Hans Zimmer: Hollywood Rebel (2022) Movie Script
Ladies and
gentlemen, Hans Zimmer!
There's a word I don't use
very often, which is genius.
Hans Zimmer is one of them.
He has the incredible
capacity to reinvent himself
without losing his identity.
He's a storyteller.
He tells stories with music.
It's not a job.
It's like a calling.
It's like a crazy thing.
I can't imagine
not writing music.
Hans Zimmer is
the world's most sought after
and prolific movie composer.
He's written music
for blockbusters, romcoms,
animations and even
iconic nature documentaries.
This is a dangerous place.
He's fascinated
just by sound itself.
He has all kinds
of technical ideas
and tricks going
on at any one time.
Throughout his career,
he's broken all the rules
about how
you compose music for films.
I don't think anybody's
ever won an Oscar for a score
that blatantly is
bagpipes, heavy-metal guitars
and a woman screaming at you.
This is great!
He doesn't
want to read a script.
He wants me to tell him,
"What is the movie
you think you're making?"
It's like being psychoanalysed.
Even if you're not hearing
what you want to hear always,
the project
gets better every time
it gets under
Hans's microscope.
He remains a child, in a way.
And I think you have to
have that quality in order
to sort of be a successful
musician for all that time.
I've been doing
this for, what, 40 years?
Somebody the other day said,
"When are you gonna slow down?"
"What do you mean 'slow
down'? I'm just getting going!
I'm just getting started."
Hans is
experimenting with some ideas
for the soundtrack of a new BBC
Natural History documentary.
Just try to get to something
that sounds remotely frozen.
I'm using a bit of noise,
make it a bit more tundra-like.
You know, I mean, it's just...
I like the idea
that there's, like, a wind
rattling across everything.
I'm literally making it as
we're talking about things.
Er... Let's say...
Let's go and use this, too.
It's relatively chilly,
but we can make it chillier.
Bit of frozenness.
The problem is
that wind across a tundra
and bacon
frying are very similar.
This is a stronghold
for one of Antarctica's
most remarkable inhabitants.
The seriousness and the depth
that we bring to this project
comes a lot
from me being a kid.
One of my main
memories is just shortly
before my father's death,
where he took me to the Rhine,
which was
completely covered in foam.
And he was explaining to me,
"You know, look,
we're destroying the world.
We now need to go and
do something about that."
And I think it hugely
influenced me in our work
with Sir David Attenborough.
Hans was born in
Frankfurt, Germany,
in 1957 into a Jewish family.
I knew what
the Nazis had done to the Jews.
It would be
brought up quite a lot.
The fear was
that, "You know what?
If you tell the neighbours,
your best friend can
turn on you within one moment."
While still a child,
Hans's family was torn apart
by a bolt from the blue.
The week before
my 6th birthday --
my birthday was on a Sunday --
my dad died on either
the Friday or the Saturday.
And on Monday, my mother,
who was totally overwhelmed,
basically dropped me off
for my first day at school.
It was like,
you know, all these kids,
terrible teachers
of an older generation.
Then came
the moment where she said,
"You know, I think
you should have piano lessons.
Do you want piano lessons?"
And as a 6-year-old,
7-year-old,
you think that stuff
you hear in your head,
a magical man is going to come
and tell you how to
put it under your fingers.
And, of course,
that's not at all what happens.
Some horrible German comes who
raps you across the knuckles
if you don't
play your scales right.
You know, "Read,
read, read, read, read!"
And to this day, if
you put music in front of me,
it just starts getting
wobbly and swimmy and...
and defocuses.
Despite having only
two weeks of formal lessons,
Hans found his home in music.
I play the piano because it
put a smile on my mum's face.
It's the only reason.
It's not the only reason -- it
put a smile on my face, too.
Hans kicked against the rules,
not just in learning music
but in everything.
He was thrown out of
eight schools in Germany
for not conforming to
the strict discipline demanded.
The music teacher
threw a chair at me.
I remember that.
He always told
stories of his childhood,
all the shenanigans
he got into --
crazy thing in boarding
school that got you kicked out.
He got kicked out of boarding
school quite a few times.
I know my mum was
really worried about me.
I think everybody was
really worried about me.
Hans's rebellious streak
led to his mother
moving them to England.
There they found
a progressive school
where he could
concentrate on his music.
On graduating,
he followed his dream
and joined
a band called Krakatoa,
mainly playing
working men's clubs.
Don't apologise,
it's not your style
We were the entertainment
nobody listened to.
We were so bad, up north,
we would be the support
act to the strippers.
Treat your mama good
And it was interesting
because it was the '80s
and it was
Margaret Thatcher and it was...
coal miners' strike.
Whoa, it was rough up north.
People were so frustrated.
You know, you left London
and you entered another world,
you entered another country.
And this country was
a country that was desperate
and it was poor
and it was everything
that you could only
imagine of the left behind
and left for forgotten.
And to this day...
I have this person
I write my music for.
And she's fictitious.
She's called Doris
and she lives in Bradford.
She has a grey
coat and, you know...
is of uncertain age.
She's got two terrible boys.
I mean, they're so ill-behaved.
And her hair-dye job
isn't very good, you know?
And she works really
hard throughout the week.
And come
the weekend, she has a choice.
She has a choice of going
to the pub, having a drink,
or she has a choice of coming
and seeing one of our movies.
And she's a hero to
me because she works hard.
And so when she comes and sees
one of my -- our -- movies,
I want to make sure that she
gets her money's worth and...
I promise you.
I mean, every movie,
I sit there and I go,
"What would Doris think?"
It's so easy to think about
the past in a nostalgic way.
Yeah, I loved it. I loved it.
My friend Warren Cann,
drummer from Ultravox,
we decided to do
an album together,
which, absolutely,
we couldn't give away.
To this day,
we couldn't give it away.
Oh, and then
we had this crazy idea.
We did a concert at
the London Planetarium,
you know, basically,
people looking up at the stars
and us playing
weird, cosmic music to them
and scaring the children
in the process of it.
The 1980s saw
a revolution in music,
video and film production.
Computers and synthesisers
were changing how music
was made and recorded.
Hans saw the potential
in all this new technology
and made
himself the master of it.
I was seriously
into synthesisers
and I was a lot
skinnier then as well.
But I still
have this, of course,
and I still make music with it.
And, you know that sound
that basically pins you
into your seat when
you watch "Dark Knight"?
That's that beast.
It was a time where
you suddenly could have access
to computers,
so the whole idea
about doing things on stage
was far less
exciting than the idea
of "How far could
I push this technology?"
Using his know-how
of studio technology?"
It was in this unassuming yard
that Hans began to hone his
writing and production skills.
Together with
his friend and mentor,
composer Stanley Myers,
he set up
his first recording studio.
I mean, you can tell from the
glamorous nature of this door
that this is the door that
leads directly to Hollywood,
fame and Oscars.
This used to be my studio.
Actually, it wasn't my studio.
It was Stanley Myers'
and my studio.
Absolutely
extraordinary composer.
I mean, everybody owes a lot
of things to everybody in life.
My film language, for instance,
I very much
learned from Stanley.
It's really simple.
If you don't have a tune,
you've got
nothing to hang on to.
So, this sort of
somewhat decrepit building
actually turned out
to be a haven for us.
I don't think many
people had the sort of idea
that you could go and do film
scores with a little keyboard
and not an orchestra,
but you could.
I want to be
manager of this place.
I think I can do it.
Please let me.
Of course,
"My Beautiful Laundrette,"
I think, was pretty much
the first thing we did here.
Stanley Myers
was doing the music
for "My Beautiful Laundrette,"
and Hans was
always in the other room.
So for some reason,
that was where you ended up.
Stanley was always in the front
room reading the racy news,
and there was
clearly a rather clever chap
in the back doing all the work.
A skinny,
lanky guy who was German
with a little computer
thing, and everyone thought,
"What the hell's that?"
basically. And...
- Because -
- I guess it was electronic,
so Hans was doing it
because he knew how
to work all those machines
and he knew how to
make the eccentric sounds.
Between them, they thought up
what the film
should sound like.
And it was pretty obvious
when it was a Stanley piece
because it was
elegant and beautiful
and when it was a Hans piece,
which was a bit like
lead boots.
And it was all rewrites for me.
And Stanley would very gently
steer me
in the right direction.
He's an incredibly
charming man.
And he was just
absolutely brilliant
cos he had this new form
of, in a funny way, '80s music,
but he also had the wit
and the ability to charm
and to be
the whole package, as it were.
Without
that character, you know,
he'd still be a great composer,
but he wouldn't have been the
successful composer that he is.
No way.
It was just a weird thing,
because, here in England,
you were always an equal.
I mean, you were totally
involved in the storytelling,
and that was the thing that
I thought was really exciting,
these conversations you are
having with film directors,
which were far
more up my streets
than just playing in a band.
I know that he's
the most successful composer
in the world,
but to me, he's
the boy in the back room.
It makes me laugh.
By the late 1980s,
Hans was gaining a reputation
as a film composer
of British films and TV.
He is developing fast.
Yes.
A knock on the door at
Lillie Yard late one night
was going to
change his life forever.
You know, 11:00 at night --
musicians' hours.
Of course we were working.
So I open the door and
there's a guy standing there
and he's going,
"Hi. My name's Barry Levinson."
Pause.
"I'm a Hollywood director."
From the first time I met him,
I thought
that he was extremely talented,
and that's before he had
worked on any of the music.
I just got...
Sometimes you get a feeling
with people that you connect.
And he came in and...
I mean, basically, the bottom
line of the story is, he went,
"Do you want to do this film
'Rain Man'
that I'm working on?"
And I said, "Yes."
Hans's ideas for "Rain Man"
were unusual for a traditional
American road movie.
There's a tendency to
use sort of guitar music,
that type of
travelling across country,
and I didn't think it was
appropriate for the piece.
And he came up with that sound,
which was very unique
and very distinctive...
...and very different
than a normal travelling movie.
You know, I'm sure
the studio wasn't thrilled
because it's like, "Alright,
I got somebody, Hans Zimmer,"
and they're going,
"Who?! For this film?
You know, we got
Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman.
And who is this composer?"
For his first Hollywood movie,
Hans received
an Oscar nomination.
I went for that lunch that
they have, the Oscar lunch,
and I picked up,
I don't know, five, six, seven.
I mean, I didn't stand up
and say, "Anybody got a movie?"
I just sat there and people
would come up to me and say,
"Hey, do
you wanna do my movie?"
The following
year, he composed the music
for yet another
Oscar-winning film...
"Driving Miss Daisy."
And then in 1994...
Nants ingonyama
Bagithi baba
The first notes that you hear,
you're in.
And it's magic.
Nants ingonyama
And the vocal
that you hear with it...
- Baba
- ...poetry.
Nqoba
Musical poetry.
- Siyo Nqoba
- Ingonyama
The studio had given Hans a
strict brief about the opening.
It was supposed to be
20 seconds of Elton's song
and then there was going
to be a dialogue scene and...
da-da-da-da, right?
And I forgot
about the 20 seconds.
I just got excited about
doing the chant with Lebo.
Then I did
an arrangement of Elton's tune.
And so I played it to them,
and as I'm playing it to them,
I'm going, "Oh, God, I forgot.
It's supposed to
be 20 seconds long,
and then it's supposed
to become a dialogue piece."
And they sort of
shuffled off into a corner,
and they're talking.
And I know what
they're talking about.
They're talking about,
"Who are
they gonna get to replace me?"
So I'm going over
there, and I'm saying,
"Look, guys, I'm really sorry.
I can do this
thing in 20 seconds."
They're going, "No, no, no!
That's not what
we're talking about at all.
We're thinking we're gonna go
and reanimate the whole
opening.
We're gonna take all that
dialogue out and da-da-da-da."
Ingonyama
It was an experiment,
and what's in
the movie is my original demo.
The African sounds...
Ingonyama
...the unique instruments...
Ingonyama
...it's beyond profound.
The circle of life
And the Oscar goes to Hans
Zimmer for "The Lion King"!
So full of life
and wonder and beauty.
I wrote
a speech, but I realised,
"It's so boring,"
so I'm not gonna do it.
I'd like to thank my wife
because she's my best friend.
I'd like to thank my daughter
because she now thinks I'm cool
cos I did "The Lion King"!
I'm incredibly nervous.
I tell you what, writing a
score is much easier than this.
Thank you.
Just let me go, okay?
Circle
I've listened to how many
songs of
how many scores end on...
Exclamation
point that is... amazing
and a signature of his.
The directors and
the producers were coming in
and I hadn't finished it,
so that's why that big drum --
the "Boing!" -- is
there, to distract them
from the fact that I hadn't
finished the track.
Hans used his mastery
of digital technology,
especially sampling, to
change the way movie directors
collaborated
with their composers.
The standard way of working
with a director before Hans
is that there was no
way to present the music
other than to
play it on the piano --
"Here's your theme,
and here's where
the brass comes in down here,
and the strings
are playing this."
You know, I wasn't
as good of a piano player,
but one of the things I figured
out really, really quickly,
that the best way to
communicate with a filmmaker
was to play them, like,
a fake version of the score,
a synthesised
version of the score.
So basically what
you have is you have
- all the different instruments -
- horns and trumpets.
In those days,
nobody did it like this
other than Hans,
you know? Nobody demoed things.
Nobody, you know,
mocked everything up
so you could
hear it beforehand.
Hans was quite unique that way,
and I liked that method.
I loved technology.
I loved his way of doing it.
And that's why
things changed in film music,
you know, when
he came on the scene.
Part of it was
the technique he was using,
to do it with these "demos."
Hans didn't just change the
way composers use technology,
he developed
a sound that influenced
a whole generation of
movie composers and directors.
I'm fascinated
by the idea of time.
The ticking
happens a lot in my stuff.
Rather than going
for a groovy rhythm,
it's ticking without accents.
It doesn't give the game away,
where the next
part or the next cut is.
It just is
like a river flowing.
And it sort of
takes you on a journey.
In his score for
the film "The Thin Red Line,"
he developed
a technique of building
an incredible
tension over very long scenes.
What it got
was this incredible
sort of feeling
of fate and dread.
It really was
unique at the time.
There's not really
anything that quite does that.
He's very influential.
It's part of
the language of filmmaking now.
I completely
ripped him off on that.
I've ripped him off on other
times, and then other times...
I mean, there's
probably a few little moments
where he's ripped me off back.
It was everything that music
school tells you you can't do.
So there was the...
You're not supposed
to do parallel things.
And they're all minors.
And it's asymmetrical.
You know, music
school will teach you
you're not supposed
to do things
in these sort of parallels.
They're not chords.
A chord needs three notes.
This is two notes, always.
And it just sort
of meanders in this...
while this note always stays...
So, you get these
really interesting clashes.
And it became a sort of...
a new language in film.
By the 2000s,
Hans had established himself
as one of the top
composers in Hollywood.
He was always looking
for a new way of doing things.
Along with his business
partner Steve Kofsky,
he built a studio
complex in Santa Monica,
expanding
it over several decades,
where teams of
composers and sound technicians
work on movies,
TV shows and documentaries.
- Hello, boys.
- Hi.
What you guys
working on at the moment?
Erm..."His Dark Materials,"
"Wheel of Time."
People here get the
opportunity to rub shoulders
with the right
kind of directors.
I mean, you know,
guys actually sit in meetings.
You know, Hans brings...
Whoever's working on
the project with Hans,
for example,
will be in a meeting.
This was your big idea,
so I just want to make
sure I don't destroy it.
The beauty of
the old show was it was full...
He wasn't afraid to bring
in his team into a meeting.
Don't break it.
There's always been
ghost-writers in films,
but Hans opened up the door
to all of his assistants...
...who were able to
experience the meeting
and take that for their own
careers moving forward.
At the centre of
the complex lies Hans's studio,
an extension of
his own personality.
I, as a European
working in America,
I miss a Europe that doesn't
actually exist any more.
And I myself had these doubts
about staying here, you know?
And I wanted to go -- I wanted
to go back to Europe.
And I thought,
"Hang on. This is Hollywood.
You know, you can be and
build whatever you want to do."
So I was very precise about
my thinking about this room...
even though it just sort of
looks like some crazed German
tossed it together...
because I knew
I was going to spend
90%, probably,
of my life in this room.
I thought I might as
well have some fun with it
and do something
which lets people
speak their mind, you know?
A room that is safe.
Hans works in a space that
removes you from the world.
You've never been
in a space like it.
It's always been
fun to hang out there,
sometimes watch him suffer,
have a glass of
wine while he suffers.
The environment
inside his studio
is so alive with exploration
and discovery
that it's a blast.
You know,
the sort of samurai thing,
and it's really
kind of, you know...
This room is like
a Buddhist sort of...
Old Buddhist temple.
And...what else?
The keyboard and whatnot,
you know?
And you just sit on a nice
couch and you just feel it,
you talk about it,
you feel it, you talk about it,
you feel it, you talk
about it. And he's on the keys.
He's on the keys,
he's feeling it.
You know, he's almost,
like, having the conversation
with the keys as
you talk about it.
And then you find,
"Hey, hey, hey, what's that?
What's that? What's that note?
Do that again.
Is this written down?
Okay, it's being recorded.
Okay, it's
being recorded. Okay."
He doesn't
want to read a script.
So he...It's...
You know, it's like
being psychoanalysed.
He wants to...
You know, he wants me
to tell him the story.
Because we had
talked about that...
Not only tell him
the story but, like,
"Why must I tell the story?"
It's about
getting the big picture.
It's about figuring
out what moves somebody,
what doesn't move somebody.
It's about playfulness. Right.
That's why I don't take notes.
Why take notes?
You know, we'll just record it.
We'll just
listen to it afterwards.
Okay, this part
of our meeting...
There's nothing
that stops playfulness
more than seeing
somebody taking notes.
You know, suddenly it's a job.
And he asks all
kinds of questions, you know?
And I think he's
searching for an angle.
And then at some point,
he'll be like, "That's it."
Womp, womp, womp. Instead of...
In the case of
"Pirates," it was...
He was technically unavailable,
but I really
think he just thought
it was a failed
endeavour from the outset.
Just the genre,
just a pirate movie,
was like, "What are
you doing?" Like, "Pass!"
You know, but in a "nice" way.
Like, "I'm doing
'Mission: Impossible.'
I can't do
your pirate movie." And so...
So when we were done editing,
I brought it to him
and played it to him.
And I think he sort of shifted
and he started
playing at that little...
They had fired
the original composer.
That's very interesting.
And we had three
weeks to finish the score.
So, Hans went home...
and started writing.
And he wrote all
the themes overnight.
And then we talked,
you know, at length about,
like, the drunken waltz.
Like, "Why is Jack
like that with his sea legs?"
What is that? Sort of...
It's not just a waltz,
it's a kind of slurred waltz.
Keep a sharp eye.
So, the character
of Jack Sparrow is...
The notes go up, positive.
Sort of,
you know, the innocence.
There's like
an innocence, hope in there.
You know, it's like, "Oh, I can
go and do anything, right?"
Now...
...this bit...
...is a bit naughty, right?
That's the wrong chord.
So, you go from naughty to,
you know, he's doing something.
- It's still -
- It's still benign,
but it's
definitely the wrong chord.
Here we are.
We're back on the safety
of the optimism, but...
the devil's fifth...
to a minor chord.
So, that's part
of his character.
He is definitely naughty.
And then he does
something unexpected.
He changes key right
in the middle of the phrase,
but only for one second.
And it resolves in
a sort of classical way,
which is really a lie
because he goes to
something even naughtier,
etcetera, etcetera.
So each phrase
is part of his...
I'm describing his character.
It kind of rolls like
you're on the deck of a boat.
Boat and rum make
for unsteady rhythms.
It's not clever. It's just fun.
I think Hans has an approach,
which I wouldn't call unifying,
but I do recognise
it over and over again.
It's this great
ability to build a theme.
In the "Da Vinci Code," Hans
refined the technique
he pioneered in
"The Thin Red Line"
of using a small number
of notes to create complex,
driving themes.
I mean, this is so simple.
The simpler these
things are, the more I fear
I'm going to get found out.
I mean, look, I can't think of
any artist who doesn't think,
"They're gonna catch me
at it. They're gonna find out."
You get some very simple notes
that inspire other
simple notes that go with it,
and you can go and
play with these rounds.
It's not easy,
but it's incredibly
powerful and stirring.
That's one of
his patterns that you will see
and with different kinds
of themes,
different sorts of tunes.
Some of them are
just one or two notes.
Some are very
melodic, like this one.
But getting
that music, through repetition,
to sort of
evolve into something
go from one place to another,
well, that's what every
movie wants to be is a journey.
And, you know,
his cues often convey that.
It's a journey.
It takes you on a journey,
and you add
experiences every time round.
I mean, you've heard it,
so now you need to add
another layer of experience,
a layer of time,
layer of something to it.
This technique of
creating longer themes
that build and build
found their ultimate expression
in the films of one of
Hans's key collaborators.
I've never liked music that
feels layered onto the movie,
like sauce going
onto a piece of meat.
You know, to me, good film
music really should be baked
into the DNA of
what the actual film is
and woven into
the fabric of the film itself.
And Hans was very on
board with that process.
There's
certain things which...
I know they're good ideas,
but I'm not good
enough to do them yet,
so I use the next
movie to actually go
and get a little
bit better at them.
Hans's work with Nolan
would result in some of
his most memorable scores,
involving war movies,
dream-stealers...
...and superheroes.
It's not
who I am underneath...
but what I do...
that defines me.
What he was
doing on "Batman Begins"
is he was distilling
the essence of this great icon,
not into a complex
melody, into an idea
of almost the sound effects
approach of these bat flaps,
these kind of
big whooshes of noise.
Literally two notes,
but the recording process
that went into
that -- the layering process,
the hundreds and
hundreds of tracks of sound
that is supporting that,
musically and
harmonically and all the rest,
and the different combinations
that allowed from us --
is extraordinary.
At times, the music
is very, very minimal,
but the production methodology
is always extremely expansive
and full of design
ideas and imagination.
I mean, that's nothing, right?
And then the theme is...
It's two notes, right?
That's it.
And only at
the end does it break.
And it goes...
Still the same two notes.
And it becomes
triumphant for one moment...
...before
it recedes back into darkness.
You know, just for
one moment, you can see...
You know, quite maniacal.
He's fascinated
just by sound itself,
beyond the emotional
qualities of music.
He has the best
samples, for example,
of anyone in the world,
but he continually
strives to improve them.
When it came to
"The Joker Suite,"
I remember talking to him.
He was like,
"I'm convinced that the Joker
should be a piece of music
and started from one note."
I was like,
"Oh, God, here we go!"
You know, but if anyone
could do it, it would be --
That's more
the thought of an inventor.
- Do you see what I mean?
- Come on, come on!
I want you to do it.
I want you to do it.
Come on, hit
me. Come on, hit me!
There's something
anarchic about the Joker.
Hit me!
By the time I'd bumped
into him again, he was like,
"I think I have to concede.
It has to be two notes."
So, he spent ages on this,
and it became the iconic,
sort of distorted violin thing
that's just
the two notes going...
I thought that Joker was
the most interesting
character in that movie.
He was always in
control of the situation
and was the only one
who always spoke the truth.
And then this idea
of these endless rises
that start in one
pitch and just climb and climb
and climb and climb and climb.
Ay!
Come on!
This idea of just
one note metamorphosising
in this absolute incredible...
and very quietly as well.
I wanted you to lean in
a little bit to pick it out.
I wanted you to
lean in to the darkness.
Could you please
just give me a minute?!
That, to me,
is something no-one
had really ever done.
You had people who wrote
extremely note-y
symphonic music
and you had, like,
rock guys
who just about
crossed over enough
to be able to
scramble together a film score,
but to have someone
sort of right in the middle
who could sort of steal
the underlying
structural techniques
of modern, popular music
and then understand
enough of all the vocabulary
of all sorts of
different kinds of,
and often symphonic, music
and sort of put that together.
People don't even
need to think about this
when they're watching a movie,
but it's one of the reasons
that he's able to deliver
so much of the feeling
you need and the storytelling
without being
invasive and fussy and pompous.
The more I worked
with Hans, the more I realised
the value of
his creative contributions
to the conceptual underpinnings
of what the films could be.
With prompting from Nolan,
Hans developed radical
new ways of scoring a movie.
With "Interstellar,"
I actually got him to do
his first demo
on the basis of a short
letter that I wrote him,
explaining the feelings,
the sort of fable
at the heart
of what the film
was going to be
without even
telling him the genre.
And I did that while
I was writing the script.
I gave him one day to
give me his first impression
of the emotions
I was talking about.
And what he did
for me in that one day
became the basis
of the entire score.
Chris made me write this
whole score away from picture.
It was a good experiment.
I was writing freely.
You know, I wasn't a slave
to the edit, as it were.
He stopped
writing pieces of music
that are integral to
the structure of the film,
and he started
just writing music
and not watching the picture.
So, he would
create a 35-minute piece
that he would
try against picture
and it would
inform, then, the process.
By writing these
big, long pieces of music,
it gives you more of
a sense of what the picture is
and how the music can help it.
A couple months ago,
I was rewatching the movie
with my friends
and we're all sobbing.
And I realised that the way
that my friends were
experiencing the movie
was completely
different from how I was,
because I was able to hear
how my father loves, you know,
because that movie is
about a father and a daughter.
And to be able to
hear how my father loves
and how he sees his children,
I think, is probably the
greatest privilege of my life.
He worked really, really hard.
You'd catch him in the
mornings, catch him at night.
But throughout the day,
every single
day, he was working.
Yeah, I'm glad
that he takes more breaks now,
not just for us to be
able to spend time with him
but also for himself.
Because he hasn't
been around in my life --
and the life of his children --
all too much, he's tried
to really make up for it.
I think every
parent comes with flaws,
but he's really tried
to show us how he can love.
He doesn't always say it, but
he shows us with his gestures.
He tells you with
his eyes, "I understand.
I'm here.
I'm sorry I wasn't
earlier, but I'm here now."
Having conquered
the world of superheroes
and science-fiction epics,
Hans was on the lookout for new
collaborators and new projects.
He sought one out.
It was a world away
from Hollywood blockbusters.
I made a film called "Shame."
And there was a piece of music,
there was a little temp music
we were using by Hans Zimmer.
It was close to him,
but not exactly.
So we were
just playing with it.
I thought it was great.
I thought it was okay.
It's not that piece of music,
obviously not.
But, yeah, it is obviously
hugely inspired by it.
So I was in New Orleans,
in a hotel room,
and I get this
call early in the morning
and it's Hans Zimmer.
And I said, "Oh, shit,
this guy's gonna
sue me or something.
What's going on?"
I immediately thought...
He goes, "No,
no, no, no, no, no!
But why didn't
you ask me to work with you?"
I thought, "Well, I never
thought I could, you know."
He was like,
you know, "You should ask me.
I'm interested in
working with filmmakers,
great filmmakers
like yourself."
I said, "Okay,
well, I'm working on this film
called '12 Years a Slave.'
Are you interested
in working on it?"
He goes, "Yeah, of course!"
"Okay, but
you're pretty expensive."
"Don't worry about that.
Listen, I would
love to work with you."
And that was it.
That was the start
of our relationship.
Hans is lavish
with what he brings you.
You know, "12 Years a Slave"
is the really good example,
that we were
there with empty pockets
and he was
getting people on planes
and first-class musicians
to come over from Germany
and start working
with us and developing...
You know, we wanted a kind
of slightly home-made feel
about some of the score
in "12 Years a Slave,"
particularly in that area
where he's trying
to write using juice.
I loved working on it so much.
I thought it was important.
Nobody believed in it.
We had no budget.
It's very few of us,
but I remember
Steve being in
the room, and it's like...
The intimacy was vital.
It was a very low-budget film,
and it was
really Hans's generosity
at bringing
the right ingredient over
and getting
him to work with us.
I'm a short-order cook.
You know, I go out, I find...
I go shopping.
Oh, good
ingredients -- you know,
fresh tomatoes, special...
"Oh, look at those carrots!
They look
really good," you know?
And then I spend forever
peeling and chopping, etcetera.
And because
the ingredients are fresh
and the ingredients
are delicious,
I'm hoping it's gonna be okay.
He's like a kid that doesn't
want to do his homework,
and it's like,
"Come on, what the fuck?"
But at the same
time, he's working.
He's... It's
working, he's working.
Shit takes time. You know,
anything takes time. You know?
This desire
never to be pigeonholed
even led him to
score Natural History films.
Hans brought all
his feature-film experience
to these projects.
The iguana
and the snake scene.
The best car
chase nobody ever filmed.
I know every director is
just immensely envious of it.
He's always changed.
He changes and changes.
Yeah, he uses
a sound for a while
as he kind of perfects
it, and then there's this era
of that sound on films,
and then he'll change again.
He gets bored
with his own sound.
Hans's most recent work
not only earned
him his second Oscar,
but it might be
the most radical
reinvention of his sound ever.
His brief was to
create what the director,
Denis Villeneuve,
described as an alien score.
The idea for doing that,
it should be a score
that will use
unknown instruments...
that the sound
would be something
that would come
from another time,
from another place.
It was also very important
that the score would have
some kind of spiritual quality.
It's one of
the main theme of "Dune,"
is that exploration of religion
and the danger of mixing
religion and politics together.
It was really important for me
to find a great female voice...
...and then frame her...
with all these instruments
which we built,
which we synthesised,
which we drove people crazy
that write software, you know.
"Can you build me a resonator
that will turn Tina Guo's cello
into a Tibetan war horn?"
"What does
a Tibetan war horn sound like?"
"I have no idea."
As much as he has designed
all those alien instruments,
he decided that the instrument
that will have survived
10,000 years in the future
will be the bagpipes.
He started to
compose with the bagpipes,
which was, like, very fresh,
surprising and interesting.
And the Oscar goes
to Hans Zimmer, "Dune."
I don't think anybody's
ever won an Oscar for a score
that blatantly is
bagpipes, heavy-metal guitars
and a woman screaming at you.
"What's going on
here? Where are the strings?
Where are the nice things?"
It was just
a provocative thing.
Hans began
his musical career in a band
touring working men's clubs.
His life has turned full circle
as he takes
his scores on the road.
But these days,
the venues have changed.
His enthusiasm has increased.
I think it's going out on tour
that's responsible for that.
He loves
the people he works with.
He loves touring. It feeds him.
It nurtures him.
When he's on a stage,
there's nobody who quite
has that relationship
with the audience.
They come in to see a maestro
and they end up seeing
somebody who feels like a
friend by the end of the show.
I used to be so
afraid of being on stage,
but nowadays,
it was just like dinner party
with 12,000
people, just having a chat.
He's basically had a midlife
crisis and become a rock star.
I'm still learning something.
I just want to use all
those things I've learned.
And I want to go and play
with all these synthesisers,
and I want to go and
tell all these stories,
and I want to go and
work with all these directors.
He is not
the norm, and that's, like,
why he has
the career that he does.
Like, he doesn't
want to do things
the way other
people have done it,
and he thrives on it.
You know, he loves it.
Things moved really fast.
Life isn't as
long as you think it is.
You have a choice.
You can go and try
to live a playful life,
or you can go and live a life
which excludes playfulness.
And it doesn't
get you anywhere.
Playfulness gets you somewhere.
It's fun, it's
inspiring, just making a racket
and hopefully
have a bit of a laugh.
It's wonderful.
gentlemen, Hans Zimmer!
There's a word I don't use
very often, which is genius.
Hans Zimmer is one of them.
He has the incredible
capacity to reinvent himself
without losing his identity.
He's a storyteller.
He tells stories with music.
It's not a job.
It's like a calling.
It's like a crazy thing.
I can't imagine
not writing music.
Hans Zimmer is
the world's most sought after
and prolific movie composer.
He's written music
for blockbusters, romcoms,
animations and even
iconic nature documentaries.
This is a dangerous place.
He's fascinated
just by sound itself.
He has all kinds
of technical ideas
and tricks going
on at any one time.
Throughout his career,
he's broken all the rules
about how
you compose music for films.
I don't think anybody's
ever won an Oscar for a score
that blatantly is
bagpipes, heavy-metal guitars
and a woman screaming at you.
This is great!
He doesn't
want to read a script.
He wants me to tell him,
"What is the movie
you think you're making?"
It's like being psychoanalysed.
Even if you're not hearing
what you want to hear always,
the project
gets better every time
it gets under
Hans's microscope.
He remains a child, in a way.
And I think you have to
have that quality in order
to sort of be a successful
musician for all that time.
I've been doing
this for, what, 40 years?
Somebody the other day said,
"When are you gonna slow down?"
"What do you mean 'slow
down'? I'm just getting going!
I'm just getting started."
Hans is
experimenting with some ideas
for the soundtrack of a new BBC
Natural History documentary.
Just try to get to something
that sounds remotely frozen.
I'm using a bit of noise,
make it a bit more tundra-like.
You know, I mean, it's just...
I like the idea
that there's, like, a wind
rattling across everything.
I'm literally making it as
we're talking about things.
Er... Let's say...
Let's go and use this, too.
It's relatively chilly,
but we can make it chillier.
Bit of frozenness.
The problem is
that wind across a tundra
and bacon
frying are very similar.
This is a stronghold
for one of Antarctica's
most remarkable inhabitants.
The seriousness and the depth
that we bring to this project
comes a lot
from me being a kid.
One of my main
memories is just shortly
before my father's death,
where he took me to the Rhine,
which was
completely covered in foam.
And he was explaining to me,
"You know, look,
we're destroying the world.
We now need to go and
do something about that."
And I think it hugely
influenced me in our work
with Sir David Attenborough.
Hans was born in
Frankfurt, Germany,
in 1957 into a Jewish family.
I knew what
the Nazis had done to the Jews.
It would be
brought up quite a lot.
The fear was
that, "You know what?
If you tell the neighbours,
your best friend can
turn on you within one moment."
While still a child,
Hans's family was torn apart
by a bolt from the blue.
The week before
my 6th birthday --
my birthday was on a Sunday --
my dad died on either
the Friday or the Saturday.
And on Monday, my mother,
who was totally overwhelmed,
basically dropped me off
for my first day at school.
It was like,
you know, all these kids,
terrible teachers
of an older generation.
Then came
the moment where she said,
"You know, I think
you should have piano lessons.
Do you want piano lessons?"
And as a 6-year-old,
7-year-old,
you think that stuff
you hear in your head,
a magical man is going to come
and tell you how to
put it under your fingers.
And, of course,
that's not at all what happens.
Some horrible German comes who
raps you across the knuckles
if you don't
play your scales right.
You know, "Read,
read, read, read, read!"
And to this day, if
you put music in front of me,
it just starts getting
wobbly and swimmy and...
and defocuses.
Despite having only
two weeks of formal lessons,
Hans found his home in music.
I play the piano because it
put a smile on my mum's face.
It's the only reason.
It's not the only reason -- it
put a smile on my face, too.
Hans kicked against the rules,
not just in learning music
but in everything.
He was thrown out of
eight schools in Germany
for not conforming to
the strict discipline demanded.
The music teacher
threw a chair at me.
I remember that.
He always told
stories of his childhood,
all the shenanigans
he got into --
crazy thing in boarding
school that got you kicked out.
He got kicked out of boarding
school quite a few times.
I know my mum was
really worried about me.
I think everybody was
really worried about me.
Hans's rebellious streak
led to his mother
moving them to England.
There they found
a progressive school
where he could
concentrate on his music.
On graduating,
he followed his dream
and joined
a band called Krakatoa,
mainly playing
working men's clubs.
Don't apologise,
it's not your style
We were the entertainment
nobody listened to.
We were so bad, up north,
we would be the support
act to the strippers.
Treat your mama good
And it was interesting
because it was the '80s
and it was
Margaret Thatcher and it was...
coal miners' strike.
Whoa, it was rough up north.
People were so frustrated.
You know, you left London
and you entered another world,
you entered another country.
And this country was
a country that was desperate
and it was poor
and it was everything
that you could only
imagine of the left behind
and left for forgotten.
And to this day...
I have this person
I write my music for.
And she's fictitious.
She's called Doris
and she lives in Bradford.
She has a grey
coat and, you know...
is of uncertain age.
She's got two terrible boys.
I mean, they're so ill-behaved.
And her hair-dye job
isn't very good, you know?
And she works really
hard throughout the week.
And come
the weekend, she has a choice.
She has a choice of going
to the pub, having a drink,
or she has a choice of coming
and seeing one of our movies.
And she's a hero to
me because she works hard.
And so when she comes and sees
one of my -- our -- movies,
I want to make sure that she
gets her money's worth and...
I promise you.
I mean, every movie,
I sit there and I go,
"What would Doris think?"
It's so easy to think about
the past in a nostalgic way.
Yeah, I loved it. I loved it.
My friend Warren Cann,
drummer from Ultravox,
we decided to do
an album together,
which, absolutely,
we couldn't give away.
To this day,
we couldn't give it away.
Oh, and then
we had this crazy idea.
We did a concert at
the London Planetarium,
you know, basically,
people looking up at the stars
and us playing
weird, cosmic music to them
and scaring the children
in the process of it.
The 1980s saw
a revolution in music,
video and film production.
Computers and synthesisers
were changing how music
was made and recorded.
Hans saw the potential
in all this new technology
and made
himself the master of it.
I was seriously
into synthesisers
and I was a lot
skinnier then as well.
But I still
have this, of course,
and I still make music with it.
And, you know that sound
that basically pins you
into your seat when
you watch "Dark Knight"?
That's that beast.
It was a time where
you suddenly could have access
to computers,
so the whole idea
about doing things on stage
was far less
exciting than the idea
of "How far could
I push this technology?"
Using his know-how
of studio technology?"
It was in this unassuming yard
that Hans began to hone his
writing and production skills.
Together with
his friend and mentor,
composer Stanley Myers,
he set up
his first recording studio.
I mean, you can tell from the
glamorous nature of this door
that this is the door that
leads directly to Hollywood,
fame and Oscars.
This used to be my studio.
Actually, it wasn't my studio.
It was Stanley Myers'
and my studio.
Absolutely
extraordinary composer.
I mean, everybody owes a lot
of things to everybody in life.
My film language, for instance,
I very much
learned from Stanley.
It's really simple.
If you don't have a tune,
you've got
nothing to hang on to.
So, this sort of
somewhat decrepit building
actually turned out
to be a haven for us.
I don't think many
people had the sort of idea
that you could go and do film
scores with a little keyboard
and not an orchestra,
but you could.
I want to be
manager of this place.
I think I can do it.
Please let me.
Of course,
"My Beautiful Laundrette,"
I think, was pretty much
the first thing we did here.
Stanley Myers
was doing the music
for "My Beautiful Laundrette,"
and Hans was
always in the other room.
So for some reason,
that was where you ended up.
Stanley was always in the front
room reading the racy news,
and there was
clearly a rather clever chap
in the back doing all the work.
A skinny,
lanky guy who was German
with a little computer
thing, and everyone thought,
"What the hell's that?"
basically. And...
- Because -
- I guess it was electronic,
so Hans was doing it
because he knew how
to work all those machines
and he knew how to
make the eccentric sounds.
Between them, they thought up
what the film
should sound like.
And it was pretty obvious
when it was a Stanley piece
because it was
elegant and beautiful
and when it was a Hans piece,
which was a bit like
lead boots.
And it was all rewrites for me.
And Stanley would very gently
steer me
in the right direction.
He's an incredibly
charming man.
And he was just
absolutely brilliant
cos he had this new form
of, in a funny way, '80s music,
but he also had the wit
and the ability to charm
and to be
the whole package, as it were.
Without
that character, you know,
he'd still be a great composer,
but he wouldn't have been the
successful composer that he is.
No way.
It was just a weird thing,
because, here in England,
you were always an equal.
I mean, you were totally
involved in the storytelling,
and that was the thing that
I thought was really exciting,
these conversations you are
having with film directors,
which were far
more up my streets
than just playing in a band.
I know that he's
the most successful composer
in the world,
but to me, he's
the boy in the back room.
It makes me laugh.
By the late 1980s,
Hans was gaining a reputation
as a film composer
of British films and TV.
He is developing fast.
Yes.
A knock on the door at
Lillie Yard late one night
was going to
change his life forever.
You know, 11:00 at night --
musicians' hours.
Of course we were working.
So I open the door and
there's a guy standing there
and he's going,
"Hi. My name's Barry Levinson."
Pause.
"I'm a Hollywood director."
From the first time I met him,
I thought
that he was extremely talented,
and that's before he had
worked on any of the music.
I just got...
Sometimes you get a feeling
with people that you connect.
And he came in and...
I mean, basically, the bottom
line of the story is, he went,
"Do you want to do this film
'Rain Man'
that I'm working on?"
And I said, "Yes."
Hans's ideas for "Rain Man"
were unusual for a traditional
American road movie.
There's a tendency to
use sort of guitar music,
that type of
travelling across country,
and I didn't think it was
appropriate for the piece.
And he came up with that sound,
which was very unique
and very distinctive...
...and very different
than a normal travelling movie.
You know, I'm sure
the studio wasn't thrilled
because it's like, "Alright,
I got somebody, Hans Zimmer,"
and they're going,
"Who?! For this film?
You know, we got
Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman.
And who is this composer?"
For his first Hollywood movie,
Hans received
an Oscar nomination.
I went for that lunch that
they have, the Oscar lunch,
and I picked up,
I don't know, five, six, seven.
I mean, I didn't stand up
and say, "Anybody got a movie?"
I just sat there and people
would come up to me and say,
"Hey, do
you wanna do my movie?"
The following
year, he composed the music
for yet another
Oscar-winning film...
"Driving Miss Daisy."
And then in 1994...
Nants ingonyama
Bagithi baba
The first notes that you hear,
you're in.
And it's magic.
Nants ingonyama
And the vocal
that you hear with it...
- Baba
- ...poetry.
Nqoba
Musical poetry.
- Siyo Nqoba
- Ingonyama
The studio had given Hans a
strict brief about the opening.
It was supposed to be
20 seconds of Elton's song
and then there was going
to be a dialogue scene and...
da-da-da-da, right?
And I forgot
about the 20 seconds.
I just got excited about
doing the chant with Lebo.
Then I did
an arrangement of Elton's tune.
And so I played it to them,
and as I'm playing it to them,
I'm going, "Oh, God, I forgot.
It's supposed to
be 20 seconds long,
and then it's supposed
to become a dialogue piece."
And they sort of
shuffled off into a corner,
and they're talking.
And I know what
they're talking about.
They're talking about,
"Who are
they gonna get to replace me?"
So I'm going over
there, and I'm saying,
"Look, guys, I'm really sorry.
I can do this
thing in 20 seconds."
They're going, "No, no, no!
That's not what
we're talking about at all.
We're thinking we're gonna go
and reanimate the whole
opening.
We're gonna take all that
dialogue out and da-da-da-da."
Ingonyama
It was an experiment,
and what's in
the movie is my original demo.
The African sounds...
Ingonyama
...the unique instruments...
Ingonyama
...it's beyond profound.
The circle of life
And the Oscar goes to Hans
Zimmer for "The Lion King"!
So full of life
and wonder and beauty.
I wrote
a speech, but I realised,
"It's so boring,"
so I'm not gonna do it.
I'd like to thank my wife
because she's my best friend.
I'd like to thank my daughter
because she now thinks I'm cool
cos I did "The Lion King"!
I'm incredibly nervous.
I tell you what, writing a
score is much easier than this.
Thank you.
Just let me go, okay?
Circle
I've listened to how many
songs of
how many scores end on...
Exclamation
point that is... amazing
and a signature of his.
The directors and
the producers were coming in
and I hadn't finished it,
so that's why that big drum --
the "Boing!" -- is
there, to distract them
from the fact that I hadn't
finished the track.
Hans used his mastery
of digital technology,
especially sampling, to
change the way movie directors
collaborated
with their composers.
The standard way of working
with a director before Hans
is that there was no
way to present the music
other than to
play it on the piano --
"Here's your theme,
and here's where
the brass comes in down here,
and the strings
are playing this."
You know, I wasn't
as good of a piano player,
but one of the things I figured
out really, really quickly,
that the best way to
communicate with a filmmaker
was to play them, like,
a fake version of the score,
a synthesised
version of the score.
So basically what
you have is you have
- all the different instruments -
- horns and trumpets.
In those days,
nobody did it like this
other than Hans,
you know? Nobody demoed things.
Nobody, you know,
mocked everything up
so you could
hear it beforehand.
Hans was quite unique that way,
and I liked that method.
I loved technology.
I loved his way of doing it.
And that's why
things changed in film music,
you know, when
he came on the scene.
Part of it was
the technique he was using,
to do it with these "demos."
Hans didn't just change the
way composers use technology,
he developed
a sound that influenced
a whole generation of
movie composers and directors.
I'm fascinated
by the idea of time.
The ticking
happens a lot in my stuff.
Rather than going
for a groovy rhythm,
it's ticking without accents.
It doesn't give the game away,
where the next
part or the next cut is.
It just is
like a river flowing.
And it sort of
takes you on a journey.
In his score for
the film "The Thin Red Line,"
he developed
a technique of building
an incredible
tension over very long scenes.
What it got
was this incredible
sort of feeling
of fate and dread.
It really was
unique at the time.
There's not really
anything that quite does that.
He's very influential.
It's part of
the language of filmmaking now.
I completely
ripped him off on that.
I've ripped him off on other
times, and then other times...
I mean, there's
probably a few little moments
where he's ripped me off back.
It was everything that music
school tells you you can't do.
So there was the...
You're not supposed
to do parallel things.
And they're all minors.
And it's asymmetrical.
You know, music
school will teach you
you're not supposed
to do things
in these sort of parallels.
They're not chords.
A chord needs three notes.
This is two notes, always.
And it just sort
of meanders in this...
while this note always stays...
So, you get these
really interesting clashes.
And it became a sort of...
a new language in film.
By the 2000s,
Hans had established himself
as one of the top
composers in Hollywood.
He was always looking
for a new way of doing things.
Along with his business
partner Steve Kofsky,
he built a studio
complex in Santa Monica,
expanding
it over several decades,
where teams of
composers and sound technicians
work on movies,
TV shows and documentaries.
- Hello, boys.
- Hi.
What you guys
working on at the moment?
Erm..."His Dark Materials,"
"Wheel of Time."
People here get the
opportunity to rub shoulders
with the right
kind of directors.
I mean, you know,
guys actually sit in meetings.
You know, Hans brings...
Whoever's working on
the project with Hans,
for example,
will be in a meeting.
This was your big idea,
so I just want to make
sure I don't destroy it.
The beauty of
the old show was it was full...
He wasn't afraid to bring
in his team into a meeting.
Don't break it.
There's always been
ghost-writers in films,
but Hans opened up the door
to all of his assistants...
...who were able to
experience the meeting
and take that for their own
careers moving forward.
At the centre of
the complex lies Hans's studio,
an extension of
his own personality.
I, as a European
working in America,
I miss a Europe that doesn't
actually exist any more.
And I myself had these doubts
about staying here, you know?
And I wanted to go -- I wanted
to go back to Europe.
And I thought,
"Hang on. This is Hollywood.
You know, you can be and
build whatever you want to do."
So I was very precise about
my thinking about this room...
even though it just sort of
looks like some crazed German
tossed it together...
because I knew
I was going to spend
90%, probably,
of my life in this room.
I thought I might as
well have some fun with it
and do something
which lets people
speak their mind, you know?
A room that is safe.
Hans works in a space that
removes you from the world.
You've never been
in a space like it.
It's always been
fun to hang out there,
sometimes watch him suffer,
have a glass of
wine while he suffers.
The environment
inside his studio
is so alive with exploration
and discovery
that it's a blast.
You know,
the sort of samurai thing,
and it's really
kind of, you know...
This room is like
a Buddhist sort of...
Old Buddhist temple.
And...what else?
The keyboard and whatnot,
you know?
And you just sit on a nice
couch and you just feel it,
you talk about it,
you feel it, you talk about it,
you feel it, you talk
about it. And he's on the keys.
He's on the keys,
he's feeling it.
You know, he's almost,
like, having the conversation
with the keys as
you talk about it.
And then you find,
"Hey, hey, hey, what's that?
What's that? What's that note?
Do that again.
Is this written down?
Okay, it's being recorded.
Okay, it's
being recorded. Okay."
He doesn't
want to read a script.
So he...It's...
You know, it's like
being psychoanalysed.
He wants to...
You know, he wants me
to tell him the story.
Because we had
talked about that...
Not only tell him
the story but, like,
"Why must I tell the story?"
It's about
getting the big picture.
It's about figuring
out what moves somebody,
what doesn't move somebody.
It's about playfulness. Right.
That's why I don't take notes.
Why take notes?
You know, we'll just record it.
We'll just
listen to it afterwards.
Okay, this part
of our meeting...
There's nothing
that stops playfulness
more than seeing
somebody taking notes.
You know, suddenly it's a job.
And he asks all
kinds of questions, you know?
And I think he's
searching for an angle.
And then at some point,
he'll be like, "That's it."
Womp, womp, womp. Instead of...
In the case of
"Pirates," it was...
He was technically unavailable,
but I really
think he just thought
it was a failed
endeavour from the outset.
Just the genre,
just a pirate movie,
was like, "What are
you doing?" Like, "Pass!"
You know, but in a "nice" way.
Like, "I'm doing
'Mission: Impossible.'
I can't do
your pirate movie." And so...
So when we were done editing,
I brought it to him
and played it to him.
And I think he sort of shifted
and he started
playing at that little...
They had fired
the original composer.
That's very interesting.
And we had three
weeks to finish the score.
So, Hans went home...
and started writing.
And he wrote all
the themes overnight.
And then we talked,
you know, at length about,
like, the drunken waltz.
Like, "Why is Jack
like that with his sea legs?"
What is that? Sort of...
It's not just a waltz,
it's a kind of slurred waltz.
Keep a sharp eye.
So, the character
of Jack Sparrow is...
The notes go up, positive.
Sort of,
you know, the innocence.
There's like
an innocence, hope in there.
You know, it's like, "Oh, I can
go and do anything, right?"
Now...
...this bit...
...is a bit naughty, right?
That's the wrong chord.
So, you go from naughty to,
you know, he's doing something.
- It's still -
- It's still benign,
but it's
definitely the wrong chord.
Here we are.
We're back on the safety
of the optimism, but...
the devil's fifth...
to a minor chord.
So, that's part
of his character.
He is definitely naughty.
And then he does
something unexpected.
He changes key right
in the middle of the phrase,
but only for one second.
And it resolves in
a sort of classical way,
which is really a lie
because he goes to
something even naughtier,
etcetera, etcetera.
So each phrase
is part of his...
I'm describing his character.
It kind of rolls like
you're on the deck of a boat.
Boat and rum make
for unsteady rhythms.
It's not clever. It's just fun.
I think Hans has an approach,
which I wouldn't call unifying,
but I do recognise
it over and over again.
It's this great
ability to build a theme.
In the "Da Vinci Code," Hans
refined the technique
he pioneered in
"The Thin Red Line"
of using a small number
of notes to create complex,
driving themes.
I mean, this is so simple.
The simpler these
things are, the more I fear
I'm going to get found out.
I mean, look, I can't think of
any artist who doesn't think,
"They're gonna catch me
at it. They're gonna find out."
You get some very simple notes
that inspire other
simple notes that go with it,
and you can go and
play with these rounds.
It's not easy,
but it's incredibly
powerful and stirring.
That's one of
his patterns that you will see
and with different kinds
of themes,
different sorts of tunes.
Some of them are
just one or two notes.
Some are very
melodic, like this one.
But getting
that music, through repetition,
to sort of
evolve into something
go from one place to another,
well, that's what every
movie wants to be is a journey.
And, you know,
his cues often convey that.
It's a journey.
It takes you on a journey,
and you add
experiences every time round.
I mean, you've heard it,
so now you need to add
another layer of experience,
a layer of time,
layer of something to it.
This technique of
creating longer themes
that build and build
found their ultimate expression
in the films of one of
Hans's key collaborators.
I've never liked music that
feels layered onto the movie,
like sauce going
onto a piece of meat.
You know, to me, good film
music really should be baked
into the DNA of
what the actual film is
and woven into
the fabric of the film itself.
And Hans was very on
board with that process.
There's
certain things which...
I know they're good ideas,
but I'm not good
enough to do them yet,
so I use the next
movie to actually go
and get a little
bit better at them.
Hans's work with Nolan
would result in some of
his most memorable scores,
involving war movies,
dream-stealers...
...and superheroes.
It's not
who I am underneath...
but what I do...
that defines me.
What he was
doing on "Batman Begins"
is he was distilling
the essence of this great icon,
not into a complex
melody, into an idea
of almost the sound effects
approach of these bat flaps,
these kind of
big whooshes of noise.
Literally two notes,
but the recording process
that went into
that -- the layering process,
the hundreds and
hundreds of tracks of sound
that is supporting that,
musically and
harmonically and all the rest,
and the different combinations
that allowed from us --
is extraordinary.
At times, the music
is very, very minimal,
but the production methodology
is always extremely expansive
and full of design
ideas and imagination.
I mean, that's nothing, right?
And then the theme is...
It's two notes, right?
That's it.
And only at
the end does it break.
And it goes...
Still the same two notes.
And it becomes
triumphant for one moment...
...before
it recedes back into darkness.
You know, just for
one moment, you can see...
You know, quite maniacal.
He's fascinated
just by sound itself,
beyond the emotional
qualities of music.
He has the best
samples, for example,
of anyone in the world,
but he continually
strives to improve them.
When it came to
"The Joker Suite,"
I remember talking to him.
He was like,
"I'm convinced that the Joker
should be a piece of music
and started from one note."
I was like,
"Oh, God, here we go!"
You know, but if anyone
could do it, it would be --
That's more
the thought of an inventor.
- Do you see what I mean?
- Come on, come on!
I want you to do it.
I want you to do it.
Come on, hit
me. Come on, hit me!
There's something
anarchic about the Joker.
Hit me!
By the time I'd bumped
into him again, he was like,
"I think I have to concede.
It has to be two notes."
So, he spent ages on this,
and it became the iconic,
sort of distorted violin thing
that's just
the two notes going...
I thought that Joker was
the most interesting
character in that movie.
He was always in
control of the situation
and was the only one
who always spoke the truth.
And then this idea
of these endless rises
that start in one
pitch and just climb and climb
and climb and climb and climb.
Ay!
Come on!
This idea of just
one note metamorphosising
in this absolute incredible...
and very quietly as well.
I wanted you to lean in
a little bit to pick it out.
I wanted you to
lean in to the darkness.
Could you please
just give me a minute?!
That, to me,
is something no-one
had really ever done.
You had people who wrote
extremely note-y
symphonic music
and you had, like,
rock guys
who just about
crossed over enough
to be able to
scramble together a film score,
but to have someone
sort of right in the middle
who could sort of steal
the underlying
structural techniques
of modern, popular music
and then understand
enough of all the vocabulary
of all sorts of
different kinds of,
and often symphonic, music
and sort of put that together.
People don't even
need to think about this
when they're watching a movie,
but it's one of the reasons
that he's able to deliver
so much of the feeling
you need and the storytelling
without being
invasive and fussy and pompous.
The more I worked
with Hans, the more I realised
the value of
his creative contributions
to the conceptual underpinnings
of what the films could be.
With prompting from Nolan,
Hans developed radical
new ways of scoring a movie.
With "Interstellar,"
I actually got him to do
his first demo
on the basis of a short
letter that I wrote him,
explaining the feelings,
the sort of fable
at the heart
of what the film
was going to be
without even
telling him the genre.
And I did that while
I was writing the script.
I gave him one day to
give me his first impression
of the emotions
I was talking about.
And what he did
for me in that one day
became the basis
of the entire score.
Chris made me write this
whole score away from picture.
It was a good experiment.
I was writing freely.
You know, I wasn't a slave
to the edit, as it were.
He stopped
writing pieces of music
that are integral to
the structure of the film,
and he started
just writing music
and not watching the picture.
So, he would
create a 35-minute piece
that he would
try against picture
and it would
inform, then, the process.
By writing these
big, long pieces of music,
it gives you more of
a sense of what the picture is
and how the music can help it.
A couple months ago,
I was rewatching the movie
with my friends
and we're all sobbing.
And I realised that the way
that my friends were
experiencing the movie
was completely
different from how I was,
because I was able to hear
how my father loves, you know,
because that movie is
about a father and a daughter.
And to be able to
hear how my father loves
and how he sees his children,
I think, is probably the
greatest privilege of my life.
He worked really, really hard.
You'd catch him in the
mornings, catch him at night.
But throughout the day,
every single
day, he was working.
Yeah, I'm glad
that he takes more breaks now,
not just for us to be
able to spend time with him
but also for himself.
Because he hasn't
been around in my life --
and the life of his children --
all too much, he's tried
to really make up for it.
I think every
parent comes with flaws,
but he's really tried
to show us how he can love.
He doesn't always say it, but
he shows us with his gestures.
He tells you with
his eyes, "I understand.
I'm here.
I'm sorry I wasn't
earlier, but I'm here now."
Having conquered
the world of superheroes
and science-fiction epics,
Hans was on the lookout for new
collaborators and new projects.
He sought one out.
It was a world away
from Hollywood blockbusters.
I made a film called "Shame."
And there was a piece of music,
there was a little temp music
we were using by Hans Zimmer.
It was close to him,
but not exactly.
So we were
just playing with it.
I thought it was great.
I thought it was okay.
It's not that piece of music,
obviously not.
But, yeah, it is obviously
hugely inspired by it.
So I was in New Orleans,
in a hotel room,
and I get this
call early in the morning
and it's Hans Zimmer.
And I said, "Oh, shit,
this guy's gonna
sue me or something.
What's going on?"
I immediately thought...
He goes, "No,
no, no, no, no, no!
But why didn't
you ask me to work with you?"
I thought, "Well, I never
thought I could, you know."
He was like,
you know, "You should ask me.
I'm interested in
working with filmmakers,
great filmmakers
like yourself."
I said, "Okay,
well, I'm working on this film
called '12 Years a Slave.'
Are you interested
in working on it?"
He goes, "Yeah, of course!"
"Okay, but
you're pretty expensive."
"Don't worry about that.
Listen, I would
love to work with you."
And that was it.
That was the start
of our relationship.
Hans is lavish
with what he brings you.
You know, "12 Years a Slave"
is the really good example,
that we were
there with empty pockets
and he was
getting people on planes
and first-class musicians
to come over from Germany
and start working
with us and developing...
You know, we wanted a kind
of slightly home-made feel
about some of the score
in "12 Years a Slave,"
particularly in that area
where he's trying
to write using juice.
I loved working on it so much.
I thought it was important.
Nobody believed in it.
We had no budget.
It's very few of us,
but I remember
Steve being in
the room, and it's like...
The intimacy was vital.
It was a very low-budget film,
and it was
really Hans's generosity
at bringing
the right ingredient over
and getting
him to work with us.
I'm a short-order cook.
You know, I go out, I find...
I go shopping.
Oh, good
ingredients -- you know,
fresh tomatoes, special...
"Oh, look at those carrots!
They look
really good," you know?
And then I spend forever
peeling and chopping, etcetera.
And because
the ingredients are fresh
and the ingredients
are delicious,
I'm hoping it's gonna be okay.
He's like a kid that doesn't
want to do his homework,
and it's like,
"Come on, what the fuck?"
But at the same
time, he's working.
He's... It's
working, he's working.
Shit takes time. You know,
anything takes time. You know?
This desire
never to be pigeonholed
even led him to
score Natural History films.
Hans brought all
his feature-film experience
to these projects.
The iguana
and the snake scene.
The best car
chase nobody ever filmed.
I know every director is
just immensely envious of it.
He's always changed.
He changes and changes.
Yeah, he uses
a sound for a while
as he kind of perfects
it, and then there's this era
of that sound on films,
and then he'll change again.
He gets bored
with his own sound.
Hans's most recent work
not only earned
him his second Oscar,
but it might be
the most radical
reinvention of his sound ever.
His brief was to
create what the director,
Denis Villeneuve,
described as an alien score.
The idea for doing that,
it should be a score
that will use
unknown instruments...
that the sound
would be something
that would come
from another time,
from another place.
It was also very important
that the score would have
some kind of spiritual quality.
It's one of
the main theme of "Dune,"
is that exploration of religion
and the danger of mixing
religion and politics together.
It was really important for me
to find a great female voice...
...and then frame her...
with all these instruments
which we built,
which we synthesised,
which we drove people crazy
that write software, you know.
"Can you build me a resonator
that will turn Tina Guo's cello
into a Tibetan war horn?"
"What does
a Tibetan war horn sound like?"
"I have no idea."
As much as he has designed
all those alien instruments,
he decided that the instrument
that will have survived
10,000 years in the future
will be the bagpipes.
He started to
compose with the bagpipes,
which was, like, very fresh,
surprising and interesting.
And the Oscar goes
to Hans Zimmer, "Dune."
I don't think anybody's
ever won an Oscar for a score
that blatantly is
bagpipes, heavy-metal guitars
and a woman screaming at you.
"What's going on
here? Where are the strings?
Where are the nice things?"
It was just
a provocative thing.
Hans began
his musical career in a band
touring working men's clubs.
His life has turned full circle
as he takes
his scores on the road.
But these days,
the venues have changed.
His enthusiasm has increased.
I think it's going out on tour
that's responsible for that.
He loves
the people he works with.
He loves touring. It feeds him.
It nurtures him.
When he's on a stage,
there's nobody who quite
has that relationship
with the audience.
They come in to see a maestro
and they end up seeing
somebody who feels like a
friend by the end of the show.
I used to be so
afraid of being on stage,
but nowadays,
it was just like dinner party
with 12,000
people, just having a chat.
He's basically had a midlife
crisis and become a rock star.
I'm still learning something.
I just want to use all
those things I've learned.
And I want to go and play
with all these synthesisers,
and I want to go and
tell all these stories,
and I want to go and
work with all these directors.
He is not
the norm, and that's, like,
why he has
the career that he does.
Like, he doesn't
want to do things
the way other
people have done it,
and he thrives on it.
You know, he loves it.
Things moved really fast.
Life isn't as
long as you think it is.
You have a choice.
You can go and try
to live a playful life,
or you can go and live a life
which excludes playfulness.
And it doesn't
get you anywhere.
Playfulness gets you somewhere.
It's fun, it's
inspiring, just making a racket
and hopefully
have a bit of a laugh.
It's wonderful.