Though he is the designated newcomer of the “Behemoth!” Music Collective, composer and songwriter Lukas Frank has a level of familiarity with its director that makes him one of the few people that can say they did rewrites on something two-time Oscar nominee Tony Gilroy wrote.
Speaking at the Middleburg Film Festival after a Sunday morning screening of the Pedro Pascal vehicle that features music from nine different composers, Gilroy said, “Lukas and I have a relationship that goes back like 10 years. His father [Scott] and I are very good friends and Lukas was a real touring drummer.” Over the years, the filmmaker had stayed in touch with the burgeoning musician, and became a fan of Frank’s band Storefront Church, “so we had a real relationship. I know his music inside out.” But even then, as Gilroy began working on “Behemoth!,” he said that Frank “wasn’t really going to be part of it originally. It wasn’t like he was an obvious choice.”
Related Stories
As Gilroy developed ideas for what music could be featured in the film in order to avoid an underscore, from Oscar winner Michael Giacchino writing the theme to a fictional classic cartoon to music icon Alan Silvestri scoring a blockbuster titled “Open World,” the biggest challenge actually became what music represented the character Viviana, a young woman who Pascal’s professional cellist character Alan Serian takes interest in.
“It says on the page, oh, it’s this transformational [requiem], this woman beyond a prodigy, a proto-Mozart,” describing one of the pieces that first showcases the young musician’s talent. “It’s like when a writer says, ‘Oh, the greatest sunset ever.’ The director goes, ‘Fuck you. Really?’ So I’m on both sides of that equation, but I know that I have to have this thing, and I just know intuitively that this is going to be the hardest thing to do. So I started very early on.”
Gilroy cast a wide net that finally came back around to a piece that his primary music collaborator, nine-time Oscar nominee James Newton Howard, wrote. “We picked a lock on the Viviana thing,” said the director. “At that point I said, ‘Oh, my God, James, you know what? Now that you have the genetics of this, now that we know who this is, you should take the rest of the Viviana cues.’ He destroyed them. I love what he does with Viviana.”
One of those cues was an original song called “Your God Is Sleeping,” an experimental pop song that Pascal’s Alex sees Viviana perform at a packed music club in Los Angeles. “I wrote a version of it and brought it to James. He tweaked it up and had all the lyrics. We’re like ‘Wow, this is kind of good. We should take it over to Lukas and have him make a hit,’” said Gilroy. “Lukas listens to it and goes, ‘It’s really good, but it’s really old.’”
Seated next to the “Behemoth!” helmer, Frank said “Tony wrote this great song, it felt like a ‘70s protest song.” “It wasn’t that lame,” replied Gilroy.
“It was a good song. It did not feel like something a 16-year-old girl could write was my complaint about it,” said the songwriter. The director said, “‘OK, you can have the title. Do whatever you want.’ And then a couple of days later the song came out.”
“Your God Is Sleeping” served as redemption for Frank who had sent Gilroy several pitches for the aforementioned pivotal piece of music that a younger Viviana performs in the film. “All along the way, Lukas is like, ‘What are you doing? What happened? What’s going on? Let me try.’ He tried a bunch of Viviana requiems and kept sending them to me, but our relationship is different. I can just say ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t stop, but no. Forget it. I don’t see how this is going to happen,’” said the director.
“Someday I’m going to release my four projected piano requiems. I got such great feedback,” joked Frank. “My favorite one, the piece was called ‘My Mother.’ Tony had the title for me, he wanted me to call it ‘My Mother.’ So I sent him one of them. I’m so proud of this piano requiem I sent. I sent it over to him. He goes, ‘I mean, it’s great. I’m sure your mother will love it.’”
After laughter from the audience, the composer continued, “I sent him another one over and he goes, ‘This is the definition of interesting for interesting’s sake.’ I then put that song [and melody] on my record. I don’t tell him. I send it to him. He goes, ‘Track four is great.’ I go ‘Motherfucker! That’s the one that you said wasn’t that good.’”
“Behemoth!” is a cornucopia of engrossing, original music, and Gilroy said Howard, the victor in the hunt for who would write music for Viviana, “was obsessed with what Lukas was doing after ‘Your God Is Sleeping.’” He added that part of the fun of the film’s musical experiment was “all the composers on this movie wanted to hear what the other ones were doing,” and they all thought Best Original Song contender “Your God Is Sleeping” “is the dopest. It’s really hard to be that simple and that effective. It’s really cool.”