Long time Coen brothers composer, Carter Burwell, was in attendance at the Nashville Film Festival this week for two reasons. The first was to pick up their annual Mike Curb Career Achievement Award For Film Music award and also to take part in a special event – “One on One with Carter Burwell”. During said event the subject of his work on the forthcoming Coen brothers’ adaptation of the Charles Portis novel, True Grit, came up, on which he had this to say;
“We don’t always see eye to eye.” Burwell noted when discussing his 14th collaboration with Joel and Ethan Coen. But when it came to the conception of the True Grit score “We both had the same idea at the same time: Protestant hymns.” The composer went on to explain that the lead character, Mattie Ross (to be played by Hailee Steinfeld) was so convinced of her own righteousness that they all thought Protestant hymns would be a fine way to play with her misplaced rectitude … He’s currently looking for appropriate hymn recordings but griped that “they all sound too sweet.”
Burwell was quick to point out that this is only the current concept and could very well change entirely. Indeed he said that he liked the idea of a call and response feel to the theme, a solo instrument echoing back since Mattie is marching off alone, determined into dangerous territory to find her father’s killer and recruiting others to join her. He spoke a little about his past work with the Coen brothers and cited Miller’s Crossing as his best ever work experience due to the fact that he got to spend three months creating the score rather than the usual three to six weeks. He was asked which was his favourite Coen score and he said; “I like Fargo but I don’t really have favorites.”
You can see some photos from the event here. Parts taken from original post on Film Experience Blog.
