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http://nerdist.com/hans-zimmer-superhero-films-masterclass-coachella/
Don’t hang around Hans Zimmer if he is scoring a tense film; you’ll regret it. During an early, zippy episode of Zimmer’s new Masterclass, the iconic film composer explains just how entrenched he becomes in his creative process: “You don’t want to be around me if I am working on the Dark Knight. I do become the Joker.” He finishes the thought with what seems like a friendly smile, but might be more of a self-aware smirk. He’s only sort of kidding.
For the man behind the severe scores for films like Inception, The Dark Knight, and Gladiator, Zimmer is a remarkably jovial teacher throughout his 31-episode seminar, in which he guides you through the world of professional film scoring, offering you sage advice, technical tools, and most importantly, ridiculous jokes and anecdotes about his life. A choice moment occurs early on–he explains the idea that good music is akin to the art of conversation. He translates notes to an entire scene (watch above) that perfectly encapsulate Zimmer as a brilliant goofball whose main focus is using every implement possible to envelope you in a new universe: “When we run out of words and when we run out of beautiful pictures, we have to resort to this other language called music.”
The truth in Zimmer’s remark about becoming the Joker is exactly what makes him a good teacher and a legendary composer. He believes firmly and preaches the principle of complete immersion in the craft, perhaps to a fault. In a discussion over the phone, Zimmer admits, “I am completely unemployable at any other job. People still say, ‘What do you do?’, and I say, ‘I’m a musician.’ And they go, ‘Great, but what do you do for a living?’”
But that has not stopped him from adding a few new things to his résumé. For the first time ever, Zimmer is taking his orchestra and scores on the road, with a notable stop at Coachella later this April. After his recent, rousing performance of Planet Earth 2 music on Colbert, I assumed that he was excited and ready to finally try out the mythologized life as a touring musician. “I’m going to be just in a perpetual state of hysteria and panic,” Zimmer says, before telling me he hopes to catch Kendrick Lamar at the festival if he isn’t too distracted by his own anxiety. Though I am surprised by his nerves, I am also relieved to hear about them. Even after a lifetime of creating classic music for beloved films, Zimmer is refusing complacence, opting for the uncomfortable, and letting the world see the act of taking that risk. He certainly doesn’t want to see the world burn, but he will always light a fire under his own feet.
We were lucky enough to catch up with Zimmer recently and talked to him about his new Masterclass, why he gave up on scoring superhero films, what we can expect from his live set, and who his favorite young composers are. Check out that conversation below.
Nerdist: I read that you are done with superhero films. Can you explain why?
Hans Zimmer: The three Batman movies I did with Chris [Nolan]–it’s only three movies to people, but for us, it was 12 years of our lives. And then I added Man of Steel, and then it suddenly became Batman v Superman, and I was going, “Oh my god, now I have to go and reinvent the Batman thing because I don’t want to betray the work I did with Christian Bale as Batman.” And I just thought, “No, I just need to have a pause here.” And I actually said I’m not doing anymore superhero movies.
And then Ron Howard sort of gently said to me, “You know, Hans, you should never say you never will do superhero movies, because if somebody turns up with an amazing script, you would be an idiot not to do it.” So yes, it’s just… I do think Chris and I sort of set the tone for superhero movies for quite a while with those Batman movies. It just felt like it’s important to go and … you know, look, do some other stuff. Hidden Figures is not a superhero movie. It was great to do that. There are other things I can do.
N: So a good script would be the thing that would make you return to the genre?
HZ: Yes, exactly. In other words, a script that would break the genre.
N: In your Masterclass, you mention the desire for younger competition to be at your heels. Why is that?
HZ: Yes, absolutely. You want to have people–and I think I manage to be really good about this as well–the people who started out making coffee here now suddenly have amazing careers as song composers. There’s a duty to keep things alive, in a way, and to move things forward and to make things progress. You want to feel the pressure of the new breathing down your neck.
N: Are there any young composers that you admire particularly right now?
HZ: Well, I’m not sure how young they are, but Johann Johannson is a favorite, as is Jonny Greenwood. I think what’s happening right now is that the inventiveness, and the shackles have just been taken off. Not every score has to be a big orchestral something or the other. Hauschka, who goes and manipulates pianos and does crazy stuff like this, is sort of what I love. And it’s become more international as well. The one thing where the foreign acts seem to be okay in Hollywood is the music. Does that make sense?
N: How do you feel about Mica Levi?
HZ: She is a complete breath of fresh air. It’s just like somebody throwing a hand grenade into film composing in the best possible way, and exploding it all and making us all reevaluate how we go about telling a story.
N: When you’re watching a show or a film, do you notice the music before anything else?
HZ: No. weirdly. No, I get completely immersed. If it’s good, I’m completely taken by the experience of it. And the only time I’m taken out of it is, if it’s a particularly great cue, or it’s a particularly awful cue. My sixth sense goes up and goes, “Aw, shit. Oh god, if you had only not played that note.”
I was watching something the other day, and I’m not going to say what it was, but I kept thinking, “God, you’re always ahead of the story. You keep being ahead of the story. You keep announcing that this is going to get scary before it actually does. You’re ruining it.” So yes, I notice those things.
N: Are there any TV shows you really enjoy?
HZ: Give me anything that is dark and moody and Scandinavian, and I’m a sucker for it. You know the series Broadchurch? It’s the sparsest, but it really hits me and I think it’s really good. Peaky Blinders, not bad at all.
N: Do you listen to music or watch other films while you are writing?
HZ: I go radio silent. We did this roundtable with Danny Elfman and John Powell was there. And the interviewer asked us what film scores we listen to. And John just bursts out, “You gotta be kidding me. Why would we be listening to film scores if there’s all this other great music out there?” 
N: What is the most painstaking score you’ve ever written?
HZ: Thin Red Line. It just stumped me. Everything about it stumped me, but in a really good way. Yeah, sometimes incredibly painful, sometimes huge big arguments with Terry [Terrence Malick]. But in retrospect, the most … He kept taking the dialogue out! When I read the script, people were talking forever. And then at a certain point, he decided it should be more like images and music, and I wasn’t quite ready for that. And that’s the thing, you learn. You get better at it. And that was a year of my life, trying to get better at it.
N: You are also going on tour and playing Coachella. Is that a nerve-racking prospect for you?
HZ: I get really bad stage fright. But my first show went great, and I thought, “Well, maybe I won’t have stage fright the next day.” And it was exactly the same the next day. So I’m just trying to come to terms. This is how I’m built. And you can’t have fear stop you from doing things in life. So, look, hey, if the audience wants to come and just see a man freaking out on stage, you’re coming to the right place. Bloody hell, I mean, who would have thunk it? Song composer at Coachella. Something inherently weird about that.
N: What era of work will you be pulling from?
HZ: Oh, I’m not telling you! I’m not telling anybody.
N: Oh really?
HZ: When we started working on Dark Knight, everybody knew Chris Nolan was making another Batman movie. And we didn’t tell anybody what we were doing. We just kept our mouths shut because nobody expected it to be that sort of a Batman movie. And that’s the joy of it: you want a surprise. You want to surprise people. So no, I’m not telling you. In fact, I’m still going back and forth and up and down and sideways trying to figure that out. But hey, it’ll be a surprise for me as well. But you know what I mean? I don’t want to go and preempt it right now, you know? Let’s live dangerously. Let’s go and be experimental and see what happens.
Images: Masterclass
Don’t hang around Hans Zimmer if he is scoring a tense film; you’ll regret it. During an early, zippy episode of Zimmer’s new Masterclass, the iconic film composer explains just how entrenched he becomes in his creative process: “You don’t want to be around me if I am working on the Dark Knight. I do become the Joker.” He finishes the thought with what seems like a friendly smile, but might be more of a self-aware smirk. He’s only sort of kidding.
For the man behind the severe scores for films like Inception, The Dark Knight, and Gladiator, Zimmer is a remarkably jovial teacher throughout his 31-episode seminar, in which he guides you through the world of professional film scoring, offering you sage advice, technical tools, and most importantly, ridiculous jokes and anecdotes about his life. A choice moment occurs early on–he explains the idea that good music is akin to the art of conversation. He translates notes to an entire scene (watch above) that perfectly encapsulate Zimmer as a brilliant goofball whose main focus is using every implement possible to envelope you in a new universe: “When we run out of words and when we run out of beautiful pictures, we have to resort to this other language called music.”
The truth in Zimmer’s remark about becoming the Joker is exactly what makes him a good teacher and a legendary composer. He believes firmly and preaches the principle of complete immersion in the craft, perhaps to a fault. In a discussion over the phone, Zimmer admits, “I am completely unemployable at any other job. People still say, ‘What do you do?’, and I say, ‘I’m a musician.’ And they go, ‘Great, but what do you do for a living?'”
But that has not stopped him from adding a few new things to his résumé. For the first time ever, Zimmer is taking his orchestra and scores on the road, with a notable stop at Coachella later this April. After his recent, rousing performance of Planet Earth 2 music on Colbert, I assumed that he was excited and ready to finally try out the mythologized life as a touring musician. “I’m going to be just in a perpetual state of hysteria and panic,” Zimmer says, before telling me he hopes to catch Kendrick Lamar at the festival if he isn’t too distracted by his own anxiety. Though I am surprised by his nerves, I am also relieved to hear about them. Even after a lifetime of creating classic music for beloved films, Zimmer is refusing complacence, opting for the uncomfortable, and letting the world see the act of taking that risk. He certainly doesn’t want to see the world burn, but he will always light a fire under his own feet.
We were lucky enough to catch up with Zimmer recently and talked to him about his new Masterclass, why he gave up on scoring superhero films, what we can expect from his live set, and who his favorite young composers are. Check out that conversation below.
Nerdist: I read that you are done with superhero films. Can you explain why?
Hans Zimmer: The three Batman movies I did with Chris [Nolan]–it’s only three movies to people, but for us, it was 12 years of our lives. And then I added Man of Steel, and then it suddenly became Batman v Superman, and I was going, “Oh my god, now I have to go and reinvent the Batman thing because I don’t want to betray the work I did with Christian Bale as Batman.” And I just thought, “No, I just need to have a pause here.” And I actually said I’m not doing anymore superhero movies.
And then Ron Howard sort of gently said to me, “You know, Hans, you should never say you never will do superhero movies, because if somebody turns up with an amazing script, you would be an idiot not to do it.” So yes, it’s just… I do think Chris and I sort of set the tone for superhero movies for quite a while with those Batman movies. It just felt like it’s important to go and … you know, look, do some other stuff. Hidden Figures is not a superhero movie. It was great to do that. There are other things I can do.
N: So a good script would be the thing that would make you return to the genre?
HZ: Yes, exactly. In other words, a script that would break the genre.
N: In your Masterclass, you mention the desire for younger competition to be at your heels. Why is that?
HZ: Yes, absolutely. You want to have people–and I think I manage to be really good about this as well–the people who started out making coffee here now suddenly have amazing careers as song composers. There’s a duty to keep things alive, in a way, and to move things forward and to make things progress. You want to feel the pressure of the new breathing down your neck.
N: Are there any young composers that you admire particularly right now?
HZ: Well, I’m not sure how young they are, but Johann Johannson is a favorite, as is Jonny Greenwood. I think what’s happening right now is that the inventiveness, and the shackles have just been taken off. Not every score has to be a big orchestral something or the other. Hauschka, who goes and manipulates pianos and does crazy stuff like this, is sort of what I love. And it’s become more international as well. The one thing where the foreign acts seem to be okay in Hollywood is the music. Does that make sense?
N: How do you feel about Mica Levi?
HZ: She is a complete breath of fresh air. It’s just like somebody throwing a hand grenade into film composing in the best possible way, and exploding it all and making us all reevaluate how we go about telling a story.
N: When you’re watching a show or a film, do you notice the music before anything else?
HZ: No. weirdly. No, I get completely immersed. If it’s good, I’m completely taken by the experience of it. And the only time I’m taken out of it is, if it’s a particularly great cue, or it’s a particularly awful cue. My sixth sense goes up and goes, “Aw, shit. Oh god, if you had only not played that note.”
I was watching something the other day, and I’m not going to say what it was, but I kept thinking, “God, you’re always ahead of the story. You keep being ahead of the story. You keep announcing that this is going to get scary before it actually does. You’re ruining it.” So yes, I notice those things.
N: Are there any TV shows you really enjoy?
HZ: Give me anything that is dark and moody and Scandinavian, and I’m a sucker for it. You know the series Broadchurch? It’s the sparsest, but it really hits me and I think it’s really good. Peaky Blinders, not bad at all.
N: Do you listen to music or watch other films while you are writing?
HZ: I go radio silent. We did this roundtable with Danny Elfman and John Powell was there. And the interviewer asked us what film scores we listen to. And John just bursts out, “You gotta be kidding me. Why would we be listening to film scores if there’s all this other great music out there?”
N: What is the most painstaking score you’ve ever written?
HZ: Thin Red Line. It just stumped me. Everything about it stumped me, but in a really good way. Yeah, sometimes incredibly painful, sometimes huge big arguments with Terry [Terrence Malick]. But in retrospect, the most … He kept taking the dialogue out! When I read the script, people were talking forever. And then at a certain point, he decided it should be more like images and music, and I wasn’t quite ready for that. And that’s the thing, you learn. You get better at it. And that was a year of my life, trying to get better at it.
N: You are also going on tour and playing Coachella. Is that a nerve-racking prospect for you?
HZ: I get really bad stage fright. But my first show went great, and I thought, “Well, maybe I won’t have stage fright the next day.” And it was exactly the same the next day. So I’m just trying to come to terms. This is how I’m built. And you can’t have fear stop you from doing things in life. So, look, hey, if the audience wants to come and just see a man freaking out on stage, you’re coming to the right place. Bloody hell, I mean, who would have thunk it? Song composer at Coachella. Something inherently weird about that.
N: What era of work will you be pulling from?
HZ: Oh, I’m not telling you! I’m not telling anybody.
N: Oh really?
HZ: When we started working on Dark Knight, everybody knew Chris Nolan was making another Batman movie. And we didn’t tell anybody what we were doing. We just kept our mouths shut because nobody expected it to be that sort of a Batman movie. And that’s the joy of it: you want a surprise. You want to surprise people. So no, I’m not telling you. In fact, I’m still going back and forth and up and down and sideways trying to figure that out. But hey, it’ll be a surprise for me as well. But you know what I mean? I don’t want to go and preempt it right now, you know? Let’s live dangerously. Let’s go and be experimental and see what happens.
Images: Masterclass
In addition to being hump day, Wednesday is the perfect day to reflect on everything you have accomplished so far this week as well regroup as you plan to finish the week off with a bang. It is also the day that social media users encourage one another by sharing positive messages, inspirational quotes, and meaningful memes along with the hashtag #WednesdayWisdom.
Just in case you’re in need of an extra boost of encouragement, here’s a round-up of 10 motivational memes and tweets about business, happiness, life, and more.
Remember, you’re a brand
You have to start somewhere
See the bigger picture
Be resilient
It’s how we react to our failures that makes us who we are. #WednesdayWisdom pic.twitter.com/7HTlj8XvM3
— Daymond John (@TheSharkDaymond) March 15, 2017
You are the company you keep
Happiness and contentment go hand in hand
Don’t over analyze
Over Analyses
— John McGrath (@JohnMcGrathMB) March 22, 2017
Leads to Paralysis.#WednesdayWisdom#Motivation pic.twitter.com/rC4xCcMxSF
Always keep going
Maintain your dignity
Want more #WednesdayWisdom? Click here to see more positive messages on Twitter. Also, feel free to share your favorite #WednesdayWisdom post with us on Twitter @BlackEnterprise.
Selena Hill is the Associate Digital Editor at Black Enterprise and the founder of Let Your Voice Be Heard! Radio. You can hear Hill and her team talk millennial politics and social issues every Sunday at 11 a.m. ET.
Follow her on Instagram and Twitter at @MsSelenaHill.
When it comes to films set during WWII, they often focus on the brave soldiers who either risked or sacrificed their lives for the greater good. These tales, while epic and every bit deserving of recognition, aren’t the only stories to be told. That’s why I also appreciate a film like The Zoopkeer’s Wife, which puts the spotlight on an ordinary but heroic couple performing an extraordinary act.
Based on the book of the same name by Diane Ackerman, the film centers on Jan and Antonina Żabiński, the real-life couple who managed to smuggle 300 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto into their zoo while it was being used as an encampment for Nazi soldiers. A number of people brought their incredible story to the big screen including director Niki Caro, screenwriter Angela Workman, and stars Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, and Daniel Brühl.
I had the chance to speak with Chastain and Caro about what sets this film apart from others in the genre, how they handled two key sexual assaults, and why it’s important to include more stories with strong women like this one about Antonina.
On working with Daniel Brühl…
Niki Caro: He’s brilliant.
Jessica Chastain: Complicated.
NC: And really nuanced, too. One of the things about [his character] Lutz Heck … I was determined that he wasn’t gonna be another mustache-twirling Nazi villain, and Daniel brings such nuance and subtlety to that role. He is brilliant and brings a complexity to i t… Also, a softness to it and a beautiful partner for Jessica. So much trust there.
JC: There was so much laughter on the set. Also, what I love so much about what he did is a lot of people say, “Oh if that happened … it could never happen today. I would go against the government” or “I would stand up for my neighbors” and he plays Lutz Heck as this ordinary man—scientist—who kind of just got wrapped up in the power of what it meant to put on that outfit … and you see him kind of in opposition to it. Even Antonina says as the end, “You’re not like that. That’s not who you are. I know you.” I like that he shows that an ordinary scientist could get wrapped up in that.
NC: And that Antonina reveals his humanity and, ultimately, his redemption. He doesn’t —
NC: Because he has true feelings for her.
The Mary Sue: A lot of our readers are concerned with the way that rape is often handled on film. How did you approach those scenes with this movie, and was there ever concern about it being gratuitous?
NC: There never is with me. There just isn’t because as women, rape is never gonna be a fantasy for us. It’s going to be a reality. And the way he manhandles her, all of that is real. Equally real is her looking him in the eye and saying, “You disgust me.” And in that truth, that simple truth, And so I think that’s truthful more than an overblown scene of violence against women.
JC: But also with the scene with Urszula (played by Shira Haas). We know what’s happening to Urszula but in the way we’re put in the mind of Jan … he knows what’s happening to her but he’s not witnessing it and I appreciate a film that doesn’t rely on a rape scene to get an audience to feel an emotion. And sometimes I find that it’s meant to titillate or have this hyped up sense of “okay, now we must revenge” or now the woman’s gonna be strong because she was just raped and she has something to overcome. I have a lot of difficulties with rape scenes in the American film industry because I don’t think that they are being filmed responsibly. So I was very happy to do this film with Niki.
On what sets this movie apart from other WWII films …
NC: The difference with this movie, I think, is that it’s profoundly feminine. And that’s very new. It’s very new in cinema and so it was pretty exhilarating for me to work in that way because it’s so powerful. You know, femininity had often been … almost always equated with weakness. And Antonina shows us that femininity is pure strength and that they are not mutually exclusive.
TMS: Diane Ackerman said something similar, that to be a hero, you don’t necessarily have to be the one holding a gun. It can also be an Antonina who is helping these people in that way.
NC: And, as Jessica says, to be an ordinary person. I mean, the Zabinskis were ordinary people in many ways and they did what they did. They did this extraordinary stuff for no other reason than it was the right thing to do. That human decency, that radical humanism, is exhilarating to me. It’s inspiring. It’s worth making movies about. It’s worth sharing, particularly now.
TMS: Yeah, this movie is so relevant because of the rise of populism.What do you want people to take away the most from a film like this?
NC: We started out making a historical drama and world events have shown us that we’ve made a profoundly contemporary film. I hope people go and see it and revisit what happened in the 1930s and 1940s, and recognize that there are horrifying parallels to what is happening right now. But also that the movie shows us that there is healing and there is hope and that we can each stand up. We can step up.
On whether or not we’re capable of world peace…
NC: I think we’re suffering a radical over-correction of something I thought was going very well. I think we’re gonna have to get to world peace or some measure of it, otherwise, we will destroy ourselves.
JC: And I think once we can get to a place as human beings where we realize you shouldn’t own or possess another living thing and that includes animals in a way … Like, I know we all have our animals but most cases it’s more like family members …When we realize that, I think it’s going to solve a lot of problems.
TMS: You often take on films with strong female characters. Is that deliberate? And can you say anything about Mulan?
NC: It’s not a deliberate choice. It’s not a political choice. It’s just that those are the interesting stories. That’s the frontier as a filmmaker … All the stuff is new. I really believe it’s no big secret and conspiracy why we didn’t know this story beforehand. I mean, nobody knew Antonina’s story. I think the fact that it’s a female story is why it slipped through the seams of history and that somehow women’s stories were not considered particularly relevant. So now, I’m thinking what else is out there that can now be explored? The female experience is the frontier of cinematic storytelling as far as I’m concerned … and Mulan!
JC: Well, I see every woman as a strong woman. And I see every man as an emotional, sensitive man. Maybe not every man (laughs). But I think for me, it goes along with what Niki said. There are stories in history that have been ignored. I think women in history have been ignored. I remember being in school and I wasn’t learning about the incredible things that women did. Since I’ve become an adult and I’m doing my research, I’m learning about Belva Lockwood who was the first woman to run for president before a woman could even vote.
There’s all these women that have created a path that we walk along today and to acknowledge them and to have representation of these great leaders … these women that have creative opportunities for all of us…to have those representations in the media helps young girls know that it’s possible. When we’re young, we think we can do anything and it’s society that tells us we can’t. And so what we need to do is we need to change that. We need to change the stereotype of what a woman is supposed to be and what she’s expected to do and say, actually no, she can do anything she wants.
The Zookeeper’s Wife heads to theaters on March 31.
(image via Anne Marie Fox / Focus Features)
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What’s your nightmare, since November 8th? Perhaps your subconscious, like mine, has reserved 3AM-5AM for an exercise I like to call “Panic Town,” a half-awake, blurry, mental recitation of anything that could go catastrophically wrong for the country, or for you personally, or for...literally anyone. It’s a fun two…