Director Louis Leterrier - Opening the Mind's Eye

By Rudy Koppl

Born on June 17th, Louis Leterrier’s directing debut was The Transporter (2002), followed by Danny the Dog (2005), which is called Unleashed in America, Transporter 2 (2005), and now The Incredible Hulk. All of his films except for The Incredible Hulk are written and produced by French director Luc Besson. Becoming a director was something that Leterrier really didn’t think of, but as life goes on all the events around him lead up to that very moment. “I grew up in the film world. My father is a director and my mother is a costume designer. On top of seeing how much fun their life was and traveling the world, they were gone all of the time, they left me tapes to see and books to read, my life was spent on weekends, but I was alone most of them because they were making movies. I would always watch film, I lived and breathed movies, but I never thought I’d become a director because I knew how tough it was. There were three films that I loved when growing up, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and King Kong. These are the movies that really inspired me. It’s funny now that I’m directing The Incredible Hulk because it’s very similar. I want to pay homage to these films over and over again, but I really became a director through my relationships and by luck,” remembers Louis.

The original Hulk was a film that many viewers forgot. Plagued with the look of the beast not just right, an interesting choice of director with Ang Lee, and a scoring change from composer Mychael Danna to Danny Elfman at the last minute, the chemistry of The Hulk provided the viewer with an interesting fusion of ideas, creative, but jagged in so many ways. Just before this interview the press had come out and said that Louis was “disappointed” with Ang Lee’s first version of The Hulk, actually, he had been misquoted, and they were quite wrong as he explains, “It’s quite the opposite, I love Ang Lee’s version of The Hulk, what I said was, ‘I can see as a fan why you would be disappointed in this version because it’s not so close to the source material, the comic book, or the television show.’ The movie is amazing; actually the story is pretty good. I told Craig that I also thought that Danny Elfman’s score was pretty good, so I actually liked the movie and loved who scored it.”

It’s Monday June 16th, a day before Louis’ birthday, three days after The Incredible Hulk clobbered the big screen to a tune of fifty five million dollars on its opening weekend in the US. Louis had just finished a meeting and had settled down in Century City, California at Houston’s to have lunch with his wife. I called him because he really wanted to talk about Craig’s score, he loved it and this was an exclusive as well as Louis points out, “During my press conferences I was trying to talk about Craig and his music in America, but no one did, so I’m very happy we are doing this.” What I discovered is a man who loves film music in and out of film, a man who can sit back, relax, close his eyes, and listen to the sound, opening his minds eye to discover the visual fireworks within.

What is film music, what should it do for a film?
Film music is two fold, sometimes it needs to carry the action, sometimes it needs to underline everything and not push everything forward. For music is the emotional place for sauce. You can have a beautiful dish with tremendous meat and vegetables, everything, but if you don’t have a beautiful sauce it’s not a dish. It’s what helps put everything together. What really excited me about making movies were all those movies scored by John Williams, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or even Superman, when you come out of the film whistling the themes in the movie, it was fantastic and I remember that clearly from my childhood. That’s what’s different than television; you don’t whistle a television theme. Now you do because there are so many things out there, but I remember, now I’m contradicting myself, the theme from the television show The Incredible Hulk. I love themes and how they create this identity. Film should underscore the characters as well as drama. The music really depends on the film you’re making. For The Incredible Hulk it was defining the characters and carrying the action forward. People are saying that the pace of our film is tremendously well done, so I give credit to Craig for keeping this relentless, upbeat score, very heroic stuff that keeps on going and even though it’s choppy by nature, going from that huge score for The Hulk to his Love Theme, you still hear this potential movement through the music. It’s very emotional, Craig is originally better than anybody else at doing that beautifully emotional music to underscore feelings and sentiments.

How did you discover Craig?
I discovered Craig a long, long time ago, as an arranger when he was doing the stuff with Massive Attack. In Europe Massive Attack is a huge band and I remember all the material he scored for them. Also when Plunkett and Macleane, the Jake Scott movie, came out, I remember the score being so powerful that I connected the dots. ‘Oh wow, it’s the guy who does the arrangements for Massive Attack.’ I also was a musician, a drummer, and at that time I really didn’t know if I wanted to get into the movie or the music business because I loved both. When I realized Craig was now scoring films, I became very excited thinking about his style accompanying my film. Now all his work, the films he scored for Baz and many other directors, just confirms he’s the most talented guy in the movie business.

This is interesting because Massive Attack scored your film Unleashed.
It’s a sensibility. They like Craig, I like them, I like Craig, it’s really makes sense. There’s no distinction, they like me, Craig likes me. We don’t find each other haphazardly; we look for each other, but not on the surface.

Craig said you love melody in your music.
I absolutely adore melody; I adore the counter actions between the violins and the cellos, the brass, I like a complicated score. If there’s anything I buy these days its scores because I adore film scores. When there’s a great film score when I see a film, I just run out and buy it immediately. I love the score to Atonement, before Dario Marianelli even got the Oscar, the first time I heard the first notes I knew he was a genius. I think he’s an absolute genius. He’ll never do a movie for me because he scores intelligent movies, not action movies. I’ll try to make a movie just to work with him. Also Alexandre Desplat, I love what he does, it’s all amazing.

In the filmmaking process when did you first start thinking about the music you want?
Very early on, I cannot work without music, it’s just that simple. When I write, when I do my shot list, when I’m making my film, I put music in my ears all the time. That’s what I told Craig, that’s why I want my composer to be involved right away. When I was talking to him I wanted him to sign the deal immediately and start composing because I kept listening to Craig’s old albums and I wanted to hear his music for The Incredible Hulk. I knew he was going to do the score or I’d have to battle with the studio or anybody who didn’t believe he was the right guy for my film. I listened to his scores the whole time, so music accompanies my whole process right from the start. I’m listening to music when I’m thinking what I’m about to shoot, when I’m writing the screenplay, when I do the storyboards, when I’m watching the dailies, it just helps me get into the mood. Everything is too dry for me without music; it really gets me into that zone. Music also helps me when editing the picture, it gives you the pace. Craig has a beautiful way of building pieces on top of each other and then he suddenly takes a big turn left and then can go a completely different direction, so his music helped me with everything.

Craig’s scored quite a variety of genres, but never a high octane comic book action adventure film. How did Marvel react to your request for Craig?
At first they were surprised because they were thinking of all the same names. I want John Williams, I want Danny Elfman, so these directors were always giving them the same names. I was very persistent and said, ‘Ok, I’ll agree to do this movie, but one of the conditions is that I want Craig Armstrong to do the score.’ They really didn’t know him so I said, ‘Listen to this.’ They reacted, ‘Oh yeah, we love that, we love that, I didn’t know he did that, but has he ever scored an action film?’ Plunkett and Macleane had a little action music in it, but not as much as they wished. It was a little tough convincing them, I told them, ‘Trust me, trust me, he’s the right guy.’ When the scoring sessions ended, Kevin Feige from Marvel came over and said, ‘Thank you guys and thanks for convincing me Louis because this is one of the most beautiful scores Marvel has ever had.’’

Tell me about your first discussions with Craig, your ideas that sent him on his way to write a fantastic score
I really wasn’t concerned about his arrangements, I knew he could do that, I was really talking about themes with him. That was one of the ways to convince Marvel and anyone else, we could let theme hear themes they could identify with. I wanted them to hear a theme that people could whistle to coming out of the movie theater. I said, ‘Don’t give me any complicated material, just work on themes with three or five notes.’ It was tough for Craig, but he did it. Just three or four notes to a theme, it’s not very glamorous.

Does The Hulk Theme with those cutting glissandos define the character perfectly for you?
It’s funny; we were all there when we heard it for the first time. Craig was very clever; he played this to us later on in the scoring process. He knew I’d like it, but he arranged it while he was in Los Angels at Hans Zimmer’s studio Remote Control. He made us listen to something he had done and we all looked at each other like, ‘Wow, crap, what was that?’ Craig said, ‘That’s what I think should be The Hulk Theme.’ We were like, ‘This is genius.’ He makes his music evolve, he makes it go up and down, but that’s really genius. He really captured the power or that burst of energy from the Hulk, it was something we had never heard before. Sometimes when I’m listening to film music I close my eyes, I listen to the music and I try to imagine what the composer scored it for. When I bought the score for Atonement and was listening to it in my house, trying to imagine what the movie was about, what Dario was scoring for, and most of the time I was right, but sometimes it was even better than what I thought. That’s what great scores are all about.

Where are the climaxes of the score in your film, where the music marries the picture perfectly?
His music for the transformation scene (The Hulk) is perfect! Also the ending because his piece is so long, so big, and so majestic, that wonderfully huge finale. It’s got everything in it, all these emotions, it just never stops and it’s relentless.

What is the most important part of the scoring process that makes the music successfully work with your film?
It’s definitely with the demos. Afterwards things happen too fast. You can’t solve any problems when you are recording. It’s all about the demos, it’s all about the work you do up front, the editing, the beginning when you’re together with the composer, the programmer, and your editor. Once you get going with a seventy piece orchestra, a conductor, four or five programmers, and producers galore, there’s absolutely nothing you can do, you’re just stuck there. The more often I can have a conversation with the composer early on, the better it is.

The pathos, the torment, and sorrow in The Acrtic are emotionally overwhelming, what happened to this part in the film?
It was a part taken out of the film, but they are going to show it on the internet and it’s going to be on the DVD. It’s at the very beginning of the movie, The Prologue. It shows Bruce Banner walking to the end of the world to do something drastic, I can’t tell you what; you’ll just have to see it.

Craig said, “We would have a meeting about the music and then after the meeting was over, Louis would come back into the room and say, ‘Craig, just forget what I said, just do what you want.’ Why did you react that way, did your instincts tell you Craig was spot on with what he was composing?
(Laughter) It’s because Craig was convincing me otherwise. You know, sometimes you score something and there’s a temp soundtrack and it’s never ideal. You don’t marry it because you are hearing it over and over again, then someone like Craig makes you listen to something else that’s radically different, the opposite of what you’ve been listening to pace wise, tempo wise, everything. You think, ‘No, no, no, I want this,’ and you are pretty much describing what you heard in your temp and then you leave the room. That’s when you realize, ‘God damn it I’m a director, I’m not a composer. He’s completely right, that’s his instinct.’ Maybe this happened a few times, but I let him do his thing. Next time I want to get Craig involved much earlier on so I don’t get any temp love, I hate that. Whether you want it or not, you get that as a director.

What do you love about film music?
I love the emotion, I love when it moves you so much. I love the virtuosity, the emotion, if you don’t watch the movie you’ll feel creative, it’s like explosions, fireworks of visuals going off in your head and that’s what I love about it.