Collaboration on a Killer: Paul Leonard-Morgan's 'Boston Strangler'
Composer Paul Leonard-Morgan spoke with CineConcerts about the score to the upcoming film Boston Strangler!
Composer Paul Leonard-Morgan
CineConcerts (CC): When did you decide to get into film music specifically?
Paul Leonard-Morgan (PLM): I’m not a stereotypical film composer. I do a lot of different things. I produce bands. I do it for theater, I do games, I do film, I do TV. It's not that one genre is better than the other. I love writing, for example, classical music, concert music. I had a concerto done a couple of years ago, premiered in front of 5000 people in France. It was the biggest buzz out. Simply going and seeing your music on the big screen, it's a really big buzz.
But there was a moment, I studied at the Conservatoire, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music. So, I was about 18 and didn't know what I wanted to do. I just knew that I've always wanted to do music. I was there studying in Glasgow and the wind and the string [players] were quite a good fun to hang out with so I’d hang around with them. This oboe teacher told me that he played this track on The Mission soundtrack, “Gabriel's Oboe” by Morricone.
I'd never heard it. It was the only other equivalent I had of that, before I was 18, was listening to Barber's “Adagio for Strings” and I couldn’t speak for about 5 minutes afterward. And [the teacher] just played me the solo and it was absolutely gorgeous. He said, “Well, it's from this film Mission.” So, I went and got The Mission checked out and it had the same profound effect. Now, I've since learned that pretty much every oboist in the world claims that they performed that. So, I don't know who actually performed it on the album, but it was stunning. And listening to that, suddenly I've always been into film and always loved film, but I never really thought about the concept of film music. It's kind of cool to move someone and you will find that most of my answers go back to this, music should make someone feel something, should make them have an emotion. And it had this effect on me.
So, I started f*cking around at the academy and started doing different stuff. But the general feedback from the teachers was that my stuff was too melodic and they didn't say it in a bad way. They were more like, “Put your arms on the top of the piano and hit some notes and see what comes out.” Which is ironically, what I did in the Boston Strangler.
CC: Do you have to wear different hats for your classical composition? You're purely classical composition versus the sort of composing hat that you have to put on for film. They're two entirely different mediums, but are they in terms of styles?
PLM: Yes, they're different mediums in the sense that, for film, you're writing for picture. Still storytelling, and that's the thing. I did an album ten years ago, something called Film Tells and it was exactly that. I'd been working with loads of bands, and all the bands were like, why don't you do your own stuff? I remember that it was just, it was really cool hearing it from their perspective.
I've always had this thing of because music is music, it doesn't matter what it is, it makes people feel something. My thing, which I love doing, is taking beats, taking electronica, adding it to orchestra. I've always done that and now I think it's just getting to that stage where anything goes along as it's cool. People don't care how you make it or people don't care how you do it. It's about experiencing something. So, you have beats behind the orchestra, have electronica behind the orchestra. Play in a car park, get some dancers on it, it doesn't make any difference. It's about people experiencing, and I'm using that word again, art. But it is art. It's about an experience, whether it's a film experience, a game experience, a classical experience. So different hat, I think, just as far as what gets your brain going to begin with, but in the end, it goes back to that whole thing of storytelling.
CC: There's something that's very unique in the score for Boston Strangler, which is this piano theme, could you elaborate on how you started with this conceptually, this story, which is obviously very dark, right?
PLM: Well, it's wonderful because you haven't seen the film yet. And having listened to the music, I love the images that it's conjured up in your head and what's connected with it because that's all I think of, “I really hope they take it the right way.”
I chatted away to Matt Ruskin, the director. He approached me in May last year and said he would like to have a chat and we just got talking and I said, “Tell me about the film.” It was about the strangler but what else was it about? It's layers, isn't it? The best films have layers, so it's about the strangler and it's about a journalist, Loretta, in the sixties, trying to solve a crime, she's trying to find out who this murderer [is].
So, what it's actually about is Loretta. This journalist happens to be a woman, but in the sixties there were no women journalists. Well, you can be in the typing pool. That's as far as it goes, or you can be in the kitchen. And she had a husband and kids. But the sacrifices that she had to make to be a woman in a male dominated society, the newsrooms were full of men, and to be taken seriously. She approached them, says, “There's a story here, those people could be you or me.” And to try and be taken seriously, she’s got to try a thousand times more. And this is connected to the piano. It's about women breaking down barriers. It's so relevant to today's society in the sense that, yeah, in 60 years’ time there've been some barriers broken down, but for f*ck's sake, this is ridiculous that you still got to do it.
So, we come up with a theme for Loretta, which is not all dark and doom and gloom. It's got a bit of hope and it's got a bit of optimism. It's got this triplet falling underneath. So, I was sitting with Matt, on zoom, because he was in New York cutting. It's about one in the morning and I'm just playing away. And he's going, “Oh yeah, I like that. What if we did this?”
I just started playing and I said so imagine we’ve got a quartet. It's a very intimate sound. We'll have the cello as the main theme, and there's a moment which Matt still comes back to, which is after one of the murders. And it's at the end, you have this really dark scene, and then there's just a reprise of the motif with the cello bit afterwards, just for about 20 seconds as Loretta, played by Keira Knightley, drives along. That is what's going to be used to add light to what is a very dark shade of the strangler. And so, what we’ll do is this piano motif is the thing that's going to give it momentum. I don't envisage percussion in the soundtrack, but I don't want it to be a classical, classical soundtrack. It's a period film, but it shouldn't be a period soundtrack.
Film Still from Boston Strangler
So, I thought, we start off with this and the whole film starts off with a really dark track anyway. That’s me tapping on my piano underneath and kind of morphing the sounds, and that becomes the heartbeat of the stranglers. That [thud] gradually speeds up and comes through, then you cut it and now we're with Loretta, this is Loretta’s world, here’s the piano, here’s the quartet.
There are different themes. Like “Loretta Investigates” she's suddenly playing the typewriter, and that's really her first proper theme there. That then comes “Have You Checked the Records?” she goes through that and it's a way fuller version of it, double time.
So, if you're to play on the piano, you've got the right hand playing Loretta and the left hand, which is the Strangler. And every now and then, that middle thumb plays the same note. So now you put that on strings, but you put them apart. So, Loretta's way up there on the right-hand side. She's all the trebles of the violin. And then you've got the strangler and ten double bass. And gradually they morph together as the soundtrack progresses.
So, the sound of the strangler is this massive orchestra. You've got the innocence and naivety of Loretta and she's suddenly realizing she's got to push herself through these boundaries. The two then morph together, and as they morph together, that's where the electronica then starts coming in, because it's not this happy world anymore of good versus bad colliding, it’s morphing.
Has she found the strangler? Does the strangler exist? Who is the strangler? What's going on? And so on. And from a composer point of view, you start off these soundtracks with this intellectual argument in your head. You go like, it'll be the quartet and then the bigger orchestra and it'll be like Pac-Man, the bigger orchestra swallow up Loretta, and then the quartet will die. But, what was really frigging cool was, we went up to Skywalker Ranch to record it. And a lot of the time in your recording, it's like this this cue will be for quartet, this cue will be for orchestra.
But what you get is, here's the quartet and then there are some cues later on where the quartet is playing exactly the same cue as the larger orchestra. So, you've got them playing the same thing. But it's the balance during that cue of, is the quartet louder in the mix? Is the orchestra louder in the mix?
CC: Did you start composing early or did you compose when you started seeing the rough cut?
PLM: For this, I was very early on in the process, for which I thank Matt profusely.
I'm awful at reading scripts. So, he'll send me a script and I'll read it and I did respond to it. And it was before I knew that Carrie Coon was in it, before I knew that Keira Knightley was in it and Chris Cooper and so on.
And then he showed me super rough cut. And what was brilliant about Matt was that he's a proper collaborator. So, it's not just case of his immediate take and it's not just a case of “Here's my film, take it.” He was really involving me in the editing process. Obviously I'm not editing, but it's like, what do you think?
What's wonderful about what it is that we do and who you collaborate with, whether it's a game or whether it's theater or whatever, having those conversations with a filmmaker means that music is so tightly caught up with it. And again, at that stage it was super rough, but later on he was still chopping, right? I can hit the beats there with this music because the rhythm of this music is propelling it so much, I can start chopping. That's particularly big on some of those sequences where it's larger, he cut it all to it, so it was super early in the process getting involved with it. But I don't like seeing a film that many times to begin with because watching it twice, switching off and just go away and writing because otherwise, and particularly with rough cuts, you've become so attached to that scene that you're looking at there. And half the time that doesn't end up in it. It's very hard to get that initial emotional reaction because for me, the initial emotional reaction, I want to watch it and have a proper, authentic reaction. If you see me laugh and it's the wrong place. I'm really sorry. But I'm trying not to watch that much because when I get into scoring it properly, as opposed to writing a suite of themes and motifs and so on.
CC: Were you required to write anything so that they did cut very early any rough cuts for Matt?
PLM: No. Matt just said, look, when you’ve got stuff, send it over and I'll start cutting it in. And it's always fun, isn't it? It's you and the director having these chats. And of course, different films are different. Sometimes you have playback, which is where you watch it with your music. The first feedback is my playback for the director and then at some stage the music team will be brought on with the director and me and the music team. Get to hear the genius that we brought to that film.
CC: That's the fun part about this, though, right? Because you were in so early and collaborative with the director, it takes on a life of its own. Do you feel like the music that you compose detaches from you in a way and kind of becomes its own thing?
PLM: I always say that with teams, it's ours. It's not your film. It's our film. It's not my score. It's our score. It's something that we've achieved together because it doesn't happen all the time.
CC: You're in a lucky situation, right? I mean, that seems like a very great collaborative environment, which is not the norm everywhere.
PLM: I think directors in general are just so flipping amazing because of what they have to go through. That sounds so sycophantic, but you think to get a film off the ground to begin with all this sh*t that's had to happen to get approvals and green lights and so on, right?
So, a composer's point of view is to help the director, not even just creatively, but from a confidence point of view of, look, we got this, it's already f*cking great. Don't listen to the inner gremlins. We all have the gremlins as creative people. You’re basically wearing your heart on your sleeve. And it's not about having a thick skin. It's about, F*ck it. You know what? I trust you implicitly as a director and as a collaborator. So, if you tell me that something's not right, I'm going to fight my corner, I'm not going to bow down and just take notes, but I'm going to take your overriding note, which is it's too dark or it's too happy or it's etc” But the hardest part of any film is finding the color for it.
So going back to that theme for Loretta, once you’ve got those sounds, you're laughing because then it's like, we already know roughly what we want. We already know roughly your motifs are working here. I'm not so sure about that synth noise there. Good to know, Memo to Self, because if he says it three times at various stages, then he's got reaction to that kind of sound. It's obviously not working and there's a reason for it. I don't feel that strongly about it. Whereas if he had said, “The cello's not working here,” I would have said, “Are you been kidding me?” He didn't, but I'm saying those are the chats that you have about it.
Film Still from Boston Strangler
CC: As a composer, you have to trust your own musical instincts to write, and you have to go to bat for things you really believe in, that a director or the producers or whomever is watching are experiencing and it might not sit well otherwise.
PLM: Otherwise, you’re not doing it. You're not doing it to second guess someone. You're doing it because you think that you can bring something to a project. It's about being true to yourself. Having some confidence and not worrying about things. Like, look I think that rocks. If you don't, well, let's have a chat about it and let's talk about why not. And yeah, you know, I can see actually why it doesn't work, but I think there are elements in there that work or but you've got to go with your gut, haven't you? Otherwise, what's the point of doing it?
CC: When you say no to things as a composer, it's not necessarily because you couldn't do it. You could probably do it, but then it would be more like work. You want it to be inspiring and cool and fun versus having it be a painful process.
PLM: It’s that word “work,” but it's never felt like work. And if it does, something's wrong. It's not that you couldn't do it and it's not that the film is bad, there's just something about it which doesn't call to you. And I never quite understood that when I was starting out. You're just like, I want to do this and I want to do that. I want to do everything, because everything is fun.
And then you realize that everybody's offering you everything and I didn't enjoy that as much as I thought. Why didn't I enjoy that as much? Because I had to really fight to come up with the theme or the sounds and it's like dating someone that you don't necessarily fancy, but they're quite good looking or whatever. They make you laugh or whatever.
And again, it's not that you get that on every film. I remember saying to my agent when I’d finished this series with Errol Morris, Wormwood, and it was one of the most creatively inspired periods. I still don't know how I came up with that sound. I'm super proud of it, but more importantly, I came off it. I was in a complete downer and I couldn't work out what it was. Because you've just worked with an Oscar winner. He's one of the world's greatest documentary makers. Pretty much everyone in the world respects him and try and imitate him. He's come to you, that's your second film with him. I'm working on another one with him.
I just loved the process because he’s bloody brilliant. But, you know, you've worked with not just one Oscar winner, but two or three now or whatever, but some people don’t get to work with them at all. You've forgotten what it's like when you're just starting out. And suddenly, because you work with that caliber of people, not that you take it for granted, but it's just when something feels right, it's just the biggest buzz because you’re not having to try.
CC: What’s your creative process and where do you go when you get started on a project?
PLM: It depends what the project is generally. I've got a Yamaha concert grand piano, so I kind of sit down at that because I know the kind of sound in my head that's calling me to do. Strings, yeah, I'm fine. I used to play the violin and viola horrendously, but I know what I'm doing so I can picture all of that. Cello is a wonderful instrument. I know it inside out.
So, I know how all that sounds, so it's about coming up with the themes and finally sitting down at the piano. There are other soundtracks where it's going to be a guitar soundtrack. I'm sh*t at guitar, so I've got a guitar down there and I'll hack away on it. But in general, then it's more I'll go for a run or a walk. It reminds me of home in Scotland and it just starts get my mind going. But my creative process is, whatever I'm working on, I try and get them to send me images. It's the same with games, they send me images of it so that I can just start mulling over and I can't show you because you'll see what my next project is. But on the walls, there are all these different things. And it just means that, you know, I'm working on something else in the back of my head, just mulling over at the start of the process so that as little themes come in, I'm watching other things, I'm listening to other things. You can call it a mood board.
Except when, I remember as I was working on these Minions short films for Universal, that was f*cking brilliant because they just sent me over a whole load of merch from Universal Minions everywhere.