NEW YORK – Trent Reznor might still be slightly uncomfortable with this whole movie composer thing. Even after earning an Academy Award and a Grammy Award with Atticus Ross for their “Social Network” and “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” scores, respectively, it's clear this was not a career path he imagined transitioning into. The 49-year-old musician best known as the face of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails has David Fincher to thank for this unexpected bounty and now Reznor and Ross have re-teamed with the iconic director for his latest critically acclaimed thriller, “Gone Girl.”
Speaking to HitFix the day after the film opened the New York Film Festival in last month, Reznor described his film scoring career as “incredibly rewarding” and admitted he was initially intimidated when they began working on “The Social Network.” The process since that Best Picture nominee hasn't changed much. Like many filmmakers, Fincher screens a rough cut for Reznor and Ross. The duo then attempt to create limitations on themselves to help with the end result, which they want to have its own identity. He notes, “[So] it doesn't just feel like more crap we've churned out with a new title on it. It starts to feel as though it relates to each other.”
Reznor continues, “In terms of 'Gone Girl' we thought a lot about some clues we'd gotten from David in terms of this concept that the film deals a lot with appearances. Here's a couple that appears to the outside world to be ideal, but is not inside. [It's] about spouses and their appearances to one another and the facades they try to hold up to attract to one another and what happens when that starts to break down. And we started to think about that in terms of music. What if we started to create some music that artificially was to make you feel like everything is OK, but almost in an insincere way. And that starts to unravel. And that we kind of translated into these instruments and tried composing with this structure that leads us into paths that start to flesh into other things.”
For more details on Reznor's history with Fincher and his thoughts on film composing check out the complete video interview at the top of this post.
“Gone Girl” is now playing nationwide.