Lisa Gerrard interview with Michael Mann mention

Here is a recent interview with Lisa Gerrard, the powerful voice behind some of Michael Mann's best known scores. Click here for full interview.

After Dead Can Dance, what was it that drove you into composing for the moving image? 

Brendan and I were working on an album, which followed “Spirit Chaser” and I had done some things for Baraka ) and also with Graham Ravel and tried my hand at being a singer whilst he wanted five singers. Yet because of the style I was singing in I was able to accommodate him in a fashion, for what he required for this film. I realised at that stage that I was actually able to do this and when Michael Mann contacted me I thought well I could sing for people that know how to compose music for film but I wouldn’t know how to score the music.

Then Michael contacted me and stated he had used my pieces in “Heat” and that he’d listened to some work that I had been doing on my Solo album, and stated he wanted that energy in his film. I said I don’t film score, but I could help him with some singing but that I didn’t write music. Michael than said all I know is that I’ve got this movie I need to make and I need you to write music in three days.

So he rebuilt my studio and I thought how exciting! Michael stated he would get me some help; some great editors and that he would help me. I then stated to my friend at the time Pieter Burke we had already recorded “Duality” together) and said to him do you want to do this thing and he said sure why not. So we took off together and I though if at least Pieter is there we will be able to nut it out together and figure out what to do. So we basically took off and went to Los Angeles and wrote some pieces together for the film, which Michael really liked. In that period of time which didn’t end of being three days but instead a few months.

We ended up going over and spending the next four or five months writing there and that was for the film “The Insider”. Suddenly we were getting nominate for Golden Globe awards, which I consequently had never heard of – no one believed at the time (and so I made sure I was very quite about it). It wasn’t our area or a line that we would have followed. So having not being at all interested in Hollywood films it was not something we would have really known about.

From that point on, other people in the industry started to get excited by the work we had done with “The Insider” and Hanns Zimmer contacted me he wanted me to do Gladiator – and I said I would love to come over and try some things. Then Ali, and then I supposed it had really started to take off.

It wasn’t by design; in fact I still to this day do not know how I arrived. But it is amazing the knowledge you pick up, especially working with Michael Mann – its like going to University, he teaches you so much about what and what NOT to do because he doesn’t like generic film scores. So he created a completely different line, which could facilitate what I was doing.

Injection: Hans Zimmer

This should be in a Michael Mann movie... but... it isn't. It is the extraordinarily beautiful "Injection" by Hans Zimmer. The music deserves a better title. But inject yourself now in this spine tingling music and let it rip open your soul, pour in and inspire you to explode with something creative today. This music has really touched me today. Get your iPod and download it now.



I actually thought this music worked brilliantly in Mission Impossible II. How this music was conceptualised for that violent scene in slow motion was genius. I can only guess it was Hans Zimmer who thought this slow building crescendo would work with bullets flying around!

Tell me... did this music stir your soul? Check your pulse if it didn't.

Michael Mann Keep Interview

Here is good interview regarding the process behind Michael Mann directing The Keep. Who would have known that the Romanian village was filmed in Wales! I was also surprised when at the end of the interview he answered these questions in the following way:

What other films or filmmakers have impressed you or influenced you?
You're influenced by who you like. I like Kubrick, I like Resnais immensely. I like Tarkovsky, although there's very little in Tarkovsky I'd want to do myself. In fact I fell asleep through half of So­laris, but I still love it. And Stalker. He has a Russian, suffering nerve of pace that it's hard to relate to, but you can't help being impressed and moved by what you see.


Do you want to produce films?
Yes, because there are more pictures I would like to see made than I can make or want to make. A case in point is a screenplay I wrote called Heat, which I love. As a writer, I really want to see this picture made. But as a director I don't want to touch it.

Mann then goes on to answer other detailed questions about the film, and rather interestingly about the notion of evil - something that is a vein throughout his movies - this constant counteraction of both good and bad in life:

But in this fairy tale we find the Nazi Wehrmacht – men dressed in totemic black uniforms with swastikas – things we can recognize and which set up a response.


Actually only about one-fifth of the film is involved with the Wehrmacht and the character of the Captain played by Jurgen Prochnow. The film revolves around a character called Glaeken Tris­megistus, who wakes up after a deep sleep in a transient, merchant-marine setting some place in Greece in 1941. The movie revolves around him and his conflict, which seems to be fated, with a character called Roderick Molasar. The end of the conflict seems to fate him toward destruction. He may destroy Molasar or Molasar may destroy him, but in either case Glaeken Trismegistus must go to the keep.


And in the course of coming to the keep to confront Molasar, he has a ro mance with Eva, whose father is a Medi aeval historian named Dr. Cuza, very quick, very smart. At a moment in his tory when he is powerless – a Socialist Jew in Fascist Romania – Cuza is of fered the potential to ally himself with immense power. For him it's a deliver ance. And as a bonus he also gets rejuve nated. So he's seduced into attaching himself to this power in the keep.


And Molasar comes to life by taking the power, the souls, of the Wehrmacht Nazis.


What happens is that after the second time you've seen him, Molasar changes. And he seems to change after people are killed. After he kills things. It's almost as if he accrues to himself their matter. Not their souls; he doesn't suck their blood. It's a thing unexplained, his transforma­tion is seen visually. He evolves through three different stages in the movie. He gets more and more complete. He starts as a cloud of imploding particles, then he evolves a nervous system, then he evolves a skeleton and musculature, and at the third state he's complete. And then it's a bit ironic when he's complete, because there's a great resemblance to Glaeken Trismegistus.


Is he evil personified?


No. Well, yes he is. Yes, Evil Personi fied. But what is evil?


Try Satan? Or Lucifer?


Yes, but think about that. Satan in Paradise Lost is the most exciting charac­ter in the book. He's rebellious, he's independent, he doesn't like authority. If you think about it, Satan could almost be played by John Wayne. I mean the Reaganire, independent, individualist spirit. It's all bullshit, but that's the cul­tural myth that the appeal taps into.


Is Glaeken Trismegistus the alter ego of Molasar? Is he the good side?


No, he's not. I tried to find a more surreal logic to the characters; so that there's nothing Satanic about Molasar. He's just sheer power, and the appeal of power, and the worship of power, a be lief in power, a seduction of power. And Molasar is very, very deceptive. When we first meet him, we too believe that he is absolute salvation. And it's all a con. Now when Glaeken shows up, the first thing he does is seduce Eva Cuza. So my intent in designing those characters was to make then not black-and-white. I put in things that are not normally consid ered to be good into Glaeken and qualities that are not evil into Molasar.


Read full interview by clicking here.

Elliot Goldenthal working with Michael Mann on Public Enemies

Michael Mann appears to makes his music composers work as hard as his actors in getting the exact nuance he is looking for from his scenes. Elliot Goldenthal who scored Public Enemies also worked with Michael Mann on 'Heat', so he knows what he is involved in. The final result is of the highest quality, though to some doesn't match the impact of previous scores. For Mann, music has always been of equal importance to every other element in a film, and not there just as lip gloss. Music in a Mann film is often a loaded emotional message sent straight into our being that often resonates so strongly that we may even have a sense of what the character is truly feeling at that moment.

Here is a Wall Street interview with Elliot Goldenthal on working with Michael Mann on the Public Enemies score. A snippet is below, and you can click here to go to the article.

You’ve worked with Michael Mann on “Heat” and now on “Public Enemies.” I sense music is important to his films. True? How is he to work with?

He doesn’t like too many twists and turns in the music’s structure. He really responds to things that evolve very, very slowly. He wants music that the images, the edits, the dialogue can float above without it corresponding too much. With Michael, you have to be prepared to make a lot of changes. He changes his mind. He watches the movie everyday in total and makes adjustments so you have to know the job is making adjustments along the way as well.

What’s your reaction to your music when you go to a movie theater and see a film you’ve scored?

It never feels finished. That’s the thing. My personal view of my work is that everything feels abandoned.

Click here for full interview

One of the more moving pieces on the Public Enemies soundtrack is JD Dies (in the clip below).



Overall, I don't think Goldenthal defines Public Enemies in the way that say Moby or Lisa Gerrard have in the Mann movies they have been involved in. I find it surprising that Mann hasn't been tempted to do a collaboration with Hans Zimmer. Who would like to see that happen?!

Compare JD Dies with Chevaliers de Sangreal, which is taylored for Cathedral like grandeur. Breathtaking scoring. Hans Zimmer is a musical genius.

Alternative Music Ending to Michael Mann's Heat

The iconic end scene of Heat

I am so glad I found this wonderful insight into the ending of Heat, which is one of my top cinematic moments. For me, Moby's "God Moving Across the Face of the Water" has become almost a life anthem. The end scene of Heat is iconic to me. It resonates with something deep inside of me, something even now I find hard to understand. But this write up of the music development of this scene is short but fascinating. Be sure to follow the link to the source of this, because you can actually play a stream of "End Titles" by Elliot Goldenthal, which is just superb and sadly commercially unavailable.

The precisely hodge-podged sources for Michael Mann's musical cues—sometimes original compositions, sometimes culled from pre-existing pop, rock, industrial, and/or electronic groups—are as diverse as the dusty Los Angeles turfs he agilely vignettes in his consummate epic crime male-odrama Heat.

Film scorer Elliot Goldenthal's original cue for the end titles (performed by the Kronos Quartet) was ultimately replaced by a Moby track—the Reich-like "God Moving Across the Face of the Water" which appeared on "Everything is Wrong" that same year.  While both selections capture the enveloping electricity of an adrenaline rush effervescing into the blinking lights of a warm L.A. night, the Goldenthal better emphasizes a potential lack of resolution, thus providing an appropriate emotional bookend to that composer's hauntingly spare and ambivalent opening track.  The Moby, in a new version specific to the film, features an additional bridge that seems rather to triumphantly celebrate the story's fulfillment.

To read more and play the wonderful streamed music click here

To read a host of brilliant writing about the work of Michael Mann click here!

Moby and Mann again

Following up on a recent post, here is another interviewer asking Moby about his music in Heat:
Click here for the full article (no more mention of Mann though).

RS: Very cool. Do you enjoy hearing your music in films?
Moby: Yes, I do. I like hearing my music in films because when they're mixing it to the film, they usually do a good job. I'm always very flattered that someone would choose to use my music in a movie. There's so much music that could be used, the fact that they've chosen mine, its very exciting and flattering.

RS: There was a scene in the movie Heat when there's that change at the end of God Moving Over the Face of the Waters… That was just a magical moment for the person who wrote the question. Do you remember seeing that on screen for the first time?
Moby: Yes, I saw Heat in a movie theatre on 19th and Broadway with my friend Damien. It was interesting because Heat was an example of a movie that, when it was released, the critics just didn't get it. When Heat was released it got really bad reviews and it didn't do very well, but in the ten years that it's been out it's come to be this almost revered iconic movie. So it once again proves to me that I shouldn't always take critics' reviews too seriously. But I do remember seeing it at 19th and Broadway with my friend Damien and just thinking that Michael Mann had done a really wonderful job putting the music in there.

Variety ran an interview with Moby too, and here is that Michael Mann connection again with God Moving Over the Face of the Waters:

Then came "Play."
"When that was released, I was a has-been," he notes,"even though it was the first release of mine to really sell. I was surprised as time went on, that the story about how every track was licensed became 'every track was licensed to a commercial.' Eighty percent of the licenses were to indie films. Most of play went to movies with only a small percentage to TV shows and advertising."
His favorite usage out of placements in nearly 70 released films?
One of the first: Michael Mann's "Heat." His "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters," a track from "Everything is Wrong," plays over the climax of the movie and the credits. "Of all of them, that's what I'm most proud of," says the former film student.

In another interview Moby is quoted as saying God Moving Over the Face of the Waters is one of two of his all time favourite pieces of music he has written. I have to say, it is mine too! It is the one track I play when the world crowds in - it takes me to a place of solice and acceptance of whatever happens next. Wierd isn't it, what music can do? Here is that relevant extract from Surfline:

SZ: Do you have a favorite song that you have ever written?

Moby: I have two. In 1996 I put out an album called Animal Rights, it is a really dark, punk rock record. It alternates between really aggressive punk-rock-metal songs and very quiet instrumentals. There is one song called "Face It" and it's about 11 minutes and I don't think anyone has ever listened to the whole thing 'cause it is very long and very dark. That's probably my favorite song I've ever written. And then on an album called, Everything Is Wrong in 1995 I wrote a classical piece of music called "God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters," that was used as the closing music for a Michael Mann film with Al Pacino and Robert Di Niro. So those two would be my favorites.

Michael Mann and Moby

The words Michael Mann and Moby almost have the same rythmic connection as their work. I first became aware of Moby's music through the soundtrack of Heat. It doesn't say a lot for my musical awareness, but it transformed my appreciation of his genre of sound. I have the same glowing feeling when hearing a Moby track as I do when I watch a Mann movie. It is almost impossible to watch any movie and fail to miss a track that was made by Moby. Just as Mann connects us to our emotions through images and story, so Moby connects us through music. It is a dizzying concoction when Moby and Mann are fused creatively together. Both have a puritan zeal running through them - a moral question that is continually being asked of us through their respective arts. So, I really want to devote some posts to Moby's collaborations with Mann. I will start with a little interview I found. Moby didn't seem that comfortable, as it was mainly one line answers. But he did say something that made me rather pleased. After reading the interview click here for a previous post, and play the YouTube clip.

INDEPENTANT FILM QUARTERLY MAGAZINE

IFQ: What was the first Moby track used in a film?

Moby: I believe it was called Ah Ah and it was used in the Ralph Bakshi movie Cool World (starring Brad Pitt).

IFQ: Was it made for the film or taken from the album?

Moby: It was adapted for the film, which tends to be the usual way that my music ends up in films. I'll write something and then adapt it to a specific scene.

IFQ: How many film tracks have you done?

Moby: I have absolutley no idea. A lot!

IFQ: Have you ever suggested a Moby track for a film?

Moby: No, I don't think I've ever suggested one of my songs for a film.

IFQ: Do you find time to see many films?

Moby: Unfortunately, because I'm on tour right now I don't see too many films.

IFQ: Well, of the films you have seen, who do you think is the most promising director right now?

Moby: My favourite current director is Takeshi Kitano (Brother, 2000), but I also really like Mark Pellington (Mothman Prophecies, 2002; Arlington Road, 1999; Jerry Maguire, 1996).

IFQ: What's your favorite Moby film track ever used?

Moby: Probably God Moving Over the Face of the Waters as used in the Michael Mann film Heat.

IFQ: Did you like that film?

Moby: I love Heat. I like working with Michael Mann quite a bit, even though he's very intense.

IFQ: Didn't you also reinvent the famous James Bond theme tune?

Moby: Yes, I did, for Tomorrow Never Dies. (It was actually his 8th U.K. top 40 hit.)

IFQ: In the future, do you see yourself doing more tracks for big budget features or independent films?

Moby: When I was young I really wanted to write music for movies, but after writing music for movies I've kind of lost my enthusiasm for it. I'd like to do music for movies wherein I could work with a wonderful director, big budget or not. I don't like being handed a finished film and then being given twenty-four hours to do music for it.

IFQ: Are you working on any film tracks right now?

Moby: No, right now I'm too busy touring to think about making film music.

Melissa Silver

Miami Vice and the famous "In the Air Tonight" saga

Here is an extract from an article written just weeks before the release of Michael Mann's recent movie Miami Vice. It details Mann's decision making process of whether or not to include Phil Collin's legendary track (cover version by Nonpoint) In The Air Tonight. It also goes into a lot of what happened behind the scenes in making the movie. Read the whole article here.


By Daniel Fierman

Michael Mann looks tortured. But looming deadlines and complex marketing strategies aren't what's bothering him. It's Phil Collins. The 63-year-old director — a coiled knot of edgy intelligence, long esteemed for films like Manhunter, Heat, and The Insider — has been going back and forth over where to use a cover of ''In the Air Tonight'' by Nonpoint in his Miami Vice remake. Actually, he’s been trying to decide for weeks. The song goes in. It comes out. In again. Out. And the postproduction staff is starting to go a wee bit insane.

''What do you think?'' the notoriously detail-driven director asks his latest guinea pig, as one of his producers mouths a silent sigh. ''I kind of love it before the last battle, but the crew are all like, 'Don’t do it!' ''

A lot of people said the same thing about making the movie. Including Mann. Despite the fact that he executive-produced the original series — which boasted a splashy and surprisingly persistent cultural influence at the height of the Reagan era — Mann thought he'd left Miami Vice behind back in 1989, when it petered out in a legacy-annihilating haze of silly cameos, aliens, and bad fashion. (''The last years were crap,'' he says now. ''I'm a bad executive producer. My attention span is two years.'') But that was before Jamie Foxx sidled up to him at Muhammad Ali's birthday party in 2001.

Lisa Gerrard - Sacrifice from The Insider

The most powerful track from Mann's movie The Insider is that of Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke's Sacrifice. It is so incredibly moving, and I admit to it bringing tears to my eyes on many occasion whilst listening to it. It is used powerfully in The Insider. The beautiful and the tragic are two themes Michael Mann seems to include in his movies, and I feel both these themes are contained in this piece of music too. The concept of sacrifice is often an alien one to our performance orientated, celebrity culture but is the ultimate demonstration of the depth of humanity. It is the concept of sacrifice that sets humanity apart from animals, and challenges the archaic notion of survival of the fittest. The Insider explores this to an extent. Sacrifice is tragic but also beautiful... beautiful because sacrifice is always in service to another but at a cost. What a meaningful end to the movie, when Wigand finally see's his children recognise their father being extolled on television. Dignity is restored after great indignity was suffered. His life finally meant something to him and his children. I would be interested to hear comments about how this track has touched your emotions. Here is Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke playing Sacrifice live for TV:

Lisa Gerrard Sanctuary featuring Michael Mann

Lisa Gerrard has long been a Michael Mann favourite for soundtrack composition. I haven't myself seen it yet, but here is a trailer for a documentary made about Lisa Gerrard called, Sanctuary. It features various comments from artists including I believe Michael Mann. If you watch the YouTube clip of the trailer you will understand, if you don't already, how Michael Mann's films are made so evocatively using her unique vocal creativity.



Here are some other snippets to enjoy too!

The Music of Lisa Gerrard

One of the most compelling aspects of a Michael Mann film is the use of the soundtrack. Michael Mann appears to have the capacity (and somehow time) to explore a vast range of musical realms, a pallet of musical colours that fills in what would otherwise be just a pencil drawing of a film. More remarkably, he is just at home at the sharp end of the musical age we live in as he is with music of the past. Employing Moby has in my view been just as ingenius as talent spotting Gerrard, and I will come to him in a later post. Music is clearly a passion of Michael Mann and just as he falls in love with the work of certain cinematographers, he has also found the vehicle to express the depths of human emotion and circumstance through the beautifully haunting voice of Lisa Gerrard. Mann creates an alchemy through the juxtaposition of music, cinematography, editing, writing and acting to create in all his movies pinnacles of extreme human "moments". Lisa Gerrard's voice often (though by no means exclusively) takes us to the highest moments of emotional intensity.

One has to read about the deeply spiritual music of Lisa Gerrard to understand how this alchemy works with Mann's other ingredients. They were made for each other. I often feel I "understand" the character of Michael Mann himself more through his choice and implementation of music than sometimes through just his visual tools. Certainly, any conventional interview with Michael Mann is a blind alley if you are trying to see what drives him, what is important to him in his personal life. Mann is famously protective about his personal life, so we don't learn much about him except through his creativity.

We can also learn about Michael Mann through the work of other artists. It was through Michael Mann that I first discovered Lisa Gerrard. Here is an excerpt of an interview about her work on Michael Mann films. She also talks of working with Ridley Scott (notably Gladiator), another brilliant implementer of music into the visual realm. For the full interview and to see a collection of other interviews with her check out the Lisa Gerrard website here.

www.lisagerrard.com
How did you get involved in film scoring?

By accident, but actually because of Michael Mann. I did some work in Spain years ago for a film doing sound score and many people over the years have used lots of pieces of my music for different films and temp dubs. Michael decided to take the risk of working with Pieter Bourke and I on The Insider, that was really my introduction to major film scoring. I‘d done a Spanish film, El Nino Del La Luna (The Child of the Moon), the original score for Nadro, which was with Ivana Massetti, an Italian director, and also Baraka. I worked with Michael Stearns on this, but on only one or two pieces, and they used a licensed piece, The Host of Seraphim, from a record (The Serpent's Egg by Dead Can Dance) I'd done years before. That was the introduction to the work, that piece of music. In turn they gave us footage for a video for the Yulunga Spirit Dance (Into The Labyrinth by Dead Can Dance), a piece of music that was already released. That was quite an extraordinary gift because this was all filmed in 70mm*.

Why do you think your voice attracts certain directors who want to use you in their films?

It's really interesting because when I worked with Michael Mann somehow he felt that there was a subtext, a story that could be told with a soul fabric type consciousness music in Jeffery Wigand's life. That we saw this very withdrawn character, so he painted a very large subtext in an almost conscious, soulful, inner experience of him, through the music that Pieter and I had written. He used my voice to depict certain emotional qualities, while in Gladiator, Ridley has used the voice as a connection with the familiar, with the family, and with the things that are true and have that value in the characters life. The human voice is an interesting instrument because it can't lie. When we have these inner feelings about our true private inner feelings, we don't lie, we can't lie. They're automatic, the voices automatically unlocks this interior journey of the private. I think that's why Ridley and Michael have found an affinity with this particular interpreter. I had very interesting experiences working with both directors.

See the full interview here