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Film Week: On: Nathan Johnson L to R: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nathan Johnson, Rian Johnson, Jared Gellar With its cryptic hard-boiled dialogue and a stellar performance from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rian Johnson’s Brick is one the best American independent movies of recent times. The film’s haunting junkyard score was composed by Johnson’s cousin, the multi-instrumentalist, band leader and all round good dude Nathan Johnson. The Johnsons are currently working on their next film The Brothers Bloom, a con-man caper starring Mark Ruffalo, Adrien Brody, Rachel Weisz and Rinko Kikuchi. From a fancy set in Belgrade, Nathan told us about the new movie, drinking songs and the difference between a junkyard score and one that’s “back-porch”. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nathan Johnson & Jared Gellar - Likst Mir Arm Herzen [mp3] Nathan Johnson On: The Brothers Bloom "Out of everything Rian has written, Bloom is my favourite. It is everything I love about Rian rolled out into a script. It is a con man story about two brothers, and it’s full of the joy of life, the excitement of globe-trotting, and these great questions about reality and the stories we tell ourselves. It is a story about storytelling, and it’s fantastic. It is very different from Brick, but in a weird way, it has a similar element in that it is very much a movie that creates its own world and envelopes you into it. "Bloom is obviously a much bigger film than Brick… maybe 30 times bigger, in scale and scope and crew, but it has been amazing to be on set because the atmosphere is still very much like a family. We’ve been shooting all over Eastern Europe and have been working with great local crew from each area. They’ve welcomed us into their cities and it feels like a very large international family. As a composer, it’s very rare to be a part of this stage of the process and it has been really astounding to see the craft of the actors on set. I’ve been awestruck by their methods of working and it has given me a great amount of respect to get a peek into their process." ...On: Drinking songs "Likst Mir Arm Herzen was something we quickly recorded to be sung by a few drunk guys in a bar. [Joseph Gordon-Levitt and I] actually sing it in the movie with our friend Jared Gellar. It’s just guitar and a toy accordion that Joe and Jared bought at a place in Jersey called Accordion-o-rama. The rest of the score should sound a bit more 'lush' in the exuberant and lavish sense, a bit less 'lush' in the drunk sense." ...On: Scoring "When I work with Rian he has a very defined idea of what the music needs to be, and I love it because he really loves music that you wouldn’t expect – music that wouldn’t seem to work, but oddly, really does. We’ve been talking a lot about the vibe for the film and I’m really excited to help tell this story. Brick was heavily atmospheric but Bloom is going to be much more melodic. I’m excited to bring a romanticism and pathos to it, and although it definitely won’t be ‘junkyard orchestration’ like Brick, it will probably strike your ears from a strange angle. I love the quirk of imperfect music and I’m excited to dive into this story, which is full of quirks. I think Bloom is strongly supportive of the idea that if you create something to be perfect, it becomes removed and ultimately unreal. Part of the job of the music will be to anchor the themes and the characters. "I’m a big fan of structure and the more I understand the movement of the story, the better it is for me. I’ll begin by reading the screenplay, numerous times if possible and then I talk for hours with the director. I want to get inside of the director’s head and the more I understand about the movie’s structure, the character’s motivations and the rules and reasons the world works the way it does, the better. In a movie like Brick or Bloom, Rian is very much creating a unique world and the music needs to operate in the atmosphere of that world. I’m very visual, so I’ll often sketch out the story on posterboard and hang the sheets around the studio so that I’m aware of the movements of the story. After that, I’ll spot the movie with the director and come to an agreement on which scenes need music and what kind of music they need. "The music for Brick was inspired by a blend of junkyard and Western. Right now I’m listening to old jazz, Italian and circus music. I think we’ll still be using a lot of interesting sounds, but the music in Brick was broken down on purpose, whereas Bloom calls for a certain amount of panache. My bent will always lean towards capturing performances where you can hear the instruments being played, which is why I lean towards organic close-mic’d sessions. If Brick was the junkyard, perhaps this will be the back-porch. It’s a step closer to the house, still salty and tasty perhaps, but not trashy." Posted by: Scott 17/08/07