't his fault. So that was really my other introduction. Yeah, 0:21:57.119 --> 0:22:01.119 And it was like, these people look crazy. These people 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:04.320 are genuinely crazy. And there was one day where Danara 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:06.680 was working out at Pinewood and there was something had 0:22:06.680 --> 0:22:10.280 gotten the things kept getting lost, are things kept not 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:13.320 happening or whatever? And he fecked me up at my studio. 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:17.160 He goes, where are the Chinese death bells? I didn't 0:22:17.200 --> 0:22:19.720 know that we're going to be Chinese deat belts, nor 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:21.560 did I even know that there is such a thing 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:24.480 as Chinese death belts. So I said, well, okay, I'm 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:28.120 really sorry. I'll come right over with that Chinese deathbelts. 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:31.280 So I made up something on the synthesizer because I thought, 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:33.359 if I don't know what they sound like, he won't 0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:36.040 know what they sound like. And I came over and 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:39.560 as I got to Pinewood, Bernardo's walking up and down 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:42.440 at the gates to the studio and he's like he's 0:22:42.440 --> 0:22:44.479 got his hands beyond his back. And I get out 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:46.720 of the Carlumn saying, look, I'm really sorry. It wasn't 0:22:46.760 --> 0:22:48.720 my fault. By the way, it really wasn't, you know. 0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:50.760 But I wasn't going to blame anybody. I just went 0:22:50.960 --> 0:22:53.840 fuck it out to it and Banana went, look, I'm 0:22:53.880 --> 0:22:56.960 really sorry. I shouted at you, and he handed me 0:22:56.960 --> 0:22:59.280 a box of chocolates and he said, look, even though 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:02.760 I'm the DIY director and I'm paying you, I realized 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:05.520 that the seconds of your life are going by and 0:23:05.560 --> 0:23:07.560 I should be more gracious. 0:23:07.840 --> 0:23:08.119 Wow. 0:23:08.480 --> 0:23:11.119 That taught me something. I mean, the more I worked 0:23:11.119 --> 0:23:14.440 within the film business at these early days, and mostly 0:23:14.480 --> 0:23:17.960 it wasn't so high, and mostly like working title. All 0:23:18.040 --> 0:23:20.720 our cutting rooms were either above a strip club or 0:23:20.760 --> 0:23:23.040 a pawn shop, and you know, and I would run 0:23:23.119 --> 0:23:25.280 up the stairs with my little piece of music and 0:23:25.400 --> 0:23:28.480 sing it up to the picture and hold my breath 0:23:28.520 --> 0:23:30.760 because if the director didn't like it. But at the 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:34.879