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TAKE 3, POV BOX: COMPOSER
FULL INTERVIEW: MARK ISHAM
Most of a film soundtrack’s music is created in post-production, so after the film has been shot. Of the workers involved in making the musical part of a film’s soundtrack, several of whom you’ve already met in earlier chapters, the most prestigious of all is the composer. The basic tasks of the composer are described here by Mark Isham. He has been composing film music for major American studios for going on four decades, from his debut in Never Cry Wolf (1983), followed by hits such as Robert Redford’s The Quiz Show (1994) and Nancy Myers’ What Women Want (2000), all the way to recent films like The Accountant (2016). Mark Isham spoke to me from his office in Los Angeles.
JH: Thank you for agreeing to this interview!
MI: It’s my pleasure.
JH: And I have to apologize for not being able to watch all of your films prior to this interview—
MI: There’s a lot of them!
JH: That’s an understatement. It’s not only the number of your scores that’s impressive, but their variety as well. You must have had a pretty eclectic musical background.
MI: I grew up in a household of classical musicians, so my first knowledge of music was my mother teaching me violin and piano. Then I studied classical trumpet. I think it was a Cannonball Adderley record, followed by Miles Davis, that changed my whole perspective of what was available to the trumpet in terms of genres and styles. By the time I was in my teens I had also become a jazz fan.
JH: No popular music?
MI: I really didn’t discover popular music, or think it was something I should know anything about, until I was well into my twenties.
JH: Besides jazz and classical, were there other influences before you started making music yourself?
MI: My father brought home a Morton Subotnick record in my late teens. I listened to that and thought, “My goodness, this is a tremendous, new universe of electronic music.” So, I entered my twenties, really with a background and complete curiosity about electronic music, a love of jazz—I was interested in learning about jazz as much as possible—a background in classical music, a respect for the rigors of it. And then as I went through my early twenties, I realized that there was such a thing as good pop music, and that I should learn something about that as well.
JH: Absolutely!
MI: So, as I reached the end of my twenties, I had a pretty thorough background in all of these genres, and had loves and desires to experiment and be a part of all of them. By that time, I had given up performing classical music. I found it too difficult. It’s a discipline that requires constant, constant practice and attention—
JH: I know from first-hand experience…
MI: Right. I just had too many other interests. So, I became a jazz, or modern jazz trumpet player and player of electronic music as my main thrust.
JH: I’ve read that your first film assignment happened almost by accident. Is that right?
MI: Yes. By happenstance, a piece of music I had written fell into the hands of film director Carroll Ballard. Carroll heard it and said, “That’s pretty great, I would love that to be the sound of my movie.” I wasn’t trained in film composition, but I had a really thorough background in a lot of different types of music. I understood programmatic music from my classical training. Film music turned out to be something that I was naturally able to do without too much other education needed. I fell right into it! I wrote the score. Not that it wasn’t hard. I mean, I worked seven days a week for four months.
JH: Wow. Now, we’re talking about Never Cry Wolf (1983), right?
MI: That’s correct.
JH: So, just to back up a little, classical music was kind of your bedrock, you might say?
MI: Yes. When somebody would say, “Well, this needs to be more like Debussy,” I knew what they meant. Maybe I hadn’t analyzed all of Debussy in the way that someone with a PhD might have, but at least I knew what it sounded like. I knew enough about harmony to know what that meant.
JH: That’s all you really need to know.
MI: That’s right. You need to know the mechanics of it, really.
JH: This first film of yours, Never Cry Wolf, is such a fascinating score. You’ve mentioned elsewhere that this was a case of a score that had been rejected and that you needed to re-score the film. It’s a Disney film we’re talking about, right?
MI: Yeah, right.
JH: For a Disney nature film around 1980, you’d expect an orchestral underscore instead of synthesizers, which is what you delivered. How did that happen that they wanted something else?
MI: It was the director. I think Disney was freaked out, to be honest with you (laughs). I think the only reason they allowed Carroll Ballard to give me a shot was that I was so inexpensive! It cost them nothing to try. And, as it turned out, that first twenty minutes I turned in, the director loved. He just told Disney, “This is it, this is the score, I will finish the film with this composer because he gives me exactly what I want.”
JH: In this case, the director had quite a bit of clout in terms of making decisions about the music.
MI: Yes. Carroll had enough clout that he made it happen.
JH: Of course, in the early eighties when Never Cry Wolf was released, synthesizer scores were becoming more popular with the music of Vangelis. Is that why you think Disney went for that?
MI: Sure, that could have been the case in the Disney boardroom, I don’t know. But in Carroll’s mind, it told the story. It had the right atmosphere. Carroll’s never been one to let popular opinions sway him. He’s always just wanted the thing that he felt was right for his picture. And I was delivering that.
JH: It was an auspicious beginning. By the early nineties you had covered a full palette of styles, a more pop sounding score like Never Cry Wolf, of course classical music, as well as the jazz sound of The Quiz Show. You seem to have maintained this kind of stylistic versatility all the way up to the present.
MI: I think so. The film 42 (2013), for example, would be a more classical score. My influences in terms of writing for orchestra were more in the John Adams vein. (John Adams is an American avantgarde classical composer.) There’s a certain amount of Americana.
JH: Yeah, I definitely heard a little bit of Aaron Copland in 42.
MI: Sure! Aaron Copland is one of the great voices that have defined the American orchestral sound. That’s the most recent movie that probably represents that side of me the most. The Accountant (2016) on the other hand, is a much more modern, hybrid score—a lot of electronics, a lot of programming of sound, a lot of manipulation of sound. Nonetheless, there are moments in The Accountant that have a very traditional backbone, more orchestral writing in them.
JH: I see.
MI: You compare that to the new Marvel television series, Cloak and Dagger (2018). It’s very electronic, very pop driven. It’s designed so that the score feels seamless with the songs that appear, and that’s all computer programmed, and tweaked and “crushed,” manipulated (laughs)—all the things you do in a modern environment. There’s the occasional acoustic instrument for contrast, you know.
JH: Let’s talk a little bit about the hierarchy of the whole post production world, and those folks with whom you work most closely. With whom do you work most closely on any given project?
MI: Generally, things are split between who’s above you in the “food chain” and who’s below you. Directly above me will always be the director, as well as whatever creative producers there are that have a say in how the picture’s coming out creatively. There might also be studio executives who want to have a say. Usually, the more money a picture has, the more people above you are going to be taking an interest in what you’re doing!
JH: That makes sense.
MI: On a movie like The Accountant, which was a fairly large budget Warner Brothers, meetings would include executives from Warner Brothers, producers of the film, and the director. So I’d be responsible to all of their opinions. I've always granted the director the lead role, but I keep a close eye on whomever else might be calling the shots.
JH: What those below you in the “food chain”?
MI: In terms of people that work under my direction, those with whom I work most closely are the music editor and orchestrator. A music supervisor sometimes is there to help me; at other times they’re there to assist songs. The music supervisor is sort of parallel to me. It’s very important for me to know what songs are coming into the film and that they are appropriate as well. But the orchestrator probably is my main creative assistant, along with music editor. The music editor is an important figure! I really rely on him for really crucial questions like, “How do you think this is working in the picture? Is there a better way? Should this be faster or slower?”
JH: Are you in on the conducting and recording of your music?
MI: I don’t conduct! I have found over the years that, although I would like to conduct, I don’t know if I’m really good at it because I’ve only done it so little. I do pay careful attention to the recording process. I’m usually a producer on the score as well. I need to hear the orchestra performance through the speakers in the control room. That way, by the end of the first pass, I can already make most of the major adjustments that are going to have to be made.
JH: In general, what is the state of the film when it reaches you? Does it have Foley sounds, for example? Does it have everything else but music? Or do you just put the music there and the sound effects or dialogue comes later?
MI: It sort of depends, again, on the efficiency of your post-production, which sometimes is budget dependent. On a bigger film, you’ll have a crew in post-production, so they can be updated on all the sound effects and you’ll go to the scoring stage with a really good dialogue track and a really good sound effects track. Then you’ll really know where you’re headed. On lower budget films, if you don't have a crew that’s able to supply you that, sometimes you have just that one mono track that sounds terrible and you have to do the best you can.
JH: At what point do you let go of the project and move onto something else, which you obviously have to do in a workday?
MI: Once the recording process is finished, it’s out of my hands. It’s hard, especially with scores I’ve put a lot into. For example, I cared a great deal about The Quiz Show. I love that score and I love that movie, and I do wish it had done better.
JH: I always assumed that the score had done quite well. I remember seeing it back in the 1990s and really enjoying the music.
MI: Thank you. That’s the thing about any creative process. There’s a certain point, unless you hired yourself, where the person who’s hired you says it’s done, and then you need to turn it in. And that’s the point where hopefully you all agree that it’s done, that it’s the best that it can be. Occasionally you kind of wish that you had an extra few days. But at the end of the day, I think that’s where one’s professionalism steps in. You’re asked to turn it in, and you realize that it is in good shape. It’s a professional product. And I’m pretty good about turning it over and being happy and able to move on to the next thing.
More interviews with Mark Isham
Christian DesJardins, Inside Film Music: Composers Speak (Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2006), 128-139
David Morgan, Knowing the Score (New York: Harper, 2000), 185-194
Michael Schelle, The Score: Interviews with Film Composers (LA: Silman-James Press, 1999), 197-217