Trent Reznor has been called the ‘dweeb outsider’ by director David Fincher, who also reveals that the Nine Inch Nails’ frontman was the only musician he wished to collaborate with on the soundtrack to his critically acclaimed film The Social Network.
He says that the synthesizer sound was the perfect instrument for the world of the internet. “I thought the only guy I knew who could take the hum of it, the drone of it, the pneumatics and the booting up – all this stuff with these weird sounds and also understand the horniness of being the dweeb outsider was Trent.”
When Fincher called him up Reznor’s first reply was ‘no thanks’, the director reveals. “I thinks he was exhausted at that moment in time and I think he felt that he was going to have to drive the thing somehow – and I think when he saw the sequences he sort of thought ‘wow, I just need to interpret what the envelope is for this sonically’.”
Reznor was in the process of winding up Nine Inch Nails and already had other projects in the pipeline such as a TV mini-series named Year Zero for HBO, based on Nine Inch Nails' 2007 album of the same name.
He is also putting together a new group, How To Destroy Angels, with his wife Mariqueen Maandig and releasing an album early next year.
Talking about working with Fincher, Reznor says: “When I actually read the script and knowing David was involved - and David brings a level of excellence to what he’s interested in and what he works on - I knew this wasn’t going to be what I feared it could be in lesser hands. [And it became]: How can I help change people’s preconceived notions of what a Facebook movie is — the same feeling I myself had when I first heard of it …. It’s not about Facebook, so much. It’s about people and greed and creation and entitlement. It’s not about how people use Facebook, necessarily.”
On the process of scoring his first full-length movie, Reznor says: “I wanted to make it something that inched up the drama a little bit. And darkened the mood. Because I think there’s a great sense of betrayal and greed that runs through this film that I kind of wanted to play up.”
Pretty much from the beginning Reznor, well, nailed it. “I went off into my laboratory for a few weeks with Atticus [Ross], my conspirator, and just generated a bunch of sketches … Somehow we got it right almost the first time. [David] didn’t have a constructive criticism because he was blown away in trying some of these out in different scenes. I would like to say it was genius, but it was probably luck.”
Reznor’s dark, edgy score is perfect for a film that will be viewed as defining a generation. It’s a modern day tale of greed, inspiration, friendship and envy - played out to a rich, operatic soundtrack composed on the synthesizer.
As well as cementing his reputation as a film composer, Reznor is also working on a remastered version of Nine Inch Nails’ 1989 debut album Pretty Hate Machine, which is slated for release next month.
He is also not afraid to experiment with social media and has been at the forefront of the digital revolution, notably by putting up albums on torrent sites (Ghosts) and releasing the soundtrack for The Social Network through Amazon Deals programme.
Twenty-one years after he gave us his first sonic experience, Reznor continues to inspire and create; love him or loathe him you certainly can’t ignore his enigmatic presence in our world today.
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