Warning: Some mild SPOILERS for Spiderhead to follow.
Netflix's Spiderhead releases on Friday, June 17, and is the second movie by director Joseph Kosinski to release within the span of a month (The other being the fantastic Top Gun: Maverick). Based on the George Saunders short story Escape from Spiderhead, which was published in the New Yorker in 2010, Spiderhead boasts an intriguing concept that evokes the feel of Philip K. Dick's masterful sci-fi stories.
Spiderhead also marks another collaboration between Joseph Kosinski and Miles Teller, and features strong performances by Chris Hemsworth and Jurnee Smollett. One of the standout aspects of Spiderhead is the music, which alternates between a brilliantly-tailored mix of yacht rock song placements and a haunting underscore. Joseph Trapanese, who has collaborated with Kosinski on a number of films starting with Tron: Legacy, blends musical textures and techniques to perfectly match Spiderhead's, twists, turns, and (drug-induced) trips.
Trapanese spoke with Screen Rant about working with Joseph Kosinski, creating the perfect musical tone, and chasing genius in simplicity.
Screen Rant: This is your fourth film with director Joseph Kosinski, who is having a pretty good month and a half...
Joseph Trapanese: [Laughs] Yeah, you know, nothing since 2017 and then two movies coming out in a month. Hollywood's like that.
Screen Rant: You two must obviously like working together. What keeps you coming back for projects together?
Joseph Trapanese: I think that's a really deep question for me, because I take a lot of pride in being a working film composer. I take a lot of pride in my skill set of being able to make music for anything you put in front of me. That has always been my goal, tell stories through music, but there's something in the way Joe Kosinski tells his stories, his visuals, that really elicits something really special from me. And it's hard for me to even put that into words. The closest I've been able to put it into words is this old Wagnerian term, which is "total art music." Where everything that you're seeing... it's like a sum of all of its parts. It's the visuals, it's the music, it's the sound, it's the performance.
There are so many things that make a Joe Kosinski movie, and I think it's just so cool that I've been involved in most of them. I feel like not just due to me, also due to the collaborators on the first two films I did with Joe, we've been able to really hold our own against his incredible vision that he delivers on screen. So I count myself so lucky to be associated with his work, because he really knows what sound and music can do for him.
He's really confident in that, so he is able to let a picture sit - first of all because the pictures are so beautiful - but then he doesn't need to hurry to make a cut or something because he's going to let us do something really beautiful. And so I think this is continuing that effort to really continue that "total art music," where it is a sum of everything. [It] Gives the audience a real journey, so... pretty cool to be back!
Screen Rant: When you start working on a film, with Joe or with someone else, how much do you and the director usually talk about the theme and the character before you even sit down to watch it?
Joseph Trapanese: I try to have as much conversation with the filmmaker as possible, and in fact for Spiderhead, I started working before a frame of picture was shot. I called Joe, I said, "Hey, what's going on with this movie I just heard about? I'd love to do it," and he said "Go read the short story." And I did, and it was awesome, I said "The short story is really great," and I immediately started having these ideas of sounds I wanted to hear. I think I wrote one of the first pieces almost right away.
Then he sent over the script, which is awesome and expands on the ideas of the short story and creates this really compelling drama, and I just kept writing. I mean, just about all the musical material that's in the film was created based on the script, based on those conversations. Because the goal for me, and I think the goal for any film composer, any artist, is to create something original that stands and supports the film, and does something really great.
My cheat code of doing that is trying to do it so early that there's never a discussion of temp music, or something that gets in the way of like, "We have to reference all this other stuff." And of course you wind up referencing things, and pointing at things, but you start with original ideas rather than the opposite, where you come in and there's already music in the film. I've worked like that too, there's nothing wrong with that. Temp music is a nature of the business and you have to be really good at working with it. That's one of the skills you need, but how awesome is it to approach it from more of a pure standpoint of just making music based on a story?
I think that's why I'm so proud of this score, because it feels like this film in a way that if it was temped with something else it just wouldn't have.
Screen Rant: Yeah, the score feels so unique. I love that you go between these really natural, lush vocal and string pieces, and then these really kind of sinister... almost sound design synth cues. Was that a decision that you came up with while talking to Joe? How did you get there?
Joseph Trapanese: It was a natural evolution of the idea of control and chaos, and the idea that there are these experiments going on with human emotion. I think one of the fun things to do was to record the choir, because we had not only the lush and organic and beautiful quality of the human voice - and I wrote these purposely simple, beautiful chords for when we're talking about Jeff's emotions and his memories - but then we also have these really super precise, dialed-in, almost robotic-sounding voices, which to me is a great metaphor for the puppetry that Abnesti is working on our subjects. That he is controlling their emotions in a very precise way.
I think we had an opportunity where we had this spectrum from total control and precision all the way to wild human emotion, and we can dial that scale depending on where we are in the film. So if we're with Jeff and he's reminiscing about a memory, we can go all the way into this raw human emotion and be really pure and direct. Versus when we're talking about one of the drugs, like Darkenfloxx or something like that, where the subject is under total control by Abnesti, we're going the complete opposite direction, like fully synthesized slash manipulated electronically.
A lot of those sounds are weird guitar strumming that I was doing. It's really fun to be able to connect musical concepts to dramatic concepts. I think that's one of the core tenets of being a film composer, that you are trying to express the core themes of the film through a score, and this happens to be one where that very direct analogy of control versus chaos really makes its way into the score.
Screen Rant: I'm really curious how much of this score was though and out and orchestrated versus how much was maybe come up with in the room, especially when you're working with the vocal ensemble Tonality. When you're exploring all their different textures, how much are you giving them sheet music and how much are you working through stuff with them?
Joseph Trapanese: For this score, because of the precision involved, just about everything was written out, but there is a big "but" here. For a lot of these human elements, it's so fragile and delicate, [and] it's not only tonality, we had a children's choir as well. The challenge is to have people sing really quietly, or sing really loudly. You're finding the extremes of the human voice and challenging people, so we wound up doing a lot of takes of music that is very simple.
It was all notated very simply, but it is really difficult because I'm asking the singers to sing high and super quiet, or I'm asking them to sing low but super controlled. The creation in the room is less about the actual notes on the page, and more about the expression of the emotion and the control of their voice, and rehearsing things to the point where the singers have that complete control over something so they can sing it super quietly.
I get asked a lot as a composer, since I do a lot of work with computers and electronic music, "When are we all going to be replaced? When is the orchestra going to be replaced?" Maybe in a hundred years or a thousand years, but you know, for right now, there's so much humanity and emotion in every millisecond when we're recording those ensembles. And the experience of that choir and the experience of each individual singer added up to the way the air is vibrating in the room, that's impossible to replicate right now. And that's the magic.
I think that's the "made up in the room;" all that in between the notes, even though everything was really precisely written out.
Screen Rant: And you have this beautiful cue called "Free Fridays" that is basically just a C major scale. For anyone that's had a 30-minute music lesson, it's like the first thing you learn, the easiest thing, but it's beautiful when you incorporate it into the score. Is it ever a battle for you when you're composing to just embrace that kind of simplicity?
Joseph Trapanese: I think that is the battle. For me in particular, that's something I'm always trying to achieve, this ultimate simplicity. I think it was Hemingway that said simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. It's a combination of being unafraid and being confident. That I don't need to prove how brilliant I am by writing the most complicated piece of music.
In fact, one could say - and this is not what I'm saying - but one could say "I'm going to show how brilliant I am. All I have is a C major scale, and that's the music I'm going to write." And I think that was really kind of the - the real challenge for this film was really just being unafraid to delve right into these powerful emotions. Even the most simple emotions, like "I'm getting out of the Spiderhead for my free Friday." That was the whole concept, is that this is this kind of free element.
But the interesting thing about this film is, "Are we truly free?" is the question. How free are these subjects? And so even though you're free, you're locked into this C major scale. So I think there's a lot of ways to read into how Joe and I interpreted the script through music, and that's what makes my job so much fun. It's all those little things that I get to do that they don't teach you in music school. Arranging, orchestrating, I love all that stuff, I'm a total dork, but applying that to storytelling, applying it here, that's the true art that I feel like I'm always in pursuit of every minute of the day.
Screen Rant: I love how deliberate all of these choices were from you. I'm curious, Spiderhead uses so many licensed songs to such good effect, and they're all this kind of yacht rock genre. Were you involved in the conversations to pick those songs? And then, once you know those songs are in there, are you composing differently when you know your cue is going to end and Hall and Oates is going to start up?
Joseph Trapanese: Really fortunately, I was aware of the songs from the beginning, because a lot of them are in the script. And obviously, they're not one-to-one, it's not like every song that was in the script made it into the film, but I'd say about half of them are what was written in the script and the other half... that's where I might have been involved in passing, like "Oh, Joe, what do you think of this song?" I was not really involved in any sort of important way in picking the songs.
But, that being said, since I knew that was a thing, what was great about being aware of that is that I could make my score so different. You know, the score is like cellos, bass clarinets, felt piano, and choir, [and it] has nothing to do with guitars and Fender Rhodes. There was a really early experiment I did where I took the instrumentation of yacht rock, like the Fender Rhodes, the bass, and the guitars, and I wrote a cue of Abnesti walking to the Spiderhead or something. And it just didn't really work, because it was so close to the songs, you know?
And so what we had learned from that experiment is that the score is most successful when it is like... there's like a Venn diagram and there's basically no overlap. The score is here and the yacht rock is here, and they're expressing two completely different sides of the story. And I think that's what's so effective about music in this film, is that not only does the score really accent the characters in a certain way, but the songs really give you so much depth and understanding of where Abnesti's coming from. I think it was really special to be a part of something like that.
It's very rare when we get early on an understanding of what the songs are going to be like. Usually, it's a last-second thing, or kind of battered around in post. I've been in films where I don't know what the final song is until the premiere because licensing is such a thing, you just don't know. And so, you do your best and it's awesome when we do know, and we can get in the key, and like transition. I definitely, in some instances, would alter the key of my cues to get into a song in a certain way. And there's actually an amazing scene - I have to give a shoutout to Bryan Lawson, our music editor.
There are a couple scenes, flashbacks, where we are playing both song and score at the same time, and he really worked hard to take the music that I had written - I had already written all these ideas - he worked really hard to take those ideas, put it in a certain key, and make it actually work with the song before then giving the cues back to me. And then I would really do the final finessing. So, it's a real team effort working on a film - any film of Joe's is such a team effort because of stuff like this. He's so demanding of making sure these elements, these crossovers, these little nuance things are super perfect so you and I, when we're in the audience... it's just this ride, and you're not really seeing the scenes as much. That it's just this one total thing. So in those moments, you're not going "Oh, there's a song! There's the score!" You're just going "Ah, this is this cool emotional moment," and I'm really proud of that. I think we did that in this one in a really cool way.
Screen Rant: In checking out some of your other work, the range of what you've done is so great. Spiderhead itself has such a range within the music, and then you've worked with Daft Punk, you've written bard songs for The Witcher, you're all over the place. When you were starting out, were you just soaking up every genre of music and studying everything? Or do you feel like you take a gig, and then do a lot of learning on the job?
Joseph Trapanese: The answer to both questions is yes. First of all, I'm just a very hungry hippo, you know? I just want to take in as much as I can just in terms of understanding and being musically present, because I look at my filmmakers - and even just if you look at the types of films that Joe is making versus the types of films that someone like Brian Duffield is making, or Peter Atencio - some of these other filmmakers that I've worked with - BenDavid Grabinski, Charlie Bean... they are all filmmakers who themselves have had a wide variety of things they've written and directed. So I view it as my job to be ready for anything. I connect with these people as a friend and a colleague and a storyteller, and then everything else is secondary.
It's like, "Oh, you need New Orleans jazz from the turn of the century. Great. Let's go record some amazing musicians in New Orleans." So I try to be ready for anything. At the same time, I think the through line I try to find is like, "What is my take? Yes, it's New Orleans jazz, but what am I bringing to the table that makes it unique? Why did you hire Joe? Why didn't you hire someone else?" I try to come to it with a viewpoint and a sensibility that delivers something profound for the filmmaker, that they hear something in the score that really expresses the story at a visceral, dramatic level. It sounds kind of heady when I'm listening to myself say these silly things, but it really is true, I think, that my job is filmmaker slash storyteller first, and then I need to be ready to execute that in whatever musical style.
I just got lucky because when I was a kid, I loved listening to hip hop, I loved listening to symphonic music, I loved listening to jazz. I was just really hungry, I wanted to listen to it all. And I try to incorporate as much as I can into my training, and I certainly have my blind spots, but the great thing about what we do is it's so collaborative, and if there's something I don't know, I have friends that I work with that I can call up and we can make something together that'll work great. It's pretty charmed. It certainly is weird sometimes, though, when you're trying to get a gig or do a gig.
It's like "Why did we hire this guy? He just did The Greatest Showman. Why is he doing this?" It's like, "No, maybe you're not aware of this other credit I have that shows I can do this." Or like, "Why is this guy doing this movie?" So it gets hard pitching myself on things sometimes. People see my output as so varied, [so] they're like "What box do we put this guy in?" Which is what Hollywood seems to be, right? We're all put in these boxes, like "Oh, you're the action guy," or "You're the musical theater guy," or "You're the TV guy," or "You're the whatever guy." I'm just like, "You know, I'm whatever you need." For my filmmakers, I'm trying to deliver something profound. So I make it my goal to learn always.
Screen Rant: Is there a particular moment in Spiderhead that was maybe the most challenging, or something that you're really excited for people to see, where you hope the score comes through the most? Or something you're excited for people to experience?
Joseph Trapanese: It was really hard finding the right tone for any of the scenes in the lab, because each lab scene has its own tone and shape to it. So, for some of them, we just spent weeks honing in the shape. And writing music early is great, but this is where it gets hard. Bryan, my music editor I mentioned, and Stephen Mirrione, the picture editor who also just worked so hard with our existing tracks, they would start sometimes mashing up different ideas I had together, so I would get a copy of the picture and be like "Oh, how do I make these three ideas I had work and transition?" So I'd record new ideas, I'd take my guitar and try to play something backwards and loop something to connect the two things, and it became a real challenge.
Reflecting on it, every piece of music I wrote early on was focused on an idea, an emotion, and in the lab, because of the types of experiments that Abnesti is doing, it purposefully is cycling through so many different layers of emotion. And some of them are real, some of them are not real, so how do you create a journey through these different emotions? And it gets really interesting toward the end of the movie, I won't give anything away, where a lot is crashing together, and I think that was really hard.
When we get to a point where we're moving really fast through different ideas and different types of sensibilities and emotions, it got really hard musically to find the through line and the trajectory and make something sensible that wasn't just a bunch of gibberish. So I'm really proud of where we wound up, and again, in no small part to the whole team kind of helping me through it. It definitely was a real challenge in a way to achieve that. I'm really proud of that. I can't wait for people to see it.
Check back soon for our interviews with the cast and crew of Spiderhead as well.
Spiderhead releases on Netflix June 17.