SXSWORLD

Cliff Martinez' Path From Freaky Styley to Cool and Composed Film Scores by James Rocchi P both Drive and Contagion, was able to imagine his journey from rocking in Hollywood as part of the Red Hot Chili Peppers to working on Hollywood's sound stages as one of the most sought-after, and distinctive, composers in the fi eld. But ask the Bronx-born Martinez what he found to be the hardest thing to learn about scoring fi lms for Hollywood, and the musician – speaking by Skype as part of a month of "power loafi ng" in Th ailand – laughs. erhaps composer Cliff Martinez, currently enjoying critical raves for his scores for I'm mostly a self-taught musical Neanderthal. Just about everything I've learned about fi lm scoring was learned on the job. When I started, the only thing I had real formal training on was a drum kit, so if I couldn't hit it with a stick, I was pretty helpless. Th at didn't get me too far in fi lm scoring initially. A few years into it, I tried to fi ll in some of the gaps in my training with piano, trumpet, theory lessons, and that helped tremendously. One of the benefi ts of learning things the hard way is that you could use all that ignorance to develop your own musical identity. I think when you don't learn (to do) it the way Bach did it, you invent your own way of creating tension and repose. I don't think it's possible to reinvent the wheel when it comes to music, but I think it's nice to have your own style of wheel." And Martinez's style of wheel has made him acclaimed – from his epic score for the social drama of Traffi c to the bizarre soundscapes of the sci-fi stunner Solaris, from Narc's gritty urban pulse and hum to the thriller score of Th e Lincoln Lawyer. Martinez, who drummed on the fi rst two Red Hot Chili Peppers albums, explains that working with directors like Steven Soderbergh and Nicolas Winding Refn is a big part of his job, and fortunately, not an impossible one. "Well, it's always piecemeal. It's always a work in progress. I ... never say, 'Here's my fi rst eff ort, what do you think?' I usually start with three "I think just about all of it. Cliff Martinez "I don't think it's possible to reinvent the wheel when it comes to music, but I think it's nice to have your own style of wheel." 34 SXSW ORLD /FEBRUAR Y 2012 pieces of music or something like that. I like to have something that demonstrates enough music to show a concept for an approach and a style for the entire fi lm, but I don't want to write 30 minutes of music and have somebody say, 'It's wrong. You're off in the wrong direction.' Th ere's usually a fair amount of course correction; almost every director has had something critical to say. I've never had a slam dunk from beginning to end. Th e fl ight from Los Angeles to New York is never in a straight line ..." moves fast, he says: "Th ey often bring you in with fi ve or six weeks to go, and the fi lm is in the very advanced rough stage, and that's a little frantic for me, although it's kind of customary. "Typically the fi rst thing you see is a script, but I don't try to write any music to a script, because I think the rubber really hits the road when you see a rough cut. I usually don't see a fi nished cut. Sometimes you'll see a script, and I'll see some dailies and I'll start to incubate some ideas, but really nothing important happens, I think, in terms of writing a piece of music, until you have a picture to look at, so that's where it really starts for me." Slated to speak at SXSW 2012, Martinez admits to feeling a little trepidation: "I'm a little uncomfortable with the whole panel and public speaking thing in general ... but particularly when it gets to the nuts and bolts of how music is created, mostly it's been an intuitive thing for me that's some- times hard to describe or put words to." Still, Martinez looks forward to sharing And while that line may curve, it also beside his bedside for late-night inspiration, and also is willing to run down to the keyboard, but he had to stop using his small recorder for simpler reasons than one would think, as Martinez explains with a laugh: "I stopped carrying around the tape recorder, because of the geek factor. I fi gured a notepad was acceptable ... I just felt like such a preten- tious twit talking into a tape recorder that I stopped doing it." ■ his working methods, whether they work or not. Martinez says he keeps a legal pad "A Conversation with Cliff Martinez" is scheduled for SXSW Film 2012; for more information, visit sxsw.com/fi lm. ROBERT MANN

• Cover