美国国家公共电台 NPR Thom Yorke On Scoring The New 'Suspiria'

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The new film "Suspiria" is a remake of a cult¹ 1977 Italian horror film. An elite² dance company in Berlin might just be a front for a coven of witches. For the film's score, the director, Luca Guadagnino, reached out to one of the high priests of modern rock 'n' roll - not B.J. Leiderman, who writes our theme music. Tim Greiving has the story.

TIM GREIVING, BYLINE³: The original "Suspiria," directed by Dario Argento, had a striking score written and performed by the prog rock band Goblin.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUSPIRIA")

GOBLIN: La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.

GREIVING: Claudio Simonetti, co-founder and keyboardist of Goblin, still remembers Argento's instruction.

CLAUDIO SIMONETTI: OK. This is a mystic film with witches. The audience - they always have to feel that the witches are there, even if nothing happen on the screen. That's why we start with a lullaby. It's a kind of a loop of keyboards. And after, I decide, also, to put my voice over. Know, like, (whispering) la, la, la, la, la. This is just more creepy.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUSPIRIA")

GOBLIN: Witch, witch.

GREIVING: Italian director Luca Guadagnino was utterly⁴ bewitched by "Suspiria" when he saw it as a 14-year-old, and the music was a huge part of its spell.

LUCA GUADAGNINO: The music by Goblin was so unexpected for me when I saw it for the first time. It was like an electric shock that was renewed every time I was listening to it.

GREIVING: But rather than reuse that music or commission a new score from Goblin, Guadagnino turned to the musician he calls the voice of his generation, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PARANOID ANDROID")

THOM YORKE: (Singing) Please, could you stop the noise? I'm trying to get some rest.

GUADAGNINO: He brings with his voice, his musical voice, a sense of melancholy⁵, darkness, unexpected twisted joy that I found was absolutely perfect for the movie. I actually thought only of him. I didn't thought of anybody else.

GREIVING: Of course, Yorke had never actually scored a movie before. He's been asked, notably⁶ back in 1999 for "Fight Club," and his Radiohead bandmate, Jonny Greenwood, has become quite the acclaimed⁷ film composer. So Yorke was a little intimidated⁸.

YORKE: But there was something about the way Luca asked me and the confidence he had that I could actually do it, which sort of surprised me and made me think.

GREIVING: Yorke's first big challenge was composing the central dance piece. Tilda Swinton's enigmatic choreographer⁹ rehearses it with her all-female dance company throughout the film, and it serves double duty as an incantation.

(SOUNDBITE OF THOM YORKE'S "VOLK")

GREIVING: The only problem - the dance had already been filmed.

YORKE: One's instinct in that sort of situation is to respond to the movements of the dance. I had, like, four or five aborted¹⁰ attempts at doing that before I realized that I had to sort of disconnect myself from the dance, go somewhere in my mind and then come back. It was a weird¹¹ process.

(SOUNDBITE OF THOM YORKE'S "VOLK")

GREIVING: Director Luca Guadagnino was delighted.

GUADAGNINO: He made a soundtrack for the sequence as if the witches had commissioned that soundtrack back in the '40s. Amazing.

(SOUNDBITE OF THOM YORKE'S "VOLK")

GREIVING: Composer Thom Yorke wrote much of the score in the same way, thanks to some advice from his bandmate, Jonny Greenwood.

YORKE: Don't work to picture. If you can avoid it, try and do as much as you can off-picture just with your impressions of what's needed, which was really helpful. If I'd been sitting there, watching the dancer throwing itself against the mirror, dismembering herself and breaking her bones into pieces and screaming and tried to write something directly to that, I would've gone mad.

(SOUNDBITE OF THOM YORKE'S "VOLK")

GREIVING: The centerpiece of the score is a Thom Yorke song...

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUSPIRIUM")

YORKE: (Singing) This is a waltz thinking about our bodies, what they mean for our salvation¹².

GREIVING: ...One he wrote before seeing a frame of footage.

YORKE: I had the idea for "Suspirium" just from reading the script, really. This idea of a troupe¹³ of witches, in a weird form of sadness, trying to cheat death and sort of simple piano melodies, which ended up then permeating¹⁴ the whole film. I had the feeling that the more stuff I generated at the beginning, before I really understood what they were shooting, the more there would be that sense of it not being literal.

GREIVING: Which is how director Luca Guadagnino prefers it.

GUADAGNINO: What I don't like absolutely is the idea of working with professionals, you know, a professional soundtrack composer. I much rather want to work with artists. A great artist can do anything he or she wants to do.

GREIVING: Even though the music began as a work-for-hire for someone else's story, Thom Yorke says it became, in a strange way, a form of personal expression.

YORKE: My emotional response to it, even though I'd never done it before, was very odd because you're constantly fighting this feeling that you're so out of your depth, you want to run screaming from the studio. But, at the same time, you're kind of getting off on it.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

UNIDENTIFIED CHOIR¹⁵: (Singing in foreign language).

YORKE: I'd sort of describe it as, like, being pushed into a series of rooms I'd never normally go into and then discovering I could create stuff that I found interesting.

GREIVING: Some pretty dark rooms.

YORKE: Every single one of them, every single one of them increasingly dark.

GREIVING: For NPR News, I'm Tim Greiving.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

UNIDENTIFIED CHOIR: (Singing in foreign language).

1 cult   

n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜

参考例句：

• Her books aren't bestsellers,but they have a certain cult following.她的书算不上畅销书，但有一定的崇拜者。
• The cult of sun worship is probably the most primitive one.太阳崇拜仪式或许是最为原始的一种。

2 elite   

n.精英阶层；实力集团；adj.杰出的，卓越的

参考例句：

• The power elite inside the government is controlling foreign policy.政府内部的一群握有实权的精英控制着对外政策。
• We have a political elite in this country.我们国家有一群政治精英。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 utterly   

adv.完全地，绝对地

参考例句：

• Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
• I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。

5 melancholy   

n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的

参考例句：

• All at once he fell into a state of profound melancholy.他立即陷入无尽的忧思之中。
• He felt melancholy after he failed the exam.这次考试没通过，他感到很郁闷。

6 notably   

adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地

参考例句：

• Many students were absent,notably the monitor.许多学生缺席，特别是连班长也没来。
• A notably short,silver-haired man,he plays basketball with his staff several times a week.他个子明显较为矮小，一头银发，每周都会和他的员工一起打几次篮球。

7 acclaimed   

adj.受人欢迎的

参考例句：

• They acclaimed him as the best writer of the year. 他们称赞他为当年的最佳作者。
• Confuscius is acclaimed as a great thinker. 孔子被赞誉为伟大的思想家。

8 intimidated   

v.恐吓；威胁adj.害怕的；受到威胁的

参考例句：

• We try to make sure children don't feel intimidated on their first day at school. 我们努力确保孩子们在上学的第一天不胆怯。
• The thief intimidated the boy into not telling the police. 这个贼恫吓那男孩使他不敢向警察报告。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 choreographer   

n.编舞者

参考例句：

• She is a leading professional belly dancer, choreographer, and teacher. 她既是杰出的专业肚皮舞演员，也是舞蹈设计者和老师。 来自辞典例句
• It'stands aside, my choreographer of grace, and blesses each finger and toe. 它站在一旁，我优雅的舞蹈指导，并祝福每个指尖与脚尖。 来自互联网

10 aborted   

adj.流产的，失败的v.（使）流产( abort的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）（某事物）中止；（因故障等而）（使）（飞机、宇宙飞船、导弹等）中断飞行；（使）（飞行任务等）中途失败

参考例句：

• The rocket flight had to be aborted because of difficulties with computer. 因电脑出故障，这次火箭飞行只好中辍。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They aborted the space flight finally. 他们最后中止了这次宇航飞行。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

12 salvation   

n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困

参考例句：

• Salvation lay in political reform.解救办法在于政治改革。
• Christians hope and pray for salvation.基督教徒希望并祈祷灵魂得救。

13 troupe   

n.剧团，戏班；杂技团；马戏团

参考例句：

• The art troupe is always on the move in frontier guards.文工团常年在边防部队流动。
• The troupe produced a new play last night.剧团昨晚上演了一部新剧。

14 permeating   

弥漫( permeate的现在分词 )； 遍布； 渗入； 渗透

参考例句：

• His grace was more permeating because it found a readier medium. 他的风度因为有人赏识显得更加迷人。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• Thoughts are a strangely permeating factor. 思想真是一种会蔓延的奇怪东西。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

15 choir   

n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱

参考例句：

• The choir sang the words out with great vigor.合唱团以极大的热情唱出了歌词。
• The church choir is singing tonight.今晚教堂歌唱队要唱诗。