Hans Zimmer HARDtalk

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Time now for HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk. I'm Shaun Ley.

From his Oscar winning score for The Lion King,

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

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

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

German born, British educated, he never received formal musical

training and he's a champion of technology.

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

Does he think all of the superhero films are proof

of creative exhaustion in Hollywood, and is the technology he

so loves killing the music makers?

Hans Zimmer, welcome to HARDtalk.

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

Is that how you think of composing?

I think the operative word in music is play

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

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

It was never true.

You had some lessons?

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

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

"Do you want a piano teacher?

"Do you want to learn?"

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

to somehow magically appear in my fingers.

Instead I had to play Mozart.

So I was just rebelling against that.

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

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

It could have gone the other way!

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

to bring them out.

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

I have...

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

I do have an idea.

The idea is...

I live this rather luxurious life which is basically this -

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

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

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

A director like Chris Nolan phones me and goes,

"I want to tell you a story".

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

starting to hear fragments of tune.

Then with great hubris I say, "Yes!

"I have an idea!

"I can do this!"

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

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

So there's no eureka moment?

There is a slog?

There are small, clawed at moments, yes.

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

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

And...

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

I wouldn't swap it for anything else.

Let's pause.

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

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

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

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

GENTLE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS.

It's an Indian Air Force drone!

When you began work on that score, how much

about the film did you know?

Ah.

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

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

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

coming to me from this page.

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

I opened it and it was a beautiful type written,

not computer, type written page.

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

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

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

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

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

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

do you want me to send it over?"

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

"Do you mind if he comes by?"

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

little fragile, very personal piece.

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

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

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

Chris, what do you think?"

And he goes...

"Hmm.

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

I said, "What is the movie?"

And he starts describing space and this huge canvas.

At one point I interrupted and said, "Look,

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

"How does this all fit in?"

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

We just carried on working like this, through conversation.

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

I can honestly say it was a co-creation.

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

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

No, this was highly atypical.

But Chris always...

We've worked together now for about 12 years.

So he just...

He tries to sort of give me something...

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

He tries to shake it up a bit.

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

Ah...

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

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

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

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

for the first time.

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

So music is your conversation in a sense?

Not only that, I think I am completely exposed and

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

my emotion and to be accounted for.

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

for scores like To Kill a Mockingbird, Magnificent Seven

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

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

Absolutely.

This is the conversation.

Chris and I only talk about story.

Or any of the directors I work with.

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

Well, you don't.

You play the music and you talk about the story

and you try to stick on story.

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

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

for, the score from The Lion King.

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

Oh, so much.

I didn't want to do the movie.

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

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

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

all fathers I wanted to show off.

I wanted to take my princess to the ball.

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

her to a premiere.

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

But the core of the story is really about a father

dying and the child left behind.

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

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

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

really talk much about your father?

No, never.

In that very Germanic way.

We have no emotions, we are German.

That sort of thing.

You just don't talk about these things.

So suddenly I find myself confronted with...

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

And I really wrote this requiem for my father.

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

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

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

So it started out as something to impress

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

emotions about your dead father?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

being in this meeting at Disney where they were discussing,

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

or imprisoned in South Africa?

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

he's not going!

And I was incredibly...

What do you mean I'm not going?

You get so involved in these things that you do become

a little bit reckless.

Well, you have to be reckless to do it.

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

So my friends went and I was incredibly envious.

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

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

like to snap at the legs".

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

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

Something's changed, hasn't it?

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

I mean, it's just...

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

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

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

Of course you were involved with Ultravox back in 1980.

A little bit.

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

Absolutely.

I was a starving session musician in London.

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

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

budget and I remember hearing...

Probably your name's on a blacklist now.

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

So I went to Hollywood and did Rain Man.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Yeah, exactly.

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

I wonder whether music that's been conceived

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

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

Because of course you have...

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

the movie and an orchestra.

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

I get really excited about the orchestra for the first five

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

they might as well not be there.

Is that what worried you about audiences?

They would come to a concert and, actually,

they wouldn't be that interested?

Yeah, they wouldn't be that interested.

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

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

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

you and a bunch of people reading the paper,

so it looks like an old marriage.

I thought, this is not it either.

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

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

is music that has to complement a visual experience,

it doesn't stand in its own right?

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

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

amazing lights etc and they do work.

Because I think part of it...

Here is the thing.

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

background music and all of this.

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

he wants you to hear it.

Be bold.

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

is just too much music in movies?

I totally agree with you.

Telling us how to feel at a particular moment rather than

letting the acting and natural sound and the pauses

and director bring that out of us?

Weirdly I might have thought about this.

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

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

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

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

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

and Ridley Scott used to say sentimentality is under emotion,

and I think he is right.

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

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

between the audience and myself.

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

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

You know you can't win this.

It is suicide.

The greatest gladiator match in the history of the world.

The son of Krypton versus the man of Gotham.

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

Stay down.

If I wanted it, you would be dead already.

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

Million dollars.

Sorry, million dollars.

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

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

has gone into, rehashing old ideas.

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

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

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

How should I say it?

I have officially retired from the super hero business

because it is just me.

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

new language and settling fresh.

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

the Mad Max movies.

We have been friends forever.

That was very important to have another voice.

Do you agree with what Steven Spielberg had to say

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

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

goes the way of the Western?

Do you think we might be reaching that point?

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

If somebody gives you another envelope

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

does your heart sink slightly?

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

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

You can't be inspired.

Money is not very inspiring.

Fear of a deadline is.

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

extension of Greek myths etc...

I remember we were told at the beginning of this,

we are just doing this one movie.

Maybe in 100 years, because John Williamson did Superman

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

It is just part of the mythology.

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

the end of the idea.

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

we have a story or don't we?

You mentioned that 12 years of your life was spent

on the that man films.

When you composed one of those films,

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

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

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

The journalist asked me for my comment about the tragedy,

and I had not heard about it.

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

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

everybody would seem devastated.

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

wrote a piece of music that night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

other meaning, unfortunately...

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

in that moment in time now.

That song, which you recorded to help support

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

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

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

is in danger of killing music?

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

accuse Hollywood of all sorts of dastardly things and everything you

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

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

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

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

in arms losing their income...

There would be a rift in our humanity

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

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

be that pretentious, purpose.

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

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

want it to replace any musicians.

You know something, it can't relate.

Music is an interaction between the audience and the performance.

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

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

Thank you.

Hello there.

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

temperatures to drop away sharply.

It will be a chilly start across the board.