He said yes. Then he said no. Then he felt bad, so he called to apologize for saying no, found that the job was still available, and said yes again.
Trent Reznor may have taken a circuitous route to writing the music for David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” but he and his longtime collaborator Atticus Ross made the most of the gig once they took it.
The Nine Inch Nails mastermind and his co-composer have created one of the year’s most imaginative and bracing film scores, a piano-rooted, synthesizer-drenched work that is by turns plaintive and assaultive, and always adventurous and unconventional.
Reznor (left) and Ross (below), who also make up the band How to Destroy Angels with Reznor’s wife Mariqueen Maandig, spoke to TheWrap about writing the music that plays such a crucial role in Fincher’s masterful film.
On his introduction to the material:
REZNOR: The first thing that struck me was, I don’t think it’s the obvious choice for someone like me. If it was a very dark subject matter, a horror film, mass murder, something like that, it would be a more connect-the-dots scenario. But here’s a movie primarily of people in rooms talking. Okay, what do we do with this thing?
But when I read the script, any initial balking I might have had about a movie about the founding of Facebook was quickly eradicated.
We sat and watched maybe 40 minutes of a rough cut to get an idea of the tone and the actors and the overall look. And then we just went off and started working on broad stroke ideas to see what might resonate.
On their basic approach:
REZNOR: Right off the bat, everybody leaned in the direction of “let’s not do an orchestral score.” David wanted something that had electronic leanings and was a bit iconic. He referenced things from “Tron,” “Blade Runner,” and talked about a Tangerine Dream-ish kind of sound. Something that would feel like it had a uniqueness and a presence in the film.
And then Atticus and I went into our studio and started thinking about the overall themes of the film, which seemed to revolve around the act of creativity, the sacrifices made to pursue that dream in its pure form regardless of the consequences, the inevitable betrayals involved, and the moral consequences of choices made, of putting the pursuit of this thing ahead of everything else, including friendship.
We just sat there without the script or the picture, and blindly created music. We adhered to something that was a bit electronic sounding, or rooted in synthesized sound, but something that had a vulnerability to it, a human element.
ROSS: That’s one of the funnest bits for me, knowing some general themes and talking a lot about the direction with Trent.
