It was a sublimely weird moment, the sort of surprise that make the Oscars just barely worth watching, when Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor took the stage at the Academy Awards in 2011 to accept the Best Original Score statuette for their coldly sinister music for The Social Network. Viewers who shut their eyes at that moment and listened closely, heard the sound of a nation muttering in unison, “Huh, aren’t those the Nine Inch Nails guys?” They were indeed the Nine Inch Nails guys, frontman Reznor and engineer/programmer Ross having translated their distinctive brand of chugging industrial electronica to fit David Fincher’s visuals, and to great effect. They did so again with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl, and in addition to his contributions to NIN, How to Destroy Angels, and a number of other side projects, Ross has also taken on other score work. His latest project is Triple 9, a star-studded thriller pitting a criminal collective against the Russian mafia, directed by Ross’ old pal from the early English electronic scene, John Hillcoat.
Ross’ score matches the same precise, mechanized rhythms that characterize his musical work to Hillcoat’s rigorously technical action sequences. The cheekily-named “Ticking Glock” uses a stopwatch as its percussive skeleton, heightening the intensity of the music surrounding it until the whole thing feels ready to blow. With Triple 9 now in release, Ross spoke with Uproxx about the core difference between composing a score and traditional songcraft, anxieties over comparisons to Brian Wilson, and the strange Amsterdam adventure that first acquainted him with Hillcoat.
I was curious about the extent to which writing music for film is a chicken-egg scenario. How much footage of the film are you able to see while you’re developing your score? Or, after you’ve written your music, does the film’s editor contour the cuts to sync up with your compositions? What’s the interplay there?
Normally, the case is that everything is done in my and Trent’s studio and nothing is changed at all by a music editor. In this case, the music was altered a bit in the mix and edited, because Triple 9 itself was in constant motion. The last scene, for instance, that shot was flown in. It was shot by John on Skype with Woody in London the day before the end of the final mix of the film. So that was thrown in, like, the day before everything finished. This particular film was changing and evolving, there was no lock on it.
How did that affect your process?
Well, it made it more frustrating. I love John, and it was an excellent piece with a really difficult story to tell, because he had to understand the relationships in this very big cast. A complicated story. When I saw the finished version for the first time last week, I thought it was the best it had ever played. And musically, I can say I wish this or that or the other because some things had been changed, but as a film, the way the story plays is the best version yet. In terms of the music, why that can be challenging is that there were many times during the film when we thought “this is stable, this is set,” so we’d write a piece that travels through three storylines and is intricately linked to the picture. Then in the next cut of the picture, all those scenes are moved around. It can feel a bit disjointed, but that’s the nature of the beast. Sometimes you work on a film and you see rough cuts and it hardly changes from there to the final mix, sometimes you work on something in constant motion.
When you’re composing music for someone else’s film, as opposed to your work with Nine Inch Nails and on your own, do you feel it affords you less creative freedom because you’re serving someone else’s vision?
I don’t feel like that, because of the choices that one makes. I mean, to some extent, you’re working in a story that isn’t necessarily my daydream. But what I love about film music is that there’s no goalpost, if you like. In a pop song — I’ve got my kids, I’ll listen to Kiss FM in the car — they follow a format, because the format works, chorus-verse-chorus-verse. If you listen to a Beatles song or Beach Boys song, musically, they’re not quite as complicated as those two, but- actually, I don’t want to go down this alley, it’ll just be me bitching. All I’m saying is that pop follows a tested, tried-and-true format, but film music, they don’t have the same goalposts. You could make an incredibly successful score out of just two notes, if it suits the story. You have to go in with an idea, which might sound judgmental, but there really are some films where it feels like some music has been just… put on. I’m not interested in that.
You want the music to be embedded in the fabric of the film.
If one can work with directors who want the music to be part of the DNA of the film, and for it to be a unique identifier, that’s where I have my most creative moments. I’ve never felt constricted.
The way people talk about musical accompaniment on film, you’d think it only exists to set the mood. But hearing you talk now, it sounds like you believe the score would serve a higher function. Do you think a good score can communicate ideas or contribute something more to the film overall?
For sure, I think that. The power of music is certainly underestimated by the powers that be, occasionally. Take The Social Network, for instance. The opening scene, where [Mark Zuckerberg] is walking across the courtyard, it used to be an Elvis Costello song in there. And I love Elvis Costello, don’t get me wrong. But when we put “Hand Covers Bruise,” it was a totally different film. You’ve set up the audience’s expectation for something completely different. Now, [the tone]’s not that we’re happy to be back at school — and again, no disrespect for Elvis Costello. But that’s an example of what music does. In that moment, there’s a joint decision from all of us working on it, that gives a thread to what this movie might be. I feel that the music, if it’s appropriate, can be played as character. Not overtly, or stupidly, but in a sophisticated way.
Do you listen to other film scores, either for inspiration or just out of curiosity?
Occasionally. I’m a music fan, so I listen to a lot of music, and before I had ever even done a film, I had Taxi Driver‘s vinyl. I’m old enough that a lot of these are for record players. Blade Runner, Midnight Express, Paris, Texas, the list goes on and on. I think that film music, and the idea of emotion in the abstract, has always been in my own records, as well. Nine Inch Nails has always had a big instrumental component that doesn’t follow the traditional structure. We might go on a tangent where there’s two minutes of singing, then eight of wordless music. It’s never felt like one or the other. Doing [my remix of Cypress Hill’s] “Pigs,” it didn’t feel like, “Okay, now I’m doing a song, and a minute ago I was doing a score.” You continue on with the ideas established in the score. Those lines are blurred.
Your earliest soundtrack composition, the score for the series Touching Evil, never saw an official release. Is there any hope for a remaster at some point down the line?
I don’t think so. A bit of it just got licensed for something, so maybe there will be opportunities for some of it to come out. But we’ll see.
John Hillcoat directed the video for “Ice Age” by How to Destroy Angels. Is that when you first met?
Oh no, I met John a long time ago, in London. Basically, there was a band in England called Bomb the Bass, which was really just this guy named Tim Simenon. You know Depeche Mode? He produced with them. I was 20, he was 22, and programming for him was my first real job. He had a deal with Island, and we were going to Amsterdam to make an album called Strange Cuts — and a lot of that music was instrumental as well, it was dark weird dance music. It was there that my friend Barry Adamson, who was in the Bad Seeds, introduced me to John, because John had a cassette he’d made of him talking to serial killers as research for Ghosts… of the Civil Dead. That was his first film, about the industrialization of America’s prison system. It’s got a great score, Nick Cave. But we all thought it’d fit well on the album, Strange Cuts. Which was eventually rejected by Island. [Laughs.] But from the start, John had the idea that the sound for Triple 9 should be electronic, it should sound unsophisticated and raw, no piano and no violin. Nothing organic, apart from the saxophone. Why it’s the saxophone, I’m still slightly unclear.
After you and Trent Reznor won the Oscar for your work on The Social Network, when you returned to composing new music with Nine Inch Nails, was the dynamic in the group at all different?
No, we had been working together forever. Trent and I took one day off when we won, to celebrate and relax. Mostly because it’s so fucking terrifying, it’s very nerve-wracking, getting up on stage and that sort of thing. But no, we went straight on to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, that had already started. My preference is to get on really early, in this case even before Fincher was shooting. This way, he had some music to shoot to, and to give to the actors. We were working on that, working on How to Destroy Angels, working on Nine Inch Nails. Life went on. Nothing like that would ever change the dynamic. One should never say never, but I can’t imagine something like that. It was wonderful to win those things, wonderful to be recognized, especially for doing something that at the time felt unusual in the world of what people accepted as film music. But while we were making it, this never came up. And so in this case, it was amazing, because we were just swept up in the process. But as people, Trent and I are pretty grounded. I love hanging out with my family and making music, that’s what I want to spend my time doing.
I heard your music last year in Love & Mercy, which has a very different vibe than Triple 9 or your collaborations with David Fincher. What was it like, to soften your signature sound for this film?
I think I’m at my best when I’m feeling challenged. When that first came up, and I heard that there was a brilliant script about Brian Wilson, I was like, “There’s no fucking way I’m gonna make music on a Brian Wilson film.” Not because I don’t love him, but because he’s an iconic genius! What’s it gonna be? A piece of Brian Wilson’s music, some classic fucking song, and then next to it is my shitty little score?
Nobody wants their music compared to Pet Sounds.
Right! But I got around that by including Pet Sounds in the music. That was the only way that I could see to make a score that could tell his incredible story. I didn’t know the details of [Wilson’s relationship with his abusive therapist Eugene Landy]. I was blown away. You can’t just go into a film and think, “Here’s the first thing, what do I do?” You’ve got to go in with a concept, there has to be an idea, like a painting. That’s what works for me, I should say. And in that case, the only way I can see this working is if Brian would give me the tapes to his music from 1960 through to 1989. I sat down with the director Bill Pohlad, who’s a fucking great guy, and I told him what my idea was, and he really liked it. We went to Brian, and two days later, the tapes to everything turned up. I heard 68 versions of “Good Vibrations.”
That must’ve been pretty surreal.
It was weird, because I wasn’t a superfan or anything. I became a superfan during the process, because when you get under the hood of his music, it’s astounding. We were talking about pop songs earlier? He writes a pop song you can hum, but it changes keys six times in three different time signatures. It’s incredibly complex, what he’s doing. But the thing with being complex — there’s math rock, that’s just counting numbers, time signatures. But to do that without anyone noticing? That’s fucking clever. That’s what I’d say about Brian, that it’s complex, but not done in a show-offy way.
When I was going through the tapes — this is for the superfans — I found on an earlier version of “God Only Knows” this harmony line that’s fucking incredible and isn’t in the final version of the song. Because he was only working on four-track, that’s the one that didn’t make it in… It felt like having a window into him. He’d just leave the tape running, and you can hearing him talking to the Wrecking Crew. Up until his mid-twenties, he was the most focused, in-charge person. You hear him on the sessions, and this isn’t some wishy-washy, spaced-out musician. You hear him, “Could you adjust the bass a bit,” can you do this, can you do that. This is a guy who’s confident, possessed, purposeful. I think “genius” is the most overused words, but he’s someone you could pass as a genius.
