Brian Reitzell

Todd L. Burns

Please help me in welcoming one of my favorite musicians on the planet right now, Brian Reitzell.

Brian Reitzell

Thanks.

Todd L. Burns

Brian, I think a fun way to get started is you brought a couple of toys along with you with which you make music, but they’re obviously pretty unexpected music-making toys. I was wondering if you could begin by showcasing what those are and maybe talking a little bit about how you’ve used them. Brian’s a soundtrack composer, I think a lot of these toys have been used in Hannibal, which is a show that you’ve worked on for a couple of years.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah, these were all used in Hannibal. The first one is actually a toy, which I bought for my daughter, its age is 3 and up. She wasn’t old enough so I borrowed it and it sounds like this. [starts playing with it and it makes crazy noises] OK. But useful. Now this is… You won’t need a microphone. This is the loudest instrument known to man.

Todd L. Burns

Keep your microphone.

Brian Reitzell

It’s from the 1940s. I live in Los Angeles and this belonged to a guy that did film and radio. When he passed away, his suitcase ended up at a shop full of gear and I bought it all. I call it a “crankophone,” I don’t know what it’s called. But it’s dangerous. [starts cranking it and it makes a loud, metallic scraping sound]

Todd L. Burns

Thanks for that.

Brian Reitzell

You could rob a liquor store with that, I’m sure. Now the third thing, this is a eBay item. It’s a postwar Japanese children’s siren put on a bicycle. I love Penderecki and I wanted to rent some of the giant sirens and they were out, the guy didn’t have them, and I remembered I had bought this thing. It totally did the trick. It’s difficult to play when it’s not mounted; I’ll do my best. [starts rotating it and it makes an energetic whirring sound] I like the part at the end. The last item is a bullroarer.

Todd L. Burns

That might be a little bit dangerous in here. Do we have enough room, do you think?

Brian Reitzell

Danger is good.

Todd L. Burns

Danger is good? Okay.

Brian Reitzell

I find when you work on scary stuff, if it’s scary to make, it gets itself inside the music. I’ll just be sure it’s not going to fly off and impale anyone. The bullroarer is one of the oldest instruments on earth; they found them on every continent. This one however comes from Stockton, California. I got it on eBay for five bucks. It’s the best sounding one I’ve ever heard. It is dangerous. Here we go. [starts spinning it vigorously around his head but it doesn’t make a sound] Come on. It doesn’t always go the first time, like all great instruments. [tries again] Or the second time.

Todd L. Burns

Third time’s a charm.

Brian Reitzell

I’ll see. It’s jetlagged. [starts spinning it and it makes a low burring sound] Wow.

Todd L. Burns

I think obviously it’s quite nice to see you doing that in person and showcasing how you might put that to use would be even better. We have a video, video number one, that I’d like to watch now. It’s a clip from the show that you’ve worked on, Hannibal, over the past three years. I have to say I found it very difficult to find a section of Hannibal which I could actually show an audience. It’s about Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer. We can talk a little bit about that afterwards. This is, I guess, safe-ish to show. Why don’t we go ahead and roll that clip.

(video: Scene from Hannibal)

That was a clip from Hannibal. Tell me how you made that.

Brian Reitzell

You notice there’s no dialogue at all; it’s all music, sound and music. Hannibal, I approach it different than anything else that I’ve done, which is I put it up, I don’t read the scripts, I don’t get ahead, I just want to put it on and instantly make music to it. The very first time I see it I’m sitting at some instrument, whether it’s a keyboard or the drum set or the Swarmatron.

Todd L. Burns

What’s a Swarmatron?

Brian Reitzell

A Swarmatron is an analog eight-voice synthesizer that is controlled with… It has two ribbons tied to, I believe, a piece of VHS tape with a leather strip across it. When you press it, one of the ribbons controls the pitch and the other controls the filter. It’s called a Swarmatron, it sounds like a swarm of bees. You get these clustered tones. It’s great for creating atmosphere. So I’ll sit and just react to the images to get my gut feeling, but also to stay inside of it, and then I’ll build on top of that. Eventually I’ve spent a lot of time on something like that, but I’m getting my first impression, which with horror is great, because it’s being with the audience, you know what I mean?

Todd L. Burns

You’ve said before that it is quite nice because you’re a couple seconds behind.

Brian Reitzell

Yes. Yeah.

Todd L. Burns

Which is where the audience is.

Brian Reitzell

Exactly, right. Yeah, that’s the point, is to react to it rather than to be on top of it. My background is in playing drums and percussion. The rhythm and the feel of it is paramount to me, it’s the most important thing. As you can see there’s quite a bit of percussion in that, but there’s koto. We made our own koto out of an acoustic guitar by moving the bridge into the center. What else is in there? There’s all kinds of things. There’s a lot of instruments going on in there.

Todd L. Burns

If you are making that watching it for the first time, as a viewer you’re used to Hannibal by now, I assume the entire time you’re on edge as well, waiting for something to happen.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah, it’s a horrible job in that respect. Yeah, I don’t even like horror movies. I’m still scared of Jaws. But it’s an emotional… Fear is an emotion, and I think some of the most beautiful music is the darkest music. And I’m just trying to make beautiful music.

Todd L. Burns

Why do you think you’re so good at doing horror films? Even though you’re so…

Brian Reitzell

I don’t know. I don’t know why I get called to do horror. Worse yet, I’ve done a lot of films about mental issues, schizophrenia and stuff. I don’t know, maybe it’s cerebral. Maybe it’s because I’m approaching it more in a physical sense. I like physical music. I also really like incorporating things that aren’t traditional instruments, because I’m obsessed with the timbre of things. Being a percussionist, your library of instruments is infinite — anything can be an instrument. We could score a movie with everything that’s just in this room, we don’t need anything else. You really can.

Todd L. Burns

You started out in a band called Wire Train, I believe.

Brian Reitzell

No, I played in a band with a guy from Wire Train.

Todd L. Burns

OK, and then you went on to Redd Kross which is where people may know you from. I went back and listened to that record, it’s very good but it’s very conventional, I’d say.

Brian Reitzell

I was in my early 20s, yes.

Todd L. Burns

How do you get from playing traditional drumming in a rock & roll band to making something like the stuff in Hannibal? Was that always there from your childhood?

Brian Reitzell

Yeah, yeah. I’ve been obsessed with sound my whole life. I mean, Redd Kross was not my band. I joined that band that existed. My fantasy was to be in a band and to tour and make records. I grew up in San Francisco and I was playing with this band that you mentioned with the guy, the guitar player from Wire Train and our band was called Missile Harmony.

Todd L. Burns

Good band name.

Brian Reitzell

We opened for the Jesus and Mary Chain and all these other wonderful bands, the Church and stuff. I was 19. But I love music, so playing pop music was great. Playing with Redd Kross was like going to pop college. I had to know every Beatles song, because the singer in that band would just turn around and tell us to play something. I remember playing a show with Jane’s Addiction at the height of their popularity; they were huge. Just before we’re going onstage the singer says, “OK, let’s play ‘I’m a Believer.’” It’s like, the Monkees. Yeah, we’re going to walk out in front of Jane’s Addiction’s crowd, I don’t even know this song! So, I did it. And I love those sort of challenges. I feel like I could… I love to improvise and I love to not overthink things.

Todd L. Burns

I guess in a similar way with Hannibal, you have a very short amount of time to create in the same way that you were going up on stage.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah.

Todd L. Burns

You’d get an episode and you had seven days to create 40 minutes of music.

Brian Reitzell

Forty-three minutes.

Todd L. Burns

Sorry.

Brian Reitzell

Yes. The crazy thing is Hannibal, because it’s a network TV show, it has commercials, so it’s 43 minutes. And sometimes I’ve done 44 minutes because of the back and the front or whatever, which is ridiculous, but it’s sound and once you take… Hannibal is a heightened sense of reality, it’s not real. It’s never meant to be real. It’s like an opera, so it’s musically driven the entire time. That’s why we can’t take it out. In the first season it gradually gets to that point. In the first 12 episodes there’s lots of pauses, there’s not music all the way through, but once the guy loses his mind — which was scored with this [picks up one of his instruments] because the director said to me, “You know he’s spinning out of control.” I thought, “Spinning of control? This is going to spin perfectly.”

When we did record this, I recorded with — I have a microphone that has four capsules in it, and it records perfect surround. I set it down on the floor and then spun the thing around it. When you listen, Hannibal is all done in surround. What you just listened to was folded down into stereo, but when you hear it in surround it’s a much more immersive experience. Again, heightened reality; it’s not meant to be traditional music. It’s supposed to be inside the guy’s head, who’s kind of lost his marbles a bit.

Todd L. Burns

Going back to your childhood and this sound obsession you were talking about, can you talk about some of the first sounds in your life?

Brian Reitzell

The first sound I remember being obsessed with is, I lived in the suburbs south of San Francisco in a town called Menlo Park, our backyard bordered on a train track. Man, I loved the sound of the train, loved it, the intensity. My father also had a drag boat with a big hemi engine in it. He would start it up on the weekends and all the kids in the neighborhood would come by. The sound of that engine, holy… To me it’s like the Stooges. It’s just intense, it’s so rock & roll, and it’s an engine. It doesn’t have a key center. You’re talking three, four years old, I was really into those things. I also grew up, I lived in a commune for a while. My parents split up and here I was surrounded by Hells Angels because one of the guys that lives in the commune who lived in the garage, he fixed motorcycles. Goats Head Soup by the Rolling Stones, that record was always playing. As a little kid, man, I loved the Rolling Stones and just music. I was surrounded by music. My older brother played guitar and made me play drums.

Todd L. Burns

That’s how you got to percussion, your older brother made you.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah, and my uncle had a drum set which he kept at my grandmother’s house, in her bedroom. This is all crazy. We were not allowed to go into the bedroom. It was a very large bedroom, the shades were always down, it was dark.

Todd L. Burns

Sounds like a weird bedroom. Let’s not talk about that.

Brian Reitzell

To this day I don’t really understand. They’ve both passed away. I’m never going to know why his drum set was in her bedroom. We used to sneak in there and play. I remember I couldn’t reach the pedals. I ended up getting the kit; my mother convinced him to let me have it, to borrow. Two years later I had to give it back to him and I had destroyed it. I had taken it apart and broken the cymbals. Then I had to get a job to buy cymbals to give him and I no longer had any drums. So, you know, you can sort of still play if you have some drum sticks or some mallets, you don’t necessarily need a drum set.

Todd L. Burns

You mentioned broken cymbals and you once said that almost every night with Redd Kross you’d break cymbals.

Brian Reitzell

They’d break cymbals. Yeah.

Todd L. Burns

Are you just playing wrong or playing too hard? What’s the deal with the broken cymbals?

Brian Reitzell

There’s no such thing as playing wrong, by the way. It’s all right. It was the grunge years. It was all about hitting as hard as you could. You know, we played in front of a huge audience, it was loud. It was all meant to be — and it was a show, so I was shirtless and being a caveman at the drums. The good news is that though I had no money I was endorsed by the Zildjian cymbal company and still am, thank you. I don’t like new cymbals anymore. Cymbals break; ironically the thicker ones are the ones that break because they don’t move properly. The thinner ones seem to last longer. Yeah, every night I’d break something.

Todd L. Burns

I guess I asked that because I find it interesting that in terms of bands you went from Redd Kross, where you’re shirtless, breaking cymbals. And then your most notable next band that you played with on a regular basis was Air, which I think the drumming style is decidedly different.

Brian Reitzell

You didn’t see the first tour, did you? Actually neither of those bands were my bands. I was brought in to — Air had never played with a drummer, really. I got the gig with Air because they were going to score The Virgin Suicides. I had quit Redd Kross. I did seven years and that was enough. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I started playing, just improvising, jamming with one of the guys from the band Slint, who lived in LA. I sort of come from jazz. Being in San Francisco I played in quite a bit of experimental music, and then when I joined Redd Kross I started being Ringo or whatever. Playing with Air was kinda more going back to my San Francisco days. I used to incorporate things like saw blades, and I had a freon tank mounted as part of my drum kit. This is when I was a teenager. I didn’t even have a ride cymbal. I was more like Bill Bruford, King Crimson, more into interesting sounds than very conventional sounds.

The Air thing came because they were going to score this movie, it was Sofia Coppola’s first film and she had asked me to be the music supervisor because I’m a total record geek. I know way too much about stupid things about music, like where it was recorded and what year it was and what microphone they used. She knew that about me and that movie took place in the ’70s and she needed ’70s music. I was the guy that was choosing the music. and Air were in town doing a music video that my friend Mike Mills was directing. He said, “Oh, Brian, you should meet the Air guys.”

I went to this video wrap party they were having at the Chateau Marmont, they were in the room discussing the Moon Safari tour, their first tour, and they had their whole band but they didn’t have a drummer. I literally knocked on the door and Mike Mills said, “Oh, Brian would be perfect.” It just so happens that they had hired some of the guys from Beck’s band, who I also had played with, so it was one big happy family. They hired me without ever hearing me play drums. And then I stayed with them for seven years.

Todd L. Burns

What was it like going on tour with them? Because this was also there first tour.

Brian Reitzell

It was great. It was great. It was great, every show was sold out. They were really the band of the moment at the time.

Todd L. Burns

One of the things, though, I think is interesting about it is they’re clearly trying to — Nicolas Godin mentioned this when he was on the couch earlier this week — trying to figure out how to play those songs with that low tempo energy and translating that to stage.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah.

Todd L. Burns

Was that difficult?

Brian Reitzell

Yeah. Yeah, it was difficult. They wanted me and Justin, who’s playing bass — and Nicolas is a fantastic bass player, yet he didn’t play bass on that tour. They wanted this energy to come from us. They didn’t want to play it like the record; they wanted me to be Keith Moon or Nick Mason maybe.

Todd L. Burns

From Pink Floyd.

Brian Reitzell

From Pink Floyd, yeah. That was easy for me. [laughter] Well, I mean, the Redd Kross days... I kept my shirt on.

Todd L. Burns

You kept your shirt on in the Air tour.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah, I had to. In fact I had insisted we all wear white and we did. We wore white. The idea was that each Air tour was going to be a different color, so if you saw a picture you could say, “It’s the white tour. It’s the blue tour.” But once I left the band they stopped doing that. I did white and black.

Todd L. Burns

Like, “Yeah, thanks Brian.” Tell me about Virgin Suicides, that process. Obviously it was their first time making —

Brian Reitzell

Everybody’s first time.

Todd L. Burns

Yeah.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah.

Todd L. Burns

How did you meet Sofia originally? I guess that’s an interesting story as well.

Brian Reitzell

I met Sofia when I was in Redd Kross. She had dated one of the guys from the band; they split up very soon thereafter. In fact, when I moved to Los Angeles from San Francisco, I auditioned for the band and got the gig, I had nowhere to live and I lived in her apartment. She was busy doing some publicity thing for The Godfather III or something. I lived in her apartment for two weeks. I had never met her. My girlfriend and her grew up together, best friends. I’m still with her, with Stephanie. Yeah, I mean, we were just friends. When she went to make the movie — because something happened to me when I was twelve years old, my mother worked for the United Way. I don’t know if you guys know what the United Way is.

Todd L. Burns

Is it a charitable organization?

Brian Reitzell

Yeah exactly. Nonprofit, help families and stuff. The local radio station in the town I grew up in in Northern California was changing formats from rock & roll to talk radio, and they donated their entire vinyl library to the United Way. Me and my stepfather and my uncle, we drove some trucks down to the radio station and picked up literally tens of thousands of records — so many records, all in crates. It was a Friday and they were going to sit in our house for the weekend and then they were going to be taken and then sold. But they ended staying in our living room for weeks.

I cut school every day for probably two weeks and I played every single record. I would just put it on and listen to it and then while it was playing I would look and go through and I was making my selections. I did this because my mother said I could keep ten records and I wanted to pick the best ones. Uriah Heep, Camel, Focus. It was like I was in college for studying music when I was supposed to be in seventh grade or whatever. In the end I ended up keeping a hundred records, but I played them all. It was like, man, I learned a lot. Nowadays you could do that on the Internet pretty easily, but imagine a kid in the middle of nowhere in the country suddenly has 25 thousand records.

Todd L. Burns

It’s like getting the internet.

Brian Reitzell

Exactly, yeah. Now it’s no wonder. You know, the thing about Virgin Suicides is I did that film, I didn’t have a computer, there was no internet happening. I did it with a turntable and a VHS player and a Teac four track reel-to-reel. I kind of still work that way. I would spend all day in a record store, literally sitting on the floor looking at records, trying to make connections, like “This person was this.” I’m really into connections, probably from cooking. I studied and became a chef while I was trying to support myself as a musician. For me it all kind of relates back to cooking and ingredients, and the connection of music and food is…

Todd L. Burns

I suppose music’s quite nice because you can take out spices if you don’t like them, as opposed to cooking where it’s a little bit more difficult.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah. Cooking, you put too much saffron in it or whatever and you can’t take it out. That’s something you learn in the restaurant business. I used to have to make a different soup every day, and, like music, like walking, like what I’m going to — kind of looking, seeing, it always had to be different. Yeah, if you put too much salt in something you’re… Can I cuss? You’re fucked. Or you’re going to add more cream or stock, dilute it. With music, luckily… With something like Hannibal, I max out Pro Tools in one act.

Todd L. Burns

This is, what, 256 tracks?

Brian Reitzell

Yeah, 256 tracks. An act is sometimes seven minutes. In seven minutes I’ve got 256 tracks of music. You can’t really do that in cooking.

Todd L. Burns

Why don’t you take a listen to something from Virgin Suicides just to situate ourselves? This is “Dirty Trip.”

(music: Air – “Dirty Trip”)

That was “Dirty Trip” from The Virgin Suicides soundtrack. Listening to the album — and I asked this of Nicolas — a lot of this didn’t actually make it into the movie. A lot of the stuff that made it onto the album.

Brian Reitzell

I think just the bass from that. Yeah we kind of made it as a record. Again, this had a lot to do with the fact that the technology isn’t — nowadays it’s really easy to work with picture. You throw it into Pro Tools, it’s so easy. Back then it was really complicated. You had to use SMTP, you had to have a track that just had time code on it, and linking and locking and delivering was just a nightmare. So we didn’t bother. We didn’t even bother. When that score was done they had bought one of those combo TV monitors that you could stick a videotape in. I think the screen was about the size of your laptop and it sat next to me.

I sat at the drums and it sat here. I don’t know if you can tell from that recording but the drums are really dead. They’re so dead sounding. Everything is muted, and this was in a way to connect it to the ’70s. The movie took place in 1973 or ’74, whatever, we don’t really say. Also, I think we’re all obsessed with Serge Gainsbourg Melody Nelson and those drum sounds and stuff. The drums were completely — I was enclosed in blankets and there was just a little seam right here where I could see, one of the guys stood here, Nicolas stood here and then [Jean-Benoît Dunckel] stood behind him. I would play and look at the monitor and nod at them for the different…

It’s really primitive, but we were mostly working in a way like Francis Lai did Bilitis. That movie was scored by him looking at a still from the movie and saying “OK, here’s a picture, let’s make a piece of music for this picture.” Rather than “Let’s score.” Hannibal, everything is frame by frame, whereas this was an overall sense of the mood. We kind of made a record based on images from the film, rather than scoring the picture so much.

Todd L. Burns

In addition to making some of that music, you also were in charge of licensing things and getting things. You had some classic tunes from the ‘70s in there but you had no experience licensing before this.

Brian Reitzell

No. No, I didn’t.

Todd L. Burns

How did you go about that?

Brian Reitzell

I had no idea what I was doing. No idea. I didn’t know what a music supervisor was. I knew that John Barry was credited for music supervision on Midnight Cowboy; it’s the only time I’d ever seen that term used. But I learned what it was and I worked with a clearance person who I still work with to this day, because on the first film I did send memos and faxes and I learned how to license music and then after that movie I said, “I’ll never do it again.” There’s no reason for me to do it. I should be listening to music and being the creative guy and let somebody else do the paperwork.

The music supervisor is one of the cloudiest occupations on earth. Most music supervisors, they don’t even have anything to do with music; they just do clearances. The director is the person that’s probably putting it in à la Scorsese or Wes Anderson or whoever it is and then a music supervisor is doing the paperwork. I did it on the first movie so I could understand it. And it’s really interesting as a musician, being a guy who’s music has been licensed, it’s really good to understand this business and what a license means. So I learned, baptism by fire on that movie. But the way I approached that movie I’ve approached every movie.

Todd L. Burns

How did you get ELO to agree to a movie that had such a tiny budget?

Brian Reitzell

Sorry. This is a very difficult process. We didn’t have any money, it was Sofia’s first movie. I think it was two and half, three million dollar budget, very little of that went to music. ELO had just licensed “Livin’ Thing” to the movie Boogie Nights for a hundred thousand dollars or something. Jeff Lynne was notorious for… Licensing has changed a lot now; it’s nothing like it was back then. In fact you could not license AC/DC, it just wasn’t even possible. It didn’t matter how much money you had, you couldn’t license AC/DC. A lot of bands. With ELO what I did is I wrote a lot of letters, and I had Sofia write letters.

Todd L. Burns

I’m sure the Coppola named helped a tiny bit.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah. I could tell you some stories. I licensed Todd Rundgren’s “Hello It’s Me” for that movie and he gave it to us. That song had never been licensed. Imagine “Hello It’s Me,” the phone company never licensed that song. Nowadays it’s all been licensed, but back then — and this isn’t that long ago, this is what, ‘98, ‘99? That’s because Francis knew Todd Rundgren and was able to get to him. But you have to be very careful, because if you go to the artist and not the publishing company or the record company, then you could get into trouble. I witnessed this with…There’s one song I could not get for Virgin Suicides which was an Elton John song, the song “Tiny Dancer.” Elton gave us permission, Bernie Taupin gave us permission, but the publisher — who also was my publisher when I was in Redd Kross — refused on a technicality. She’s long fired and gone off to wherever she’s gone. And then Cameron Crowe used “Tiny Dancer” in Almost Famous, which came out a year later or something, whatever. With ELO it was so cool because Jason Schwartzman, Sofia’s cousin, knew a guy that knew —

Todd L. Burns

Another guy.

Brian Reitzell

Another guy that played golf with Jeff Lynne or something. What I had to do with that movie is I had to write a lot of letters, get a lot of people interested, and then I had to show them the film. I’ve never done any gratuitous music licensing in my life, and I won’t do it. You’d have to kill me before I licensed one of your songs or somebody’s song and stuck it in there to sell something or whatever. To do a favor for someone. It goes in because it belongs there.

I was going to screen the film and I had sent a fax to this guy that knew a guy that knew Jeff Lynne, and just crossed my fingers. I had a whole bunch of people at this screening, like Carole King’s people and the people that worked with Heart and Gilbert O’Sullivan and the Bee Gees. They were all in the room, we’re waiting, it’s 2 o’clock. It’s 2:15, there’s no Jeff Lynne. And I said, “Just five more minutes.” Everybody in that room is like, “Brian, Jeff Lynne, he’s not going to come.” Five more minutes. I went outside, scratching my head waiting, and up walks Jeff Lynne. I almost peed my pants because I literally learned to play drums playing to ELO records on Tupperware as a kid, and I told him that obviously.

He came in, everybody in the room was like, “Oooh, Jeff!” I’m pretty sure he watched the entire movie with his sunglasses on, which is cool. Then after the movie, he was the first guy, he stood up and he walked up. I was sitting next to Sofia, he walked up and he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, “Brian, you can have my song for 25 cents.” And walked out of the room. Everybody else was like… They all had to license their music to me because Jeff… I mean, in the end he got his fair share, it wasn’t 25 cents. But the fact that he said that was like, wow. I was floating. I learned to be resourceful. I learned to write letters. Every film that I had to do — the last film I did with Sofia, Bling Ring, I mean the stuff I went through with Kanye West to license that music was really, we’d be here for ten hours if I told you those stories.

Todd L. Burns

One of the things about that that’s interesting is that I guess Sofia’s filming certain scenes where they’re singing along in a car to a song and it’s kind of like, if you don’t have that license already in place, you’re taking a pretty big chance by having these actors sing along in a car. Because that scene has to go, right?

Brian Reitzell

Yeah. That’s what happened with Kanye. There was this song called “All of the Lights,” which was a big hit. The world of hip-hop is the trickiest to license, because that song has I think 11 guest artists. Each one of those guest artists… It’s Fergie, Drake, John Legend, Elton John. These are rock stars, these are not little songwriters. They’re all huge. Alicia Keys. They each have to sign off on it. They each were going to get a little piece of this little piece of money that I was going to give them, and they’re all rich. And Sofia wanted to shoot a scene with them singing the song. To make things more difficult, the publishing company told me that there was a dispute over the writing credits. Not the credits but who owned it, the percentages. They told me it was unlicensable.

I learned when I did Marie Antoinette, if there’s a publishing dispute, what you can do is you can take the money that you were going to license it for and put it escrow. When they figure out their dispute, they get their money. There’s ways, you can do anything if you’re creative and resourceful, trust me. Sofia wanted to shoot the song and I’ve got the record company saying it’s impossible. But I’ve been pretty lucky my whole career with her. I think she makes movies and we respect music and people, they’re willing to take less to have their song used in a cool way. This isn’t a Princess Cruise commercial, thank you Iggy Pop.

It’s like, some of these artists, they just don’t care. But I care. I think people get that with Sofia’s movies. I got Kanye and he said yes. I thought, “If he says yes, it’s on his record, maybe they’ll all follow suit.” It worked. When she shot the scene I didn’t have an approval, but he had said yes. In fact he was here in Paris at a dinner party and his assistant said, “When he gets to his dinner party, I’ll ask him.” He said yes, we shot the scene the next day. Three months later, I got it all approved. To this day I think there’s still a publishing dispute but it doesn’t matter.

Todd L. Burns

It’s all in escrow.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah.

Todd L. Burns

It seems like this takes a lot out of you.

Brian Reitzell

It’s terrible. It’s excruciating, yes. I used to work at home, I don’t do that anymore. Once I had a child, especially working on horror stuff, I’ve got to —

Todd L. Burns

Keep that in the studio.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah, I have a proper studio. I would work on these things 24 hours a day. I’d be in my underwear, drinking a cup of coffee, it’s like, “Aaah!” You wouldn’t even take a shower because you’re obsessing on getting things done. It’s a hell of a job.

Todd L. Burns

Why don’t we watch —

Brian Reitzell

Scoring is easier is my point. Yeah.

Todd L. Burns

Why don’t we watch a clip to showcase the end result — at the very least maybe you don’t have to think about all the sausage that went into making it. We have a clip from Marie Antoinette. Talking about this music licensing, there’s two pieces of music in there. One is the Cure and one is from New Order. Yeah, why don’t we take a look at this clip from Marie Antoinette.

(video: Clip from Marie Antoinette)

Brian Reitzell

It’s interesting watching that. First of all, we kind of have a rule we don’t actually use music over dialogue, this being an exception. Most of that dialogue you’re not really meant to even here. It’s interesting hearing it and hearing how it’s mixed. The other thing that’s interesting is the whole song plays. Where we just ended, there’s no more dialogue, the track comes up, they go outside, but the whole song plays. I think only once in my career up to that point had I ever edited anybody’s song. I thought that that was blasphemous; you don’t take somebody’s piece of music and edit it. I took the vocal out of a Chemical Brothers song on Lost in Translation because I wanted it to be instrumental, but I went to London and sat there and did it with them, not with the guys in the band but with their engineer, and had them approve it.

Nowadays, everything, you do whatever you want with someone’s song. In fact, if I license your song, I can cut it up however I want, I don’t have to ask you. But I thought — and I still kind of think — that you shouldn’t do that. There’s a musicality and a flow and a rhythm to the music which is priceless.

Todd L. Burns

You make mixtapes for Sofia.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah.

Todd L. Burns

Before she begins to film a movie. On that movie you’re thinking the Cure and New Order is the way to represent Marie Antoinette.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah. Actually the New Order was her idea. I think I gave it to her, I don’t remember, but she had put it in. Sofia and I, the way that movie was made and the way Lost in Translation was made is I started when she was writing the script. I can tell you this movie was tricky in the beginning. It took months before — it just wasn’t coming out, I wasn’t cracking it, I didn’t know. Then all of a sudden in one day I made two mixes. They’re mix CDs. I had one of those CD burners where you’d stop and start like a cassette. Though I did make a cassette for Marie Antoinette actually.

I had made two mixes and she listened to them, the actors also listened to them in their trailers, everybody. We did the same thing for Lost in Translation. With Lost in Translation I made two CDs and that was it. All that music is in the movie. Once the movie was shot, my job was almost done, you know what I mean?

Todd L. Burns

How did you crack it? You said you cracked it one day. Was it just, “Oh, the Cure symbolizes youth.”

Brian Reitzell

There’s two Cure songs in this film actually. There’s a Cure song at the end, “All Cats Are Grey,” which is probably my favorite Cure song. It has no guitar in it. I had originally put that song in Lost in Translation but I took it out and scored it because I thought the use was too short. I’m not going to license this beautiful song and then just let it play for a few seconds, so I made some music. I essentially ripped off the Cure.

When we did Marie Antoinette, once we had sort of decided all the music we wanted to use, we were here in France filming and Robert Smith was in Paris; it was his birthday. I was able to give him a private tour of Versailles. We had this pretty unprecedented access to Versailles. We had it one day a week, it’s the day they were closed. We would film there one day a week. They allowed us to go into these back rooms that the general public does not get to see. Actually Nicolas Godin came with me on this day that I was giving Robert a private tour of Versailles and the funniest thing happened, which is we were in Marie Antoinette’s private apartment. She had a bedroom, which was for all the court to see. It was like the pageantry, her and the king would get in bed and the court would gather around and sort of bless them and hope they would have a child. Then the court would leave and then the king would go to his apartment and she would go to her apartment. They never slept in the bed, it was just a façade.

I’m in the back, showing Robert her toilet. She had the first toilet in France — first flushable toilet, that is. I’m walking through and then at one point the guy that was giving us the tour, “If you look through this door, here is her bedroom.” He opens the door and Robert Smith, he’s got his hair — he’s Robert Smith, he’s this iconic guy, and he opens the door and in the bedroom is about 30 Japanese tourists, all these young tourists with their cameras, and appears from nowhere Robert Smith. It was incredible! They were just, “Aaaah!” So confused. The king of goth is suddenly before us. Is it real? I mean, it was amazing, I loved it.

Todd L. Burns

Speaking of Japan, we should talk a little bit about Lost in Translation. I guess one of the most notable things for music nerds is that you somehow coaxed Kevin Shields out of, I guess not retirement necessarily, but coaxed him to make some new music. How do you get someone like that to a place where they feel comfortable making music and putting it into the world?

Brian Reitzell

You just ask.

Todd L. Burns

You just ask?

Brian Reitzell

Well, remember the thing I told you about Jeff Lynne. I’ve got stories about the Sex Pistols and the Rolling Stones and all these different artists. You can get to people and send them a letter or ask. Ask them. In the case of Kevin I was in Japan, in Osaka, playing a festival with Air. Kevin was playing with Primal Scream, he was on tour. I’m a big My Bloody Valentine fan and our dressing rooms were next to each other. I thought, “You know, I’m just going to go say hi.” I’m a geek, I want to talk music. “How did you make that record, Kevin?” I looked in the dressing room and there was no Kevin but Mani, the bass player from Stone Roses, is playing bass with them and he’s, “Hey mate, what’s up?”

He came up and gave me a hug; he was the nicest guy in the world, this guy. I told him, “Is Kevin here?” He says, “I’ll find him for you.” Eventually we met and we instantly hit it off. I don’t know, we weren’t even talking about music. After I watched Primal Scream play, and he came over and watched Air play, I guess, I don’t know. After the show we hung out, it was like 4:30 in the morning, the sun was coming up, we’re walking through the streets of Osaka back to the hotel. And I said, “You know, Kevin, if I ever find a movie that suits you, would you be interested in making some music for it?” He said, “Sure.”

Two years or a year and half later, whatever, Sofia was going to make Lost in Translation when I was trying to figure out the sound of that movie. It was all about that feeling of being jetlagged and being in Tokyo. It’s like being on acid. You’re drugged, even though you’re not. It’s like My Bloody Valentine. Varispeed on a tape machine, that’s what your brain is doing. That to me was the sound of the movie. I asked Kevin, “Look, I’ve got this movie.” We had done The Virgin Suicides and people liked what we did with that, Kevin included.

Todd L. Burns

Were you in the studio with him?

Brian Reitzell

Oh yeah. He wouldn’t go to the studio unless I pretty much brought him into the studio. He had a studio in Camden. I think he was sort of trapped with Primal Scream. It was his job and it’s hard to get out of those things, really. He always said he was going to… My Bloody Valentine was just on hold, and I believed him. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why we get along is people think he’s crazy and I don’t. We’re all kind of crazy in some way. When I was working with him, the people around me and people that I would see and music executives, they all thought I was nuts, like, “He’s never going to deliver. He hasn’t done anything in 13 years, he’s not going to deliver for you.”

It wasn’t easy but I got enough; I got what I needed from Kevin. I produced him, I played drums, I brought in keyboards. I did whatever, but we would start working right as all the restaurants in London were closing. Because he only wanted to work at night, which me coming from California was fine. I didn’t have to deal with jetlag, I just never saw the sun until I was going to bed. Which related really well to the film, which is essentially a jetlag movie I think. We would start, we’d have breakfast at this restaurant right as they’re just trying to lock the door, and then we’d work all night. I went back to London I think three times.

There’s one song that is in the movie but we actually, I think, did two. In true keeping with all the rumors and myths, the nature and history of Kevin, nothing was happening and then all of a sudden he’s like, “OK Brian, get on the drums.” I was so tired, it was eight in the morning or something and I’m just tired. I sat, I was like, “OK.” Sat at the drums and he played these chords and it was one take. That’s the song. I was just following him. Again, talking about Hannibal and just kind of getting in that moment and getting your pure, raw reaction to something. I’ve not really thought about this before but that’s exactly what happened with that track.

Todd L. Burns

Should we take a listen?

Brian Reitzell

Sure.

Todd L. Burns

“City Lights,” right?

Brian Reitzell

“City Girl.”

Todd L. Burns

“City Girl.”

Brian Reitzell

City Lights is a great bookstore in San Francisco, you should go there sometime.

Todd L. Burns

This is “City Girl” from the Lost in Translation soundtrack.

(music: Kevin Shields – “City Girl”)

“City Girl.”

Brian Reitzell

One take.

Todd L. Burns

One take.

Brian Reitzell

That was all recorded to tape. Kevin, I think, got Pro Tools to do the movie, thinking he had to, and got the best Apogee converters and everything. But we recorded to tape. When we did work with Pro Tools I think we recorded at 192, which when you work at that high of a sample rate, there’s no plugins. We didn’t use any plugins.

Todd L. Burns

He also doesn’t use any pedals for the most part, right?

Brian Reitzell

Yeah. That’s just a guitar. What it is, and I learned a lot about — Kevin and I, we spent more time talking about music and the physics of music, because I’m a real kind of purist. If we want to have phase or vibrato or tremolo, it’s more interesting to break down what that is and then make it naturally, which is why you can make all these things naturally. You lie if you would use the pedals to recreate the things that you do in the studio. No, literally it’s a guitar; there’s no distortion pedals either. It’s just a guitar, a certain Vox head, a little speaker and a microphone. It’s the reaction — it’s insanely loud. You cannot be in the room, it will kill you. Your bones will break, it’s that loud. What happens with the translation of the volume, the microphone, the desk, the EQ, the dude is a master of EQ. He’s got really sensitive ears. I love it. Those chords in that song I think are absolutely beautiful. It’s two guitars, a drum set and a bass, that’s all it is.

Todd L. Burns

Another classic, great songwriter you worked with a little bit for movies, Elliott Smith. This was for the Thumbsucker soundtrack. I guess only a little bit of that stuff actually made it out because he tragically —

Brian Reitzell

He died.

Todd L. Burns

Killed himself. What was it like working with him on that project?

Brian Reitzell

That happened right after Lost in Translation. I was gaining a reputation, it was like, “Well, if you can work with Kevin, you can work with Elliot.” Again, Elliot wasn’t my idea, it was Mike Mills’ idea to have Elliot come in and write music. It wasn’t really to write music; Elliot was asked to do some covers. We did “Trouble” by Cat Stevens, which is a song that Elliott — he didn’t like Cat Stevens, but he liked the song. If you’ve heard that song, his version of it, I can’t listen to it. It’s too painful. But he made it his song. He literally… And it’s the last thing he ever recorded.

Mike had asked him also to do a cover of John Lennon’s “Isolation,” which is quite possibly one of the greatest recordings in the history of music. You don’t redo that, it’s too good. But Elliot loved John Lennon and he was working on it. Elliot was very similar to Kevin in a way, very sensitive, very quiet, great with the desk. I worked with a few people who are really insanely good engineers as well as musicians. Their engineering skills are a part of their music. I remember I once had a friend that was an engineer in London, so I asked Kevin, I asked Richard James.

Todd L. Burns

Aphex Twin.

Brian Reitzell

Aphex Twin. Richard, he doesn’t even know any engineers, he does it all himself. I thought that was so cool because his music and his engineering skills are completely connected, as I’m sure a lot of your guys’ music is too, my music is now. We’re all essentially engineers now, which is cool. The more time you spend with it… I was lucky because I had a guy, I did several of my films at a studio in Burbank. It was a private studio owned by a guy named Eric, he had co-authored Microsoft Windows 95 or whatever, 98, I don’t know, made a bunch of money as a programmer and invested it all in recording gear.

He had the Trident A Range that Queen did “Bohemian Rhapsody” [on]. He has the Langevins and the mic pres that were on the Rolling Stones mobile truck. He had crazy gear, and he liked me. I don’t know why, but he took to me and I would use his studio. He completely mentored me. He would say, “Just take this one piece of equipment and spend some time with it, learn to see what it does.” When I started playing drums, I first got a snare drum, I then got a cymbal, I then got a floor tom. I got them in pieces and I think that was really good for me. Going back it’s like, take this, figure out one thing rather than sit at a recording console and go, “Oh my god, it’s a 747, what does this do?”

But it’s really quite simple, but it’s getting into those… Have one compressor and spend some time figuring out what a compressor does. Have your EQ and figure out what that does. Anyway, I think I forgot exactly what the question was. Elliot was fantastic. He played me some music that was just mind-blowing. I was trying to hook him and Kevin Shields up, because Elliot was scared to death of his studio. He couldn’t go in it. The problem with, I could say a few artists that I know that they’ve made these incredible recordings, these monumental, iconic records, and they’re scared to death to follow them up. And, fair enough.

Todd L. Burns

Do you think that film is kind of a way for them to think about it as a lower entry back into making music somehow?

Brian Reitzell

Absolutely. Not a lower entry, I would say.

Todd L. Burns

Not that their name is out front.

Brian Reitzell

It’s not a pop record. When you score a movie you’re supporting, you’re a part of the team. You’re a line cook; it’s not necessarily all about you. I wasn’t asking Kevin to remake Loveless. I was saying, “Let’s score this film,” and I was the guy that could shield people from all the bullshit of Hollywood. Because I understand Hollywood. If you’re too sensitive or you just don’t understand it, it’s so political. There’s so much garbage and you don’t need to think about it, so I would shield these people and say, “Don’t worry, I won’t let them get to you. I won’t let a producer in the room, you’ll just deal with me.”

Todd L. Burns

One of the things I’ve read, though, is that you sometimes take music out. Mark Hollis had written something for a film and you took it out and didn’t use it. How are those conversations going when you’ve coaxed music out of Mark or Kevin Shields? Is it simply showing them the film and saying, “It doesn’t quite work here”?

Brian Reitzell

Yeah. Ultimately, I’m working for the director, and if I don’t think something works or the director doesn’t think something works, it’s not going in the movie. It doesn’t matter how good musically it is. You know, Mark did something for a film, I’m a big fan. Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden is very much the way that something like Hannibal is made. Tons of improvisations, everybody gets a few passes then they leave and then we kind of take things out to create the track. With Mark, I actually met Mark when I was doing Marie Antoinette, when I was figuring out what I was going to do. In one morning, first I met with Mark Hollis and then I ran across town and met with Richard James.

Todd L. Burns

That’s quite a day.

Brian Reitzell

And it was snowing and it was in London, I’d never seen that snow like that. I ended up using Richard’s stuff, but Richard didn’t do anything for the movie. He gave me some stuff and I did some tweaks to his music. Again, when you’re working on a film it’s kind of like you’re putting your art onto somebody else’s art and that can be very not natural. What happened in Mark’s case is he had done a piece based on a script. That’s how I like to work too, “Let’s just see what this could be, what this sounds like.” In the end, though I loved it and the director loved it, it wasn’t the right thing for the movie. I ended up scoring that whole movie by myself, which is not something I had intended to do.

Because when I go into a movie, sometimes I just want to be a music supervisor and just check my record collection or bring in Explosions in the Sky or whoever it is that might the right fit, because every movie should have its own sound. If I’m a composer… God, I mean, most of the film composers, their scores all sound the same. You could take this Hans Zimmer or whoever track and put it any of those movies, and it’s the same thing. No offense, Hans is great. I’m just saying that Hollywood in general — and it’s typically not the composer’s fault, it’s usually the studios. They don’t want to take a chance or a risk on anything. Whatever is of the moment, that’s what they want. But I don’t subscribe to any of that stuff.

Todd L. Burns

I think people like you and Trent Reznor can kind of come in from the side, when you’re working with Sofia.

Brian Reitzell

We came from records. Yeah.

Todd L. Burns

They can take notice and be like, “OK, actually that can work.”

Brian Reitzell

It does work. Trent won an Oscar. When he won that Oscar, I felt totally validated. I come from the world of making records and I’m scoring movies, and there’s not many people doing that. Some people do one. And now it’s totally legitimate. Any of us that come from the world of making music can score a movie.

Todd L. Burns

Before we open it up to questions, I wanted to ask you one last question, to go back to Hannibal in a way. You’ve talked a little bit in the past about bronze and its properties, bronze the metal.

Brian Reitzell

The king of all metals, yeah.

Todd L. Burns

Why do you regard it as the king of all metals?

Brian Reitzell

I took a trip once, two weeks. I went to Kyoto, Japan, and then I went to Bali in Indonesia. That trip altered my ears. When I got to Indonesia I heard the gamelan orchestras, I was completely taken by those tonalities. I decided I needed to bring some of those instruments home. There’s a part on the island where they used to make — well, they still do — but they used to make all the instruments for the court. I went there to pick out my instruments. I spent hours in this gong factory, which is more like a shed. I brought these instruments back and I got a full set of gamelan instruments.

When I started recording them and playing them — I didn’t study gamelan, I buy instruments all the time, I have no idea. I don’t know how to play a viola but I play it all the time. When I started recording them and researching and doing all of the stuff that I do, I discovered that bronze creates the most complex wave forms of anything. Anything. There’s no synthesizer that’s going to do what bronze does. For Hannibal I had an instrument made that is like a bronze slit drum.

Todd L. Burns

What is a slit drum, exactly?

Brian Reitzell

A slit drum is like an African tongue drum. It has little slits cut in the wood on top, each one is tuned a little differently. Usually it’s one key, very harmonious. I had seen a documentary on Toru Takemitsu, who’s one of my heroes, Japanese film composer. You should all know this dude. In the documentary I saw this instrument sitting on a timpani, and I took a picture of it with my phone. It turns out it was a bronze slit drum. I had one made — it took two years, it was a nightmare. Bronze is twenty bucks a pound. I needed sixty pounds of it apparently to make two drums.

Each drum is thirty pounds. It’s about the size of this turntable, maybe a little smaller. It’s got about thirty little slits in it, each one creates a different tonality. I take that and I set it on top of a forty-inch bass drum that I have as a resonator. I play it and it’s just this insanely complex, beautiful, gates of heaven opening up. Heaven and hell at the same time, actually, because it’s quite dark. But yeah, the bronze thing. And now I’ve become very obsessed with old metals. I’ve been buying things that are, I mean, the older the better. I’ve been buying cymbals that are two hundred years old.

As metal ages, there’s a complexity there. Again, this relates back to me being a drummer, breaking cymbals. I don’t break cymbals anymore, because one, it’s the way I’m playing. But also, those new cymbals, no. It’s like wine. The stuff, really, it gets more complex as it ages. Yeah, the older the better. And cymbals are an alloy, so they’re only part. They’re not bronze. Pure bronze instruments, we don’t really have that. You’ll notice in the gamelan, when they play the instrument that looks kind of like a marimba or a xylophone — when they play one of the tines, before they play the next one they mute the one they just played, so the two notes are not overlapping. Because that complexity, your skull starts to crack, which when you do horror is fantastic.

Todd L. Burns

You want those skulls start to crack.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah, it’s very violent and physical. What’s cool, because we record in computers, you can see the wave forms that it makes. Oh my God. It’s trippy acid stuff. It’s cool.

Todd L. Burns

I want to open it up to questions. Does anyone have a question for Brian?

Audience Member

Hello. Thanks Brian, that was great, I really enjoyed it.

Brian Reitzell

Thanks.

Audience Member

I do have a bunch of boring career questions I’d like to maybe ask you afterwards, not to take every down. And gamelan as well, we have to talk gamelan. I’m just wondering, with the presence of decent prime-time television and a lot of directors are preferring to work in that medium, and then you also have the strength of the video game industry as well, are you finding yourself gravitating more towards any of those particular industries? Are you still in features as well as TV? Are you just taking the projects that you find interesting?

Brian Reitzell

Yeah. My next gig is doing a film. It’s a little indie film, but it’s really good. I can’t not do it. It’s so good. I just like to do things that I think are good. I’ve done a couple of video games. That is the hardest job. Of them all, video games is the closest to my days of being a chef, because everything is made to order, it’s à la carte. You get paid by the minute, you don’t go over by a second. And it’s modular, so it’s music that can loop infinitely that never sounds like it’s looping. You’re dealing with — I mean, we could do a whole panel on the psychology of making music in a way that… You know what I mean? You make modular music, so it can play infinitely and you never can tell that it’s literally a twenty second piece of music.

Todd L. Burns

Do you feel like you’d want to go back to a video game?

Brian Reitzell

It depends on the game. The problem with video games and the problem with even film and TV is that they’re so behind the technology that we have in the studio. I’m years ahead of video games. What I mean by that is that I love surround sound, I’m into immersion and bringing music into, again, physical, the concert hall, everything, it’s all around you. With video games, every time I’ve gone into a video game I say “Can we do this in 5.1? Can I use the…” They’re like, “No we don’t have the bandwidth for that. We can use it for the cut scenes but we can’t use it in gameplay.” That’s one example of how behind the technology is. It’s all about visuals. They think that people are stupid. They think that our eyes are more important than our ears. It’s frustrating. Working on video games, I would love to do another one; I just want them to be able to allow me to push things a little further, that’s all. I learned a lot and I must say the first video game I did, the first delivery I did was rejected. It was too intense, rejected.

Once I figured it out after that… I mean, I didn’t go to school for this. I didn’t know. I come from film, everything that I do is based on working in film. And I don’t differentiate really. With TV, film, same thing. It’s just with TV, you have a gun to your head and you’ve got two weeks to deliver a score. With a movie you’ve got months and months and lots of producers saying, “Oh, I don’t know” or whatever. With video games it’s very precise. I will say that I got into TV because Gus Van Sant asked me to do a TV show. Coming from film and worshiping Gus’ career, it’s like, “If Gus is going to do it, I’m going to do it.” I always thought TV was the lowest art form for music. But if you really do your research and go back…

Hannibal was produced by a French company, Gaumont, one of the oldest film companies in the world I think, definitely here in France. They made the show, they produced it and then it was licensed to NBC. Because of that I got away with murder. If you listened to Hannibal, it is the most far-out shit I could think to make. What can I do that is the craziest, mind-melting thing and put it on network television? I don’t think I will ever get that opportunity again because I think network television is probably dead now. We have too many other ways, cable, on-demand. Who’s going to watch network television? And the standards and practices, the commercials, there’s a lot of crap that goes within doing a network television show. But it was great to do, it was great to do.

Audience Member

What’s a situation where directors reached out to you but the producers have stepped or the studios have stepped in and said, “No, not going to happen”?

Brian Reitzell

I’m very careful about what job I take. I don’t ever take a job, A) Because of the money, B) because of the studio or the producers. I work for directors. I learned how to do what I do working with Sofia. Sofia was the person. I was only interested in her being happy with what I did, nobody else. That’s the way I do it, I work for a director. That can get me in trouble. That can also cost me. It’s cost me jobs. I mean, I would probably be a rich man if I adopted the “I’ll work for the producer” deal. With TV it’s a very different trip. Because with TV, the director is not the most powerful guy in the room. Once it’s all shot, the director is kind of kicked out the door and then the show runner, the producer, the studio are making it.

Todd L. Burns

You’ve kind of got dragged into Hannibal through a film director that you worked with who was working on Hannibal.

Brian Reitzell

Hannibal was a complete one-off. What happened with Hannibal has probably never happened in television because the director — check this out. The director who hired me because I had done a film with him, when I delivered the first score for Hannibal, you make your music and then I would play it for director in my studio and he’d say, “This great, cool.” Signs off on it. Then we go to the dub stage, this is where they’re going to mix the dialogue and the effects all together. It’s in a big fancy technicolor room. With no outboard gear, just a console. So we’re sitting in the room and the mixers took the stems and mixed it like you do TV, they pulled this down here, they brought in this helicopter sound. And my score didn’t work. After a few minutes of watching it, I had to leave the room. The producer is sitting behind me, who have never heard the music that I’ve done. They’re like, “Oh my God, did we hire the wrong guy? Fuck, it’s a disaster.”

It turns out that the mixers, they didn’t understand the score that I had delivered. It was too far out for them. They were all based in Toronto, Canada, by the way. Not Montreal but Toronto, where a lot of television is made. These guys only do a lot really generic TV, CSI-type TV shows. They had unfolded the mix. The director came in and said, “Hey Brian, how come it doesn’t sound like it did at your studio?” I said, “Because they altered the mix.” What they did is the director now sat in the mix room; you keep the music at zero and you start taking out all the sound effects, because again people think the audience is stupid. They think if a phone rings, “Oh my God we’ve got to hear it over and over. We’ve got to hear everything that’s in the room. We’ve got to create this reality.” When really you don’t — I mean, if you want it to be artistic.

So what we did is — and I had experience working with this director, we did a film together and the film was mixed by these guys that did all the Lord of the Rings movies down in New Zealand, Peter Jackson’s guys. These guys, they’ve got Oscars and they fly airplanes, they’re very intimidating. The movie opened with a guy walking through the snow. When I scored it, I just take all the sound effects out and I just make music. I’m taking into consideration they’re going to have wind and stepping and all that stuff, I’ll work with that. We got down to New Zealand for the mix and you couldn’t hear the music, it was all [make sound effects of crashing and distortion] And the director walks in, this is the same guy who does Hannibal, and he says, “Take all that out.” I’m like, “No, you can’t take it out.” In the end what we learned is that you can use those effects to establish something, and then you can take them out, and you don’t miss them. And then the music was doing his footsteps and the strings were doing the wind, and it became this really cool thing. But it was a fight. It was two weeks of us fighting these guys and really it’s very simple. Leave it at zero, pull the effects out. We don’t need to hear somebody’s police walkie-talkie, it’s very disruptive.

Todd L. Burns

I guess there’s two things, or two ways of thinking about it in normal television scenarios. One is we want to have the exact sound in the room and that’s very, very important. The other is the music tells you how to feel.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah.

Todd L. Burns

I think one of the things in watching the clip of Hannibal that was so interesting was I knew that something — there was tension, but I didn’t know why and I certainly didn’t know what was coming up.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah. Neither did I when I was making it. That’s the point, I guess. Look, this is artsy TV or whatever, but it’s what I like to do. At least with that show. Hannibal couldn’t be more different than, say, something like Marie Antoinette. Every project is different. Or with the video games, where I got to use lots of keyboards and be electro. They’re all different and they all need their own thing.

Todd L. Burns

Are there any other questions?

Audience Member

Hello, thank you for being with us. I would imagine that you would have a huge, huge, huge collection of random percussion instruments. I would like to ask where your favorite place is to look for, because it’s something that I’m really interested in it as well. Yeah.

Brian Reitzell

I am constantly searching out. Yesterday I was in the Marais looking at 200-year-old instruments. When I travel — and I sometimes will go somewhere because I want to buy some instruments. Last year I went to Morocco for the first time and I bought some instruments that I brought back with me.

Todd L. Burns

You have people in these cities that tell you, “You need to go there.” Or you just walk in around?

Brian Reitzell

Yeah. My friend, Mr. Google, helps me a lot. Being in Los Angeles is a really great place. I’m really fortunate. For Hannibal, I had some custom-built bass tone bars that are giant. I have a picture on my phone, I can show you all afterwards. They are these giant wooden planks. Each one is one note. The largest one is the size of this couch. When I hit it with a mallet, your clothes move. It’s low end I’ve never heard off a synthesizer in my life. But there’s a guy that makes them. I really love Harry Partch and microtonality music.

Twelve-tone music bores me to death. I guess I’m getting older; this might happen to all of you too. I’ve been making music for as long as can remember and the older I get the less I’m interested in twelve tones. I want to get in between all that stuff. Often I like to dream something up and have it made. I find people that can make stuff for me. In LA, if you’re ever in Los Angeles, go to the Pro Drum Shop, it’s almost like a museum. It’s run by these two brothers, Stan and Jerry. It’s been there forever. I go in there and buy different things. But really, everywhere I go. My percussion instrument collection is massive. And I’ve never sold an instrument in my life. I own everything I’ve ever had.

When I was nineteen I bought a Noble & Cooley, 5 x 14 single-ply steam bent snare drum. I had to borrow money for this thing, because it was like $700, which is a lot of money. I was 19. When I bought it, I slept with it for a month. I put it in the bed next to me, because I cherished it so much. You guys are all going to think I’m crazy. I don’t know, the bed was big enough. It was a futon, actually, and I just put it there. That drum, to this day, it’s what’s on The Virgin Suicides. I use it; it’s my drum. It’s what I go to. I have probably twenty snare drums, but this one is special. I think it’s because I slept with it for a month.

Todd L. Burns

Are there any other questions?

Brian Reitzell

Not after that.

Audience Member

Hello. I’m wondering, as a sound enthusiastic, crazy sound freak… No, you! I’m sorry. I’m wondering what are your strategies to search for silence and go out of this world, you know? Because sound can be really, all the time. What are your strategies to come down and just be in your own element?

Brian Reitzell

Yeah. To be honest, my favorite movies have very little score in them. Silence is — it’s never actually silent. It’s pretty silent in here because this room is soundproofed. When I’m dealing with film… See, there’s some silence. I’m dealing with what I consider to be atmosphere, and silence is very powerful and I use it all the time. Again, depends on the project. Talking about — Hannibal is our sound-crazy world that we’ve been talking about. But I think we’re surrounded by sound, whether it’s the heater coming on, the refrigerator making a sound, the birds, the wind. It’s never silent. It’s only silent when you’re, I don’t know, at the doctor. When your head is in some machine or something. I mean, there is no silence.

To me, the most beautiful sound in the world is the sound of the ocean. I’ve never heard anything as cool as the ocean, or birds. I think that music can have a similar rhythm, presence, texture as nature. That’s what I’m the most interested in. Really, the music can be the most manipulative, horrible thing. Music ruins films for me, because it’s too musical. It sounds like another layer put on top of something. I like it — and again, I’m talking more about where I am today with Hannibal and these sort of projects. I don’t want people to think of music being a separate layer, unless it’s a musical moment in the movie. I’d rather it be more naturalistic.

Again, it has this... You’re not repeating melodiesm because once it’s repeated it’s planned out or something; it’s not natural. Birds do the most incredible rhythms and the most incredible melodic, repetitive lines and stuff. I think I get more from that than I do listening to the Strokes or something. I love the Strokes, don’t get me wrong. I love pop music. But I’m talking about film, I’m talking about sound in that way. Silence is one of the most important things. In Hannibal what is so great is I would do wall-to-wall atmosphere and sound, and then at one point when these two characters are connecting, it’s completely silent. For me to go through hours and hours and episodes and episodes to get to that one point is golden to me.

Todd L. Burns

Are there any other questions?

Audience Member

Hi. I’m wondering, coming from a more band-slash-record background, was there anything in particular that you eventually had to break yourself of, in terms of approach when dealing with picture? Or anything that you’d just care to share for those of us who haven’t really done much picture?

Brian Reitzell

You mean in scoring picture?

Audience Member

Yes.

Brian Reitzell

As opposed to making a song?

Audience Member

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah. Sometimes you are just makings song. It’s a completely different head. It really is. This is why it is liberating for some of the people that I’ve worked with, like Kevin or Mark. It’s liberating to work on a film, because when you’re writing a song, it’s kind of the hardest thing in the world to do. You have to pull your inspiration from… [looks around] Nowhere, thank you.

I’ve worked quite a bit with a guy named Britt Daniel from the band Spoon. He’s a songwriter and he’s told me, writing a song is really hard. With a movie, or with any of the things that I’m talking about, it’s right in front of you. I put up a picture and it’s like I know what to do. This is why video games are so hard, because with the video game you don’t have a finished picture, you don’t know what it’s going to be, so you don’t know if it works. With film, with TV, when it works you just know it and then you can put it down, you can stop. When you’re making a song, and I just did — I just did two songs, one with Siouxsie Sioux and one with Marc Almond, and I can tell you that writing a song, especially like that where I was writing for a singer, it’s hard. And it takes more work. A lot of the stuff that I, and maybe it’s because I’ve been doing it for a while now, I can do very quickly. I’m outputting 50 hours of music a year or something. That’s a lot of music. Most bands are doing thirty minutes, forty minutes, whatever. Yeah, we’re a factory. But we’re not writing songs. I’m not writing pop songs. I’m not making Abbey Road. I did, though. I made records. I spent my 20s and my 30s... My 20s were with Redd Kross, touring, making those records. My 30s with Air. Now in my 40s, I’m in this world.

Todd L. Burns

You did make a record though, recently, that you put out last year.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah.

Todd L. Burns

Was it tough to get back into that mindset? Like you’re saying, turning that kind of…

Brian Reitzell

That’s not a pop record, though.

Todd L. Burns

Sure.

Brian Reitzell

I think writing, and in a way it’s really tricky. Right now you guys have the opportunity to sort of turn things on its ear, change things up a bit. We need something new. It felt to me, especially like with both Air and Redd Kross, it’s like, well, look, the perfect pop song was made in the ’60s or whatever. You’re not going to beat that. What you’re trying to do is so difficult if you’re making a three-minute pop song. I think that’s one of the hardest things there is to do. But then again, I have a nine-year-old daughter and we listen to pop radio in the car and because of, man, it sounds so different now. I mean, it’s still the same one-five-four, it’s still the same chord progressions. And I think that for me, I’m not interested in that anymore. I’m not interested in three, four chords. I’m not interested in pop structure anymore.

But to work within something that feels familiar and is structured in a pop way, and to do it in a new way, that’s really tough. It’s really hard and it doesn’t really relate to what I do. It relates to what a lot of people do do with film. That’s one of the problems that I have with it, is that I think pop music is pop music and you can put it in a movie, but when you’re scoring, it’s kind of a whole other trip.

Todd L. Burns

I think we probably have time for maybe one more question. Does anyone have... Back there?

Audience Member

Hey, I’m just curious about what game you scored.

Brian Reitzell

I’ve done three, I think. The first one I did was called Red Faction: Armageddon. You should see the record cover, it’s amazing. Nile Rodgers has a record company that only does video games, so Nile Rodgers’ company put out the vinyl. That was the first one I did, and I tell you, that was so hard. So hard, because I didn’t know what to do. The guy flew out and showed me, and I don’t play video games, because Pro Tools is my video game. I’m playing all day long. The second one I did was I just contributed some music to Dead Rising 3. I love these titles. The last one I did came out last year, called Watch Dogs. Watch Dogs, it was very exciting because it came out while I was here in Paris last year, and I walked by, there’s a game shop over Montparnasse, and I walked by and it was packed with all these kids playing the game. I hadn’t seen it, because when you work on these things you don’t see it really until the end. That was… Wow. Yeah. Hard work, video games.

Audience Member

You should check out, if you don’t know it, Shadow of the Colossus, it’s a PS2 game. I don’t even consider it a game, it’s one of the most theatrical... There’s not really any dialogue in the game, it’s just a huge atmospheric landscape and you’re just this dude on a horse.

Brian Reitzell

Is it Japanese?

Audience Member

Yeah.

Brian Reitzell

Yeah, see, that to me is interesting. I would love to do a video game that isn’t violent. I think we could do really interesting things with video games that isn’t just people being blood and shot and action movies. I’m not really interested in that. I did it, it’s great, it’s fun to do. But doing something that’s more interesting like that would be really cool.

Audience Member

The soundtrack is amazing.

Brian Reitzell

What’s it called again?

Audience Member

Shadow of the Colossus.

Brian Reitzell

OK, I will check it out.

Audience Member

It’s really easy to find. Thanks.

Brian Reitzell

Thank you. Cool.