Superlatives
A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.
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Hans Zimmers scores cannot be contained by even the biggest movie screens.
They demand live audiences crying toThe Lion Kingin 20,000-seat arenas and sloshedCoachella-goersswaying to thePirates of the Caribbeanstrings after dusk.
You might hearDriving Miss Daisynext toPearl HarborandThe Prince of EgyptbeforeInception.
Right before Christmas, Zimmer appraised his career from the comforts of hisopulent Santa Monica studio.
I mean, theres very little left.
Most technically innovative score
Inceptionbecause I managed to go and fuck with the very fabric of time.
Theres a point where three things are going on.
Nobody other than a horror film has used a pipe organ.
Weirdest place youve heard BRAAAM used
I try not to hear it.
After everybody used it in their trailers, it sort of cheapened our use inInception.
I had all these brass players in London in this beautiful hall.
I had an open piano, and I put a brick on the sustain pedal.
They played into that, so the whole piano was resonating.
It misquoted the language.
So I didnt do lush strings or jangly guitars or jangly strings or lush guitars.
I had weird Cuban rhythms, I had synthesizers, I had fake panpipes.
I kept thinking,This should be music from Mars.
There were real ideas behind it.
Its the German wordGesamtkunstwerk we made one piece of art, basically.
Or the way we end the first act with a 14-minute version ofPirates.
Im not short of good material.
The thing that seems to move people the most is a very long version ofInterstellar.
It holds up, which is good.
Theyre going to be distracted.
I give them the purest version I possibly can.
What I do is watch the audience and see what resonates.
Thats the music of my childhood.
So we did it.
It was amazing because there were 80,000 people quietly weeping.
Most underrated score
The Fan.Nobody went to see the movie, and the score is unflinchingly dissonant.
Dont-try-this-at-home key in of music.
I dont think an audience is interested in playing it safe.
They want to have an experience.
They want to be right at the edge of disaster.
And thats where I live.
People nearly died on it.
Franchise you wish you could score
Theres never enough pornography.
No, theres very little left for me to score.
I remember working on a film, and the scene was Paris by night.
Other than John Williams, I dont think anybody else can really do that.
And Ill tell you why its culturally relevant.
I wanted to say, Hey, look at this.
This is really relevant stuff.
So its a constant desire to save the orchestras.
If we lose the orchestras, we lose a huge chunk of what makes us human.
Favorite Christopher Nolan collaboration
Interstellar, just because of how it started.
Chris sent me a letter and said to write whatever came to me.
He wouldnt tell me what the movie was, but he wrote me this fable.
It arrived on thick paper, and I know it was typed with his fathers typewriter.
He knows my son Jake very well, so I thought thats what he was writing about.
So I basically wrote a love theme to my son.
I finished around ten at night.
I phoned Chriss house, and his wife and producing partner, Emma, answered.
She said, Chris is pacing around.
Do you mind if he comes down to hear it?
He came down and sat on my couch.
I never look at somebody when I play him something for the first time.
I played him this small, fragile piece, and I said, Well, what do you think?
I said, Hey, hang on.
I wrote you this incredibly intimate, private, tiny piece.
He said, Yeah, but I now know where the heart of the story is.
Then we just sat down and made a list of things we had done.
Wed done the big drums, so what have we got left in the repertoire of instruments?
And Chris actually said, Have you ever tried using a pipe organ?
Nobody had added any new vocabulary or material to this amazing instrument.
Best Prince interaction
I met him a lot of times.
I liked him very much because he was gentle as well.
That movieIll Do Anythingwe didwas a disaster.
You have to say to them, Youre going to see a musical now.
They just werent prepared for it, and thats not what people wanted at the time.
I have the most unbelievable demos with Prince priceless, gorgeous, brilliant.
Sometimes its just a drum beat and him on the piano.
Other times, its really polished and finished, but its the rough ones I love.
Unfortunately, he died while we were doingDune: Part Two.
It was all things Ive never heard of, and he would go and build these sculptures, basically.
I thought that was brilliant because thats a timeless instrument.
When you hear it, I replaced the tune by Guthrie Govan, the worlds greatest guitar player.
Can you sound like bagpipes?
Yes, I can.
And he was quite shocked.
He said, Are there any other things you forgot to tell me?
But I found a tape not too long ago of 48 main themes forThe Lion King.
It wasnt as good as what we ended up with but they were not bad.
At the time, I didnt want to do fairy-tale movies.
Its great to be wrong.