 was not your first rodeo with the mummy? Right. Yeah, the mummy, original mummy for me was definitely Bobo Hoteb. And it was a bit different. It was, you know, that's one of my all-time favorite projects to have worked on was Bobo Hoteb. I mean, Don Coscarelli, a huge phantasm fan growing up. And I mean, when he described the movie to me, remember talking to you really early on, too? It's like the impossible movie to describe, you know? Like, before you watch it. Yeah. Yeah, we got this movie. You were wondering if you wanted to do it. And it's got this guy that's Elvis, but he's not. Well, he is. But he kind of has now become an impersonator. But then there's a mummy. And then there's this guy that thinks he's JFK, but he's a black dude. And he was just like, I was like, what? And also, it's quirky and funny, but heartfelt. Like, you know, we want really an emotional score. What mummy things did you pick up from Bobo Hoteb that you could apply to this? You know, I don't know if there was really, you know what? No, that's not true. There's kind of a certain harmonic scale that you tend to go to for Egyptian-type music. But I never wanted to be overtly Egyptian. I don't know if you even pick it up so much in the Bobo Hoteb score. There was a bit at the beginning with the voices, which are me, because we had no budget. So I did everything. I sang all the choir parts. I just stacked. It was like, you know, that big choir piece where they come out of the car and all that. That's all just me singing. And so, but in a sense, that did tie into one of the main themes, the secret of the mummy theme. You can draw a connection between the two for sure. So what did the old universal orphans mean to you, just as a kid, as a genre geek growing up? You know, I had seen it out of order. I saw Bride of Frankenstein first. And I loved it. And then I went backwards into Frankenstein, saw Invisible Man, Creature, of course, the mummy. And all of the music for all of these were really something that grabbed me. Because these movies were really the first movies to do actual scary, off-putting, unsettling films, like the James D. Drake score. And so to me, I mean, I was a kid that kind of was all over the place. I loved a lot of genre stuff. I was a little out of the box. I loved old films. It was kind of like, you know, and even musically, I was, I think you're out of the box automatically. I mean, my favorite too, forms of music when I was like a little kid. It was film scores and hip-hop. And this did not fit in kind of to my circle, you know? And it was like, what? You know, I would be like, yeah, I got the T2 special edition. And I thought that was, you know. So it all kind of made sense, eventually, to go into what I do now. But I don't know. It's one of those things that, where are we going? I went way off topic, I think. No, it's all good, man. And I think the one thing that really struck me again, even as a kid watch on the Zulizan Channel 56's Creature Double feature, was just how romantic those scores were back then. Oh, yes, yes. There we go. Sure, they were very, I mean, they were truly using the orchestra in two ways. I mean, there was the unsettling, there is the dissonance. But at the same time, they were thematic. And you had great use of strings. You even had some bizarre instruments that were used in some of them, like in Bride. But so I went back and looked at all of that. And of course, I took that all the way through. I love horror films. So I saw the different versions of the mummies. There's a lot. There's hand, and then there's new mummies. And you have the Brendan Fraser mummy with Terry Goldsmith and the Allen Sylvesterie one. And all of those things were hugely important to me to make sure that I was doing something that connected but also was new. So I mean, you've been doing this kind of major epic score since Timeline, right from the beginning. But this is kind of like Alex, the director, had just done a very small little intimate film called The People Like Us. And this is kind of a movie that put him into this whole other playing field. What was the kind of education? Just in terms of, OK, this is how you score a film like this. Or that's ominous. Yeah, I mean, you step into anything that has history. I mean, you're talking about, I mean, it's the mummy. For me, really being cognizant of what came before me is important. And working on an epic score on this scale to me, almost like at the beginning of my career, I did a lot of horror films. And I missed them. But I didn't quite have the, this movie allowed me to do kind of whatever I wanted in terms of, do you want a choir? Do you want this? And I found it was interesting to be that there is, even if you have access to 100-piece orchestra and the huge choir, you just do not want to do that for the entire score. I think it becomes very interesting. When the scariest scenes came, for instance, the policemen are under the bridge. It goes stripped down. It's a broke string section. It's a chamber group with close, really close quarters and singular solo plucks and things on the cello. And the bowing was like solo cello, like bowing in the air. And that contrasts with that richness of the romantic side of the score, I thought. And so the epic size, it's like a tapestry. But you want to make sure that you just don't try to hit it with epic all the time. And I think that's Alex, this is something he was aware of too. And of course, his previous film, being a smaller film, he obviously is very familiar with huge films from producing them, like Transformers and Mission Impossible. And I met him on Eagle Eye. And we've done a million things in the last 10 years. But I think that he was really just kind of leaving it to me because he hadn't really worked this closely with a composer on a movie. Even when he does Star Trek with Giacchino and all that, he's involved. But when you're directing, it really is another level of responsibility. The one thing that really hit me about this film is that I think if I hear an action score or a Fast and the Furious score, I know that you score that there's like this one called the Brian Tyler Action Fandango sound. All right. The Tyler and Zones idea. Read about it on the best of sports. Tyler is on it. And this really sounded nothing like you. You really seem to reinvent your entire action genre vocabulary with the score. It's pulling on a lot of things that I love. But a lot of the action was a little bit more intricate and a way smaller in the details. And then there would be these big melodies. But these melodies were gothic. They're not Thor. And certainly the action is not what you would call modern. It's more of an ode to a time where you could just perform it. Now for me, I wanted to do it. And this is tricky when you're dealing with a big studio film, where you often now you record the score in sections on different days. I don't know. So you have the strings on one day, brass on another day, and then percussion or whatever and you put them together. And so they can mess with it at the end. It takes the fun out of it. Right. So I was saying that I wanted to do everything live in the room at one time, where I'm conducting and the orchestra is playing. And to the point where we had like a dodeck player in the room, which could ruin a take. You have someone that would come along and you're talking about instruments that have they're bending quarter tones into being whole tone scales and all this. And the thing is, is that there's two reasons why I wanted to do it this way. And it is because you have, literally, there is a difference between a brass section playing by themselves and the sound going across the room and hitting the wall and then coming all the way back and you record that. There's no string players. There's no human bodies to absorb sound and do their thing. Also, the string players create these sound waves. They're flying through the air this way. The brass sound waves are flying through the air this way. They meet in the middle and they do another sound. It's like shifting, Doppler shifting and things like that. So you cannot simulate it just by stacking ticks on top of each other. In order to get the real proper rich sound, you need those sound waves clashing with each other and it creates a chorusing effect. It's imperfect. And so this is why we wanted to do it. Now, of course, it makes it more difficult because one person, you have more of a chance of one person blowing it for everyone else on the take. But it's exciting that way, too. It's kind of like doing it without a net. And what that does is it makes it so you can go, when I went and conducted it, right after I finished, I conducted it in Poland and in concert. And it sounds exactly, you know, it really, it's meant to be performed. It's not meant to be in a computer. So anyway, that was kind of the philosophy behind the whole score. Well, I want to hear some of this, man. And I want to give a big thanks to Eric Stratman and Backlot Music for providing us with some music-only clips from The Mummy. I hate to sound like Comic Con guy because he drives me crazy, but no photography and no video of the stuff, please. I mean, wow, I mean, talk about really knowing how to hit stuff but keeping it within the context of a musical architecture and then you have this beautiful reveal of Amonet's theme when the tomb comes out of the water. Yeah, I mean, the thing about Amonet in this movie that we had to really be aware of was that it's not just an arch kind of monster. It's a monster that you're attracted to. She's, you know, it's like, you know, the reaction you have when you see her is like, oh, god, run away. Oh, no, but, oh, come back. And so the theme had to be kind of in a sense romantic and alluring and kind of a siren song. So I think that the other kind of interstitial music there is more about the atmosphere and the scariness and all that. There's a bit of mixed theme there just for a split second when he puts down the bags. But that doesn't really become fully, that theme doesn't come to fruition until later. It's just, again, setting up themes for later, as well as just kind of setting the tone, hopefully. Well, in this, we have really a place in the romance, the dark romance of Amonet. It's one of the flashback clips. Actually, it's the first one with Nick. Oh, right, yeah. Yeah, that was fun. It's funny because that scene was very different originally. Yeah, I was telling the audience about essentially those flashbacks used to be all through the entire movie. And I think they did a pretty good job of putting it right in the beginning of the film, kind of putting all that stuff together. Yeah, yeah, they did. Yeah, there was more in this flashback, actually, where they showed her as princess and to be queen. And she was going to, you know, and the entire backstory of why she became the mummy was actually right here. Yeah. Yeah, and then they put it at the beginning. But so this, I ended up re-recording this in Abbey Road. Oh, so this is the original version of that scene. So there is, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and again, I was also talking to the audience about how Amonet used to, for me, she was the most sympathetic character in the film. And boy, they couldn't really have that by the end. Right, yes, you really needed to. I mean, you couldn't run from the fact that she is a, she's alluring. And she is also irredeemable from what she did, right, with killing the baby and the whole thing. I mean, it was just, you can't come back from that. So, you know, she, it was a revenge thing. And you get why she did it. It's like any origin story of a monster. They have to have some reason that makes sense. You know, with the exception of modern psychopath movies, where there's nothing the kind of post-modern psychology, like a Zodiac killer, you know what I mean? But when you're talking about a monster's movie, you need to kind of ride with the lead character. And I know there was controversy over how much you should like her, you know? And I think I like, for me personally, I like when it's a little bit gray. You know, I don't really want my villain so arch and my hero's so, you know, squeaky clean. You want a little bit of that. I can relate to both, you know? What was the size of the choir? Of the choir? Yeah. I think it was like 90? Wow. Yeah. And then there were soloists in there as well, like there. It was all what Abby wrote as well. Was there any talk about, okay, how Egyptian do we make this movie? Well, there are moments, you know? But it was more about writing the themes and more about kind of going with the story. I think inevitably you want to feel some of that sand in your toes, you know what I mean? So there are certain percussion instruments and there's certain instruments that are Egyptian, but also scale-wise, and I did some quarter-tone type of music in it as well. But I mean, it's really blended in. I don't think it's overt. And the thing that you wanted though is to establish some of that Egyptian thing because when you get into modern-day London, you need to bring some of that sand with you, you know? So the point wasn't to make Egypt look more Egyptian when you see the pyramids, you know, right? It was to remind the audience in modern-day London that this is a mummy movie, which was one of the real hurdles of the movie in the first place. So that was my part of trying to... Now, I mean, I think, you know, when people heard about this, the big question was, what is Tom Cruise doing in a mummy movie? Is he the mummy? Yeah. Right, yeah. And he's actually really fun, and I really had a good time watching him in this one. But how much of it was, you know, your kind of duty and kind of selling him in a mummy movie? Okay, so look, I was writing this score before Tom was cast, you know? And this was 2015 or something like that. You know, it was to the screenplay. When the story was totally different, as a matter of fact. And Nick's character changed, and then when Tom came on board, they changed it. And then Tom, of course, was involved with the making of the movie, and it changed too. He actually was taking pains to make him kind of... More conflicted. More conflicted, yeah, and had more failures as a human being. Right, that's Tom wanted that. And so it changed. And so, I mean, you know what happened. It's like I wrote this Nick theme back when I was reading the screenplay back, and let's say it was a year and a half ago. And then I was recording the score, and we had like a one pickup session at the very, very, very end of the movie. I mean, we're talking, oh, we'll get the end title and like a couple things. You know, it was gonna be a melodic Abbey wrote. And it was on a Monday, and on Friday night, I was like, you know, and it occurred to me to kind of pop it in my head that this new Nick theme, you know, and of course, Nick's theme is in 17 cues. The only reason I know that is because of what came next. It's all over the movie. And I thought this is a better Nick's theme. And Alex and I talked about this because it's character that evolves. And so we talked, I talked to Tom and talked to Alex. I was like, I think I'm gonna try to rewrite all 17 Nick cues between Friday night and Monday morning and get them orchestra to copy for our sessions at Abbey wrote. And that's what I did because it was like letting go of this child that I was like, the other Nick's theme, I was like, you know, I had lived with it for a big year or plus, but it wasn't the last seconds. Like, you know what, sometimes last second changes are bad, but on this one, I think this is the right move. And so, believe it or not, that's the one that's throughout the movies in this scene. It's all over the soundtrack and, you know, anyway. So next big clip we have is one of the action set pieces towards the first half of the film, which is the whole church attack and the banter, and again, it really shows how you're writing action differently. And that was one of those ones then, though, that weekend that I wrote, because that had Nick's theme. Let's take a look. Okay. All in paper, by the way. Couldn't do a mock-up somewhere in time. Definitely we're going for like old school monster. I mean, clearly. Oh yeah. That's not modern. But yeah, you know, I think that since there is a sense of humor to this. Yeah, I was going to say that, you know, it's horror, but it's fun. Yeah, you need that kind of, there's kind of a, there's a bit of bounciness and also kind of hearkening so much back to the, it's almost like when you hearken back to older school monster scores. Back then, they're serious, is a little cheeky now. Because we associate it with like, you know, kind of old like, and so when you evoke that music, just like using a theremin for aliens and you know, it's kind of now a bit of a cheeky thing. You know, where at first it was like, ooh, what's that scary sound now? So part of doing this is an old school 1930s style, 1940s style score, a lot of it. In this particular scene, I think it made it so it wasn't taking itself too seriously. But you can see, it's interesting to see that now. I'm like, whoa, yeah, they're at that theme. It's very, the theme is like even for the knife or it sets theme and it really helped that there was these clearly delineated themes for these scenes, just to kind of help with the narrative. And it's a real textbook in how to take your music in and out, in and out and how to, yeah. Right, you know, one of the, really the follies of your wall and wall with all that sound effect, I mean, the big joke in there was when he steps on the mummy head and goes, and then I cut out because Tom kind of under his breath goes, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh. Like, and if you're just, you know, going crazy through it and that's why it's really hard to tempt these kind of things? Oh yeah. Because I know you work on temps all the time and it's just a maddening because all your stops are musical, there's no way you can match, you know, things like that. So you end up kind of having to layer like wall to wall it. Right. And then you have to get the director used to, we're gonna bother weave, yeah. Well, let's continue with this actually, probably the moment where I felt the most sympathy for her, and that is. Ah, yes, yeah, she's. It's funny, because I scored that scene two different ways, I remember. And that was the much more atmospheric way. It was, where originally I did it all orchestral kind of thing. And then we kind of wanted to make it a little bit dreamy. That was the thought from Alex. And so it got that way. But yeah, you definitely, I mean, you know, you got this troop of, you know, faceless armed people jumping out of a van and shooting harpoons at someone, you know, you feel like. That's not nice. That's not cool. Yeah, so it's a tricky balance, you know, because you still have to keep her, okay, she's still the main villain, but you have this other group that may be even worse. I mean, I have to get this off my chest. I think one big reason I really enjoy this film as well, it's like Life Force with Tom Cruise. Totally it's Life Force, yeah. Because obviously, later in the film, you get into, I'm gonna go crazy in London, you've got like zombies overrunning the place, double-decker. No, I know. Where Steve Rails back, I mean. Totally, yeah, I know, it definitely harkened back. There was a couple references. Dad, American werewolf and all that, you know, we. Now, you know, the film is, you know, it's done over here, but overseas it's kicking ass. Yeah, I mean, it's so crazy, you know, I talked to Tom right around, like I think it was the Sunday when we knew the numbers. And he actually, he was just chiming in, he saw the performance of the mommy in Poland that we did and he was just chiming in. And then we had a little chat. And then I, you know, he's just used like good mood, everything was cool and all I saw was the domestic of turns and I'm like, well, it's fine, it's fine. But I was like, you know, I was disappointed that it wasn't, you know. But, you know, you always do your best and you just put your foot forward. And then I look at Variety and it shows Global Box Office biggest Tom Cruise opening ever. You know, I'm like, what? So it was kind of, and it's interesting and I remember talking to some of the people in the movie and Tom included and Alex and there is something about making a movie for everyone and you make it for yourself and you make it for everyone. It's not a United States thing. I mean, we all, I mean, it's a little meta, but meta, but it's maybe a little piece-nicky but we all breathe the same air. We're on this globe. We're, you know, it doesn't matter, you know. To me, it's like, you know, we live in countries and we have invisible borders that we draw on maps. But in a sense, I'm not even sure why it's broken down. Like, well, you did well internationally, but the domestic return, you know what I mean? Like, I'm like, well, just all one thing. I mean, it's not like we're on five different planets, you know. We're all breathing the same air. So it's interesting to see, when we went on, we kind of did this little tour where I was out, I did the concert out there and then I went to Paris and England and Greece and we did different premieres and Universal was great. They had me come along and they really put the music forefront, all the premieres, they had the music playing as Tom would come out and do a thing. And it was interesting to see how there and then do the New York one. There's a huge difference. Like when we were in France or when we were, it's just, it was so much of a bigger phenomenon there and you could tell being there. And film music is also different there in terms of how it's perceived. It's much more, here it's a little more niche there. It's almost like, even the more Eastern European you go, it's almost like pop music. Like, it's bizarre. I'm not used to getting recognized at the mall, you know? And that's what would happen there. It was like, you know, it's like kids that just hanging out, the skateboard can come out to me. I'm like, wow, how do they know this thing? It's just it's a different world. So I think certain movies will do better internationally whether it's Tom or not Tom. I think the mummy would be something that translated. But- And it's certainly not the end of the dark universe because these movies are gonna keep on going. Maybe they'll learn lessons or whatever and apply them to the next ones that they do. Yeah, yeah. I think the thing is you don't wanna overcorrect. I think there is a phenomenon that also has a lot to do with what came right before you. Six days before was born a woman opened. Yeah, you know, and then you have, it's such a weird, like there's no particular formula and I always worry about overcorrection, you know? But as long, I think the idea, the music they're very behind of keeping the music as thematic, orchestral and- And kind of old school. Old school, right, yeah. No, also I wanna give a shout out to a really excellent documentary even though they cut me out of it called Score. That's playing the arc light right now. So wonderful, wonderful documentary about the music and you're definitely a future person. Yeah, yeah, that's a, it's cool. I just saw it, you know, I was at the premiere and that was great. And it's really interesting to see just kind of the process of these, you know, different composers and how their similarities down to the point and at one point there's a, I'm talking about how it's the other themes of John Williams that make, you know, where it's, I was talking about Superman at one point and saying how the Krypton theme is what sets up the main theme and we would not know the march as what it is whether for Krypton. And then like two seconds later, John said, it was the same thing. You know, and so it's cool to know that there, this, you know, especially as all of us being film music fans and lovers of it. I mean, I grew up listening to music and I would have loved to have seen this movie about all the film composers that I grew up with, you know, which they actually do cover. You know, I mean, there's Bernard Herman and John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith and they talk about everything, you know, but certainly those were my heroes growing up. Those were my, you know, I had, I mean, I literally made my own stickers on my notebook. They were like, it's like Jerry Goldsmith. And they're like, I have it like, you know, it was, it was weird. Well, then talking about fans, I want to open this up to questions from the awesome people here. Questions from Brian Tyler, anyway. Yeah. Hi, Brian, nice to meet you. Thanks for coming out here today. Sure, thank you. So talking about old school, I know that Universal also recruited you to compose the longer version of the fanfare for the 100th anniversary. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about how that came about where your inspirations were for that? That's, that's where my, they're a good omen of putting Jerry Goldsmith on my notebook. I'm true. So Jerry Goldsmith wrote the original pa-pa-pa-pa-kunk-kunk theme and when it was a 100 year anniversary universal, they did the new logo and, and so they brought me on and they wanted me to kind of, I wanted to honor the Jerry theme and also there had never been a, like a longer, sweet version of it with it had sections and, you know, different movements to it. So that was really cool. Now the thing was is that Universal, it was interesting because I was doing a movie over there and I had off handedly was just talking about some of the relationship that Jerry and I had, you know. And, you know, I'm obviously a huge, huge fan and the respecter of him. And we also worked on so many movies and projects where he did the original and then I ended up, I mean, it's insane. The timeline. Well, and for timeline, of course, he scored it. Yeah. That's how we met. And that was, I was awkward because, you know, I'm feeling, I was replacing the score and he's my hero. It's just bizarre, you know, and I didn't want to hear the score because I know I just cry and I'd be like, I can't do better. But I saw him at the Star Trek Christmas Shindig and all was forgiven. Anyway, so yeah, I had, because I was scoring Star Trek so he did Star Trek the movie. I did Star Trek the show. I did Aliens vs. Predator. He did the original Aliens. I did Rambo. He did the original First Blood. I did, you know, the timeline. I mean, it just goes on and on. Mummy, he did the mummy. Like, it's crazy how much we just accidentally been connected. So that was really the thing that capped it all off for me and I was glad I did. It was a huge honor. And I hear it all the time. I mean, every time I see a movie from Universal, there's no way I can get away from myself. Yeah, maybe, but I want to. I'm on a plane anywhere. It's like, they do so many movies and here it comes. I'm going to run from here. Anyway, yeah. Questions, anyone? You said that you did it from, like, a Friday night to a Monday where you did 17 reviews and you did it all by paper. Was that just going on piano or do you have a time with you or are you coming home from work? Yeah, it was scary. No, yeah, it was literally on paper. I wrote the theme on piano. pretty much only had the piano at that stage. I played it on the phone for Alex, on the piano, and Tom, and they loved it. And so I basically, they're like, OK, I don't know, but I guess, look, we trust you. We have this other thing, if we really need it. I think that was in the back of their minds. They didn't say that. But they're just like, we'll trust you, and we'll go ahead. It was literally going down and writing it on, just like, OK, clarinet. And it's like really, really old school, and it's in your head. And you're hoping that when the orchestra plays it, what's in your head translates. Because there is a variance. You find out things when you're mocking up, like, whoa, that's not right. That octave's ridiculous, even in your brain, for some reason, it sounded good. For whatever reason, we had no time on that day to fix things. It was like trying to do 17 cues and a 10 and a half minute end title, and all this. And one day it was insane. Luckily, we weren't doing it stacked. We were just recording. But it really turned out that all the accidents where I'd hear something and I'd be like, oh, that's different than what was in my head a little bit. Like a harmony part, just the timbre of harmonics on the strings versus just playing very high, all these little tiny differences I liked. So I think it improved. The accidents improved it. But it was really hair-raising. It was super close. And the copies and orchestrators hated me because I was doing this. I mean, it was like, it was Sunday night, and I was still writing maybe six more cues, still writing them. And it's like the next morning. So we were literally, the copies were going while the session was going. We're printing in the next room. I mean, it was like, at a certain point we caught up with them, and there was no more music. And we would wait for the sheet music to just be brought in physically, and quit. Well, it was nuts. Ah, Evan. Hey, Mike. What would you say you've learned during studio films that you didn't possess as a film composer or composer doing independent films? Yeah. A film composer needs to possess your studio films. For sure. I think there's two answers to that. One is that the difference between the studio films and the independent films is very distinct. But I think, and I'll go to that in a second, the thing that I found was even more of a hurdle was going, how do you go from independence to studio films? It's almost as big of a jump as going from no films to independent films. And because there needs to be something, the vast majority of independent films are good as a composer to get other independent films. It's very difficult to do one that a studio says, we're going to trust you with this gazillion dollar movie. Because the amount that's on the line in shareholders and stuff is just crazy. And for me, I kind of just got lucky. I did frailty, and William Friedkin loved frailty, and he was doing the hunted. He was directing that. And Sherri Lansing, who William Friedkin was married to, is president of Paramount. So when he says, I want to use this guy, this young dude, that's done some independent films for my gigantic studio film, we got the green light. So it was just a kind of a bizarre circumstance. But then once you get there, boy, things change. It's like, wow, the number of people that approve themes and need to write off on it is just enormous. And to think, when you're talking about, let's say we talk about melody, and we're like, what do you think of this melody? Between composers and musicians, you would find arguments. And these are the people that actually know how to do it. When you're talking about the director, who has his own vision, four, five producers that all kind of, they all have their little in-fighting, then you have the studio executives, and then maybe someone that's from distribution and marketing, and also, they all have these different opinions about what music should do. And about half of it is just not applicable to reality, you know? But you need to kind of learn to navigate the waters of director says he wants something distinctly different than what producer wants. And they both say, I'm in charge of the film. You do what I want. I want it, I mean, as much as I want a metal song, I want a waltz. Like, you get things that are like completely, I got a note like that. Actually, one point on this, by the way. It was like they wanted a Metallica type of thing for a thing. That was the note. Can we do Metallica? And then the other side was Bernard Herman. So you have to do it so you convince both sides that you've done. What you do is write for the film to help them, help the movie. And then you put it in a way that shows that you've internalized the note and Metallica does use their view. I found that, well, they actually use a diminished, you know, they found a kind of a similarity between psycho and Metallica. And so harmonically, it fit both. So those are the tricky balances they had to do outside of writing the music. And you find that there's this whole other aspect to your job that you did not even know was there that is only on studio films. And that answers. Do you have any thoughts about how it was like working with Bill Paxson, the director, with royalty? Oh, God. I mean, Bill was amazing, a good friend. Bill, it's like one of those things. If Bill, he kept getting cast in roles that he couldn't turn down, right? You know, and he had cool shows on HBO and all sorts of things as well. He was a great actor. But I think his best talent was directing. And there was so much more there. It's a shame that he passed away for so many reasons. He was a great guy, a great friend. But at the same time, I felt that he was so distinct to be able to direct frailty, which was a great Gothic thriller, and then turn right around and do the greatest game ever played, which was like a beautiful turn of the century drama, true story. I mean, they could not have been more different. And both are two of my very best films. And such a musical guy. And here's something else. He, working with him, was awesome because he, like this Nick theme, his way of previewing the score was me sitting in the piano. That was it. And then we would go and I'd conduct it. But he was old school. He knew it. He was so melody-based. He's like, you nailed it, right? You cracked it if I do. He knew. He could tell if I was off or I was on from the piano, which was great. Miss Bill, for sure. Me, as well. Marcus? Hey, how come you've come up with such a driving, pulsing score for the Borg episode on Enterprise? Borg. I love, well, OK, so I'm a giant tracker. I think everyone knows that. And I always felt that the Borg were the most menacing, speaking alien villains. I would say the alien is the most menacing over. It's just so unpredictable. But the Borg was just this, just as a relentless nature. They're mantra, of course. Resistance is futile. It's just motherfuckers. They're just like, you know. And so I wanted to have, then we've used some choir for that, actually, to give it kind of a otherworldly nature, but this driving, you know, relentless mode was really, I think, just represented the freight trainess of them. They just did not, like, it's like a freight train when it's cruising along. It doesn't look at traffic and it kind of makes stops or anything. They're not either. There's like, mowing down people, destroying worlds. They're just like, yeah, not worried about anything. So there's no, in the sense that the metaphor sticks is that they're relentless. So, hey, bye. One of my favorite pieces, what it is, I run a play on a piece of film music that's your US Open theme. Oh, thanks. And I was just wondering, how did you approach writing that piece of music because you obviously didn't have pictures to art, so? No. So like, what were your inspirations and how did you feel about doing that? Yeah, and that piece is like, eight minutes or something. And it was cool because that was also a really old school method. That was on paper. And it was just going through themes and kind of setting up and trying to come about with something. Now, I didn't do it in a vacuum. I started writing a vacuum. And then the melody was, I just kind of did it with nothing. And then I was like, you know what, I got to be inspired. So I actually watched the Tiger Woods. He's great, you know, the one where he does that. Forget which Open was when he made that incredible putt. And I watched. I got ahold of instead of the highlights, I watched the actual footage from it. And I was lucky enough they sent it to me, even following just him around. And him waiting for other golfers and kind of the stress and the whole thing. And I thought, wow, this is like a whole dramatic back storyline that you almost don't get as much when you're just watching it because they tend to just go with whoever's on the most important hole. So to me, it was like, there is drama to this. There's disappointment. And there's moments. And then it ends triumphantly. But I really needed something. In a way, I guess I'm just a foreign film composer because I'm impressionistic. I wanted something to write to. And so that's what I did, you know? You seem to be getting a lot of big assignments and doing a lot of action films where earlier you were doing horror. One of the scores I liked by you best was for the small films standing up. Oh, yeah. Occasionally for something like that for a breather. Oh, all the time. Yeah, that kind of there was a few in there. Around the Same Time Truth was another one. And yeah, I love dramas. I want to change it up. And I'm lucky that even these big action films kind of have nothing to do with each other so much in terms of music. Going Power Rangers really didn't sound anything like Mummy didn't sound anything like Fast and Furious. They're just different, just totally. You can't even use the same scales. But so I've been lucky in that way, but I could see how it could very easily be a much different thing where you're doing the same kind of thing over and over, which I couldn't do it. I would just turn down stuff. But in the in-between time, I kind of have to, in a sense, now I get asked to do movies way ahead of time. And you work, you build a group of friends that are directors. And they kind of tell you what's up. And you do those movies. This is your squad. You want to continue on with them. And so it's almost regardless of what they're doing. If I have the time, I'll work with my very good friends that are directors. And it's up to them, in a way, too. I do have some things coming up where they call me. They're very different. I'm doing a romantic comedy coming up. I'm doing in this next year. There's a bunch of different, very, very different things. I'm doing a really old-school kind of fantasy film that's going to be really interesting. I'm not saying what any of these are, as you can tell. And Standing Up, which is really a really beautiful drama about two kids. But DJ Caruso directed that. Who directed, like, Triple X, the Xander Cage movie, and Eagle Eye, and Disappointment Room. And so I've done all of his films since we met. Save one, I couldn't do it. So in a sense, that's really the great thing is when a director does something completely out of the box. I mean, early on in my career, it was the same way. Greg Yatane has directed this movie, Plan B, which is a comedy. It was all big band score. It was jazz. All jazz. And then, and I was doing jazz scores for somebody in that year. Big empty? Yeah, yeah, big empty last call. I was doing jazz score after jazz score after jazz score. So I was like, the jazz guy, right? And then Greg got Children of Dune as an assignment to direct. And they're like, do you think he can do a lot of this stuff? You're kind of a jazz guy, you know what I'm saying? And of course, it was because of Greg saying, no, no, no. He can do this. He can nail Children of Dune. He read the books, and when he was a kid. And we had to kind of convince Disney that I could do Children of Dune, which of course now you look back, it's like, come on. That's like the one thing that actually ended up being that stuck with me early on more than any other score. Yeah, great, great mini-series, too. So what's your approach in terms of a tempo? Whenever a year is going, what's your approach? What do you look, you know? Yeah, I mean, tempo, I'm notorious for changing up tempos. But I think that's kind of going to be my first instrument. That was drummer, you know? And so I think the idea for me, there's one thing that I found that psychologically, it's a psychoacoustic kind of mind, jet on mind trick, which is when you're scoring these action sequences, sometimes in a fast enforcement, they're 17 minutes. You want to get faster as you go. That's the natural reaction, but if you really want to get faster, it's so, over that amount of time, it's so gradual, you don't feel it. And so what I would do with the tempo, for instance, in that sequence, situation, I would ramp up the tempo so it felt naturally. I wouldn't worry about it. I would just start ramping up and feel more exciting. And then I found if I pretty much multiplied where I was at by about a third, basically making your eighth-nose triplets, it's slower, sounds faster. So you can downshift the tempo. So you go up, you go, so you're going, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. You're slower, but it sounds faster. And then you start, then you do it again. And you can, it almost is that trick of where you hear the, I forget to write what it's called, it's basically like a Mobius strip of sound. You're continually rising, even though people drop off and come back down and go up. So for tempo, and at least in action, I found that you had to be really smart about doing it so you feel like, wow, that was a 17, 20 minute sequence, but I still felt I was revving up the whole time. Any more questions? All right. So you can't give us any hints? I know. Well, yeah, I'm trying to think, how do I put this? Yeah, I think you're gonna be excited about it. I am, I'm really excited. Well, I want to give a huge shout out to our Taylor White Creature Features, Nikki Walsh and Mike Noblek at Backlot Music, Eric Stratman, and Brian Tyler. Thank you so much for joining us. Gales Ryder. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming out.