Hans Zimmer: Live in Prague (2017) Movie Script

Hello, Prague.
This is sort of a little
bit of my life story here.
Because the reason I start
the way I start,
with my friend Richard Harvey,
here on clarinet.
And the amazing
Nick Glennie-Smith on...
...accordion, OK.
Thirty five years ago
or maybe a little more,
just after leaving school,
I met these two,
and we started
making music then,
and we're still making music
and...
Actually I'm not sure
if it's getting any better,
but the friendship
is still there
and the friendship is
the important part.
So much of my life and so much
of my music is all about,
you know, friendships
you've made.
So let's treat this like
a little dinner party,
just you and me, and we're just
here, we're just having a chat,
and we're just gonna
play you a bit of music.
The next thing we're gonna do
is actually from a friend
that I truly seriously miss,
the late great Tony Scott.
And tonight, with the amazing
Czech National Choir,
we're gonna do Crimson Tide.
So yes,
it wasn't all Crimson Tide.
There was a little
Angels and Demons.
And tonight,
I really want to make this about
the musicians that I work with.
And there's no one greater...
One of the truly, if not. . .
Oh yeah, come on.
My friend Satnam Ramgotra,
the most amazing drummer
I have ever had the honour...
...to ride on a bus with.
And the little devil over there
is Lucy,
and she's got an angel
on her shoulder named Holly.
So from one Scott brother
to another Scott brother.
I'm a musician
which means partly
I'm unemployable for a real job.
I'm up at night
and I sleep during the day.
Or I have a 9 to 5 job
which starts at 9 in the evening
and goes until 5 in the morning
or something like that.
So, when somebody phones me
at 9 o'clock in the morning,
I'm very, very vulnerable,
and they know it.
So, Ridley Scott when he phoned
me at 9 in the morning
and said to me, "Hans, do you
want to do a Gladiator movie?"
I just started laughing.
Because to me a gladiator movie
was men in skirts and sandals
and it was basically,
we were going to do a comedy.
And he said,
"It's not really like that."
And he started
telling me the story,
and as he was telling me
the story
I could see what amazing vision
he had.
And we were really gonna do
a gladiator movie
that was going to be great.
We finished talking after about
an hour and I got off the phone,
and my wife's looking at me
and she's going,
"What did you and Ridley
talk about?"
By this point I was really
excited and I said to her,
"You won't believe it but we're
gonna do a gladiator movie."
And she just paused,
and she looked at me and went,
"Oh, you boys."
The weird thing is that
she was absolutely right.
And I told Ridley about this
and we started
really questioning the idea
that we had no female soul
in this movie.
We needed to get a muse.
We were talking about this
in the cutting room
and Pietro Scalia our editor,
he's got like three CDs,
I'm not kidding,
he had three CDs on his shelf.
One of them was Dead can Dance,
and he picked it up and he goes,
"What about Lisa Gerrard?"
To make the story very short,
I phoned Lisa in Australia.
She said she'll come and she was
going to come for three days.
And the three days
turned into three months,
and the three months...
God, hang on,
this was sixteen years ago.
So, we're still friends,
you know.
These little movies make these
little families and you get
to meet really interesting
people through music.
Tonight,
ladies and gentlemen,
Czarina Russell is going to do
Gladiator for us.
And Mike Einziger
from the band Incubus.
Guthrie Govan.
Oh, yeah,
and Steve Mazzaro.
In the middle of Gladiator we've
got this guitar concerto,
this crooked guitar concerto
going on.
It's an experiment.
It will either work
or it won't work.
But ladies and gentlemen
let me not bore you any longer.
Because in the immortal words
of Gladiator,
you will not be entertained.
Here we go, Gladiator.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Czarina Russell.
All right,
so from Rome to Paris,
Da Vinci Code.
It wasn't really about the novel
that inspired me,
the thing that really
inspired me was Paris.
But what really
inspired me there
was when we were shooting
at the Louvre,
and then next to the Louvre
is this beautiful pyramid,
this very provocative modern
pyramid built by I. M. Pei.
And that really gave me
the idea of how I wanted
to attack the whole thing.
Then I wrote this tune
for Ron Howard
called Chevaliers de Sangreal.
I actually wrote it
very quickly,
I just wouldn't play it
to him forever.
Eventually he was starting
to get very nervous
and I played it to him,
and he loved it,
and it became really our main
theme for The Da Vinci Code.
And tonight we're gonna go
and do it in sort of the version
that it was originally
thought of,
where we have an ancient...
No, no, you're not ancient,
your instrument is ancient.
The very young Rusanda Panfili
is going to be playing
her old violin, while we do
a sort of electronic thing,
so you get the...
I love it when two cultures
sort of collide
and then become something
really interesting.
I think every sentence
is getting me more
into trouble here, right?
OK, I'll just shut up.
Here is Da Vinci Code.
Buyi she has such an amazing
voice, she moves me.
She moves you.
But...
- From Soweto to Prague.
- To Prague.
Every night we play this game,
it was a long time ago when
I first met Lebo in Los Angeles.
He was a refugee from
South Africa.
Things were bad in South Africa.
So things have changed.
So every night I just like
to remind both, him and me,
from Soweto to Prague.
It's been a journey,
it's been a journey.
Thank you.
You could go to see the play and
you see an actor do his part,
you see the movie
and you hear his voice,
but this, ladies and gentlemen,
this is the true Lion King.
And one thing
I always have to add,
Lion King was written
for my daughter Zoe,
who's somewhere here
in the audience.
I want to say it a lot
during the day,
but it's sort of nice to say it
in front of ten thousand people.
Zoe Zimmer, I love you
from the bottom of my heart.
Thank you.
Meanwhile,
just cast your eye over there.
In the string section
is young Tina Guo.
Not quite the same but all
the way from China to Prague,
but it's not quite
the same story.
Everybody works so hard,
but I'm always astonished
at her playing.
So, this very trivial piece
she is going to perform
as a cello concerto tonight,
and I'm honoured for you to be
playing this, thank you Tina.
Now you know,
that piece is only in there,
so that I get to play the timps
and make a lot of noise,
because everybody
wants to play the timps.
But the true heroes
of this piece are over there.
Young Nathan Stornetta,
from Switzerland.
And I just have to take a moment
to tell you about the guy
next to him.
That is Gary Kettel,
he is a true legend.
He's played on more film scores
than anybody else,
for John Williams,
for John Barry.
I mean, are there any other
Johns left?
Truly, I mean,
this man is amazing.
I'll go and play a little piano.
Young Yolanda Charles.
The beauty's on duty.
Thank you so much.
You are so wicked.
Thank you very much.
That was a piece from a movie
called The Thin Red Line.
And I know Johnny Marr
really likes this piece,
and that's why it's in the set.
Because like that, I get to have
my friend Johnny come out.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Johnny Marr.
But it doesn't just end there.
So Johnny, Andrew Kawczynski,
Steve Mazzaro,
Mike and Ann Marie,
and of course Satnam, would we
go anywhere without Satnam?
We sort of formed a band with
Pharrell a while back to do
a superhero movie,
Spider-Man.
So we all wrote this next piece,
this is truly the band
at its finest.
And of course what would we
write if not a clarinet concerto
in a very classical way?
So this next piece is called
Electro.
The.
Dark.
Knight.
Let me tell you one last story,
about twelve years ago,
maybe thirteen,
Chris Nolan phoned me
and asked me if I wanted
to do a Batman movie.
Of course I wanted to do
a Batman movie,
and more than that I wanted
to work with Chris Nolan.
But I had a problem,
I didn't know how to be Batman
and split my personality
and become the suave
and elegant Bruce Wayne.
So Chris suggested that I call
my friend James Newton Howard,
who's one of the most brilliant,
elegant and wonderful composers.
And off we went to London
with our friend Mel Wesson.
The four of us together came up
with Batman Begins,
we never thought about a sequel
or anything like this.
A few years went by and one day
Chris turned up at my studio,
and he started telling me
the story of the Joker.
And he told me a story
of anarchy,
he told me a story of a punk
attitude to music and to acting.
And I said to him, "Who's going
to be the actor in this,
who's going to play this Joker?"
And he said to me,
"Heath Ledger."
And Heath gave
this incredible performance,
totally fearless, totally on
the edge, totally out there.
Every day, when we saw it daily,
we were just like, "Amazing."
Just before he finished
the movie,
we found out that
our Heath had died.
And I thought I should tone
the music down,
I thought it was all too much
and I suddenly realised
that the only way to really show
respect to this performance,
to give respect to the man,
was to keep the edges in it.
The razor blades, the steel,
the broken glass.
And a few years went by
and Chris said,
"Come on, we've got
to finish the trilogy.
We owe it to ourselves."
And so, Dark Knight Rises
came about.
Somehow we found
the playfulness again,
the experimentation,
all that stuff was all back.
We did the movie,
we finished it,
we went to New York,
we had an amazing premier.
The next morning
we got on a plane
and we arrived at dawn
in London
and I went to my apartment.
And a journalist was on
the phone and he asked me
what I felt about
the mass shooting
while they were showing
our movie,
in the small town in Colorado
called Aurora?
I hadn't heard of it
and I said, "Devastated."
The first word
that popped into my head.
And I realised everybody
was going to use that word,
and I don't use words.
Words aren't the way
I express myself.
All day I was thinking about
the victims and their families,
and the loneliness they must
have experienced.
So that night I phoned the choir
and I said,
"Can we do something? Can we do
a piece of music with no words,
that should feel like
we're stretching our arms out
all the way across the Atlantic,
for the small town in Colorado?"
And let them
not feel alone any more,
let them know we're
thinking of them,
let them know we're feeling
for their hearts.
And the world hasn't gotten
any better,
and tonight we're here
in Prague.
And we're stretching
our arms out,
and we're playing and singing
from our hearts for you.
Ladies and gentlemen,
this is Aurora.