Paul Leonard-Morgan (The Pigeon Tunnel)

This podcast has had a long and fruitful relationship with composer Paul Leonard-Morgan, the man behind the scores of films like Dredd and Limitless, among countless others. But two commonalities have permeated the scores he's discussed with me: Errol Morris and Philip Glass. For the former, he teamed up to score Amazon's Tales from the Loop; for the latter, he's scored A Psychedelic Love Story among many other Morris docs, many of them alongside Glass.

 

Now, both have teamed up for yet another of Morris' deep probes into an intriguing figure, this time famed novelist John le Carre, the author of books like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Framed as the prototypical days-long sitdown between Morris and his subject, The Pigeon Tunnel takes us through le Carre's childhood and early days with his abusive father, to his time in the spy service, to the ways those experiences informed his legendary novels.

 

In so doing, Glass and Leonard-Morgan had to build a whopping eighty minutes of score, a propulsive effort that keeps the spy-thriller momentum of the doc going with cimbaloms and other features of the '60s espionage caper. And this week, we've got Paul back on the podcast to talk about his collabs with Morris and Glass, and building a score for the most mysterious man in the world.

 

You can find Paul Leonard-Morgan at his official website here.

 

The Pigeon Tunnel is currently streaming on Apple TV+, and you can listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Platoon.