‘One Part Jerry, One Part Michael, And The Rest Is Yours’: John Paesano On Wes Ball’s Notes For The 'Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes' Score

Cinema Blend

Interview with John Paesano

Transcript

00:00To your credit, I have to say, you do a wonderful yes and with both Goldsmith and

00:06Giacchino's work, especially because Discovery, when I first heard Discovery, I automatically

00:11picked up on how it's like this positively sort of inverted, that simple piano opening

00:16from Level Plaguing Field, where it's just like the downturn versus the uplift.

00:22Yeah, that was a big, you know, that cue especially was an inspiration for, I think we,

00:29when Wes and I had gotten together early in the process, that was kind of the marching order.

00:37You know, the marching order was, we always, Wes is a huge film score enthusiast, like huge. I

00:45mean, he knows, Wes knows more about film scores than most film composers I know. Like his,

00:52he is an encyclopedia of film music. From the very first time we, and me growing up as a kid,

01:00I was, so was I. I mean, that was, I think, one of our common connections that we had when we

01:05first got together on Maze Runner. I was definitely not the most qualified person to do the Maze

01:11Runner films. You know what I mean? Like I was young, I was coming up, I was, you know, it was

01:16one of my first big wide released films. And Wes, I think, when we had gotten together to

01:23talk about it, we had that very, we had that common interest. You could tell we both grew

01:29up on the same stuff. We grew up on Spielberg, we grew up on James Cameron, we grew up on Zemeckis,

01:33we love film scores, you know? So we kind of had this like common thing. And when you're,

01:40when you go into the trenches with a director to work on one of these projects, it's so important

01:44to have that camaraderie and that, you know, writing the music's one thing, you know? I always

01:50say, it's interesting, when you get to a certain level, everybody can write music, you know? When

01:56you get to a very high level in this world, everyone's great. I mean, like, Hans Zimmer,

02:04you know, Michael Giacchino, Daniel Pemberton, Ludwig, myself, Joe Trapanese, you know what I

02:12mean? Like, we're all, everyone can write, you know what I mean? Like, Bear McClure, I mean,

02:16everybody can write great music. And I think what happens is the part that's almost more

02:24important is the pairing of like a director and a composer, you know? And it becomes a really

02:34important part of the job. And the, for Wes, you could tell we were kind of, we grew up on that

02:42stuff. So we have this kind of common goal of wanting to work with each other. So going back

02:50now, when we sat down and talked about Apes, we both knew 100% that we wanted to include

02:59what Jerry had done, you know? I think, Wes, I think you can even see it visually in the film.

03:05It was never a question that we wanted to bring that DNA into this score. I think most composers

03:12who've worked on these films have, in one aspect or another, have brought Jerry's world

03:22into the scores in one way or another. I think we had a really great opportunity on this film

03:27because there were sequences that were so reminiscent of the 1968 Planet of the Apes

03:33that it really gave me even more license to infuse it, even like turn the dial more

03:40of that sound that Jerry had established. So we knew that was important. So we were going to do

03:44that. Secondly, we knew we had this extremely successful franchise that we were coming off of

03:52with the Edgar Wright and then the Matt Reeves films with obviously Rise and then Dawn and War.

04:05And we knew they were hugely successful. We also knew that the fan base was just so intense and

04:15appreciative of those films and they were just so popular and so well-received

04:21that we also felt it was really important to bring along that DNA as well. So I think Wes

04:27told me, he said, okay, it needs to be one part Jerry, one part Michael, and the rest is yours.

04:35That was kind of the idea. And the trick was like, okay, how do we do this? And I think the cool

04:43thing that was, I think that I discovered was Jerry not only wrote a score for Planet of the

04:50Apes, but he developed an actual language, a musical language to that film. If I want to get

04:57like super technical with it, what he did is he, there's a style of composing called serialism.

05:04And what you do, what he did is he created a tone row, which is basically a musical scale,

05:09but that musical scale ended up becoming kind of the keystone to how he developed that score.

05:17And it gets very, very technical. So, but he really did develop a language

05:23for the Planet of the Apes score. And it's got a very distinct kind of architecture to it.

05:28And there's rules that you kind of have to follow with the tone row. And he really wrote it in this

05:33kind of avant-garde style called serialism. It's a modern classical discipline that he wrote that

05:41score in. So what I did is I kind of delved into that language and I tried to understand it and

05:47learn it. And then at the same time, Michael had kind of taken a language, kind of developed a

05:53language too that you're hearing in Discovery, right? I mean, it's, it's, it's a very distinct

05:59kind, very distinct, like a very distinct language that he wrote that film in as well.

06:08And I was trying to figure out how to, like, what were some of the common points of these two

06:13worlds musically? And then how do they work together? How don't they work together? You

06:19know, what can we do with them? So it's not that I literally had to take themes from them.

06:23I was able to kind of learn the language of both those films and then figure out how do we

06:28express them to kind of bring that fan base along, honor the Jerry Goldsmith score that

06:34came before us in 1968, and then give us a way to, to push forward on it. So it was really

06:40interesting. It was really, it was, I almost, I felt like I had to learn two musical languages

06:45that were established and then, and then try to wait. And then the, the easy part was at that

06:51point, once you kind of learned those language, you know, once you learn the languages of both

06:55those scores kind of having fun in that sandbox and developing your own, you know, musical themes,

07:02your own you know, different harmonic chord progressions that can go with it. I mean,

07:07it was, it was a lot of fun actually, at that point to try to play in that sandbox

07:11with kind of had what had come before us. And then we obviously take the score

07:15into our own world to, you know, for this new story that we're, that we're delving into.

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