Hans Zimmer HARDtalk


Hans Zimmer

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You're up to date on BBC News.

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Time now for HARDtalk.

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Welcome to HARDtalk. I'm Shaun Ley.

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From his Oscar winning score for The Lion King,

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through 12 Years A Slave to a series of superhero blockbusters, including

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the latest Batman vs Supermanm, Hans Zimmer is, as one director put

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it, "quite simply the contemporary composer to work with".

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German born, British educated, he never received formal musical

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training and he's a champion of technology.

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He is jealous rivals say he isn't a real musician.

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Does he think all of the superhero films are proof

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of creative exhaustion in Hollywood, and is the technology he

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so loves killing the music makers?

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Hans Zimmer, welcome to HARDtalk.

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You called your talent a gift, rather than something you worked at.

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Is that how you think of composing?

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I think the operative word in music is play

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and people used to always ask me, "when did you start playing music?"

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and I used to make up a date, when I was six years old, or whatever.

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It was never true.

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You had some lessons?

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Yeah, I had two weeks of piano lessons, but it was very dramatic.

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My mum said when I was a kid, because I was just playing,

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"Do you want a piano teacher?

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"Do you want to learn?"

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I thought he was going to teach me that stuff that was in my head,

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to somehow magically appear in my fingers.

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Instead I had to play Mozart.

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So I was just rebelling against that.

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Within two weeks he turned to my mother and said, "it's either him

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or me", and fortunately she made the right choice for me.

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It could have gone the other way!

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So there were ideas trapped in your head and you needed some way

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to bring them out.

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Now that you can bring them out, where do the ideas come from?

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I have...

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Well, I was going to say I have no idea.

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I do have an idea.

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The idea is...

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I live this rather luxurious life which is basically this -

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when you're a kid and your mum tells you bedtime stories, about the best

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thing that can happen to you, I get grown men phoning me telling

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me, "I want to tell you a story".

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A director like Chris Nolan phones me and goes,

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"I want to tell you a story".

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And as he is telling the story I'm starting to hear sounds and I'm

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starting to hear fragments of tune.

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Then with great hubris I say, "Yes!

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"I have an idea!

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"I can do this!"

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And then I sit there for weeks and weeks and go, "Why did I ever

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say yes to this because I have no idea how to do it!"

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So there's no eureka moment?

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There is a slog?

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There are small, clawed at moments, yes.

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It's really when you watch it with an audience for the first time,

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you really know where you are going wrong and where you are going right.

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And...

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You know, look, it is a struggle, but it's a glorious struggle.

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I wouldn't swap it for anything else.

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Let's pause.

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You mentioned Christopher Nolan, we'll look at an extract

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from one of the films you composed for him, Interstellar,

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and this is where Matthew McConaughey's character is in the

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car with this son and daughter and they're in hot pursuit of a drone.

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GENTLE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS.

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It's an Indian Air Force drone!

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When you began work on that score, how much

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about the film did you know?

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Ah.

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I ran into Chris somewhere and he said, "How about this?"

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If he were to write one page and not tell me what

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the movie was about, would I give him one day and write whatever was

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coming to me from this page.

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And so this envelope appeared, I had a free Sunday.

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I opened it and it was a beautiful type written,

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not computer, type written page.

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A letter which was basically a fable about a father and his son.

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Now, I have a son and Chris knows him very well.

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It was very poignant and very moving and in return I wrote

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a love letter in music to my son, or about my relationship with my son.

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I phoned Chris's house at about ten o'clock at night

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and caught Emma, his wife, on the phone and said, "I've done it,

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do you want me to send it over?"

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And she goes, "Well, actually, Chris is curiously antsy.

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"Do you mind if he comes by?"

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So he came down and sat down on my couch and I said I'd play him this

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little fragile, very personal piece.

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I can't look at people when I play them something for the first time

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just in case the sort of fleeting disgust creeps across their face.

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So I get to the end of it and I turn around and I say, "So,

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Chris, what do you think?"

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And he goes...

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"Hmm.

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I suppose I'd better make the movie now."

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I said, "What is the movie?"

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And he starts describing space and this huge canvas.

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At one point I interrupted and said, "Look,

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all I've done is I've written you this fragile, really personal tune.

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"How does this all fit in?"

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And he said, "I now know where the heart of the story is".

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We just carried on working like this, through conversation.

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He was shooting, I'd be here writing away and it really was...

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I can honestly say it was a co-creation.

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Absolutely hand in glove, the two of us working together.

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Not always typical of how a music composition in a film works.

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No, this was highly atypical.

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But Chris always...

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We've worked together now for about 12 years.

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So he just...

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He tries to sort of give me something...

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He tries to make it fun for me, he tries to make it interesting.

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He tries to shake it up a bit.

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How much do you think he's revealed about you by the music you produced?

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Ah...

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That's a question I didn't expect, but I shall answer it truthfully.

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First of all, we're speaking in my second language here and I can hide

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behind words brilliantly, but I feel I can't ever hide behind music.

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That's why I can't look at Chris when I play him something

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for the first time.

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I think that is the true me, in the music.

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So music is your conversation in a sense?

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Not only that, I think I am completely exposed and

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you can completely see into me and I have to have the courage to bare

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my emotion and to be accounted for.

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Elmer Bernstein, who composed films, as you would well know,

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for scores like To Kill a Mockingbird, Magnificent Seven

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and so on, said, "The dirty little secret of film composition is that

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we are not musicians at all, we are dramatists".

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Absolutely.

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This is the conversation.

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Chris and I only talk about story.

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Or any of the directors I work with.

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I always get asked, how do you talk about music with a director?

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Well, you don't.

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You play the music and you talk about the story

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and you try to stick on story.

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Let's pause again and hear another of your compositions,

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one that many will recognise immediately, one you won an Oscar

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for, the score from The Lion King.

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Now, The Lion King, that does reveal something about Hans Zimmer.

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Oh, so much.

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I didn't want to do the movie.

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I had never done what I called "a cartoon",

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they're called animated movies if you have some grace about it.

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But I had a six-year-old daughter, Zoe Zimmer, who is now 28, and like

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all fathers I wanted to show off.

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I wanted to take my princess to the ball.

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And I thought, oh, it gives me an opportunity to take

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her to a premiere.

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So I took this, thinking it would be fun, fuzzy animals, et cetera.

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But the core of the story is really about a father

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dying and the child left behind.

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My father died when I was six and suddenly I found myself having to

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confront something that I had never had the opportunity to confront.

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You had a very close relationship with your mother and you didn't

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really talk much about your father?

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No, never.

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In that very Germanic way.

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We have no emotions, we are German.

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That sort of thing.

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You just don't talk about these things.

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So suddenly I find myself confronted with...

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The only way I know how to write is you have to write from the heart.

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And I really wrote this requiem for my father.

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And part of what was interesting for me was, don't ever say no, don't

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turn things down because there's always something in there that will

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be personal that you can latch onto and that'll surprise you.

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So it started out as something to impress

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your daughter and it ended up being a way of resolving some unaddressed

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emotions about your dead father?

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And actually the clip you showed, my friend who is that voice

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at the beginning of the film, and this was two years ago

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and we realised it was the first time we ever played it live.

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The first time we ever played it together since we wrote it.

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And of course you weren't able to be at the recording, were you?

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Because there were doubts about your politics for the South Africans.

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Because by that point I had done two anti-apartheid movies and I remember

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being in this meeting at Disney where they were discussing,

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with me in the room, who would take over the score when Hans gets killed

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or imprisoned in South Africa?

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And finally the head of music says, you know, look, you're all crazy,

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he's not going!

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And I was incredibly...

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What do you mean I'm not going?

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You get so involved in these things that you do become

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a little bit reckless.

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Well, you have to be reckless to do it.

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I was happy to go to Africa and die for this movie.

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So my friends went and I was incredibly envious.

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You describe yourself earlier this year in an interview with the Times

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as like "a little dog who sees a postman's uniform and I still

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like to snap at the legs".

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There's a kind of subversive spirit in some of the early films, but now

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you've become the sort of go-to man for the Hollywood blockbuster.

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Something's changed, hasn't it?

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If you look at Dark Knight, etc, Dark Knight is a 100% punk score.

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I mean, it's just...

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I hide it a bit, but if you talk to the orchestral players, and most

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of these people I've worked with all my life, they know there's a bit

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of the old Sex Pistols and mainly The Clash creeps into things.

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Of course you were involved with Ultravox back in 1980.

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A little bit.

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There's a whole musical world that predates your cinema work.

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Absolutely.

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I was a starving session musician in London.

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In fact, I feel slightly guilty being here because the last thing I

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did here was a miniseries for the BBC and I believe I went ?25 over

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budget and I remember hearing...

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Probably your name's on a blacklist now.

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No, the immortal words, "You'll never work for the BBC again".

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So I went to Hollywood and did Rain Man.

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And the rest, as they say, is history.

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Yeah, exactly.

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You are now back in Europe and about to tour a live show.

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I wonder whether music that's been conceived

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for the cinema can really make that transition to the concert hall?

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Well, that was my experiment when we did the Hammersmith shows.

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Because of course you have...

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It has become more and more of a trend that you have

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the movie and an orchestra.

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And for me, this is my personal opinion, what happens is

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I get really excited about the orchestra for the first five

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minutes and then if the movie is any good I am fully in the movie and

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they might as well not be there.

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Is that what worried you about audiences?

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They would come to a concert and, actually,

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they wouldn't be that interested?

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Yeah, they wouldn't be that interested.

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Yes, so I had a couple of ideas, all concerts, because the other form

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is that you go to the Hollywood Bowl and there is a conductor

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and the orchestra, and your evening basically is a man with his back to

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you and a bunch of people reading the paper,

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so it looks like an old marriage.

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I thought, this is not it either.

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So, you have recreated the spectacle, but in a sense,

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with the singers and light effects, isn't that an admission that this

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is music that has to complement a visual experience,

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it doesn't stand in its own right?

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I try to write every piece on consignment to stand on its two

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feet, and with false modesty, I have heard these pieces performed without

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amazing lights etc and they do work.

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Because I think part of it...

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Here is the thing.

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You are supposed to serve the movie and to remember the days when it was

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background music and all of this.

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I remember hearing Walter Goldsmith say once if you wrote it,

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he wants you to hear it.

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Be bold.

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In a desire to be bold, have we ended up in a position where there

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is just too much music in movies?

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I totally agree with you.

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Telling us how to feel at a particular moment rather than

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letting the acting and natural sound and the pauses

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and director bring that out of us?

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Weirdly I might have thought about this.

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I did a movie called The Thin Red Line, and it was a long

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process and involved process that made me think about what we can do.

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I realised what my job should be, at its best, it's to give you the

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opportunity to open the door and say to you, you have permission to feel.

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I'm not going to tell you what to feel or manipulate you in that way,

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and Ridley Scott used to say sentimentality is under emotion,

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and I think he is right.

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Maybe I was writing a bit more, dotting every I, and crossing every

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T, in the old days, but now it is more of a dialogue

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between the audience and myself.

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Here is some more of that dialogue, from the film that is the latest one

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associated with Hans Zimmer, and that is that man versus Superman.

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You know you can't win this.

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It is suicide.

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The greatest gladiator match in the history of the world.

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The son of Krypton versus the man of Gotham.

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It is time you learned what it means to be a man.

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Stay down.

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If I wanted it, you would be dead already.

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In its opening weekend, it grossed $420 billion worldwide.

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Million dollars.

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Sorry, million dollars.

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It is still a lot to gross in an opening weekend.

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I wonder if this film illustrates part of the problem that Hollywood

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has gone into, rehashing old ideas.

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Let me talk about it from a personal point of view.

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I did that man with Chris 12 years ago, so the Dark Knight Trilogy

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might be 12 years to you, but it is longer for me.

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How should I say it?

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I have officially retired from the super hero business

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because it is just me.

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I started to find, this one was very hard for me to do, to try to find

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new language and settling fresh.

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I did it in collaboration with a friend of mine who just did

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the Mad Max movies.

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We have been friends forever.

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That was very important to have another voice.

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Do you agree with what Steven Spielberg had to say

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in February, when he told The Associated Press, we were around

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when the Western died and there will be a time when the superhero movie

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goes the way of the Western?

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Do you think we might be reaching that point?

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I think we still have a few superhero movies but ...

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If somebody gives you another envelope

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and says another story about a bloke in tights with special powers,

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does your heart sink slightly?

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As a cheque you probably look at it and say maybe my heart rises again.

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I really and truly, in my heart believe no-one can write for money.

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You can't be inspired.

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Money is not very inspiring.

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Fear of a deadline is.

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If you look at this as logical characters, some kind of weird

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extension of Greek myths etc...

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I remember we were told at the beginning of this,

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we are just doing this one movie.

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Maybe in 100 years, because John Williamson did Superman

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before, there will be a different actor, different voices.

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It is just part of the mythology.

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So maybe a pause would be a good thing, not necessarily

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the end of the idea.

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Every movie comes down to the same thing, which is do

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we have a story or don't we?

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You mentioned that 12 years of your life was spent

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on the that man films.

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When you composed one of those films,

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that must have some painful memories for you because of what happened,

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the murder of 12 years people watching that film in Colorado.

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We had just arrived and I was supposed to do a phone interview.

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The journalist asked me for my comment about the tragedy,

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and I had not heard about it.

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He told me, so I went, I'm devastated.

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The whole day I was thinking about that word, devastated, how

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everybody would seem devastated.

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I picked up the phone and found a choir that I know, and a studio, and

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wrote a piece of music that night.

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I then recorded it the next morning with a choir, no words.

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I wanted the families, the survivors, to feel there were voices

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at the other end of the world, like arms reaching around them.

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I realised words were not the way I communicated, it had to be music.

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It sounds trivial, but we were so happy we had finished

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the movie, and it really was the end of an era for us.

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Since then, of course, that piece itself has taken on a whole

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other meaning, unfortunately...

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It means much more with what is going on in the world than it did

0:21:460:21:50

in that moment in time now.

0:21:500:22:37

That song, which you recorded to help support

0:22:370:22:39

the victims' relief fund, you put it on Facebook initially.

0:22:390:22:42

You are very engaged with technology and are a technology enthusiast.

0:22:420:22:44

Do you worry that video killed the radio star and maybe technology

0:22:440:22:47

is in danger of killing music?

0:22:470:22:49

I can only speak personally, and I will say it's like this: You can

0:22:490:22:52

accuse Hollywood of all sorts of dastardly things and everything you

0:22:520:22:55

say about it will be true, but there is one thing it does really, it

0:22:550:22:59

commissions orchestral music on a daily basis, and it is the last

0:22:590:23:02

place on earth which commissions orchestral music on a daily basis.

0:23:020:23:05

If we lose the orchestras, it is not just about my brothers

0:23:050:23:08

in arms losing their income...

0:23:080:23:09

There would be a rift in our humanity

0:23:090:23:11

if we do not have that cultural gift of being able to see an orchestra.

0:23:110:23:15

In that way, we actually serve quite a noble, I don't want to

0:23:150:23:18

be that pretentious, purpose.

0:23:180:23:19

I am clear that I don't want technology...

0:23:190:23:21

And I am good at it because I have been doing it since the 70s, I don't

0:23:210:23:25

want it to replace any musicians.

0:23:250:23:26

You know something, it can't relate.

0:23:260:23:28

Music is an interaction between the audience and the performance.

0:23:280:23:31

If we lose that, we lose a huge chunk of conversation.

0:23:310:24:13

Thank you so much for having this conversation with me on HARDtalk.

0:24:130:24:16

Thank you.

0:24:160:24:43

Hello there.

0:24:430:24:43

Clear skies for many parts of the United Kingdom overnight, allowing

0:24:430:24:46

temperatures to drop away sharply.

0:24:460:24:47

It will be a chilly start across the board.

0:24:470:24:50

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