In other words, it seemed really artificial and working against nature, in a sense, to think of the [government] commissioning. I assume it's similar in the U.S. as it is in Canada, that new music is commissioned by government agencies and various endowments for the arts, which are generally run by artists given grants of money from the government. It seems like a completely bizarre and unnatural way to have music caused to be written.

So, it was a conscious decision [to look for work as a film composer]. You look around and film is where the money is to pay for original music. If you're a composer at this time, it just seems like a very logical decision to end up writing music for film.

Doug Adams: Was that your plan from the start?

MD: It wasn't from the start. When I was younger I don't think it ever crossed my mind, because when you're younger and you're being trained, you're being trained in historical styles. I was learning styles of people who were paid by churches, or kings. So, in a sense, those were the models I had in my mind. Then, when I was foisted upon the real world, I looked around and saw that there really were no more kings or churches with any power and money. Obviously there had to be someone else.

I dont want to make it sound as if money is my goal, because it's pretty far from that. Otherwise I'd be living in Los Angeles and having a completely different career path. I guess money is a symbol to me, in the sense that it's where the power and the interest are. It's where the creative fire is. It's the workshop; it shows where things are happening. I don't want to make it sound like I'm looking for the money because I'm not at all.

DA: Well, you've got to eat, too.

MD: You do have to, and certainly that does come into it. I always wanted to be a composer since I was a little kid. Of course, when you're a little kid growing up and you're reading about famous composers of the past, the whole idea of poverty is almost held up as a rite of passage. it's a very romanticized thing. I don't think poverty or lack of money was anything that I was afraid of; in a sense, it was almost celebrated by the things that you're taught-the past models.

That's a concept that's important to me; I don't know if it is to other people, but having an idea of where you stand in the whole history of making music, that is really important to me. That's a sense that I carry into the work that I do as well. I try to be very aware of music from different places and from different times. I feel perfectly able and like I have the right to use those in my music-making and draw from them at any point.


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It's a Small World After All

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DA: How did you first become interested in using all these instruments from all over the world?

MD: They just struck my ear. Toronto is a very multicultural city - like a lot of places in North America, but Toronto is really quite an extreme example. Even when I travel around North America now, [Toronto is] still, one of the most multicultural cities. The communities here have thriving little arts cultures. It's very easy to go out - tonight I'm going to hear some South Indian dance. You can hear anything or see anything from any culture. Most cities are getting that way, but Toronto's been that way for a long time. So, I hear those things. Those people are around, those players are here. I just never thought there was a reason not to [use these instruments].

And the other thing is, I've always been annoyed by the kind of patronizing and ignorant film-scoring uses of these musics. When you see a film that's about Middle Eastern terrorists and you hear tablas and sitars, things like that really get on my nerves. It's just ignorance. It's something that I wanted to make sure that I wasn't doing. You can do that if you have a reason, but if your reason is that you just don't know any better, that's not a good reason. I think, having some knowledge and some understanding of those cultures, what the music means to them, and how it's used is important. It doesn't mean that you have to follow that all the time, but I think that you should be knowledgeable. If you're going to stretch the boundaries or bend the rules, you should know that you are doing that. As opposed to doing it by accident.

DA: You've made some amazing choices as far as pairing these instruments with films and stories. What's your method of operation when deciding what instruments you're going to use in a project?

MD: I just feel that different instruments, like different people , have their own, completely original and unique characteristics. It's the same with music from different places and music from different times. They all have a character that you can't find in any other thing. So, if you have a theme and you want to get across a certain idea with that theme, maybe a 100-piece orchestra playing late Romantic style is the right choice, but maybe it's not. There's no reason why it needs to be. If you want to get across the idea of a tiny, tight, very homogenized community, well, medieval music is a nice place to start, maybe. So, it's very dependent on the theme. I hope that they're not random choices, and I hope that they don't seem that way.

DA: Oh, no. Actually, it seems like a lot of the choices you make deal very closely with dramatic subtexts of the film. Are those the kind of things that you find interesting?

MD: Absolutely. Yeah, that's exactly where I want to start. There doesn't seem to be any point in repeating what the drama is already saying on the screen. It's already there, so why be redundant? That I find a very patronizing sort of film scoring because it's almost assuming that people are so stupid that they don't know what's going on. And I think people sense that. They may not understand why they find music kind of irritating in some films and in some moments, but I think people are smarter than some filmmakers and composers give them credit for. So, people can sense when the music is saying something that's not on the screen that makes them think about things in a different way. They may not be conscious, exactly, of what's going on, but I think that is what I like to play with.

DA: It seems like you've worked pretty extensively on films that cover a lot of mature and sometimes heavy themes. It's not kids stuff. Do you actively seek these kinds of projects out, or do you think that filmmakers are hearing something in your music that they equate with maturity of some sort?

MD: That's an excellent question. I've wondered that myself. Amusing enough, often when I go to see films, I go see films that are completely the opposite of what I end up scoring.

DA: Oh, really?

MD: Yeah, and I definitely don't pursue films of the nature that I end up doing. But I guess people do hear something, some character in what I've done that seems to be right with things that are dark and complicated. I don't know what that says about what I'm doing. [laughs] I think it might disturb me if I thought about it too much. But, no I don't [seek these films out]. If anything, for watching things, I'm attracted to quite the opposite.

On the other hand, I have worked on films that are very different from, say, The Sweet Hereafter or The Ice Storm, and I have to admit, they aren't as fun to do. I love doing period music and things like that, but really, I feel like it's not what I should be doing. It feels like it's too easy. I mean, I did this series-I did a few episodes where it was a period thing and it was really fun to do. But, I felt... I can't quite think of the word. I want to say "cheap," but it just felt...

DA: Not challenging enough?

MD: Exactly, yeah. I knew as soon as I saw the picture exactly what to do. I didn't have to think about it. It was easy and painless and fun. And I felt really guilty at the end of it.

DA: Is that "easy" in musical terms or in dramatic terms?

MD: Both, I guess. It was operating on a certain level and the music needed to just be late-19th century whatever. I love doing stuff like that; I love writing period-style music. But, I think it's more challenging to try and mix up period-style music with other things and take it somewhere where it's not necessarily supposed to be - or, it hadn't normally been.

DA: If you had complete autonomy over these choices, do you think you'd still be doing the same kinds of films or would you be getting into the lighter side of things?

MD: Like I said, I ended up doing this kind of film really by accident. It wasn't a kind of filmmaking that attracted me at the beginning. In a funny way I actually would almost prefer mainstream, lighter films. I love Disney animation and things like that. But, I don't know if I could write something for it. I guess I could. But when I'm watching those films I'm actually not conscious of the music at all. Whereas when I'm watching something that's a bit darker and deeper, I start thinking about what I might want to do. I guess they're very inspiring to music, the projects I've been involved in.


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The Ice Storm

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DA: Let's talk a little bit about The Ice Storm if we could. The choices that you made for that--the gamelan and the flute music, how did those first come into your mind?

MD: Well, the process of working with a director, especially somebody I hadn't worked with before like Ang Lee, was to try and understand what he really was wanting to say--what his main theme, if you could sum it up in one sentence, was. It actually was a long process with Ang because he's a very subtle man and a man of very few expressive moments, really. There's a lot going on in his mind, but he doesn't necessarily communicate in a way that is really obvious. So, it took quite a while. It took a matter of months to really understand what he was trying to say in the film.

We started out in a completely different direction. We actually started out kind of plastic and synthesized, and we ended up coming full circle. Again, it comes back to the idea that the plastic and synthesized thing is really what's going on in the film--what the surface is. But underneath is the element of nature and man's relationship to nature and how, in that period of time, man was very disjointed from the natural world and man's own past. So, that theme meant to me that it would be kind of interesting to remind the viewer in a subtle way about nature, and that nature was right outside the door. The sound of a Native American flute was just the perfect sound for that, for me. You see these shots of these goofy prefabricated houses in the middle of this hardwood forest which, only a few generations before, had native peoples living in a completely different way. I guess that was something that I thought about when I was watching the film. And the power of nature eventually reasserts itself in the film. The gamelan ensemble is the same thing. It's a music that, to our Western ears especially, seems more closely related to nature--a natural, elemental almost. Also on a central level, the sound of brass pots being hit reminds me of ice.

DA: Yeah, it has a very brittle sound. How did you about spotting this film? I really loved the way that there was a very unified approach rather than a scene-by-scene type of thing.

MD: The film was in flux a great deal while I was working on it. It was a very, very challenging film to work on because Ang was really wrestling with the film, trying to come to some kind of a structure that he felt comfortable with. If I look in my files, there are like 18 different versions of the film--something like that--that I was writing music for, never mind that they were doing. In a sense, that's every composer's worst nightmare. On the other hand, in this case I think what happened was we nailed it really carefully because we had such an intimate understanding of every moment in the film. You know, music came and went in all kinds of scenes. It wasn't spotted the way it ended up. But, the way it ended up, I think, is very effective and it makes sense--like you say, the uniformity of it. There were themes attached to certain ideas within the film, but I think it's because the structure of the film really rings true, those musical structures also make a lot of sense.

DA: This is more of a logistical question, but how did you go about dealing with all the different tunings as far as using the gamelan against woodwinds and things like that? That had to be a nightmare!

MD: You know, you're the first person who's asked that. That, probably, was the biggest source of stress for me as a composer. Nobody else understood that, of course, and I wasn't about to tell them! [Laughs] I did mention to them that my samples that they were listening to were not going to sound exactly the same [when played by a live ensemble]. And I think there was a sense of shock at the session when the gamelan ensemble was playing. There was certainly a sense of shock on their part. There was for me too. It was just one of those things where I really felt that it should work together. The funny thing was I talked to the guys in the gamelan ensemble and they said, "You know, we've played with orchestras before and it sounds pretty awful." They were kind of up front about that. So, I just kept that in mind and worked with it so that I used pizzicatos a lot with the gamelan, which you know is sort of an unpitched thing anyway. The woodwinds against the gamelan were the thing I was most worried about. As you know, the tunings are really different. But, somehow it just kind of works. I guess it was a matter of keeping in mind how different they were, and if parts were duplicating each other in the Western and Eastern orchestras, they were sounds that would not be really discordant. Not sustained sounds.

DA: The first thing I thought when I heard that was, "Boy, they had to have either carefully selected these instruments or digitally changed the pitch."

MD: No, we didn't. I have [done stuff like that]. In fact, today I am digitally tuning some medieval instruments I recorded that are really hurting my ears. On [Ice Storm] it was just a matter of--we recorded the gamelan and we recorded the orchestra. I took the two tapes home, put them up, just held my breath, and they worked. So we actually recorded them separately. I really can't explain it! We didn't tune a thing.

DA: Amazing.

MD: Yeah, it was just a bunch of natural instruments all together and luck, I guess.

DA: I also noticed the orchestral music that underscores that last section. It's really expressive, but it seems to be expressive in a non-emotional way. It's very reserved. It almost feels like a texture that's based on orchestral writing more that anything that's strictly melodic or anything like that. When you're composing a cue like that, do you think it's the choices that you make (the string and woodwind orchestra and the lack of any sudden dynamic shifts) that creates the sound, or is it more an application or an execution of those kinds of choices?

MD: Again, that's a really interesting observation. You're right, I found that last scene very difficult to do because, in a sense, that scene is so emotional. The music needed to respond to it, but there was a line I didn't want to cross at all. So it was a matter of being expressive and yet, holding back. I guess it's just the simplicity of the intervals. It's not very rich orchestration. I mean, we had all the players sitting there. If they'd all been playing, it would have been really kind of maudlin. So it was matter of selectively holding back melodically. But, like you say, the strings are actually playing pretty expressively there. On the floor, when we were recording, we sort of coaxed that out of them a bit extra. But, I think in the composition itself there's a line that's not crossed. I guess it's the simplicity, really.

DA: So, it's just not over-scoring it?

MD: It's not over-orchestrated and it's not over-written. I think that was something I was very conscious about with that scene--both those things had to be held back. I don't know, I'm really afraid of that line. That line is something I'm always aware of and I think, more than anything, it would bother me if I ever crossed it.

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The Sweet Hereafter

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DA: Let's also talk a little bit about The Sweet Hereafter. What was your basic overall approach to this score? I know it features the ney flute.

MD: The Sweet Hereafter is a story that takes place in a small, Northern community. There's a terrible tragedy that happens and a lawyer from outside comes and tries to seduce the people into a big class action lawsuit. Throughout the film there's the legend of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. It's sort of a thread throughout the film. The Robert Browning story/poem is read throughout the film in little pieces. And it's almost like the underlying, analogous story. So that story became the focus of the music. The Pied Piper story, as you know, takes place in a medieval, tiny town. Then the exotic, nasty, Middle Eastern piper [comes]. So, really that was the choice of the music right there. It was early music instruments on one hand, and then an Eastern ney from Iran. An Iranian ney player was actually brought in from Europe. He was this master whose name is Hossein Omoumi. And we used an early music ensemble. So those were the two [elements].

There's one other theme that's going on in the movie. The main character is a singer (Sarah Polley) and she is in this band, so, with the actress who plays her, we wrote some songs and she actually sings them in the film. We did a couple of covers and we did some original things as well.

DA: I've read a lot of reviews of this film that say the music gives it a very "fairy tale"-type of feeling. That's not exactly the term I'm looking for, but it seems to feel like more of a "story" than a straightforward drama or anything like that. How was that approach decided upon?

MD: I guess again it was the whole philosophy of looking for something the music can do that [draws] a parallel line to the story that's there. I just find it really boring to reinforce what's already on the screen. And like I said before, it's kind of a patronizing approach, assuming the audience is rather stupid. So, this story which is read in this poem-style, and the pictures from the book, these old-style Kate Greenaway pictures from the book of all these people in medieval garb (and very "fairy tale"-ish as you say) seemed like a great place for the music to start and get people thinking "community" and how the townsfolk are so much like the Pied Piper townsfolk. So, when we're looking at the modern day townsfolk, we're hearing this medieval kind of "fairy tale" music, if you want to put it that way. It doesn't come off, I think, as fairy tale music, but it just is suggestive of another time and another place. I don't even know if people are consciously aware, if they come out going, "Oh, yeah, I get it." I don't know if they are. But, I think at a deeper level they might be. I hope they are.

DA: Have you ever had a project where it's hard to find that kind of parallel story arc?

MD: Yeah.

DA: How do you deal with that?

MD: I usually turn them down. I guess that's a bit of a problem, really. Well, and like you noted, that's why I've ended up doing the films that I do. Because it's hard to find an alternate line in a lot of mainstream films. They're not really saying anything. It's just a story about lust or greed, and that's it. I don't know how you would get up day after day and work on that. The thing that gets me sitting in my chair is the sense of discovery and finding connections that weren't there originally. It's really exciting to me. I don't know if I know how to work on things that don't work on some other level as well.

DA: Well, again I think it's probably served you well, you've gotten to work on some great projects. And maybe, who knows, the mainstream stuff will start coming around to having a little bit more depth to it.

MD: I think it is. Of course there will always be mindless action flicks... which I happen to like, actually! I enjoy them, but I don't know if I would really be able to offer anything to them--at least one that didn't have some other depth to it. But, there are a lot of interesting films being made these days. I think it's a good time for film making in that way.

DA: OK, the final, general question: Do you think that there is such a thing as a Mychael Danna sound, and if so how would you describe it?

MD: Um...

DA: I know that's difficult since drawing from all these varying sources is almost part of what you have to offer.

MD: Well, if you're living in a building and you're looking out of it, you don't necessarily know what it looks like. You can start putting it together, maybe, by what other people's reactions are. I don't now if there is [a Mychael Danna sound] or not. I'm told there is. I hear a lot of the same descriptive words from people saying, "Oh, your music is so ...." I hear certain words over and over again. So, I guess that's the impression that it makes on people. It's not something that I've really thought about. I just do what's fun and what's exciting to me. I don't know, I'd have to leave that to other people to decide, I guess.

Doug Adams can be reached at Doug@filmscoremonthly.com