I had a chance to speak with composer Tyler Bates recently, about his work on 300, and the subject of Rob Zombie’s Halloween reboot — for which Bates is also providing the music — came up. Bates has worked with Zombie before, and had some interesting things to say about their working style, his take on the script and tackling such an iconic score.
“Rob came to me when I believe the Weinsteins first tapped
him to see if he would be interested in making a Halloween movie,” says Bates. “Rob gave me his idea for the script and he asked
my opinion of it, which I appreciated, and then asked if I would mock up our
version of the theme for a presentation to the studio. So we had a dialogue
going, and through The Devil’s Rejects
we had definitely creatively bonded immediately. Rob pretty much leaves me to
my own devices, musically. He doesn’t really speak in musical terms to me about
anything. And that’s probably because as an artist and a musician himself he
knows it would be horrible to have your A&R guy saying, ‘Yeah, write
another one like “Living Dead Girl.”’ You know that’s not going to be so good.”
“Going into Halloween
I’ve had the opportunity to develop a palette of sounds that are going to be
applicable to the film, texturally,” Bates adds. “And being very familiar with Rob’s filming
style, and the script, and having taken a look at a couple of examples of
cinematography that reflect the attitude he wants to capture for the film, it’s
given me a lot of info. He’s in his third week of filming right now. I imagine
that I’ll start looking at an assembly of dailies next week. Rob lives pretty
close by, and so we’ll have a chance to get together and talk. Rob’s visual
style is so intense that the music really has to become part of the film
itself. It can’t accompany the film, it has to become part of the fiber of the film itself. That’s the challenge.”
aspect goes, first off I think he’s written a great script,” continues Bates. “He’s telling the
story, in my opinion, in a way that fans are really going to love. …And one of
the pleasures of getting a chance to do this movie is getting a chance to do
the John Carpenter theme, but kind of get back to the way that Carpenter did
it — at least that attitude. There’s not going to be a sweeping, orchestral
version of the theme happening. This is hopefully going to be the most
disturbing version ever created. That’s our objective, to really get into the
darkest corners of your mind, and I feel that Rob is definitely going to
accomplish that, in a really classic way. I think you’re going to see this
movie as something that really delivers on a psychological level and a dramatic
level. It’s probably going to be violent as hell, I’m sure, but that’s not his
main point.”