Reinhold Heil: Yes, definitely, I always have. I really love films. Even when I just watch a real Hollywood blockbuster: I watch it because I want to get into it, I don't sit there and pretend to be a film critic to find all the weak points but rather to imagine myself in it. Every now and then they really insult you, of course, just take a film like Twister when the two of them cling to each other in the eye of a hurricane even though the cows are flying round them... That's the point I get angry because it insults my intellect. But stuff like Indiana Jones or Star Wars: great! It's like a rollercoaster ride.
It gets really good with films like Run Lola Run. I thought it was brilliant because it covered so many aspects of film: it was a rollercoaster ride, but once you started thinking about it you could get really deep into the story. All of a sudden you were philosophizing for ages, thinking about parallel universes or whether the meaning of life may be to get from one universe into a better one and so on.
That's why I think pop is best when it is able to get a variable depth. There are always people who offer things like this, even in very modern music, like Moby for instance, whose tracks are almost like film scores and at the same time you can dance to them, which is really great.
[...]
[About the soundtrack of The Princess And The Warrior:]
We didn't want to revolutionize the genre of film score, but we wanted to show that a soundtrack can be at least something else than taking a few songs by popular artists pretending they are inspired by the film and putting them onto a compilation. I'm not trying to say this is wrong per se, though. It is possible that the musical style fits the style and atmosphere of the film, this can be perfectly alright.
But we thought that it must be possible to make a soundtrack album that is pop (even though the music in the film may not be that pop) and yet has a close connection to the film. And that's what we did. And I think we proved this even more than we did with the Lola soundtrack. It was easier with the music of Lola because the film itself demanded pop music in a way, it almost screamed for pop and pop is what it got. (laughs)
[...]
The actual songs don't appear in the film but their basis exists within the film score, and we distilled the songs out of the score. We did something like that on the Lola soundtrack where we created two songs out of the score. It wasn't such a big step, though, since the tracks had such a cool groove anyway. This time it took a much bigger effort and the songs are even more different from the score. But it is all connected to the film, the music as well as the lyrics. We were able to work with seven different singers.
Charlotte: That would've been my very next question: how did you choose the artists?
Reinhold: Well, we chose those singers we like, of course. For example, Skin was the first one of which we thought 'This would be perfect, it couldn't get any better if she said Yes.' And quite often you say 'Well, we don't need to ask her in the first place, it's impossible anyway...'
Charlotte: "She wouldn't want to work with us weird German guys anyway..."
Reinhold: Yeah, and somehow I think that's one of the reasons [the artists agreed to cooperate]: Run Lola run is a really special film which I think deserves to be celebrated as an original and distinguishable piece of filmmaking. And that's why it got such a huge worldwide response... I think people in Germany can hardly imagine this. It was a blockbuster in Germany, of course, and as always when something is really successful in Germany, there are lots of guys who say: 'Well, it wasn't that good, you know...'
Charlotte: ...that it becomes such a hype that people think they have to be against the hype...
Reinhold: Exactly, that's the way it works here [in Germany]. But when you meet someone in, say, L.A. (regardless of whether they're in the film business or not), they more or less hug you and say 'It's so great that something like this happens, it's among the best things going on for years!' And this is opening the way for each of us at the moment. Johnny and I are working on soundtracks for American films, not the biggest productions yet, but who knows, you have to start somewhere.
Charlotte: After all, Lola is one of the few modern German films that are accepted and apprechiated worldwide.
Reinhold: And in the end, this was the kind of help that particular great artists and singers agreed to work on this project.
Charlotte: Or at least it made them take a look at it at all.
Reinhold: Exactly, it's like, how do you manage to open the door and be allowed in, or: how to manage to avoid the management.
Charlotte: And how easy was it when it came to Skin?
Reinhold: I don't think it was that easy because Skin has a manager as well, a very tough one, and Skin lives a rather secluded life. But the really scary part of the day we recorded the song is that I'm the only one who didn't get to know her because I was the only one who couldn't meet her then. Tom and Johnny were in Nice while recording the album and I was already back in Santa Barbara at my studio to prepare for several other recordings.
[...]
The film had to be mixed by April [2000], these film projects always take up so much time in advance. And that's why we started at Johnny's studio in Berlin, then moved to my studio in Santa Barabara and at that point the orchestral recordings had to be done as well, which is why we almost had no choice but to take an orchestra in Los Angeles. So we chose the real Paramount Studios film music orchestra, 40 people, first-class players! There is this distinct and wild string part on You Can't Find Peace which sounds, well, almost "drunk", but deliberately drunk. And even during the very first session they actually played it like that which left me totally speechless.
It was really expensive and we had exactly three hours to record the whole score and the string part for this song. But the musicians were so good that it wasn't a problem at all. We actually finished it exactly within these three hours! It was exciting and stressful because we knew: 'After these three hours we're out of money and what do we do when we haven't finished it all by then?'
[...]
Charlotte: Back to Winter Sleepers again: The music of this film reminded me of films by John Carpenter or maybe even Dario Argento.
Reinhold: If you notice things like that you're on the right way. Although I have to admit that it's rather obvious when it comes to Winter Sleepers. Tom started making films at the age of 8 or 9 with a Super 8 camera. I think he once told me that when he saw Halloween for the first time he knew he wanted to make films, which does not only refer to directing a film but also its soundtrack. John Carpenter wrote the script and the soundtrack for the films he directed.
When it comes to The Princess And the Warrior, Tom is not quite on his own since he works with me and Johnny, but he is the one who makes the decisions. He is the palest of us all which makes him the band leader (laughs) and since he is the director his decisions are final, of course. When we offer him some musical pieces it is up to him whether he wants to have the film that way or not. It's even easier in a way because you don't have to fight for your place in the band, there is no question of 'who rules', in this case it's the director, the palest one.
Charlotte: Another question about The Princess And the Warrior: Did you add the soundtrack to the complete film or to seperate scenes?
Reinhold: It was a work in progress since Tom insisted that we began writing the soundtrack at the beginning of February already, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to finish it by the end of March. The problem was that he hadn't finished editing the film yet. That is the reason why Tom was the palest of us: In February, he had been editing the film for three and a half months already and had cut it down to three and a half hours. As you can imagine, this meant that he had to edit it even further even though we had begun writing the film score...
So there he was in the cutting room during the day, stopped by at our place until 1 or 2 am and went home afterwards. But instead of going to bed he read the script for his next film [Heaven]. [...] So that were all the things he got going at the same time, which makes you look rather pale, I guess, hence the name of the band. (laughs)
Charlotte: How many times did you try to find the musical theme, in other words: how many times do you have to re-do things until they don't distract from a scene in a film but rather support it?
Reinhold: It happens every now and then. We finished the song with Skin pretty early and we could have put more parts of it into the film, but somehow most of those scenes got deleted. You constantly work on it, the basic ideas worked pretty well pretty fast, the intersting thing is to elaborate these ideas.
During all this, Tom kept on editing. Which means that we created some "musical blueprints", as it were, handed them to Tom, he put them onto the film scenes, reedited them because the music inspired him differently, gave us the new version of the scenes and we had to redo the music again. This went on during the whole of February and then we were able to take a deep breath eventually since the final cut had to be done by the end of the month. Based on this, we kept on finishing the score at my studio in Santa Barbara. And right before the sound mixing began, Tom edited the film even further and therefor had to edit parts of the music again.
Charlotte: Is it ok with you when someone does that?
Reinhold: Yes, if it's a good music editor.
[...]
Charlotte: Would you say that Tom is a more musical director than others?
Reinhold: Definitely, yes!
Charlotte: Which also makes it easier for those working with him, doesn't it? It must be way harder if the director doesn't know anything about music and is a millstone around everone's necks.
Reinhold: Well, he only is a millstone if he doesn't know anything about music but thinks he does. There are other directors who are not musicians but who like music a lot, so they choose you because they like your kind of music and also trust you. Or sometimes they even have a scene for you in which the music really takes control: no dialogues or sound effects and all of a sudden there is a landscape and the music simply matches perfectly. That's great and it is a good cooperation with a director who isn't musical himself.
But with Tom things are completely different, of course. He used to have many piano lessons and can play pieces by Beethoven really well. Which is why the music of Carpenter is a piece of cake for him [imitates the staccato hammering with his fingers]. So he isn't a director that is merely allowed to join in but an actual really good musician.
[...]
Charlotte: Do you have future plans for this project or band Pale 3, will you continue to work under that name?
Reinhold: That's what we want to do. Strictly speaking, the project already existed during the making of Run Lola Run, only that we stupidly enough didn't give ourselves the name of the band then. (laughs) That's why you couldn't talk about us yet, we kept ourselves in the background and simply said: It's Thomas D. and Franka Potente. But it was our project as well, of course, although the name would've become pretty long: Pale 3 feat. Thomas D. feat. Franka Potente.
[...]
It is important to know that the music [in The Princess And the Warrior] is completely different from the Lola soundtrack.
[...]
All singers wrote the lyrics under the impression of the story of the film. It is very interesting to listen to the lyrics on the album because of the different interpretations. So there are seven different singers with seven different songs that are sometimes more, sometimes less connected to the film score. You can even listen to them without the context of the film.
Charlotte: Skin even said in an interview that You Can't Find Peace was expressly not written about the love story but about its negative aspects: the situations you have to overcome to begin the love story.
Reinhold: Exactly, it is a piece written for the character of Bodo and therefor is rather melancholic.
[...]
Or take Anita Lane, who usually works with people like Nick Cave with all those darker tales and stories: I think her song on the soundtrack is hilarious because she created this almost catholic naive story, think of the things she tells at the end of the song, it's great. She lives in Sicily and has three kids with a Sicilian, I guess that leaves its marks on you (laughs). But it is also a valid interpretation of the story and I think that's what makes it so exciting: you can find out so much on this album.
