Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Today on in service of we spoke with the legendary
composer Hans Zimmer and the renowned director Paul Dugdale about
their upcoming concert film, Hans Zimmer and Friends. Diamond in
the Desert premiere in March nineteenth. The film captures Zimmer's
iconic music like ever before, blending breathtaking live performances with
intimate behind the scenes moments. We dive into Hans's creative process,
(00:25):
the magic of orchestras, and how this film redefines the
concert experience. They take you behind the scenes with interviews
that Hans does with Billie Eilish, Timothy Shalom, Zindea, Forrell Williams,
Christopher Nolan, and so many more. The film is amazing
and it was such an honor to speak to them both.
Get ready for an inspiring look at the power of music.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
First, we'll welcome you to the podcast portion. I'm Steve
the stage. Thanks so much for being here. I'm curious,
do you wish you had seen the rock and Roll
Party at any point, because that's not one part.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
No, no, no, no no. In fact, you know my
life making movies with personal and I think back to
the amount of parties we've been invited to and reluctantly
have gone, and then squeezed ourselves into a corner and
just started talking about film and the amount of great
ideas we started to have which had nothing to do
(01:33):
with the party, and we would have the great ideas
about what we wanted to do work wise for the film,
and we just sneak out and go to a studio
and make noise. You know, when when when you when
you have when you have a friend that you can
talk to about some projects and you get excited about
the project. Suddenly it's a great party, but nobody else is,
(01:55):
you know, involved in the conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Well at least inspires ideas.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Though.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
It's funny because yeah, because.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
It's the flight of you know, the reality all around
you that sort of focuses your brain into the idea
space somehow.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
That's so funny justin I'm going to let's say it's
take over in one second. But I wonder if you
ever actually went to a great party, if in fact
that would negate the ideas, if it would kind of
be something where you focus on the party instead. It's
kind of similar to like when I go to a party,
I'll stand up in the corner with the dog loudly.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Absolutely, And I have gone to some great parties, you know,
and I came away not having any ideas. And then
as the week's gone by and the interesting intellectual conversations
started to sort of foment in my brain. Yes, all
sorts of crazy, great, fabulous ideas would come up.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I love this story, and it doesn't surprise me that
someone who is so remarkable at capturing the human experience,
you know, isn't isn't in it for though, those those
party moments, those like shallow moments, and I loved the
focus of humanity for this film. But there's such a
(03:11):
duality there. There's like this real intimacy that's almost immersive.
You feel like you're on stage, you feel like you're
with you in the interviews, and then there's this massive
grandeur with the spaces that you're in and the music.
And I'm sure when when you're playing your music in
different spaces, it offers new perspectives. And I'm curious what
(03:35):
that experience gave to you as far as your own
perspective on the music that you played.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Well, all audiences are different, all cultures are different, you know,
how they respond or how they don't respond. You know,
you have the very polite northern European audience. Uh, and
then you know you get further south and it's like yes, right,
(04:02):
so the the southern hemisphere is always better because you know,
they just got nuts and ditch here and they make
you feel at home and you know you're just all
of that. So yes, it is a different experience. It's
you know, I mean you can draw some really interesting
(04:23):
cultural conclusions from this, you know, but to be really honest,
I mean, you know, look, I was bullied, forced into
this role of leaving my dark and windowless room and
suddenly hop onto the stage and become that other person.
(04:44):
And of course what I didn't do is I didn't
become the other person, you know, I I whatever comes
out of my mouth. And Paul will verify this. And
because it's very hard for a director to make a
film when you have somebody who will not hit them,
will not repeat the same story again, and just go,
you know, just just you know, because I can't. I can't,
(05:06):
you know, it's like boring. So I just make things
up as I see the audience, as I react to
the audience, as I see the audience react, you know,
so it really becomes a dialogue. And I say to
them at the beginning, I'm not I have no stagecraft
at all. So the only thing I can do. Let's
treat this like a like a dinner party, and we're
(05:27):
just going to have a chat. Right, That's that's the
best I can do. So come to my house and
we chat, you know. And so it works quite well,
I think. I do think it makes it hard for
Paul because he doesn't quite know what's going to happen next.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Yeah, well that's all part of the fun for sure.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
And and and the you know, all the conversations that
are threaded through the film were really kind of you know,
we want them to be really informal and wild and spontaneous.
And I did, you know, I had some themes that
I wanted, uh hands and friends to tackle, but we'd
always start just completely carte blanche, and it was just
(06:07):
a chat, you know, and see where Hans went, and
it was all very spontaneous.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I just remember always getting to the end of the
chat and going we didn't talk about any of the stuff.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
But that's the beauty of it's it's good and you know,
You're obviously a brilliant rack on turn.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
So that was part of the fun of it. And
there were only you know, a couple of times I
would steer it, but no, we just wanted. I think
it was really good to have unfiltered you and spontaneous you.
And you know, with those conversations they're meant to be
informal and authentic.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
And you know, just a chat and it's it's about life.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
And you know, I've never said this to you, so
I'm going to say it now in front of in
front of the press. As it were. I always thought
what you were doing with these little chats, with the
interviews with my friend, you were what you were doing,
you were being really brilliant at creating an autobiography that
(07:08):
was very free, you know, because you found out much
more about the character and the characters I was speaking to,
because it was just you know, we were free and
loose and just talking about you figured out what interested us,
and so you figured out who we were, you know,
as opposed to you know, going by the book as
(07:32):
it were.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
Yeah, completely, and it went both you know, it kind
of went both ways. You learn about that person, and
you know, we had some incredible names in this film.
But also it allowed us to paint a portrait of
hands from from kind of a range of different people,
So you get all these everybody kind of has an
opinion or or was able to draw different things out
of hands, you know, at different times, and it gave
(07:56):
this real kind of three D portrait of an artist
and obviously the person that was he was talking.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
To as well.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
I think we should have had the eight Masters that
kicked me out of school.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Right, I think so too, it would be a different film.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
I'm curious about something though, because for me, right, I
don't write out questions for interviews. I haven't in a
thousand years. And so a lot of times when you
get really lost in the conversation, same as in writing
or composing, you don't even know what the hell's happening
because you're so immersed in it. So then when you
go back and look at it, you're like, oh, it's interesting.
(08:37):
So we're for you getting to go back and watch
these conversations. Were there things that people said that kind
of surprised you, that you're like, or that maybe you
don't even notice the first time, because again, when you're
in a good conversation. You're not sitting there recounting it.
You're simply lost in the conversation.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's a big difference between real
time and then see, here's the funny thing. So here
I am. I'm a film composer, and Johnny Marr and
Pharrell Williams come to me and go, Okay, you've done
this for forty years. There comes a point where you
have to look at the audience in the eye, where
(09:15):
you have to stop hiding behind the screen and you
have to do things in real time. So but somehow
I can't help it that the real time thing I then,
you know, metamorphosized through Paul back into a movie. So
your question, your question is very, very valid, because yes,
(09:35):
it's exactly what it is, exactly what happened, you know,
watching it back, I'm going, oh, we talked about this.
Oh I didn't really, I didn't really catch the news
of something you know, here or there. So playing the
show and feeling the audience is very different than watching
the show and feeling the audience, you know, and you know,
(10:01):
I mean we tried. I mean, Paul did an amazing
job at capturing the spirit of the whole thing. But
there's still there's still I don't know, there's still something,
you know, like the dirt under the fingernails isn't quite there,
you know, it's the I don't know, I don't know
(10:23):
what it is, you know, real people's hearts beating. I mean,
I mean, look, all credit goes to Paul. I think
he's done an extraordinary job of making this work. I
love that he never failed in having the carriage to
dissuade me from my really terrible ideas, even though I've
(10:45):
done a lot more movies than he has, and he
did it in a way that that would just make
our friendship better because I realized he was right, you know, no,
but anybody who say you from follies, you know. And
I was really happy that when I said I want
goats in this scene, he totally agreed, you know.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
That was Yeah, that was definitely one we agreed on. Yeah,
for sure.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
You go to so many different amazing spaces, and it's
so cool to get to lock in with the musicians,
like you feel this real intimacy with the musicians in
the way that it's shot, and then the beautiful portrait
of the hands at the end. It's all just wonderfully
comes together. But character they turn into these characters. I
(11:34):
think that that takes you along this journey in these
different spaces. And I have to say, one of my
favorite characters, although she wasn't physical, was Doris, and I
need to ask about her because that just made my heart.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yes, with the two horrible kids and the gray raincoat
and the really bad bleached hair and the red red
red hands, you know, you know, like how hands get red,
you know when you're constant under water. I don't actually
know what she does, but I just know, I just
know she she she she just works so hard. You know,
(12:09):
life is so hard. She's she's she's always unlucky. You know,
it's like she just manages to sustain life. And come
the weekend, you know, the idea that she can, you know,
the easy way out to take them easily, the little
money she earned, go to the pub and just forget
it all, or go to cinema. And if she goes
(12:31):
to cinema, I feel very duty bound to her to give,
to deliver an experience something that she something that she
will remember beyond you know, what she would remember in
the pub. So our job is to distract sometimes from
the pain of life and you know, the hardship of life,
(12:52):
you know. And one of the reasons I wanted to
do the movie with Paul was because there are certain
places we can't get to. I mean we we are
fifteen trucks and thirteen buses, so to put the little
show together, it's one hundred and seventy one people, so
that makes it expensive and I want and cinema is
(13:12):
a wonderful way where you can still afford to go
and have an experience. And I just think it. I
felt bad, you know, getting a lot of emails et
cetera over the years of people, when are you ever
going to come to Minsica pins, you know, when you're
(13:33):
ever going to come to I don't know, you know, Antarctica.
We have to prove ourselves, but you know, we proved that.
Let's see how it goes, because we proved ourselves when
we started to do the concerts, you know, and we
were told straight away the attention span of the youth
(13:54):
of today is like minimals, so keep it, make it
short songs, you know, And what Pirates is fourteen minutes long.
Batman is like twenty minutes long. And they stick with
us you know, so so they want an immersive experience,
you know, and what can be more immersive and not
(14:16):
showing any images from the movies, So you have to
either watch the band or make your own movie in
your head. I always hope that they make their own
movie in their head, you know. And and the experiment worked,
you know, it's it's We just booked the Australian tour
(14:39):
and sold out within thirty minutes, sold out every venue.
So we have to add more dates of course, you know.
But but but it's it's a it's a pretty remarkable
thing because you know, what do we do. We're doing
film music, you know. You know, people used to kindly
(15:00):
called it background music. You know, we do film music.
We don't have a lot of singing, we don't have
any pup hits, but still we have Lion King, we
have Dune, and we have Gladiated and we have things
like that, and they seem to mean something. Well, I mean,
(15:32):
if you.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Look at it, though, film like music becomes such a
part of people's lives. They have so many associations with
it that it makes sense because you have childhood memories
of the films you saw when you were a kid,
of seeing them with friends, of seeing them with boyfriend's girlfriends.
So in a way it makes perfect sense. But before
(15:53):
we come on to that, I want to ask you
guys quickly because I want to get Paul involved as well.
It's interesting there were two great talk of me is
that I just saw. I don't usually see a lot
of music documentaries, but I did stories with both becoming
the Zeppelin and the sly Stone one because I'm obsessed
with sly Stone and that film is brilliant. For both
of you, guys, were the films that you particularly looked
(16:15):
at and of course you know Paul liked this last
Waltz just stopped making sense. Those are the iconic concert films?
What were the ones for you? And then there's a
one like some Song Remains the Same and I freaking
love Zeppelin and that film is so self adulted and ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
It's yeah, it's it's It's not good is it?
Speaker 2 (16:37):
And I love Zeppelin?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
But no, it's not the same here. I mean I
remember watching it as a teenager on coding. Oh shit,
you just ruined the band for me.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
So for you, guys, what about it? Were the films
that really inspired you?
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (16:52):
I mean, I think.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
For me, I mean all those references that you just said, yeah,
of course, they're incredible touchstones, and they are you know, yeah,
big big inspirations to get into this job basically. But
I used to look to a director, or still do
look to a director called to call David Mallett, who
(17:15):
did a lot of enormous live music things in the well,
I don't know when he started, probably seventy nineties, two thousands.
He's and he does still occasionally make stuff now, a
lot of music video. He's work with Bowie and Tina
Turner and Queen and all these legends, and he just
some of his work is just the absolute best and
(17:38):
for me, and so I found that really inspiring. And
I guess like it wasn't it isn't a direct reference,
but certainly the look of the of the conversations that
happened in this movie where I had coffee and cigarettes
in mind, in terms of you know, it being black
and white, and they're just very sort of free conversations
(18:02):
that or free seeming conversations anyway, in terms of in
that film that I guess that was a sort of
a vague visual reference, but yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
I think they were the touchstones for me. Really, I on.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Purpose didn't watch anything. I mean, I have, I have
my ones that I love, you know, but I really
I really wanted, I really wanted to to listen to
Paul's ideas, if you know what I mean, because as
opposed to having clutter in my brain of things I've
just watched and researched. I believe I didn't mention a
(18:39):
single movie to you, No.
Speaker 5 (18:41):
Not really, but you were I think you were really
very intuitive and good and gave us a lot of
guidance about just the feeling of like all the you know,
about just how there should be a jump to wide
screen here and there should be. It was kind of
a it was very much like same with your work. Really,
(19:03):
it's such an intuitive following the feeling of something.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
If it's intuitive or one hundred and fifty movies.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
But yeah, well yeah exactly. Well that I guess that
is learning a bit of the craft, you know, Yeah,
exactly exactly. So yeah, there was definitely that for sure.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Yeah, I mean, you know, and if I have to
name my favorite my favorite concert film, it probably would
be Woodstock, which has surprisingly little music in it, but
it just it just it's about the people, it's about
the farmer, it's about the town, it's about a social change,
you know. So I think all those those things are
(19:47):
really interesting. And I think one of the things which
is interesting about what Paul did we are in this
city of the future. I mean, I think, I think
Dubai is completely futuristic. And at the same time we
go and drag an orchestra and a choir and a
(20:07):
band into a bedroom camp just outside, you know, and
just over the hill the nivil Nerve is shooting dune
poth too, so it's like it's sort of all you know,
it was all the sort of extreme which I liked.
You know, we didn't have to do much to get extreme.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
I love to know more about the preparation for this
because it's such a massive film and such a concert film.
And I love how you talked about bringing together of
the orchestra and the focus of the musicians, and you
highlighted how some of the musicians were coming from Ukraine
(20:46):
and you know, the difficulties that they experienced and then
being there together it was just kind of this place
of solace for everybody to just thrive and with joy
and music. But can we hear a little bit more
about the preparation for this and it all coming together.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
But that's really a poor question, I think.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Yeah, I mean it was a Yeah, it's obviously a
huge undertaking, and I.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Mean, okay, may I interview you for a second.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
Yeah, did you have so for the show?
Speaker 5 (21:20):
There's twenty cameras, and we did a we did a
kind of a what we've described as a phantom show
where we shot with a lot less cameras, kind of
a couple of well not more than a couple of
the songs, but not the whole set list, but we
shot some without an audience. So it's a kind of
a combination of two shows which hopefully you don't really
notice the live concert, but the predominant amount of it
(21:45):
and the way you get the most passionate performance is
obviously the one with an audience. Yeah, twenty cameras for
that for that main shoot. And yeah, a lot of
preparation obviously learning that music. And I think, like I
was saying before, me and Hans were discussing about how
(22:06):
you know, when you shoot an orchestra or a band
of this size, it sometimes is the sort of common
thing to follow the music really precisely and go where
there's a violin there and a French horn plane there
and whatever. And obviously we did a little bit of that,
but this film is much more about feel and about
(22:27):
trying to create an atmosphere or an emotion or a
vibe where you just get carried along with the music.
You don't have to see every instrument, and it actually
it was much more for us. It was much more
about the intimacy between the players and trying to capture
that humanism that was really important. Hans is so loyal
(22:49):
to his band and will really fight for them, and
there were lots of instances where we really sort of
sensed and understood that they're an important family to him,
and he is the sort of, you know, the leader
of that and knows so much about everybody, and you know,
it's really is truly a big group of friends creating
(23:11):
something every night when they're on the road, and so
we wanted to kind of capture that spirit, you know
what I mean. And so it makes it kind of
not your it's not really a normal kind of orchestral recording.
It's much more kind of visceral than that, and hopefully
taps into the emotions that the music is is demanding,
(23:35):
you know.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
I mean, look, it started off with me going, I
really I'm worried about the orchestras. I'm worried that the
orchestras will disappear, And if the orchestras disappear, we will
lose such an enormous amount of our you know, off
(23:57):
humanity of what makes us human, makes us excellent as
human beings. You know, because an orchestra playing together, you know, wow,
they hit a note. Everybody in the orchestra hits that
note with the same emotion, which is sort of you know,
is picked up by the by the audience. I mean,
that's quite something. This togetherness, the joy of this togetherness
(24:20):
is that's what makes us, culturally or whatever, are humanly extraordinary,
you know. So, so I'm always worried about that. But
at the same time, the way you see an orchestra
these days are the way you usually see an orchestra
is you have a man with his back to you
(24:41):
all night, and you have guys in penguin suits reading
the paper, and it feels a little bit like, you know,
like the marriage that has worn out on a Sunday morning.
You know, it's like, So, the first thing I did
was I got rid of the conductor, because there's no
reason to have a conductor. We have modern technology. We
(25:01):
have screens which you can't see but that you know.
Plus it up there, you know, and and the orchestra
can see it, and and and you know it conduct
it conducts, you know, and everybody can see it. And
the other thing is, you know, now suddenly there's a
there's a plus. The orchestra knows most of the stuff
(25:24):
by heart by now, you know, if solo has know
their stuff by heart, why shouldn't the orchestra know stuff
by hard So it gives them an opportunity to have
a sort of an uninterrupted relationship with the audience in
a way. I mean, there's a sideline that they suddenly have,
which which isn't The sideline isn't to the wiggles of
(25:45):
the conductor. The sideline is to is to the people
you're actually playing for. So I thought that was sort
of an important thing to do. And the other thing
was I wanted to take out I just wanted to
take out the images from the movie that the music
came from, because I wanted to see what would happen
if the music. Number one could stand on its own
(26:07):
to feet, and number two I wanted to give the
audience sort of an opportunity to have the experience of
making their own movie in their head.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
It's I'm always interested. I'm always interested in the idea
that music automatically manipulates, you know, I'm always interested in
how can I not manipulate but just become an open
door that says, Okay, you can have an emotion, you
can go and feel something, you can have an experience.
(26:40):
But I'm not telling you what it's going to be.
It's it's going to be entirely up to you to
figure this one out. So that was very much, you know,
how the whole thing started.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Is there anything that you want to add we didn't
ask you about before?
Speaker 3 (26:54):
You have to.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
No, nothing from no, I don't say anything from me. No,
I mean no, it's uh yeah, it's just been a think.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
I mean, you know, look here, at the end of
the day, I suppose I'm the artist, and all I
can say is thank you, Paul, mission accomplished. I mean
you you you did. You did what I think you
would do, but you did what ultimately I couldn't even imatch.
(27:25):
Oh man, thank you pretty much.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Nice, thanks, oh well, thank you guys so much.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
And yeah, sorry, I feel like that just flew by.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
It did, didn't it. I told you very very limited release.
You know, they won't even give you, give us time
to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Well hopefully if it flew by for you then as well,
that means it wasn't as painful as other ones.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
No, it's not, it's not. It's it's never It isn't painful.
The German model was painful this morning.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Cool, cool, Thank you guys again, have a good will
had listens.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Thank you, thanks, thank you great
Speaker 1 (28:20):
H