Nicholas Britell on the Art of the Film Score

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

Nicholas Britell has emerged as one of the most in-demand film composers working today, creating original music for projects that hew to no style or model. He wrote the infuriatingly catchy theme of HBO’s “Succession”; he is nominated for an Academy Award for the score of Adam McKay’s manic apocalypse comedy “Don’t Look Up”; he was previously nominated for his score for Barry Jenkins’s “Moonlight.” In 2017, Britell spoke with the New Yorker editor Henry Finder on the occasion of the release of “Battle of the Sexes,” about the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. This segment originally aired September 22, 2017.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.1	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:16.9	Oscar season is a time when film composers get a single moment in the limel
0:21.6	Nicholas Bertel wrote that infuriatingly catchy theme of HBO's show, Succession.
0:28.9	And he's nominated for an Oscar for the score of Adam McKay's recent film, Don't Look Up.
0:33.8	I've been running it all day. I keep getting the same result, a direct hit of
0:39.6	Earth in six months and 14 days. Which is all about the impending destruction of the world and what
0:46.3	the world decides not to do about it. Bertel also scored McKay's film The Big Short, which was about
0:53.2	the financial crisis,
0:54.5	and he also worked with director Barry Jenkins on Moonlight and the Underground Railroad.
0:59.9	In 2017, Brutel wrote a score for a film called Battle of the Sexes,
1:04.0	which was all about the 1973 tennis match between Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs.
1:09.6	It starred Emma Stone and Steve Karell. It's Bobby, Bobby Riggs. It starred Emma Stone and Steve Correll.
1:12.7	It's Bobby, Bobby, Bobby. How'd you get my number?
1:17.1	Call every hotel in San Diego. Listen, I had a great idea. Okay. Well, it's after midnight, Bobby.
1:22.8	Can we talk another time? You and me, Billy Jean. Three sets, five sets. Your choice.
1:28.0	Are you drunk, Bobby?
1:29.5	No, of course not.
1:31.2	Nicholas Bertel sat down with the New Yorkers, Henry Finder.
1:35.0	In the old days, it seems to me, most composers, when they weren't writing sacred music, were writing in the service of story.
1:43.1	You think of Henry Purcell in the 17th century.
1:46.9	He becomes the greatest English composer writing incidental music, theater music, ballet music, opera.
	...

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