Following “Heaven Knows What,” filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie return to the mean streets of New York City with “Good Time,” a hypnotic crime thriller that explores with bracing immediacy the tragic sway of family and fate.
After a botched bank robbery lands his younger brother in prison, Constantine embarks on a twisted odyssey through the city’s underworld in an increasingly desperate attempt to get his brother out of jail. Over the course of one night, Constantine finds himself on a mad descent into violence and mayhem as he races against the clock to save his brother and himself, knowing their lives hang in the balance.
We spoke with the film’s composer at the New York premiere. Check out what he had to say below:
So, tell me a little bit about how you got involved with the project.
Josh and Benny were fans of my music, going back a few years. Their director of photography, Sean Price Williams, made a CDR mix with no names of any of the artists on it, years ago in 2008. So, the year after I started composing music, they heard it and they remembered this one piece of music. It’s almost been 10 years now, so I think it was in their head that they wanted to do something for a long time. We just hooked up in New York. We all live here. I went to their office in midtown. We had a lot in common and we just got to work.
Tell me a little about the mood you were going for, because the music does add a really interesting texture to everything, makes everything more intense. Can you speak about that?
Yeah. They really wanted a score that wasn’t background, that stuck out, and felt like a character in the film. So, whenever I would decrease the intensity because I was trying to not step on the action, they would just say, “Where is it at?” So, I constantly really had to go five steps further than appropriate. That’s what’s so great about them as directors, obviously Robert as an actor and I think the scores as well. Everything’s 120% what people are used to.
In terms of instrumentation, what did you use? Synths?
All synths. Yeah. I have a studio in Bushwick, just me and a bunch of keyboards. No help, just engineers sometimes just doing a lot of sound on sound experiments and sequencing these instruments.
Is your background primarily in composition, or do you produce songs as well? What’s your musical background?
I’m a self taught composer, producer. I grew up around musicians. My mom was a musicologist and a piano teacher. My dad was playing in old Russian restaurant bands. So, I always was playing piano since I was a little kid. My dad had a synthesizer in the basement. I started deleting his old sounds and making weird, spaced out shit with it. The rest is pretty much history.
What was an exciting scene for you to score, or a moment you were most excited about, in terms of combining music with film?
The flashback scene when Ray is kind of revealing how he got to this point where he’s bandaged up. It was because it was a concrete story. There was a finite amount of time to work with that was really specific, and they wanted a real piece of music for it and not just kind of floaty, atmospheric stuff. We ended up making this very Giorgio Moroder style disco tune for it. It peaks out right as the action kind of tapers at the end. It was a challenge and that’s why I liked it.
What’s next for you?
I’m working on my own music for a bit, yeah.
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