March 21, 2016
If you had the chance to change history, regardless of the consequences, would you? When Jake Epping (James Franco) steps into a closet and travels back to 1960—a Maine diner’s version of Narnia—he’s on a mission to stop the assassination of JFK. Armed with stacks of research from diner owner Al (Chris Cooper), who attempted this mission before, Jake makes a life for himself in the past while staking out Lee Harvey Oswald (Daniel Webber). The past pushes back, however, actively throwing chaos at Jake as he tugs at the threads of history.
Developed by Bridget Carpenter (Friday Night Lights) for Bad Robot Productions and Hulu, 11.22.63 is an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same name. Rather than the “binge watch” model of Netflix, Hulu went the more traditional route, releasing one episode of the eightpart series every Monday. Each episode also features an orchestral score by Alex Heffes, himself a fan of King’s novels. He approached composing the series as he would a film, but one that runs nine hours. With live musicians and the Newman Scoring Stage at his disposal, Heffes stirred up weekly drama with his sessions for Franco’s man out of time.
Kristen Romanelli: I imagine that your connection with [director] Kevin Macdonald brought you to 11.22.63. Alex Heffes: That was the original connection, yeah. Bridget Carpenter, who is the showrunner, had seen quite a few of the movies I’d done with Kevin and a few of the others. It came through Kevin, but she had already picked up the music on some of those films, and so I talked to her early on and we brainstormed what we might be able to do on the show and started preparing.
KR: Now, as we know, the story is about Jake, who goes through this portal in his friend’s diner. It takes him from 2016 back all the way to 1960. How did you approach scoring this “man out of time” story that blends suspense and action with this scifi element?
AH: Yeah, it’s a gift for a composer, I think, for many reasons. Partly because it’s just such a great story. It’s got such great hooks—it’s got classic Stephen King hooks to it. It’s got a good premise and it’s got brilliant characters that come and go from the story. The thing I really love about it is that it’s been made like a long movie. It’s not like an episodic series—it’s like a ninehour movie, the way it’s shot, edited and acted. You get into finding what those themes are for the different characters and how they might evolve, mutate and change over the arc of those nine hours. That was how I looked at it from the beginning, but in my early discussions with everyone, we decided that Jake is a man out of time and how could that be musically represented? There were a few broad brush ideas that I started from, I guess.
The first one was that we would try and make the score sound very live. In fact, it was live. We recorded the whole score with live orchestra here in L.A. every week on the Fox and Newman stages, just to make sure that it sounded real and live. Not necessarily in a 1960s style, but I suppose there wasn’t anything of 2016 too much in it. We recorded live percussion—we did live drum kit along with the orchestra, just like the old school style. And we looked at ways to try and make it classic but modern at the same time. I guess there’s a difference in the 2016 section at the beginning of episode one—the music is definitely different in the present day. It’s got more synth elements and it’s more modern. Then, once you go back through the portal, you go into something that is harmonically and orchestrally stylized in its own way.
It was really exciting to have quite a big orchestra every week on a big stage. It’s just an exciting way to do it. Also, usually when I’m scoring a movie, we do the orchestra at the end and that’s great, but this is like you do that eight times. (Laughs) It’s a novel experience and we were doing it really quickly. We were almost doing it on a weekly basis, so music was written very, very fast. Going in, writing it and then listening to it that fresh. Hearing it, mixing it down, going onto the film and then going on to the next. It sort of actually informed the way I would write the next episode because you could actually hear it evolving and mutating in front of you, which is quite fun. That was one broad brush idea.
The other one is just trying to find what the themes are, and one of the very early things that just lit up like a beacon to me was the idea of the past pushing back against Jake and trying to stop him in his mission. Pretty early on, everyone asked if we could come up with something to represent that, which we did on the cellos and basses—a little motif, which is very, very simple, but sort of gets elaborated as you go through the series. It’s one of those things you can throw in. It’s almost subliminal, that the audience might not even realize it’s happening, but we even threw little clues in. Sometimes we would put it in in underscore or in middle parts to try and lay little clues that maybe what you’re watching is being influenced by the past pushing back.
That’s maybe a slightly Stephen King idea. I know he loves throwing Easter eggs in here and there, little references to other things, so we wanted to lay a trail of clues. So, the past pushing back has its own theme. Sadie (Sarah Gadon), she’s probably got the most thematic through line through the story. I just love Sadie because she comes into the story sort of like a side character and you’re sort of tricked. You have the wool pulled over your eyes—you think that she’s not going to be too important and, without giving any spoilers away, she becomes a very key and central part to the whole show by the end of it. Having a theme for her that can really develop and having something for JFK as well, which develops in a subtle way because he comes and goes in the story, but by the time we get to the end of the story, there’s a through line there.
I love the fact that it’s a wild, rambling, long story with characters that come and go and, by the end of it, if you make it all the way to the end, which you will because it’s just so great, (laughs) it all ties up and it all makes sense. If you could sit down and watch the whole thing, the show has got this wonderful, rounded arc and so, it’s a gift for a composer to follow all of those threads and try and join up the dots and have the music be the through line for all of that.
KR: This is pretty interesting because it’s being broadcast on Hulu, but they don’t do the binge watch model that Netflix does, so it’s more like a slow burn.
AH: Right, yeah. I think some of the feedback I’ve got, some people are just annoyed (laughs) and some people are loving the fact that they’re having to hang on because there are great cliffhangers every week in the way it’s structured. Yeah, I think that’s two sides. It’s a doubleedged sword, but I believe also that once it’s finished, it will be available then on Hulu, so you can binge on the whole thing if you want. You could hold off a few weeks, if you can bear it, and just watch the whole thing in one go. Certainly, when we were making it, I had in my mind, if you did watch the whole thing from beginning to end, there would be a continuity and sort of a line of thought and development that would hopefully be consistent with watching it all at one go.
KR: When you have a miniseries that’s eight or nine hours, it’s a lot of room to breathe for music, for themes and developing them. What is it like writing for such a prolonged arc?
AH: In a way, it’s very similar [to writing for film]. I try and treat everything like I’m just doing a movie. The thing I like about 11.22.63, one of the many things because I really love it, is that there is a lot of room for breathing and each episode has got its own slightly different style. I actually watched episode two last night for fun because my wife hadn’t seen it. Actually, I should say my wife, she sort of watched it because she’s the concertmaster—she was leading the orchestra, so she saw it on the big screen, but she hadn’t actually sat down and watched the show in our front room, so we went and watched it last night and there’s the most wonderful monologue with Arliss (Michael O’Neill), who is the husband at the guest house where Jake is staying. He gives this amazing monologue about winning his bronze star in World War II and the show takes so much time for him to sit and tell this story. You get so immersed in it. It’s much longer than a regular scene on a TV show, but the acting is so great and the writing is so great that you just get drawn into it.
There’s a lot of these moments. Each main character, or even side characters, have fantastic monologues. Sadie has a wonderful, long monologue in episode three or four and there is a lot of room to breathe in the show. They’ve given themselves this room to breathe because they have made it like a movie. It’s not like every scene needs to be 30 seconds like you sometimes get in episodic TV, which moves very, very fast. That allows me either to write really long cues, like in that one where you get to go on for four or five minutes just underscoring dialogue, or to leave scenes empty as well. Just trying to find pockets where music would work and where it shouldn’t be.
KR: It’s interesting, and you mentioned this earlier, but you treat history, the past, as a character itself.
AH: Yeah. It’s like an unseen presence. It’s the offstage presence pushing back against [Jake]. That’s something that music, if you get it right, can do really well because it can be the voice of something you don’t see. That was a really fun thing to do and the cellos and the basses, which have that theme all the way through the show, were loving it. Every time we got to one of those cues, they were cheering: “Yeah, it’s us again!” (Laughs) They felt like they had their moment, but I like doing that sort of thing. It’s not always possible, but I think Stephen King definitely gives room for characterization. He’s so great with drawing characters, even if the character is just time. For me, as a composer, anything like that to latch onto is great fun.
KR: I saw that you had a nice, little orchestra to work with. Thirtynine players at the Newman stage. That’s kind of a nice luxury in television.
AH: Yeah, it is. Absolutely. On top of that, we also had a fair amount of percussion and guitars and all of the other things that go with it that I recorded at my own studio. It was a luxury for a TV show. As I said, they were treating it very much more like a movie than a TV show, which was wonderful. I think it shows in every aspect of the show. It’s got wonderful production values.
KR: You conducted the score, too. Do you prefer to be on the podium rather than in the booth? AH: Yeah, I’ve always conducted my scores, almost for every movie I’ve done. I do prefer it. I think it’s partly a chance for me to get out and interact with human beings rather than being shut alone in my studio. (Laughs) I just crave seeing people. It gives me the chance to finish the music off on the podium. I find it much quicker to be able to make changes, shape things and try ideas on the fly. And as I said, I had the luxury of my wife leading the orchestra as well, which is great. We have a great shorthand and that’s a golden opportunity also to see my wife. (Laughs) KR: Yes, a nice way to spend time together. AH: Yeah, exactly. Right. I know some composers prefer to be in the box, but I find I can translate what the director is saying to me, or the producer, much quicker standing in front of the orchestra. I feel otherwise like there’s a barrier in between me and the orchestra and it takes me a lot longer to just explain everything. Plus, it’s just such a blast hearing the music you’ve just written being played in front of you. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.
—FSMO
http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/fsmonline/story.cfm?maID=5560