'Drive' Composer Cliff Martinez on Writing the Most Fire Film Score of 2016

'The Neon Demon' is the best sounding film of 2016.

Image via Icon Film

Drive. Only God Forgives. Spring Breakers. A lot people would say they are three of the coolest films of recent years. You’ll also find some people who’ll hate all of them. But pretty much everyone would agree on one thing: that they all sound amazing. That’s down to composer Cliff Martinez, who’s detached, eerie and atmospheric synth scores have become one of the defining sounds of modern, cool American cinema. He started out as a drummer in the 1980s, playing with the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Captain Beefheart, but in 1987 he got a break writing music for an episode of cult HBO kid’s show Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. This led to him scoring the breakout indie hit Sex, Lies and Videotape for director Steve Soderbergh, starting a partnership that would last over 11 films and nearly 20 years, including classics like Traffic, Solaris and Contagion.

But it was when he was brought on at the last minute to score a Ryan Gosling-car chase movie called Drive, directed by Danish arthouse director Nicolas Winding Refn in 2011, that truly established him as one of the most iconic film composers in America. His dreamlike synths perfectly accompanied the instantly-iconic 80s-style pop songs like “A Real Hero”, and the soundtrack album became a modern classic. Martinez would re-team with for Winding Refn and Gosling for their 2013 follow-up, the controversial and aggressively uncommercial Only God Forgives, providing a nightmarish soundscape to accompany the horrifying violent visuals. He’d also team up with EDM superstar Skrillex to score the Disney-stars-gone-wild trip Spring Breakers. 

Now he’s teamed with Winding Refn for a third time, for his latest film The Neon Demon. The film is a surreal, beautiful and disturbing take on the fashion world, starring Elle Fanning as a young model in LA hounded by beauty-obsessed older peers. Martinez again brings the oppressive beats, but this time there’s a distinct sense of glitz and glamour befitting the subject matter, and the end result is almost definitely the most fire film score of 2016. We caught up with Martinez when he was in London to promote the film. 

View this video on YouTube

youtu.be

Let’s start with your work with Nicolas Winding Refn. You were brought in pretty late on Drive, right? Wasn’t there going to be a score by electronica band Chromatics?

They never told me about that. It was almost complete. Normally I get a rough cut, but this was a locked picture. I don’t know about the Chromatics, I’ve heard that — mostly from the Chromatics, not from Nicholas or anyone else. 

Were the synth-pop songs already there when you came on board?

Yeah, the five songs were already locked into the picture. So that’s why I felt like an obligation in some way to stylistically compliment them. For the most part, when there are songs in the film, I mostly ignore them. Because the songs are so eclectic that you can’t bring them all together. For instance, in The Lincoln Layer there was hip-hop, and R’n’B, and so many food groups that there was no way to unify it in the underscore. But with the Chromatics, “A Real Hero”, and Kavinsky that there was a style, an 80s homage that I felt an obligation to compliment. Fortunately retro 70s and 80s synths were all the rage at the time. 

Were you influenced by classic 80s movie scores, like Miami Vice or Tangerine Dream, on Drive then?

Yes, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk. Giorgio Moroder, that’s about it.

I’ve read that Winding Refn asked your to make the score ‘dreamlike’ — what instructions did he give you?

Yeah, fairytale was something that was thrown around. Religious experience was another term thrown around. The 80s homage was another idea. But mostly directors communicate by way of the temporary music the use. There was a lot of Brian Eno, Trent Renzor, the Social Network score. There was a temp score that indicated when the music starts and stops, and was this techno, minimalist style that Nicolas was looking for. Then there were the songs, that exerted some influence.

If Drive was meant to be like a dream, was Only God Forgives sounds like a nightmare…

Yeah. On Drive. I was brought in at the five week mark, with the picture locked. And then with Only God Forgives he called me before it was even written, and we discussed the story. And then when he has a script, he showed me the script. And then he showed me the movie and it hand nothing to do with the script! So he brought me in very early for that film.

View this video on YouTube

youtu.be

The meshing of visuals and audio in Only God Forgives is vital to the film — what’s your working relationship with Winding Refn like?

It’s pretty collaborative. Nicolas was in Denmark all that time and I was in Los Angeles, so we had a lot of Skype conference calls where we talked about Only God Forgives  quite a lot. He was very hands on for Drive, very hands on for Only God Forgives, but for The Neon Demon he took his foot off the gas. That’s what happen when you work together for three films. There’s a little bit of creative shorthand, and a little bit of ESP going on, so there was a bit less collaboration. But usually he’s very music centric, and talks a lot about music.

When did Thai karaoke songs in Only God Forgives get added?

Those came first. Initially Nicolas wanted to have iconic country and western songs like Johnny Cash and John Denver, and then when got a look at the price tag to licence those, he changed his mind. We saw the cost, and went, “Aw, we’re not interested”. But I did [the Thai karaoke songs] first, I did about five karaoke songs, only one of which actually got used in the film.

So what was the approach for The Neon Demon?

Nicolas described it as the first half is a melodrama, like Valley of the Dolls, kind of a little bit of exaggerated emotion, romantic; and the second half is a horror film, like Dario Argento or Texas Chain Saw Massacre. So they are the two things.

What were your influence on this one?Goblin [The legendary 70s Italian band famous for scoring horror movies with oppressive prog rock]?

Yeah. Nicholas and I have been talking about Goblin and Argento since Only God Forgives. John Carpetner a little bit. And again Kraftwerk, Moroder, Tangerine Dream.

The fashion world has always been very much tied up with the music world — did you attend any runways or fashion shows to find out what they ‘sound’ like?

I never got into character, so to speak. I don’t know what a fashion show sounds like, I guess I wasn’t that interested. There’s one runway scene in the film, and it’s so abstract I didn’t think there was a need for it to be anything like reality.

View this video on YouTube

youtu.be

What was it like working with Skrillex on Spring Breakers?

I didn’t know who he was. My introduction was seeing a rough cut of the film and the opening sequence of the girls jumping up and down in the water to “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites”. Skrillex was there, and I was just dumbfounded by his music. That’s probably one of his greatest pieces, and to put that with those images… I was intimidated. And originally I wasn’t going to do it, because the script didn’t seem very good. And the money wasn’t very good, and they were going to pay me in frozen shrimp! But then I saw that, and thought “That’s great.” That’s the theme for the whole movie, let me just take that and write some stuff with that melody and those changes. Skrillex was all sheepish, and said “That’s so 2013, that’s my old stuff.” And we’re like “Dude, don’t make us feel old!” I loved it. It just seemed to work out.

Who’s idea was the orchestral version of ‘Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites’?

Mine. I didn’t get any encouragement for that idea. [Director] Harmony Korine already had something else over it, I think it was Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings", and they were just going to buy that song. But I said “It’s the most important real estate in the whole film. Let me try this other thing with “Scary Monsters””. I played it for him, and he high-fived me, and that was that. The original is so up tempo, so it’s almost unrecognisable.

Spring Breakers feels like a very improvised film — did it change a lot as you were working on it?

No I was brought in very late, it was almost a locked picture. And all the temp score and Skrillex stuff was there, and the songs were bought and paid for. It was very a very advanced cut when I saw it, it all seemed very complete. It didn’t change a lot. For as abstract as it was, Harmony wasn’t very abstract to work with. He was very grounded.

Were you worried about trying to be down with the kids on Spring Breakers?

Yeah, I was pretty intimidated at first. I thought I had to sound like Skrillex. Maybe Skrillex was thinking he had to sound like me to a small degree. Cause he wrote a ton of stuff too, that doesn’t sound as typical for him, that’s not as aggressive, as beat driven. I wrote a couple of beat driven things that weren’t typical of what I do. So yeah, it was a bit intimidating. But I think Harmony and the picture editor Doug Crise put together such a blend — there was like 15 song that were not Skrillex, that were other people. There was this really aggressive hip-hop, there were the Skrillex songs, there was his underscore, there was my underscore, and somehow the stuff managed to fit together cohesively. I didn’t do that, I just followed the blueprint and try to fit in.

Latest in Pop Culture