He Shoots, He Scores

Since first meeting in Toronto as teenagers, director David Cronenberg and composer Howard Shore – a three-time Oscar winner for his work on The Lord of the Rings – have formed one of film’s most creative partnerships. They’ve collaborated on 12 movies, including The Fly, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, a Russian mob thriller in theatres this month. enRoute caught up with them to discuss friendship, Saturday Night Fever and how filmmaking is like boxing.

ENROUTE You both grew up in Toronto. When did you meet?

HOWARD SHORE When I was 14, David was 16 or 17, and he had the most beautiful motorcycle and leathers. He was the coolest guy in the neighbourhood. Then I saw some of his short films in the early ’60s. I was about 28 when I did [Cronenberg’s 1979 film] The Brood. It took me 14 years to get up the courage to ask David to do one of his films.

ER Why do you think you work together so well?

DAVID CRONENBERG There’s a kind of bittersweet understanding of human darkness to what Howard does. It’s an interesting combination: never sombre, never solemn, but with an understanding of the tragic nature of human existence, leavened with humour. You can feel that in all of Howard’s work and certainly in mine.

ER What’s the biggest misconception about music in film?

DC There was an ugly, unfortunate era at the end of the ’60s and ’70s, when pop music was a really creative force, when people were always looking for a hit song out of a score. You had movies like Easy Rider whose score was basically pop music. We had some of that pressure on The Fly, weirdly enough. There was a producer or two who felt that a pop song, which was just background music in the bar scene, should play over the end credits so that we could legitimately say that it was music from this film. But we tried and it was so horrible, it completely destroyed the very tragic, emotional ending of the movie.

HS Good films use music as part of the story. Scorsese uses sound pieces in interesting ways that become part of the film.

DC When you think of Saturday Night Fever, you can’t separate it from its music. And that works for a movie like that, which was all about pop culture and dance.

ER How do you know when it’s not working?

DC We’ve all seen movies where the music strains to make you feel something that isn’t warranted by what’s on the screen. But when everything is firing on all cylinders, the music can add a whole emotional subtext. It’s almost like a fourth dimension. We have a couple of spots in Eastern Promises where the music completely alters the scene. Once you hear the music, you think, ‘Oh my God, that’s what’s going on.’

ER Do you know what music you want to hear when you’re writing a script?

DC My decision to write a script is intuitive, and it’s a gradual process. It’s not like I’m suddenly flooded with musical ideas or visual ideas or casting ideas. I wouldn’t have the energy or excitement of making a film if I had the whole movie in my head right from the start.

HS It’s a discovery process. You go on a journey to discover the film.

DC It sounds very arty to say that, but it’s true. And the movie surprises you. You thought it was going to be funnier or more tragic or lighter or darker. It starts to take on a life of its own. If it doesn’t, then you’re in trouble.

ER How is working on the opera adaptation of The Fly – to be staged next year in Paris and Los Angeles – different from doing a film?

HS It’s a different set of tools.

DC Opera is a composer’s medium, and I’m basically a traffic cop. The interesting thing is that the libretto will be based on a script that I wrote, so I have a deeply rooted creative connection. But when it comes to casting, I can’t cast an opera the way I can cast a movie because I don’t have the sophisticated ears for operatic singing.

HS You’re going to have them after this production. [Both laugh.]

DC I hope so. I hope to come out of this with a few more sensory inputs.

ER Have you ever changed a film because of the music?

DC It doesn’t happen a lot, but there are some moments where the music has demanded another beat or two at the end of a shot – probably in Naked Lunch and possibly in Crash. On Eastern Promises, Howard was working on the score with a version of the film that was still in flux, so there’s a real cross-fertilization.

HS He does that on a lot of the films. I’ll go to the set and see some of the assemblage, and a lot of times I just go back to my studio and write music based on that. There’s a lot of trust in doing that.

DC There’s nobody else I would let do that. Certainly not the producers. [Chuckles.] Howard actually saw the cut of Eastern Promises before I did. Basically, I was saying to him, “So how’s the movie?”

ER Do composers need to think visually?

HS A lot of people think that music is what you hear, but composition is entirely visual because it’s about the relationships between the notes that you see on the paper.

DC There’s a condition called synesthesia in which the senses seem to be mixed up, where people see music or hear colours. But for artists, that crossover of the senses happens all the time.

ER What are some of your most successful collaborative experiments?

DC That’s like asking…

ER Who’s your favourite child?

DC Yeah, and no parent wants to voice that. For both of us, the most extreme things are the most exciting. Dead Ringers, Crash and Naked Lunch stand out.

HS The story dictates how you use music. We’ve developed some of our own techniques over the years. With Naked Lunch and with Crash we could do certain things that we might not have tried in, say, M. Butterfly. And The Fly was also pretty experimental at the time.

DC That’s right. The music and feeling in The Fly were very operatic because it’s just three characters in a room despite all the sci-fi trappings, which in a weird way is Samuel Beckett-like: stripping yourself down to the primitive essentials. Maybe it’s because we’re Canadian, but Howard and I try to be invisible. We let the movie tell us what to do rather than wrestle it to the ground and stomp on it.

ER Do you take breaks between projects?

HS I’m essentially a writer, so it’s a very linear process. The recording process happens a little later and usually pretty quickly because it’s so expensive.

DC It’s different for me. A movie goes through the writing process, the trying-to-get-the-movie-together process, shooting, editing and so on. Then you release it, and you’re required to go on the road like Charles Dickens used to do with his novels. By the time you’re finished, you’re ready to go back to the beginning again, writing a script.

ER How has your approach to filmmaking, and collaborating, changed?

DC We’ve found our way creatively in a strange kind of parallel. We have an understanding of what movies can be and what they shouldn’t be.

HS Experience brings with it a stronger sensibility of what a movie should be. You have a more creative way of defining scenes and dramatic moments.

DC When you first start, survival is your priority. To come out of it with some dignity is a challenge, because you’re so overwhelmed. You’re learning on the go. Ernest Hemingway used to compare his writing to boxing, and when I was a kid, I thought that was superficial. Later I began to realize how right he was. It’s like Muhammad Ali doing the rope-a-dope: You can take the hits and blows more easily. You’re an older, more clever boxer.

Write to us: letters@enroutemag.net