There are few composers who intrigue me enough to want to pursue an interview: John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Alexandre Desplat. Atticus Ross. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Ross lends his talent out sparsely – completing just a pair of film scores each year while his peers often churn out four to seven. He earned his name alongside Nine Inch Nails band leader Trent Reznor scoring David Fincher‘s The Social Network, a game-changing composition that went on to Academy Award acclaim. Since then, Ross has joined each of Fincher’s projects working alongside Reznor to provide dark, harrowing musical compositions to underscore Fincher’s devilish palette.

More recently, Ross worked with Bill Pohland for a whole new kind of project: a biopic. Often regarded as shamelessly paint-by-numbers, Pohland and Ross aimed to bring novelty to an expiring genre and have (our review of Love & Mercy here). Join me as I sit down with the wonderfully British Atticus during his SIFF 2015 visit to discuss music as a character, the “shitty” nature of biopics, working with Trent Reznor and David Fincher, having unfettered access to Brian Wilson’s unreleased materials and the aftermath of winning an Academy Award.

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First, I want to preface this by saying, you’re the first composer I’ve spoken to. I’ve had some options in the past, but I never quite knew what to say. And I’m thinking, we’re getting Atticus Ross in, and I thought, that could be an interesting interview. Let’s talk about your movie choices and who you are as a composer. Who do you see yourself as as a composer?

Atticus Ross: I don’t have a personal vision of myself, but what I would like, what I aim for is to work on things that I think are good, and to make something that feels like it’s tied uniquely to the film, and that can stand up as a piece of music. There’s a lot of film scores, I think—I’m sounding like a dick—but they’re interchangeable. It’s film music; it’s not necessarily the DNA of the film. What I hope for, and where I’ve been incredibly lucky, is to work with directors who want the music to be a character in the film.

I know that as a composer you’ve limited yourself in the work that you do. You’ll see some of your peers who maybe do five, six projects a year, but you’re only doing a couple. Is that something you’re limiting yourself to, thinking you only want to do two a year? Or is this kind of a coincidental thing?

AR: It’s partly because I try to do other things as well; I don’t just do film. It’s partly because I’m slow. It’s something like Love and Mercy. Have you seen Love and Mercy? That took six months.

I have. Speaking of Love and Mercy, I read that you had almost exclusive access to some of Brian Wilson’s unreleased stuff dating back to the sixties. What was your experience like diving through that, being one of the first people outside of that inner circle to look at that?

AR: Generally speaking, the music bio has almost become a genre, and it’s become a pretty shitty one. And when he said to me, “There’s a film, and it’s about Brian Wilson,” I wasn’t feeling a lot of positivity. There are two things. 1) You’ve got an iconic guy; and 2) Is it gonna be a biopic? He kept saying, “The script is amazing. Read the script; read the script.” And then I read the script, and I did think it was amazing. And then I thought, well, if one was to do music for it, it would sound shitty if it was like, “Here’s an iconic song; now here’s some score.” How is it gonna work? I’m not a super-fan, but I know enough to know that there was some mythology about a lot of this material from the sixties that had been recorded in the East. And when I met with the director, Bill, I was like, “If I were to do the music, here would be my idea: why don’t we try and see if Brian would be open to giving me the Master tapes?” After I’d read the script, I thought Brian should be ever-present. If we could sample and manipulate his stuff… sometimes it was a case of sampling his voice and bringing it into an original conversation. Sometimes it was a case of processing his song into something completely different. Sometimes it was set design, with the knives and forks coming to life. If we could do that, and if Brian would be open to giving me the material, maybe we’d be able to do something that was unusual and really worked well in terms of storytelling. And then, amazingly—Bill liked the idea. My first ideas was a bit more like The Grey Album. And then when I did a couple like that, they were too extreme for everybody. So I dialed it back, so it’s very clear, was like, here’s a piece of music that has Brian’s voice or influence of some nature, or there’s a recognizable Beach Boys motif in the middle of some different music. But the incredible thing was just these hard drives arriving at the house, with all his music. I’ve got Pet Sounds. I’ve got everything. And you also realize that this version of Brian that has become popular culture’s version of him as a kind of spaced-out guy. One, drugs had very little to do with anything; he hardly took any drugs. And two, up until ’65—because a lot of what I was given were multi-tracks and these recording sessions where you can hear him on the talk-back—and he’s not a wishy-washy dude, he’s super-focused, he knows exactly what he wants. He’s incredibly in command and uncompromising. I think it’s—whatever happened to him had more to do with mental illness.

When you’re going about this process of taking this material that already exist and kind of leading the charge to blend them with your own unique, dark palette, that’s something unique for you as well. Was that particularly challenging, more so than past projects?

AR: Yeah, it was. My brother—I like my brother a lot—I couldn’t have done it without him. There were a lot of people. It was like the concept sounds like it is a good concept, but the reality of actually achieving that is an awful lot of work, especially when you’re trying to tell a story, and say you’re confined in some ways by whatever it might be. We would sample such small sections, like a moment of his voice, then stretch it out so we could play a melody or do whatever. But there are the times where it’s just using—like the end bed montage, where he’s lying in his bed—I’m not really adding anything to that; I’m just processing his music. It starts off with the father’s voice—now that we did create, and there are some tones underneath that. But when it goes into “In My Room,” that’s just a very heavily processed version of that multi-track. Same with the other side of it: “Til I’m Dying”—the moment in the middle is where we can go off into the soundscape after he gets hit and the Four Horsemen come after. It was an incredibly interesting and educational process. And a challenging one. And I’m incredibly glad that I did it, and worked with the people I did. I think Bill Pohlad is an incredible director. But I wouldn’t do it again. I definitely wouldn’t.

So there’s no Pet Sounds in the Hood on the horizon?

AR: That aspect—I hope they will release the music, that we get all the right clearances. What I mean is, I wouldn’t propose that idea.

Maybe for the next Dylan biopic or something. So the first movie you ever scored was Book of Eli. What have you learned since then? What is the learning curve of a film composer?

AR: I’ve learned that you have to be very careful with what you pick, and even with the most research, things can go wildly off track. I’ve kind of started to try to stick to my guns in the sense that I’m not trying to do ten films a year. I know that I couldn’t do ten; I couldn’t make it. I’d rather do fewer and feel really proud than do more and be richer. I’ve got a bad business model:  feeling good about your work. I think there’s no doubt, my career has been incredibly lucky. I’ve worked damn hard, but the fact is, when we got asked to do Social Network, nobody particularly cared about that. If you said to someone, “We’re doing a film about Facebook,” you could just see people’s faces—“Oh, jeez.” But the idea that Fincher would ask Trent, and then Trent would ask me, and then we would go off and do this thing that felt like it was gonna be a niche film, and then suddenly…

Right in the zeitgeist.

AR: Right. Those kind of things—you can do your best, that’s all you can ever do, I think—and I don’t know if everybody sticks to this—but I want to feel like when I’m done in the studio, that’s the best I can do at this point in time.

What was the transformation for you after winning an Academy Award for The Social network? Has demand for you increased exponentially?

AR: The thing was, Trent and I knew exactly what we were doing next, so it didn’t effect me right after that. It was an incredible experience. But what was more amazing about it was that it was so far removed from what we thought was gonna happen. We never even mentioned anything about anything. All we felt is this is the best we can do on this film. We didn’t think about awards, or this or that. And we never do now. But it was what it was, and it was suddenly like being on a rollercoaster, and it ends up being what it was. But we already knew that we were gonna do Dragon Tattoo. We already had started writing music for that. We already knew we were gonna do an album. So in terms of my world, lots of offers might have come in, but what was funny what that they were lots of things I would be totally unsuitable for. It would be like something that was utterly absurd.

A Marvel movie?

AR: Or even more crazy. Some crazy comic—whatever. But those were all—people have short memories, so that’s kind of gone away. And then it just kind of settled into the routine.

Speaking of your relationship with Trent Reznor, you guys have obviously made a very fortuitous duo over the past decade or more. What is it about the two of you that kind of clicks and makes your collaboration so well?

AR: I don’t know. I really don’t know. For whatever reason, we just do get on very well, and the things that we’re both—I mean, he genuinely is the best musician…I’ve worked with millions of musicians—and he’s got a natural gift that surpasses anyone else I’ve worked with. But at the same time, in the studio, the things that I’m really good at, or the things that I try and be good at, and the things that he’s good at, kind of complement each other, so that the sum, hopefully, is greater than the parts. And that’s combined with the amount of time we’ve put into things. You’re literally with your working partner more than your wife, so…it’s kind of like love.

If you don’t get on well, it’s just no fun.

AR: You just wouldn’t be doing it. You have to connect musically, and you have to connect personally. It has been great.

Speaking of working professional relationships, you’ve also formed a bond with David Fincher. You guys have scored three of his films now?

AR: Three of his films.

Is that something that you foresee yourself doing for the next twenty years, or do you see maybe a part in the road, or too early to tell?

AR: I don’t take anything for granted. I would really hope I keep making music with Trent. And I really hope that we make music for David Fincher films.

‘Cause he’s one of the great directors working today.

AR: Yeah. In my opinion, it was interesting on Love and Mercy, Bill was a guy who had an incredible vision. And what you realize after working on a film—and I haven’t done tons of films—but I’ve done enough to know that’s the most important thing for a director, is someone who’s clear about their vision. And there’s no one more clear about their vision than David Fincher, in my experience. He knows exactly what he wants. Gone Girl, for instance, I watched three weeks before the end of shooting. He had an assemblage of that, and me and Trent went to watch. It was missing some scenes, but it was still there. I have also worked on films where they’re radically changing everything around—that isn’t Fincher.

He’s a perfectionist. He’s known for doing takes like thirty, forty, fifty times, if need be.

AR: He might be doing that take forty or fifty times, but he also knows what he’s going to be doing further on. He’s like one of those guys— like sometimes I’ll tell him about music, and I’ll write down something. If he has a comment, it’s not just a comment for comment’s sake, it’s ‘cause that’s gonna have an effect on that, and that’ll have a relationship to that. He’s a phenomenally intelligent and incredibly visionary man.

Definitely a genius. So shifting back to Love and Mercy quickly—I think one of the most powerful underlying themes here is the destructive power of the mind, especially in the hands of manipulative people, which we see juxtaposed between the past and the present with his real father and his psychiatrist, who’s kind of like his surrogate father. How do you inject these really dark, dark themes into your music?

AR: I felt like, on this, you have to break it down—there are some disturbing moments, but it’s not like it’s full of dark music. I think there’s a sense of melancholy; there’s a sense of unsettling, and scenes that will relate to that. The thing is, when you’ve got actors who are as good as Paul and Cusack and the other Paul (Giamatti) you don’t have to telegraph the emotion, ‘cause they’re able to carry it. And I hate that in films. I loath it when it’s like, here’s the sad face.

Strings, strings, strings.

AR: It’s already sad. I’d much rather play the counterpoint or—and I certainly don’t want to slip into corniness. And that’s just a measure of being able to step back and be objective and have people around you that can see it for what it is. I think that we were able—I hope that we were able—on this one to honor Brian in the sense of we’re using his music that hopefully did it in a way that was respectful, and at the same time, didn’t pull any punches or any compromises in terms of the storytelling. And never lapse into that kind of thing we were just talking about. I wasn’t there for the final mix, even though it was mixed by someone who I know directly and is a very good friend on the film. I saw it, and I did think it was a good film.

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