Well lookieeee here, it’s the thing I’ve been avoiding for over five years: updating my Substack! In the coming weeks, I’ll be publishing sections of interviews I did with David Cronenberg’s key collaborators that weren’t included in my book, David Cronenberg: Clinical Trials. I’ll also start doing some original writing, aggregating pieces that I enjoyed reading, and probably something else to do with sound and/or moving images. Don’t rush me, though.
Before I get into this week’s interview, I must urge readers who are in the New York City area to please please please come out to PowerHouse Arena on Friday, February 7 at 7pm. I’ll be discussing my book with my dear friend, fellow writer, and professional shit-kicker Nick Pinkerton. More details (aka sales copy) here. Oh, and on February 15 at 7pm, I’ll be hosting a screening of eXistenZ at the Philadelphia Film Society—you know, for Valentine’s Day.
Interview with Howard Shore
Howard Shore (born 1946) grew up near David Cronenberg (who he would see tooling around the neighborhood on a motorcycle) and went to summer camp with Lorne Michaels. These early friendships, however, are not the sole reason why his music has come to shape so many different television shows and films. (But they didn’t hurt, either.) Thanks to the Canadian government’s efforts in the mid-Fifties to help build a Canadian culture, Shore was identified as having an aptitude for music at age seven and was given a clarinet. At age nine, while studying the instrument with Morris Weinzweig (brother of John Weinzweig, one of Canada’s most famous composers), Shore began to learn about counterpoint and harmony, which led to an interest in musical composition. He writes something every day.
Shore first worked with Cronenberg on The Brood (1980), and, save for The Dead Zone (1983), has continued to score Cronenberg’s films ever since. He also wrote music for After Hours (1985), She-Devil (1989), Se7en (1995), the Lord of the Rings trilogy (the Viggo Mortensen connection), the theme song for Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and many, many other projects. I spoke with Shore on a snowy day last January. He was in his home in upstate New York and I was in my home office, worrying because I hadn’t interviewed anyone for a long time. Please check the book for all the good stuff about Shore working on Naked Lunch with Ornette Coleman.
The main theme for Dead Ringers uses D major, which is typically triumphant, tonally speaking, with brass and strings. But there's also something sad or worrying about it. And you have these descending and ascending chromatics. There’s a sense of unease but also something kind of prestigious. Was this to mirror the seemingly upstanding nature of the twins and what lurks beneath that?
I can't really analyze it that way. I wrote that score in a dream. It's about fifty minutes long. I created a piece of that length away from the film—I had only watched the film once. Then over a period of a few weeks, I wrote this piece. And once I had the piece, I then went through another process of analyzing what I had written and how to use it in the film. So certain pieces that didn't seem like they would have been related, were in my subconscious, they became so in my process of using music for the film. In a lot of David's films, I'm not writing into the center of the frame. I'm working around the edges and trying to create music that adds depth to the story and to the frame.
Dead Ringers is also interesting because there's the opening credits with that music and then there's a lot of silence for most of the first part of the film. Why did you choose restraint and sort of hold back?
That's something I do with David. The spotting sessions are really about how to use music in the film. Where do we want to put it, and why is it there? In some instances when we've spotted the film, I've written music for certain scenes, and then on viewing the whole film in the final mix, I sometimes have said to David, “You don't need music there. Let's take that out.” I have been known to do that. Where you use music in a film and how you decide to use it is a really important part of filmmaking. That process is collaborative. Where music is used? How is it used? Why is it there? What is it doing? That's an important process.
You were the first musical director on Saturday Night Live. For a weekly show that’s live, you have to learn how to compose new things very quickly, find old records, and be able to parody things that are out there in the cultural ether. Do you feel like that was kind of a warm-up of sorts for the work you did in film, or was it coming from a different impulse?
Well, you know, I always did a bit of directing. I did some acting and writing, not music, but away from music. My friends were also interested in those things, in directing and acting. And I did radio shows, dramatic radio shows and comedies for the CBC in Toronto. I also did documentary films. I just kept growing and absorbing more ideas and learning how to work with the studio, how to record, how to do live recordings. I just loved that whole process.
I mean, it was just a search for knowledge, really, and to keep expanding. Something like Saturday Night Live was great for movies because it taught you how to collaborate with other artists, how to think on your feet, how to move quickly, all good things to know for writing, for working in film. I think I did over a hundred live broadcasts as a conductor for Saturday Night Live in the Seventies.
It opened up other techniques that were very valuable for studying music, for a student studying music. I think I was in my late twenties.
There was this real push by the Canadian government in the Fifties to create a sense of Canadianness, Canadian arts, and not just import things from either the United Kingdom or the United States. How do you feel like your identity as a Canadian has shaped your career? Do you feel like a lot of the opportunities you got were because there was this real investment in the arts?
Well, that's true. I mean, Canada is known as the art country. That's one of the main things that they exported. And they did it in music, they did it in comedy, they did it in acting, in film. Growing up in Toronto, I think I had a lot of opportunities to work with things that I was interested in, and they were pretty open to it. I wasn't mentored by anybody. I was pretty much this kid who tried to figure things out on his own. I went to the library and got out a lot of books and read them, cover to cover, and tried to practice the techniques. But I think being Canadian and growing up in Toronto, you know, I think I had good opportunities to expand my ideas.
The Fifties was also this great period where there was a really interesting progression in jazz, as well as the rise of Afro-Latino music in North America. During this time you were also learning how to play the clarinet from a more “traditional” mode. How do you feel like those three influenced your approach to composing and to your interest in music?
I was interested in jazz and I liked the experimental nature of jazz. I like the idea of improvisation, and I've used improvisation in my work for a long, long time. Part of my process is to free associate music ideas with things I'm feeling, or things I'm seeing, or things I'm experiencing. It's a way for me to connect to my inner emotions and music. Music is, to me, an emotional language. I'm using this language of music to express ideas that feel very emotional and close to me. And jazz and improvisation felt like a really good way to express your ideas. What I would do is organize them a little further on the page, and then re-record those works.
The opera was done—probably all my works have been done—using that same process. As I delved further into orchestration, I wanted to go beyond the jazz groups that I was listening to. I wanted to work with orchestras and chamber musicians and other soloists. It just took me further and further into music. And as I say, really, my interest was in music. I mean, I love film and I love working with David because he allows me so much freedom to express these ideas. But what I was really interested in was the music.