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Charlie Clouser
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Mar 2, 2005
Charlie Clouser likes to make people’s ears hurt in a good way. He first became known to the public as the keyboardist for Nine Inch Nails and recently he’s moved into scoring film and television. His first feature film job was the horror hit SAW which has just been released on DVD.
Check out the website for SAW official soundtrack
Daniel Robert Epstein: Hey Charlie, how are you doing?
Charlie Clouser: Good I’m just messing around on my new computer.
DRE:
What’d you get?
CC:
I just got a G5 for my music studio.
DRE:
Nice, but don’t you have one in there already though?
CC:
I do have one but it was one of the very first ones and one channel on the video card is bad and it crashes all the time. Apple is really good about repairing it but it’s just been back so many times.
DRE:
I bet you have a really nice studio.
CC:
Well it never got set up with conventional equipment, it’s mostly computers.
DRE:
I interviewed [SAW co-writer/director] James Wan recently and he’s a lot different than I expected.
CC:
He’s full of energy. Part of the reason the score is so crashing and banging is because he had this great delivery when he was setting up the scenes for me. He wanted to go straight for the jugular. He has all the enthusiasm of someone who either has no clue of what they’re up against or has a clue and doesn’t care. I don’t know if someone who went to film school in LA would have the same attitude.
DRE:
James said he had this really intense temp score with Nine Inch Nails and Einstürzende Neubauten.
CC:
Also Ministry. At one point he had Ministry coming out of the left speaker and Einstürzende Neubauten coming out of the right. You can imagine that.
DRE:
He said the temp score helped you because you had a very short amount of time to score the film.
CC:
Yeah we wound up doing the whole score in five or six weeks. They had puzzled through some of the potential trouble moments with the temp score. They had arrived at some successful conclusions like where the drums stop towards the end of the movie.
DRE:
In the liner notes James said that after he screened the film for you, you came out and said “I need a cigarette right now.”
CC:
I had to watch the damn thing at eight in the morning [laughs]. I couldn’t finish my Egg McMuffin.
DRE:
I would imagine you saw the crazy unrated version.
CC:
Yeah it was pretty nuts. They actually had some more aggressive stuff in there like more close-ups of the girl going through the guy’s stomach.
DRE:
You haven’t been doing movie and television scores for very long.
CC:
I was in Nine Inch Nails for nine years and before that I had worked in New York and LA with an Australian composer who was doing TV shows like The Equalizer. I did about three or four years of being the hands and arms behind the computer. My name wasn’t going on it but I was kind of the facilitator. I took a decade off to do the Nails thing and production so now that I am coming back into this side of things I already know all the terminology.
I did this TV show for FOX called Fastlane that was fun and now I’m doing this show called Las Vegas which is just a romp. That’s how I get my Fatboy Slim ya-yas out.
DRE:
I’m sure James didn’t want you because of those shows but because of Nails. But did he know you had done some composing?
CC:
He knew I had done some of it but I also believe we share the same lawyer. The movie also bears a visual similarity to what Nails did and I think one of his people told him about me. It was good because obviously James was looking for someone who would be familiar with how to get those types of industrial tones as opposed to worrying about what his string arrangements would be like. Though for me the industrial and electronic programming side of things doesn’t represent so much of a challenge anymore because it’s something I know how to do. There are a million ways to have a great time but it’s not exactly Mount Everest for me. In fact the little string arrangements at the end of the movie for me were more difficult and more head scratching than just about anything else in the movie because it was new for me. They may hire you for what you know how to do but you always got to find a way to tuck in something you don’t know how to do.
DRE:
I’m not putting down the score to a movie like Halloween but Saw doesn’t have the traditional horror movie music in it. There is no sting when someone opens a door for example. Do you feel like if you had put stuff like that in James would have called you on it?
CC:
Their temp score didn’t have traditional movie music that hit each and every little thing. Talking to them and listening to their temp score I found that they wanted a larger and overall sense of murky menace as opposed to small spiky things that jump out at you. There was a sense that having a sparser score that makes you feel like there is something in the walls that may or may not burst out.
DRE:
Were the bits that were done Helmet's Page Hamilton and NIN's Danny Lohner done beforehand and you had them or did they come in special for the soundtrack?
CC:
Using drums and computers I mocked up some of the cues that were going to be industrial pounding stuff like when Danny Glover’s character gets his throat cut. Then I gave that to Lohner and he overdubbed everything from him screaming to him playing all sorts of drums and guitars. Then I remixed it into the body of the track I was building. With Page I had a couple of cues sort of mocked up then I had him play about six tracks of feedback guitar. Page was around because when I was doing the score we were just finishing up the recording of the new Helmet album which I co-produced and co-wrote a few songs.
DRE:
I read that the SAW soundtrack producer Jonathan Platt compared it to Jerry Goldsmith's score for Planet of the Apes.
CC:
First of all, he’s high because it’s not that good [laughs] but that was a huge compliment. There are very few scores that I actually remember because I am fan noticing the soundtrack to a movie. The Planet of the Apes score is something I listen to just as a piece of music.
DRE:
Would it be silly of me to ask if you’re a fan of horror movies?
CC:
I’m not a huge fan of the genre per say. Let me put it this way I didn’t see many of the Chucky movies but I’ve watched Se7en 40 times. Though horror movies, even some of the cheesy ones, have generated some of the most memorable themes and motifs ever.
DRE:
Are you a fan of the ones that influenced SAW like Dario Argento’s films?
CC:
I’ve seen two Argento films and both of them had soundtracks by Goblin. There’s that loveable cheap quality I was talking about even though they are still terrifying.
DRE:
Did working on this lower budgeted film take you back to when you started out?
CC:
Definitely. It was entirely invigorating to work on a project where the end result was big but the amount of hassle was small. Usually it’s just months and years and by the time it comes out no one cares. This was the exact opposite because every molecule of effort was on the screen. It was a very lean and sinewy artistic experience.
DRE:
What else are you working on now?
CC:
I’m doing a bit of drum programming and rhythm generation on the next Killing Joke record. They could be 70 years old and look like Lou Grant and I wouldn’t care.
DRE:
You’ve worked with a lot of people that others might call difficult like Rob Zombie, Trent Reznor, Marilyn Manson and Page Hamilton. So you are either the calmest guy in the world or you’re tougher than all of them.
CC:
I’m pretty mellow. What attracts me to the people I’ve worked with is personality. The music may be one thing but if they can’t enjoy a good rousing game of Playstation together or something like that then there is no hope of making a record together.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Charlie Clouser likes to make people’s ears hurt in a good way. He first became known to the public as the keyboardist for Nine Inch Nails and recently he’s moved into scoring film and television. His first feature film job was the horror hit SAW which has just been released on DVD.
Check out the website for SAW official soundtrack
Daniel Robert Epstein: Hey Charlie, how are you doing?
Charlie Clouser: Good I’m just messing around on my new computer.
DRE:
What’d you get?
CC:
I just got a G5 for my music studio.
DRE:
Nice, but don’t you have one in there already though?
CC:
I do have one but it was one of the very first ones and one channel on the video card is bad and it crashes all the time. Apple is really good about repairing it but it’s just been back so many times.
DRE:
I bet you have a really nice studio.
CC:
Well it never got set up with conventional equipment, it’s mostly computers.
DRE:
I interviewed [SAW co-writer/director] James Wan recently and he’s a lot different than I expected.
CC:
He’s full of energy. Part of the reason the score is so crashing and banging is because he had this great delivery when he was setting up the scenes for me. He wanted to go straight for the jugular. He has all the enthusiasm of someone who either has no clue of what they’re up against or has a clue and doesn’t care. I don’t know if someone who went to film school in LA would have the same attitude.
DRE:
James said he had this really intense temp score with Nine Inch Nails and Einstürzende Neubauten.
CC:
Also Ministry. At one point he had Ministry coming out of the left speaker and Einstürzende Neubauten coming out of the right. You can imagine that.
DRE:
He said the temp score helped you because you had a very short amount of time to score the film.
CC:
Yeah we wound up doing the whole score in five or six weeks. They had puzzled through some of the potential trouble moments with the temp score. They had arrived at some successful conclusions like where the drums stop towards the end of the movie.
DRE:
In the liner notes James said that after he screened the film for you, you came out and said “I need a cigarette right now.”
CC:
I had to watch the damn thing at eight in the morning [laughs]. I couldn’t finish my Egg McMuffin.
DRE:
I would imagine you saw the crazy unrated version.
CC:
Yeah it was pretty nuts. They actually had some more aggressive stuff in there like more close-ups of the girl going through the guy’s stomach.
DRE:
You haven’t been doing movie and television scores for very long.
CC:
I was in Nine Inch Nails for nine years and before that I had worked in New York and LA with an Australian composer who was doing TV shows like The Equalizer. I did about three or four years of being the hands and arms behind the computer. My name wasn’t going on it but I was kind of the facilitator. I took a decade off to do the Nails thing and production so now that I am coming back into this side of things I already know all the terminology.
I did this TV show for FOX called Fastlane that was fun and now I’m doing this show called Las Vegas which is just a romp. That’s how I get my Fatboy Slim ya-yas out.
I did this TV show for FOX called Fastlane that was fun and now I’m doing this show called Las Vegas which is just a romp. That’s how I get my Fatboy Slim ya-yas out.
DRE:
I’m sure James didn’t want you because of those shows but because of Nails. But did he know you had done some composing?
CC:
He knew I had done some of it but I also believe we share the same lawyer. The movie also bears a visual similarity to what Nails did and I think one of his people told him about me. It was good because obviously James was looking for someone who would be familiar with how to get those types of industrial tones as opposed to worrying about what his string arrangements would be like. Though for me the industrial and electronic programming side of things doesn’t represent so much of a challenge anymore because it’s something I know how to do. There are a million ways to have a great time but it’s not exactly Mount Everest for me. In fact the little string arrangements at the end of the movie for me were more difficult and more head scratching than just about anything else in the movie because it was new for me. They may hire you for what you know how to do but you always got to find a way to tuck in something you don’t know how to do.
DRE:
I’m not putting down the score to a movie like Halloween but Saw doesn’t have the traditional horror movie music in it. There is no sting when someone opens a door for example. Do you feel like if you had put stuff like that in James would have called you on it?
CC:
Their temp score didn’t have traditional movie music that hit each and every little thing. Talking to them and listening to their temp score I found that they wanted a larger and overall sense of murky menace as opposed to small spiky things that jump out at you. There was a sense that having a sparser score that makes you feel like there is something in the walls that may or may not burst out.
DRE:
Were the bits that were done Helmet's Page Hamilton and NIN's Danny Lohner done beforehand and you had them or did they come in special for the soundtrack?
CC:
Using drums and computers I mocked up some of the cues that were going to be industrial pounding stuff like when Danny Glover’s character gets his throat cut. Then I gave that to Lohner and he overdubbed everything from him screaming to him playing all sorts of drums and guitars. Then I remixed it into the body of the track I was building. With Page I had a couple of cues sort of mocked up then I had him play about six tracks of feedback guitar. Page was around because when I was doing the score we were just finishing up the recording of the new Helmet album which I co-produced and co-wrote a few songs.
DRE:
I read that the SAW soundtrack producer Jonathan Platt compared it to Jerry Goldsmith's score for Planet of the Apes.
CC:
First of all, he’s high because it’s not that good [laughs] but that was a huge compliment. There are very few scores that I actually remember because I am fan noticing the soundtrack to a movie. The Planet of the Apes score is something I listen to just as a piece of music.
DRE:
Would it be silly of me to ask if you’re a fan of horror movies?
CC:
I’m not a huge fan of the genre per say. Let me put it this way I didn’t see many of the Chucky movies but I’ve watched Se7en 40 times. Though horror movies, even some of the cheesy ones, have generated some of the most memorable themes and motifs ever.
DRE:
Are you a fan of the ones that influenced SAW like Dario Argento’s films?
CC:
I’ve seen two Argento films and both of them had soundtracks by Goblin. There’s that loveable cheap quality I was talking about even though they are still terrifying.
DRE:
Did working on this lower budgeted film take you back to when you started out?
CC:
Definitely. It was entirely invigorating to work on a project where the end result was big but the amount of hassle was small. Usually it’s just months and years and by the time it comes out no one cares. This was the exact opposite because every molecule of effort was on the screen. It was a very lean and sinewy artistic experience.
DRE:
What else are you working on now?
CC:
I’m doing a bit of drum programming and rhythm generation on the next Killing Joke record. They could be 70 years old and look like Lou Grant and I wouldn’t care.
DRE:
You’ve worked with a lot of people that others might call difficult like Rob Zombie, Trent Reznor, Marilyn Manson and Page Hamilton. So you are either the calmest guy in the world or you’re tougher than all of them.
CC:
I’m pretty mellow. What attracts me to the people I’ve worked with is personality. The music may be one thing but if they can’t enjoy a good rousing game of Playstation together or something like that then there is no hope of making a record together.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
