When composer Carter Burwell starts to work on a score for a film, he tries to find the thing that isn’t there on screen – using music to create a dissonance with the visuals of the film.
In filmmaker Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine,” that meant writing something warm. The film stars John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA agents stationed in Santiago, Chile in 1973 who go on a trip to Easter Island. If you know anything about Chile in 1973, you can guess their intentions for the South American country’s government are anything but pure.
Burwell has worked with McDonagh on multiple films, and also is a frequent collaborator with the Coen Brothers – so he knows a little something about darkly comedic films. But, because of the darkness at the heart of this story, Burwell thought the music necessarily needed to communicate the deep love between the film’s two main characters – the love which the emotional arc of the film hinges on.
The film released in theaters on Nov. 6, but I recently spoke with Burwell about his creative process, what he likes about McDonagh’s work, and how he scored his first job on 1984’s “Blood Simple.” This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You’ve had a very long career, at this point. What do you really look for in a project before you decide to come on to a movie at this point in your career?
Carter Burwell: Well, definitely one thing would be the opportunity to not repeat myself. Because, you’re right – once you’ve done enough projects, that does become a thing. I’ve been fortunate to work with filmmakers like Martin [McDonagh], or the Coen Brothers, who they themselves are trying not to repeat themselves too much. So that helps. But that’s one thing.
If the film offers the opportunity for music to play some different role, then that’s interesting to me. The opportunity to use new instruments I haven’t used before. But the main thing – it’s going to be the least interesting answer – but I just want it to be a really interesting film. I want to trust that the director is a good director, and that the story is something you haven’t seen before.
It’s interesting you bring up instrumentation. I was curious while watching this movie, how do you consider place when you’re writing music? This takes place on Easter Island in Chile. Does that affect what instruments you use, or the melodic structure?
Burwell: So, it’s not necessary that a score refer to the place of the film. But ideally for me, I want every film and every score to be its own little world – where you hear it and you think of that film. You wouldn’t think of any other film. In order to give a score a character like that, a specific character, the idea of location and specific instruments – that can help with that. So it is something that I do, is try to find some instrument that is suggested by the film that I haven’t used before. In this case, because we are in Rapa Nui [indigenous name for Easter Island] in Chile, I was looking at instruments from there.
Rapa Nui doesn’t really have a specific instrumental tradition. There’s one instrument – this is a little digression – but there’s one instrument that they have there that I really did want to get into the score. And I think we did, at one point. As you know, if you’ve seen the film, there are a lot of wild horses there. They have an instrument that is made out of a horse’s jaw, where if you hold one side of the jaw and you slap the other side, the teeth rattle. It makes a rattling sound.
Wow!
Burwell: I had never heard of that before, and that was pretty interesting. But, mostly in this score, I went with the Chilean instruments. They have these little guitars called the charango and ronroco. Which, at the moment you hear them, you think of Andean music, like Chile, Argentina, Peru. They’re beautiful, and they’re very warm. I thought, well, this kind of puts us in the place. It also doesn’t sound like anything certainly that I’ve done before. So I began with that. But, you know, scores don’t have to be location specific – but it’s a good way to have a new flavor, right?
I was reading an interview with you, and something you said really struck me. When you’re working on a film, you want the music to add to the film in such a way that the audience isn’t just experiencing one thing at one time – creating dissonance, basically, and trying to find the thing that’s not there. How does that ethos apply to “Wild Horse Nine?” What dissonance were you trying to create? When I think about the warmth of the music versus the darkness of what the characters are actually doing there, that’s the tension for me.
Burwell: You’ve totally focused in on it. Even when I read the script, I thought – and this is what I said to Martin after I read the script, I think – that really one of the main jobs for the score is to play the love between these two men. I don’t think I’m giving anything away to say they’re CIA assassins. They’re gruff, they’re fighting most of the time, arguing. But for the film to work, and in particular for the end of the film to work, you have to believe that they really do love each other, that there’s really a sincere affection. I felt that warmth, which is something you don’t see on screen hardly at all, was actually a very important role for the score in this film.
It definitely comes through, I think particularly at the end, which did make me tear up – I don’t want to spoil anything. You mentioned you read the script – I’m sure it differs for each filmmaker, but is that something that usually happens for you? How late in the process do you come on as a composer, usually?
Burwell: I always read the scripts, partly because the film often hasn’t been shot at the point which they start talking about hiring a composer. But when it’s also a filmmaker that I’ve worked with before, like Martin, he knows that I’m going to do it … so he sends me the script, and I read it before he shoots. We have a chat – it’s not terribly substantive. Unless there’s music on screen, it’s not that important. Like, on “The Banshees of Inisherin,” one part of the story is that there’s a fiddler, and he’s writing a tune that he calls “The Banshees of Inisherin.” So, right away, the question was, well Carter, are you going to write that? Martin told me, ‘Oh, you know, Brendan Gleeson actually wants to write it!’ [Laughs] So, we have those kinds of discussions. And in this case, yes, we talked about the music playing love.
I read the script, but I don’t really start writing music usually until I see a rough cut. Because there’s so many different ways to shoot a script. A script is not actually a film. So, that’s usually when I really start, is when there’s a rough cut.
What is your collaborative relationship like with Martin? Again, I’m sure this differs for each director, but do you send him something and then he notes you, and you discuss it? Do you talk about scenes together when you watch them?
Burwell: Martin is in London, and I’m in New York. So, if by chance we were both in the same city, I might actually just come by the cutting room – which I do with the Coen Brothers, because their cutting room is actually just a few blocks away from where I live in New York. But that’s pretty unique. Almost no one else I work with is based in New York. So with Martin, we watched the film through together physically in London – it’s called the spotting session. We talk about where music should go, where and what it’s supposed to say. Why is it here? What are we trying to achieve?
But then I go back to New York, and I’m basically sending him sketches that I do on the computer that try to represent [the score], using electronic instruments – something that sounds like what it would finally be. Then he sends back [thoughts]. With Martin, we usually do it by email. He’s a writer, so he can express it pretty well. The only time that ever goes off the rails is if he’s being sarcastic, and I don’t realize he’s being sarcastic [laughs]. But that’s usually how we do it. I send him things over the internet, he replies over the internet, and we just do that on a regular basis, at least once a week as the whole thing develops. But I don’t see him. I saw him at the first spotting session. I didn’t see him again physically until we were recording in London.
I feel like that would be kind of difficult for me if I were collaborating with someone.
Burwell: I gotta tell you, it’s not ideal. I don’t know what the alternative is. The reason is that music is so hard to talk about. Even on Zoom!
I know.
Burwell: If I’m actually in the room with someone, I can see their body language. I can see what their eyes are doing. I really have a sense of what the music is doing to them emotionally, you know? I can’t get that at a long distance. It’s not great. It’s a trade off that comes from my living in New York. But I agree. It’s challenging.
You’ve worked with Martin a number of times, as you have with some other filmmakers. So, I’m assuming you like his films and the way he works. What draws you to his movies and his work?
Burwell: I do really like his films and the way he works, yes. You have to start with the way that he writes, I think. Which is right from the beginning, right from before he was even a filmmaker, as a playwright – his writing is unique. I think everyone would say there’s a dark humor, but part of what he does that’s unique is even one sentence might begin dark and end with a punchline, or might begin light and end with a threat. When a scene begins, you just have no idea where it’s going to end. It’s always a surprise, and I find that fascinating, because it’s just shaking my brain back and forth as to what I’m watching. I personally love that. I think a lot of the humor isn’t even really necessarily – it’s not from jokes, it’s just from the total unexpected directions that the dialogue takes you.
He keeps you on your toes. I also think, for me, it’s so much to do with the performances too – the actors and how they perform the words is so important.
Burwell: He has sort of a repertory company of actors that he works with again and again, and they know how to do his dialogue. And in this case, it’s really just amazing.
I was reading another interview with you, and you said something I found kind of interesting. I feel like when I usually talk to composers, a lot of them are like, music was my thing from a very young age – I knew I wanted to do this. You said that you didn’t really like playing written music as a child. You liked improvisation, you liked making things up. I’m curious, when did the idea of working in music really solidify as a possibility for you?
Burwell: I mean to be honest, I still don’t like writing music. I only like making things up, and then I just sort of move on. But, you know, I guess in college – as an adolescent, I would play piano, as you say, improvisationally, just as therapy. It really worked for me. I think young people should all, at some point, be forced as I was to have some music lessons so that they can at least pick up an instrument and bang away at it, because that’s an important part of, I think, adolescence.
So that was how I came to be playing the piano, was just for myself … When college ended, it was the punk rock era. I managed to convince a couple of my friends from college – why don’t we just go to New York and be a band? It was this period where you weren’t expected to know how to play the instrument, right? As long as you’ve got some energy, and you’ve got something to say! So, that’s what we did. My friends lasted a year or two. I ended up just really liking it and playing with friends, having a few bands that I would play in and record with. Out of that, just by coincidence, I got a call one day about people my age who were making a movie with no money, and … would I do music for it?
I certainly didn’t think of myself as a composer. But I said yes, and the filmmakers ended up saying yes. That was the Coen Brothers with their first film “Blood Simple.” That was fun. I didn’t expect it would happen again. But when that movie came out, other people started calling. I do really love it. I love film, I love music. And here I am, like, 40 years later, and I still really, really enjoy it.
An amazing twist of fate, that those were the filmmakers who called you up.
Burwell: I know. Young composers, or composers-to-be, ask me for advice on how to get your first job – my story is so unhelpful.
