The New Yorker Radio Hour - Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on HBO’s “Watchmen”

Episode Date: August 21, 2020

 HBO’s “Watchmen” was nominated for twenty-six Emmy Awards—more than any other show this year—including two for the music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (who are also the members of the industrial-rock band Nine Inch Nails). The music negotiates the show’s superhero plot with its real and traumatic historical context: the Greenwood Massacre, in which mobs attacked the Black community of Tulsa in 1921 and killed as many as three hundred people. It “brings this very difficult history together with the sheer bad-ass fun of fantasy,” Vinson Cunningham says. “That tension shows up on every level of the show, and definitely in its wide-ranging score.” The music in “Watchmen” is “sometimes creepy, sometimes mournful, and sometimes outrageous—it’s not just a mood-setter; it’s like its own character.” Cunningham spoke with Reznor and Ross about how they achieved this effect, musically. “I knew we were not going to let the show down,” Ross said, “because it was clear that this one matters.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Vincent Cunningham, and I'll be sitting in today for David Remnick. Thanks for joining me. Hands down, one of the standout TV shows of the last year was HBO's Watchman. It's been nominated for 26 Emmy Awards, which is an amazing number. Watchmen was adapted from a cult classic 80s graphic novel about American politics, vigilantism and war.

It's a superhero story, but at the heart of this new version is a horror that's totally real. The Greenwood Massacre, a rampage against the black community of Tulsa, a century ago, that left hundreds of people dead. The thing about Watchmen is how it brings this very difficult history together with the sheer badass fun of fantasy. Cavalry's back. Three years of peace. And we convinced ourselves that they were gone.

But they were just hibernating. Good thing we know where their caves are. That tension shows up on every level of the show, and definitely in its wide-ranging score. Watchmen's music is sometimes creepy, sometimes mournful, and sometimes outrageous. It's not just a mood setter. It's like its own character. The score is by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and it was nominated for two Emmy Awards. You might know Trent Reznor and Attecasson.

Atticus Ross as the two permanent members of the industrial rock band, Nine In recent years, they've also composed music for films like Birdbox and Gone Girl, and their score for the social network won the Oscar. They worked with creator Damon Lindeloff, who also created Lost to score Watchmen. I talked last week with Atticus Ross and Trent Rezner. We were drawn primarily to Damon, and not knowing him as a person. we just respect the work he's done. I think what he's done in television

has been groundbreaking. When I heard he was interested in Watchmen and I got wind of his affinity for the material that seemed like something that could go wrong so easily that I know he's going to approach that with everything he's got. And what we found was exactly what we'd hoped it would be. It's a shame it's only one season. It felt like a new home.

If I imagine how you write a TV score, you're setting yourself in a world, you have major characters, you're exploring that world through sound, but Watchman has like a million characters and it takes place in like four or five different worlds and all the stories are very complicated. So I found myself wondering as I watched again listening to what you had done, where do you start with something as sprawling as this? The new thing that was presented to us on this project, being my first foray into television, was the, you know, if it's a film, generally you know how it's going to end. You've read the script or there is a script.

You have a couple hours usually to tell the story and one as a composer can start to think about it in its entirety. What's the shape of this thing? what connective threads could there be, what bookendish qualities to the score might one consider when approaching. This was different where, what did we know? We knew it was nine hours, okay? And we have the script for the first one.

Right. And we have a very vague, a very vague understanding of what might happen throughout the course of the season with major points omitted in that description to us. And they weren't finished writing it yet. I mean, I'm assuming it was planned out,

but we didn't have access to that. So we didn't know what the ending was. We didn't know exactly where it wound up. We didn't know that there would be, we'd be revisiting several different time periods in genre. Yeah, I mean, you could read the script, but you didn't really get it, until you got the picture.

And then, I mean, the two things that struck me when we got the, there were two cuts of the episode one, the second one, was one, this is really important. And two, it's simultaneously important and engaging. In a kind of fun would sound like not the right word to use, but there is an energy about it and that Damon wanted the music to be a character. And particularly in episode one,

it felt like we were being let off the leash in a way that we hadn't previously been in the sense that we were able to dip into the toolkit that we might use in aspects of in nine-inch nails. But it was also an education as well. You know, I mean, the whole process of Watchman was. But looking about Watchman, I can't really think of anything else apart from Watchmen. I mean, it was a wholly immersive experience for however long we were on that, which is a blur.

I'm glad you mentioned the pilot, because there's a song from that episode that's nominated for an Emmy. The song's called Objects in Mirror are closer than they appear. and it runs through a series of scenes. It kind of goes from an interrogation room with the character looking glass, all the way to this shootout that happens on a cattle farm. Well, we looked at that really as a suite of music.

How long have you lived in Tulsa? Six. You know, one knew it needed to be propulsive and engaging, and we had some idea of the backdrop of the shots that were being shown at the time. And it was really just kind of punch away. to looking-glances questions and knowing that this piece was going to need to build

and build and build and build are you a member of or do you associate with members of the white two premises organization on this seventh cabin. No. Up until we arrive, Angela takes off at the cattle battle is when we switch music.

Like what Atticos was saying earlier, once we realize they want to play music in the forefront and they want to, as we're, Attica said, treat music as a character. Then we were faced with, particularly in this first episode, now there's six and seven, eight-minute chunks of music. It's almost plays like a music video with action behind it. Then it quickly becomes, all right,

how can we pace this so that it still can step up in ways? It's not all about fast tempo and it's not all about gun battle excitement. How can we stretch this out? and manipulate the release so that when it comes, you can't wait for that musically to help achieve that. Cop got shot, so we're all a little wound up here. But still, that's no excuse for how I treated you. Sorry.

Yeah, okay. Appreciate your understanding. I think the one you're talking about now, it starts with an interrogation. which we love the idea of it being almost kind of raunchy feeling and kind of sexy in a weird way. With his images and it was shot in such an interesting way that we felt that music amplified the disoriented nature of that whole scene. The choice then as they've got the information from them and now they're about to go into a shootout, what if we try to keep the tempo the same through this whole long chunk?

Cattle Ranch And we then started experimenting with different ways We could flip that groove on its head and keep the tempo the same So it still has a half-time kind of nods your head feel But it suddenly gets much darker and unpleasant We bring in a distorted base Next thing during the shootout We were surprised, pleasantly surprised to see that we could

Make that feel exciting and violent and overwhelming without having to speed up to double speed, without bringing in drums of war and other mechanisms that would be corny. So we were learning through that whole process, and it was cool to see, we kind of went from feeling like our role as the composer is going to be, you know, gently filling in some blanks here and there to, okay, it's a featured music. 20 minutes of the show is, you know, go. all right let's make sure we do that with taste and restraint

and knowing when to put a foot on the gas and when to kind of let the picture pick up but it was a very exciting experience because of the pace of TV and because of what we were being challenged to do musically

but it was also a kind of I don't know what the right word is you know I just I know that we didn't want to We were not going to let the show down Because it was clear That this one matters This one really does matter

Yeah Can you name a moment during this process Where you got the assignment from Damon And it just was totally intimidating It felt like something you just couldn't deliver Well I can tell you one easy one easy one was the reveal of

Dr. Manhattan Life on Mars. Right. Song by David Bowie. Yeah. To me that's one of the greatest songs ever recorded. If I had to just pick, if I had to go to a desert island and only allowed to take one

person, it would be David Bowie. No question. So, to me, that's sacred ground. and I think both of us were intimidated and when we when we finished it we were like

I don't know if we've done it justice I don't know if it's we didn't know and I can and this is true we were like I don't think we should put it on one of the albums like one of the things that me and Trent have in common

is that you know we're not we're not like the most secure people in in like I know I can look back on watchmen and say we did the best that we can do and I can look back on

everything that that we've done and say that but we that when it leaves the studio at the end of you know episode X or Y we're not at the end of the episode slapping each other on the back going man we knock that out the part.

It's just, we're just not like that. And on the David Bowie cover, now I can listen to it. And I really like it. I love it. But it was almost like I needed the validation of the few friends that I do have getting a text message from them saying, man, love the end of episode seven,

love the version that you did. You know what I mean? It's like. Shamefully it. I agree. There you go. Very cool. The thing about music I found, just to ramble on for a second, is...

No, please. The more you do it, the more I feel like there's so much more to know. There's never a sense of mastery. There's feelings, I can have the feeling that I'm good at this thing I know how to do. But what's I found endlessly engaging about... composing and what's been great about having an alternate career in scoring is that you're constantly reminded of how powerful and beautiful music and how emotionally direct, you know, and it can affect people in ways I don't think anything else can, and memory and experience. And it's, it's

invigorating to kind of see for as much as you know, there's that much, more to know, and it keeps it exciting. Thank you both so much. This has been awesome. Oh, thank you. Feeling is mutual. Trent Rezner and Atticus Ross. They're nominated for two Emmy Awards for the music for the series Watchmen on HBO.

I'm Vincent Cunningham, and we'll be back with more from the New Yorker Radio. A year ago, August of 2019, we lost one of the greats. Tony Morrison was 88, the author of 11 novels and many other works. people of my generation first encountered Morrison in our high school English classes. She was a legend by then, and her books helped us to see not only how rich and satisfying literature could be,

but also how varied and strange our own lives could be. She revealed the history of slavery as a kind of haunting. She investigated new and freakish ways of seeing. She showed us how dangerous it could be to be alienated from the past. Morrison once said, we don't need any more writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writer's movement, assertive, militant, pugnacious.

She did more than most to build that kind of broad, loving community, but she was a hero too. Tony Morrison spoke with my colleague, staff writer Hilton Alls, in 2015. It was a few months after her last novel, God Help the Child, was published. takes place in the so-called contemporary world. Yeah.

How was that for you? Oh, Gary. I started God bless the child. And I started home and finished it. Because that was a period that I could sort of understand. I couldn't write about now I felt because it was so slippery. until I thought, I realized that what was very definitive about now is so powerfully, powerfully self-reverential.

Novels about me, stories about me. And I thought, okay, if she becomes this glamorous creature, it will be in cosmetics, which is all about beauty and looking good. you know, so on. And for him, it would be hanging on to the absence of his older brother. So he leaves and he goes away to college and nothing is satisfactory. He's better than everything. He's going to write the great books.

He's going to do, you know, he doesn't do any of it. He can't even play a decent horn. I mean, you know, he plays a little bit, but nobody takes him that seriously. So he's cutting himself off at the leg, Because he's hanging on to, you know, this, what about me and how I feel. So the coming together, when somebody can listen to a conversation between these two people, and they can listen to each other and know that there's something valuable that they need in the other person. And that's a good ending.

But when you talk about that idea of me and selfies and all of that, that noise, let's say, that doesn't exist in other centuries or other times, were you distracted by the reality of now before you could tell the story? You know, I always say, you know, remember when I was a girl, a young girl, we were called citizens. American citizens. They're American citizens this, American citizens that. We were second-class citizens, but that was the word. And then after World War II in the 50s and 60s, they started calling us consumers.

The American consumer needs or should or meh, and so we did. And so we did. Consum. Now they don't use those words anymore. Listen, the American taxpayer. And those are different attitudes. If you're a citizen, you think your block or your neighbors or your town or something is part of you. If you're a consumer, you just go to a store and shop.

That's a whole different thing. So that's part of what I was feeling. But generally speaking, when I was writing, God bless the child. That's what I thought was distinctive, you know, about the period. I want to tell you what the title of that book was before I was forced to change it. I called it The Wrath of Children. That's a great title. Yeah.

Everybody hated it. No. My agent, my editor. the editor-in-chief, the da-da-da-da-da-da. So this one sounded like Billy Holiday or somebody. You know what I mean? This is great.

Thank you. Tony, I'm going to be one of those boys in Lorraine getting up. But thank you. The thank you. Thanks, Charlie. It's really lovely. That's Tony Morrison, who died in August of last year. She spoke in 2015 with the New Yorkers Hilton Alts,

and you can hear a much longer version of their conversation at new Yorkerradio.org. I'm Vincent Cunningham. Thank you for joining us this week. David Remnick will be back with you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron,

Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon Corby, Calli Leah, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam, Morgan Flannery, Meng Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.