2009

The Informant

Marvin Hamlisch

Marvin Hamlisch was the pianist and arranger on Broadway before adapting to Scott Joplin on THE STING earned him an Oscar. Author of songs for Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand, and conductor, he has composed scores for film jazz in the 70s to Woody Allen's TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN and BANANAS, or to SPY WHO LOVED ME (a James Bond). In 2009, THE INFORMANT by Steven Soderbergh mark her comeback.

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iNTERVIEW

Cinezik ; Could you tell us how did you come to film music industry?

M.H : I was a recording assistant for Funny Girl, and Julie Stein meant a lot to me. He is a great, great man and a wonderful composer. Of course, the first time any composer ever hears Westside Story that will influence you. Julie Stein is one of the big influences on me because I love his music and I love Gypsy.

How did you get involve on THE INFORMANT Did Steven Soderbergh give you any directions to follow, or were you free to compose?

M.H : Interestingly enough it is because of Bananas that I got the score for THE INFORMANT because when Soderbergh was working on Che he took some old DVDs with him to the shoot. One of the films was Bananas, and he loved the recording—the excitement of it, the upness of it and the fun of it. He asked one of his people “Who did that score?” and someone said “Marvin Hamlisch.”
I got a call from Soderbergh and it was such a great feeling to work with him. We talked about the film a lot. Then once I had done about half the film, I just showed him a few cues to see what his reaction would be. It was a lovely, lovely relationship.

What are your musical inspirations or references in general? In *The Informant!* there are several musical “winks” due to the Comedy and the Spying film aspects, could you telling us more about this subtle balance?

M.H : The score of The Informant! is not so much about notes as it is about choices. Because the character is bipolar, I came to believe that the music would have to represent the part of him that the world didn’t see, but that he inside of himself did. So therefore, as far as the score is concerned, without this theory of being a man in total control, he would respond to the FBI as though they were kind of silly. Therefore, they get kazoos and he gets this happy-go-lucky theme—giving the other part of this bipolar person a voice.
It was supposed to be pretty eccentric. The way I looked at it, was that this guy Whitacre, his brain is like a cassette machine, and just puts on music for different parts of his life. That was the idea behind the score.

How do you work the music for a movie based on codes of jazz ?

M.H : It was all about accentuating the comedy, and because we were on a very tight budget, sometimes tight budgets can be very helpful. If you can’t have 70 musicians, you need to figure out what you can do with 16 or 18. So what I tried to do, was try to use different combinations of about 17 or 18 people featuring different people in different parts of the score. So, you have some zany, off-the-wall scoring. You have piccolos, kazoos, you have a bass saxophone, you’ve got a ho-down while he’s taking a polygraph test.

After more than ten years without composing Film Scores, you are still composing in an old fashioned ways, with pen and paper. What do you think about the evolution of film music industry?

M.H : It’s a lot different. The electronics we deal with now– just the amount of electronic music and electronic stuff and the new equipment is a tremendous advantage, but I feel it is also a crutch. The fact of the matter is, I come from a long lineage of the European family and therefore, I tend to be a person that loves to write melodies. And I think the biggest differences between now and then, is that now there aren’t as many melodies around these days but that doesn’t mean it wont change again—That is just how it’s evolved.*

Few composers started to work with rushes and drawings, some others prefer working scene by scene. What is your working process?

M.H : It is important for me that the director is in the recording studio while I am recording because it is much easier to change something when the director is sitting there, rather than trying to edit later on.

What memories do you have about your collaboration with Woody Allen, and what hold up about today?

M.H : I learned a lot on doing the score for Bananas, one of Woody Allen’s very first films. I remember that we used to preview parts of the film for people, all the time. And I became very aware that there was a lot of—I’d go to the preview without music, and somehow the laughs got lost if the music was wrong. I learned that comedies can be very difficult because you can’t allow the music to overtake the laughs. So you have to be very, very careful.

Your music is mainly associated with comedy, how do you explain this and is it possible to work on a drama?

M.H : I think with drama you have to be very careful not to be overly anything. That is to say, not to be overly sentimental, not to be overly dramatic, not to go over the top. That’s something that we have really gotten away from. I usually try to figure out what element in the film or in the scene could use some extra lift and find some kind of undercurrent that might be very interesting for the scene. So I am always looking for something that’s not quite on the screen, but I can add to.