Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on HBO’s “Watchmen”

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

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

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2020

⏱️ 21 minutes

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Summary

HBO’s “Watchmen” was nominated for twenty-six Emmy Awards—more than any other show this year—including two for the music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (who are also the members of the industrial-rock band Nine Inch Nails). The music negotiates the show’s superhero plot with its real and traumatic historical context: the Greenwood Massacre, in which mobs attacked the Black community of Tulsa in 1921 and killed as many as three hundred people. It “brings this very difficult history together with the sheer bad-ass fun of fantasy,” Vinson Cunningham says. “That tension shows up on every level of the show, and definitely in its wide-ranging score.” The music in “Watchmen” is “sometimes creepy, sometimes mournful, and sometimes outrageous—it’s not just a mood-setter; it’s like its own character.” Cunningham spoke with Reznor and Ross about how they achieved this effect, musically. “I knew we were not going to let the show down,” Ross said, “because it was clear that this one matters.”

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.
0:10.1	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:12.6	I'm Vincent Cunningham, and I'll be sitting in today for David Remnick.
0:16.8	Thanks for joining me.
0:18.5	Hands down, one of the standout TV shows of the last year was HBO's Watchmen.
0:24.0	It's been nominated for 26 Emmy Awards, which is an amazing number.
0:28.8	Watchmen was adapted from a cult classic 80s graphic novel about American politics,
0:34.0	vigilantism, and war.
0:36.3	It's a superhero story, but at the heart of this new version is a horror that's totally real.
0:41.5	The Greenwood Massacre, a rampage against the black community of Tulsa, a century ago, that left
0:47.4	hundreds of people dead.
0:49.3	The thing about Watchmen is how it brings this very difficult history together with the sheer badass fun of fantasy.
0:57.0	Cavalry's back.
1:02.7	Three years of peace and we convinced ourselves that they were gone.
1:08.0	But they were just hibernating.
1:11.3	Good thing we know where their caves are.
1:14.6	That tension shows up on every level of the show, and definitely in its wide-ranging score.
1:20.7	Watchmen's music is sometimes creepy, sometimes mournful, and sometimes outrageous.
1:26.2	It's not just a mood setter.
1:28.7	It's like its own character.
1:44.8	The score is by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and it was nominated for two Emmy Awards.
1:49.9	You might know Trent Rezner and Atticus Ross as the two permanent members of the industrial rock band, Nine In Inch Nails. In recent years, they've also composed music for films like
	...

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