The Newman Family is a dynasty in the world of film music and the point of “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” is an illustration of the latest chapter in Newman Saga. The Score to the Nine-Episode Netflix Series is a collaboration Between Thomas Newman, a Veteran Composer With 15 Oscar Nominations, and His Daughter, Julia, A Third Generation Composer In A Family That Also Includes Her Grandfather (4), 45 Emil (11 and one, respectively) and her cousins Randy (22 Oscar nods and a spot in the rock & roll hall of fame), David, Joey and Maria.
It’s pretty inheritance, and Julia knows it. “I never thought about being the continuation of a dynasty,” said the composer, who graduated from Calarts in Fine Arts before studying music at USC. “I had a lot of reverence for what my dad did, but I think it scared me. I grew up around orchestras, but I didn’t even understand how you could come from having an idea to have an entire orchestra’s collaboration and then have that work on a picture.”
Her father recognizes the pressure to continue in the family business. “I also did it in my generation with my uncle Lionel and my dad,” Thomas said. “It was scary but interesting, and it was washed over you with this epic scale.”
“But the idea of how I could be meaningful in my contribution remained to be seen. It made me feel small as opposed to large and part of a legacy.” He laughed. “It scared me, this idea of writing music to image.”
But Thomas has done it successfully for decades such as “The Shawshank Redemption”, “American Beauty” and “Wall-E”, while Julia has switched from shorts and indie films to a pair of Ryan Murphy Limited series, “FEUD: Capote vs. the” Monsters. For the first of these, Thomas wrote the main title and Julia composed the music for the individual sections; Secondly, they were initially asked to work with the music together, perhaps a tricky task given that the series is about children who kill their parents.
“The question was“ How should we do this together? “, Thomas said.” I had never collaborated with another composer in film, so it was a great adventure for both of us to find out how we would do it. “
They had no tough and quick rules for the collaboration. “We gathered ideas separately and we developed these ideas together and we developed them separately,” Julia said. “I think starting with a big old idea pot is really good. An empty page is scary, but by trying many different things I think we started refining our sense of style and refining a sense of how comedy works in connection with a story about such a brutal murder.”
Originally, they used many Drone structures -and when they stopped making the first episode, the producers began to use their existing music instead of outside temp music when mounted rough cuts.
Julia, who worked with the second episode, the one who got Newman’s her Emmy nomination, Julia wrote what she called a “very complicated piano piece.” Not sure how to present it, she added an introduction that consisted of a simple and frightening keyboard passage in stock with her voice that intonated the word hum. When she sent the two -part piece to her father, she said he quickly replied, “Cut this. These are two separate ideas.”
Thomas immediately embraced hum motif. “My assistant had accidentally put Julia’s music at the beginning of the second episode,” he said. “I thought,” Whoa, this involves. “It plays into a deep emotional hunger, some form of subtextual thing by what could potentially motivate these characters to do such things.”
Julia cut: “One of the most exciting things, at least for me early in this process, was that the idea excited you, Dad. I got a call at 7:” Hi, Want to jump on Zoom? “
Her father she said, “had taken that piece and started structuring it. For me, this points out why it was a completely different thing to work with my dad at this show – because it is one thing to have an interesting idea; it is another thing to realize that that idea is interesting. And then it is a completely different thing to get the idea to have legs.”
The two worked faster than Thomas were used to ending all nine episodes, and used their music to reflect the darkness in the Mentez world but also capture any style and sexiness that can leave the audience worried.
“The ambiguity has a convincing story aspect,” Thomas said. “If it contradicts itself and leans from one thing to another, it makes you want to know what will happen next.”
Julia Added, “When You’re Diving It, You’re Forced To Make Snap Decisions And Figure Out How To Survive On A Moment-To-Moment Basis. And In Some Ways, I think you and I BOTH Find That Process Easier Than Trying To Come Up With This Big Idea Moments of Survival – and HopeFully, Music that We Delighted in Making Comes Out On The Other Side of It. “
This story first appeared in Down to the Wire: Drama Issue of thewrap’s Awards Magazine. Read more from the question here.
