\tHans Zimmer has just wrapped his world tour, \u201cHans Zimmer Live,\u201d and the hallways of his Santa Monica studios are stacked with instrument boxes.<\/p>\n
\tHis studio space is large and welcoming, oozing with creativity. The composer and musician is currently at work on an undisclosed project. We\u2019re set to talk for 20 minutes, but Zimmer welcomes the distraction. \u201cThe more you are here and we\u2019re chatting, the less I have to go and do any work,\u201d he teases. We end up chatting for an hour.<\/p>\n
\tAside from the tour, Zimmer has reunited with his go-to collaborators Denis Villeneuve for \u201cDune: Part Two\u201d and Steve McQueen from \u201cBlitz\u201d to score their current projects. The former is currently the topic of discussion and whether it qualifies for the Oscar \u2014 and while he thinks it\u2019s unlikely he\u2019ll win a second Oscar for it, he\u2019s not happy about the ruling. The latter has a deep personal connection as his mother sought shelter in the U.K. as a German Jewish refugee. \t<\/p>\n
\tZimmer also talks about life on the road, and why that\u2019s when he\u2019s at his happiest.\u00a0He also reveals his remarkable connection to \u201cWidows\u201d and why scoring that was a full-circle moment for him. <\/p>\n
\t\t\t \t\t\tPopular on Variety\t\t \t \t\t \t \t \t\t\u00a0That \u2018Blitz\u2019 score is something. It\u2019s really unsettling. What was your approach to it?\t \tIt\u2019s not an easy score on the audience, which was very much on purpose. After seeing the film, I said, \u201cI want to write something dissonant. I want an adult to feel the same confusion and terror that a child would feel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t \t\tThere are cues throughout it where you create that terror for George, who is trying to find his way back to London to return home. What was the instrument you used to achieve that?\t \tThat\u2019s mostly my band; Molly Rogers and Tina Guo, who I know really well. If you say to a violinist or cellist, who spends their lives making beautiful sounds \u2014 now I tell them to make \u201chorrific sounds.\u201d So, it was people who I know very well and a lot of chaos where textures change in the middle of a shot. It was about creating contradictions like when the kids are on top of the train, the music is jolly.<\/p>\n
\t \t\tAnd what happens next is so deceiving.\t \tExactly.<\/p>\n
\t \t\tWhat was it about \u2018Blitz\u2019 that spoke to you?\t \tIt started as a very personal journey because Steve and I know each other well. We\u2019ve talked about our history, who we are, and where we come from. He knew my mother was a German Jewish refugee during the war in England and lived through the Blitz, and he told me the stories of what it was like to live through it. The main direction Steve gave me before going to see the movie, he said, \u201cYou\u2019ll understand your mom better after you\u2019ve seen it.\u201d He was right because the stories that had been just stories, I suddenly felt them. He made me feel the helplessness and sheer terror she must have felt as a young woman. She was still an enemy alien in England. So she was stateless wherever she went. It wasn\u2019t that different from George. Where do you turn? Who\u2019s going to show you kindness? \t<\/p>\n
\tWhat I love about working with Steve is that you are working with a true artist and a true visionary. His wife is an eminent historian, so he knows what he\u2019s talking about and has a way of checking on the history. So, it felt right to write something unpleasant and truthful, and not get swallowed up. There\u2019s a tendency to go and do something sentimental, and I think I managed to avoid that at all costs.<\/p>\n
\t \t\tSteve is a visionary. I saw him recently at a film festival and we spoke about this score, and I also told him \u201cJustice for \u2018Widows.\u2019\u201d That score still holds up, you know?\t \t\u201cWidows\u201d comes from a television series. It was a British show. I was a runner and making tea on that. That\u2019s so crazy. So it was like completing a circle.<\/p>\n
\t \t\tLet\u2019s talk \u2018Dune: Part Two\u2019 and scoring this world. Returning to Arrakis, how did you approach it?\t \tListen, I am potentially confronted with an odd problem, which I think is quite interesting because of the amount of music that comes from the first movie into the second. We are not a normal sequel. We\u2019re not like \u201cPirates of the Caribbean,\u201d you have a theme for Jack Sparrow that comes again. This is different. \u201cDune: Part One\u201d and \u201cDune: Part Two\u201d are one story, so it would make no sense for me to go and change the theme for the characters. I knew what the last note of the second one was before I wrote the first note of the first one, and I had the whole arc in my head of how to develop what we were going to do.<\/p>\n
\tThere was the story that I was ineligible. What you\u2019re saying you shouldn\u2019t be allowed to use this form of storytelling. \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d used this form of storytelling as well. They had one book and one story which they needed because of its sheer size and weightiness, they needed to divide into three parts. We are dividing it into three parts, but we had to split the first book.<\/p>\n
\tHere\u2019s the thing, I\u2019m not going to win an Oscar for the second one if I won an Oscar for the first one, which I did, right? That\u2019s not the point. My point is be careful about these rules because what you\u2019re doing is in the back of the studio\u2019s mind, the Oscars are important, and you\u2019re influencing the way you are saying whether we can create art or not. You\u2019re saying you can\u2019t do that because we won\u2019t allow art to be nominated. We should have the freedom to find ways to create whatever comes to us. Denis made the right choice by splitting a heavy-duty book into two parts.<\/p>\n
\tBefore I went on tour, everybody was saying to me, \u201cOh, the audience\u2019s attention span is terrible these days, and you have to make things short.\u201d Well, that\u2019s not true. The \u201cPirates\u201d piece is 14 minutes. I think \u201cThe Dark Knight\u201d piece is 22 minutes and the audience is with us. And when Denis wants to go and do \u201cDune\u201d in two long parts, the audience will stay with us. But part of that is you have to go and be able to develop your themes. You have to think of your themes and how you develop them over five hours. So, don\u2019t tell me that makes me ineligible. It really isn\u2019t about me, it\u2019s about the movie. \t<\/p>\n
\t \t\tIf you listen to the scores or watch the films, you do hear the evolution of, say, Paul\u2019s arc, right?\t \tThere\u2019s a radical development in this character. It\u2019s a tough one for everyone to pull off for Denis and even Timothee because where we are ending up is with a very unlikeable hero. And the audience needs to feel a satisfying experience, that we\u2019re not letting them down. I think that has quite a lot to do with the job of music. It\u2019s not telling you what to feel, but it\u2019s telling you that you can feel, I\u2019m opening doors to have an experience.<\/p>\n
\t \t\tI recall speaking about the music of \u2018Dune: Part Two\u2019 a while ago, and you said you teased Paul and Chani\u2019s theme in your concerts before people even knew what it was. What was it like performing that after the film had been released?\t \tThat might actually be part of the thing that I\u2019m questioning. The way I start the show, I start with the theme and four minutes of Loire Cotler who is the voice of \u201cDune\u201d singing by herself in front of the audience. There\u2019s a big screen down behind her, so it\u2019s just one person on the stage. After the intermission, Pedro Eustache starts playing exactly the same theme, but this time it\u2019s orchestrated. So, I do the same piece twice, but nobody recognizes that it\u2019s the same piece. Or if they do, they have a different emotional response to it. So within those few notes, there\u2019s a there\u2019s a huge emotional journey.<\/p>\n
\t \t\tAre you happier on the road or in a studio?\t \tI think I\u2019m happiest surrounded by musicians and being able to be a musician is so difficult these days. It\u2019s so hard to earn a living, it\u2019s so hard to survive, it\u2019s so hard to be heard. So I feel really happy if I can go out there on the road and have people play their hearts out, and [hear] the response from the audience. And everybody for those three hours are having a good time.<\/p>\n
\t \t\tThere\u2019s a story to your orchestra and why their performances each night were special, can you share it?\t \tThe story of my orchestra is quite simply this. We have played with this orchestra from Odesa, Ukraine, before, and we really liked them, so we booked them again. But COVID hit, so we couldn\u2019t do anything. When we were ready, we called them and said, \u201cPack your violins.\u201d But the war started, and we managed to get not everybody out. One of the violinist\u2019s cars had broken down trying to get across the border, and just by sheer accident, one of the other orchestra members saw him and gave him a lift. So now we have this orchestra that for three hours every night can\u2019t answer the phone. They don\u2019t know if their homes are being bombed. One night someone couldn\u2019t find their mother, but then the next day, someone found her. These are constant real-life things going on.<\/p>\n
\tOnce the tour finished, they couldn\u2019t go back, but we were really lucky with the German government really stepping up big time and giving everybody a home. I can go on about the stories of these people that I am surrounded by, who all have extraordinary life stories that they express in a most beautiful way through their playing, the substance behind each note, \u00a0and how each note comes with blood, sweat, tears and great commitment. So that\u2019s what makes me happy, the intensity of working with people. They\u2019re walking out with big smiles on their faces. \t<\/p>\n
\tThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hans Zimmer has just wrapped his world tour, \u201cHans Zimmer Live,\u201d and the hallways of his Santa Monica studios are stacked with instrument boxes. His studio space is large and welcoming, oozing with creativity. The composer and musician is currently at work on an undisclosed project. We\u2019re set to talk for 20 minutes, but Zimmer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19559,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}