Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Allison Stewart. Let's continue our series, The Big Picture, which focuses on Oscar-nominated creatives who work behind the scenes. Our next guest's music helped transport us to the steampunk world of Poor Things. His score is at times energetic, sometimes mischievous, sometimes appropriately dissonant. None of it gratuitous or too on the nose, just sort of magical. Composer Jerskin Fendrix is a musician who never worked in film before Director Yorgos Lanthimos recruited him for this project.

The score he created befits the universe scene through the eyes of Bella Baxter, a woman for whom everything is new, and wonderful, and confounding. Here's an example of one of the tracks from the score, to show you a bit of what I mean from when Bella's experiencing new things. This is, I Hope She's Alright.

[MUSIC-Jerskin Fendrix: I Hope She's Alright]

Alison Stewart: Jerskin Fendrix is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on Poor Things. He joins me now. Hi, nice to meet you.

Jerskin Fendrix: Hi. How's it going?

Alison Stewart: It's going well. How about you?

Jerskin Fendrix: Doing well, thank you.

Alison Stewart: You're nominated for Academy Awards. It's going well. [chuckles]

Jerskin Fendrix: It's okay.

Alison Stewart: What were you doing right before you accepted this position? What were you working on?

Jerskin Fendrix: I was doing a few projects in London. I just released an album called Winterreise, which was basically pop songs, although maybe a slightly generous use of that definition. I'd done a bunch of work more of the live pop music. The general scene in London revolved around this avenue called the The Windmill Pub in Brixton. Generally, I was working in the songwriting arena when Yorgos got in touch, and I believe he'd listened to that album, which I released in lockdown.

Alison Stewart: Before this project, were you someone who paid attention to the score in films?

Jerskin Fendrix: Sometimes. There are definitely people like Mica Levi and Jonny Greenwood, and so on, who I think, in the contemporary scene were doing wonderful things. I also really loved a lot of the music for '90s Disney films, like Mulan, The Lion King, and Hunchback of Notre Dame, and so on were really, really big influences on my music generally. I did watch films like I suppose most living people.

Alison Stewart: Did you ever think about being a film composer?

Jerskin Fendrix: Perhaps abstractly, but it wasn't anything that I had particularly-- I wasn't aiming for it in any sort of professional way.

Alison Stewart: When you got the call from Yorgos Lanthimos and his team about acquiring about your interest, what were your first thoughts?

Jerskin Fendrix: I think even now it's hard to work out exactly what I was thinking. There was a few days of being sent materials and chatting on various calls and so on until I fully realized the extent of what I was being asked. Then, at that point, I think it was about six months of panic and making sure that I actually came up with something that was good. There wasn't much of a ramp, to be honest. I think I was very suddenly dropped into actually just doing it.

Alison Stewart: Was there anything from your experience as you described it, pop songs, but, they're big pop songs. Anything from that experience that was useful to you in this experience?

Jerskin Fendrix: Sure. Very early on, one of the first conversations I had with Yorgos was about how we didn't really want to think about other films or any other films' scores. When I was writing the bulk of the music for Poor Things, I didn't watch any films. I tried very hard not to think about any other film scores, and we never discussed any other music in general. All I had is, it was an autophagic process. I basically only really had what I already knew about music and writing music to rely on. I think it was such a wonderful film to start with considering my background.

So much of about Bella's story is to do with these really exaggerated emotions, feeling these primal things for the first time in so many different arenas, and the exaggeration, the melodrama. That's not entirely fair because I think so much of it feels true. From my experience in writing pop songs, so much of it is really dumb, and it's really naive and exaggerated. I think it's why it's such a popular art form. People really turn to it because it's one of the few art forms, I think, where you can't really be completely embarrassingly overbashed with emotion, and it never feels too much.

You can really push the suppositives there. I think there was a lot of that sense of very, very concentrated, very powerful emotional writing that I could apply to Poor Things.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Jerskin Fendrix. The name of the film is Poor Things. He's Oscar-nominated as the composer for Best Original Score. What did Yorgos tell you he needed from a score?

Jerskin Fendrix: That's a good question. The way he directs and all of his collaborators will say a similar thing, he doesn't backseat drive in any capacity. He actually gives a really radical amount of trust to all of his collaborators. At first, it can be slightly daunting, and there's so much responsibility placed on your shoulders for your own interpretation and your own understanding of the materials. So much was communicated just through the script, through the content that was handed out, given. I think you get a sense that you are almost non-verbally transmits that basically, you can go as far as you want.

There's no point where you're going to be overdoing it. I think all of us working on the film got the sense that actually this is a place where you don't have to hold anything back. That's actually not a common thing to have as an artist. Realizing you have an entire gamut to play with is an extremely liberating thing. I think it's why so many of the contributions, not just mine, but everyone else's seemed so vibrant and extreme.

Alison Stewart: What material did you have available to you when you started writing?

Jerskin Fendrix: As well as the script, which is wonderful by Tony McNamara, which I think so much the emotion, and the humor, and the sense of feeling, I was really moved by that. There was also this 200-page document that Shona and James, who are the production designers who'd come up with before we started work. Which had all of the art, all the set designs, what the sky might look like, whatever, all the buildings, and a lot more abstract and weird stuff that actually, than what ended up in the film.

That gave me such a solid sense of cosmetically how astounding this film is going to be. I just basically started running from those two things. I think I wrote about 95% of the score before the cameras started rolling.

Alison Stewart: I want to play a bit of Bella's theme. Bella is childlike at first, baby-like and she eventually matures, but she still always has this childlike curiosity about the world. That's something that someone can't take away from her. How did you play with this idea of curiosity and childlikeness in the Bella theme?

Jerskin Fendrix: It's a good question. I think I've always really liked the idea of having some very straightforward, diatonic, simple sweet melodies and pieces of music. Then thinking about the way in which they're played informs the meaning rather than just the content. I think Glenn Gould's recordings of Mozart's Sonatas might have been somewhere in my head during that, which I think the way he does those are incredible. He plays them as if he's trying to make fun of them almost but that dialogue gives such power.

I think I wanted to write some really quite simple, quite moving pieces of music, and then what happens if the players miss it slightly? What happens if the tuning is almost reaching this thing? You're right, I think Bella never really loses the childlike aspect. One of the great parts of writing the score is that she never becomes normal. She goes from being this bizarre child to being this extremely bizarre, hyper-intelligent being that there's no point where she settles into just what everyone else does.

Though it could always-- the score, even though when it became more complex and more multifaceted, could still have that naivety and curiosity.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to Bella from Poor Things.

[MUSIC-Jerskin Fendrix: Bella]

Alison Stewart: Jerskin, what is the instrumentation on that?

Jerskin Fendrix: That's a great question. I'm going to not answer it directly, but one of the things that we were playing with a lot is we basically recorded every single instrument separately. We had separate recordings and files for every single musician who plays on the score. We never had like an ensemble in the room or anything. What that allowed us to do was a great deal of processing, basically. Like a lot of the sounds and instruments you're hearing, you're often like something very close to what you think it is, but actually, either something similar that's been a little bit bumped into shape or something which is actually completely the opposite end of the spectrum pitch wise or instrument wise.

It's been like fully surgically altered to go into a very different sphere. I really wanted to play a lot with you feeling like something was familiar and warm and approachable, but actually, part of your lizard brain is telling you there's something quite deeply off about it.

Alison Stewart: It does, it plays with our anticipation of what it's supposed to sound like a little bit. There's a lot of silence. You use silence. How do you use silence in your writing?

Jerskin Fendrix: I've always been really interested in how space works and music. I think it's an unthought-about aspect at least, of Western music and Western pop music. One thing we did as well, I worked really closely with Johnnie Burn, who's the sound designer who is fantastically talented, talented designer. We were looking at the final mix together and actually, what happened often there was a dialogue between the score and the sound. In parts, I think, for example, Lisbon, we had a lot of the general sensations of the street drowning out the score and it coming in and out a bit with how overwhelmed she is.

Then there are other parts, especially towards the end of the film where Johnnie, he said in a more conventional situation, he would've put a standard amount of atmosphere and he actually took out all of the sound designs, so it's just the score. The mix of that and the space is really apparent and I think it makes it even more striking and you start to hear your own breath and your own heartbeat in the spaces where it becomes far more mortally terrifying towards the end.

Alison Stewart: We had Johnnie on the show three or four days ago for The Zone of Interest.

Jerskin Fendrix: Oh, great.

Alison Stewart: I asked him how did he take care of himself after working on such an intense film, and he said, "Oh, I went to do Poor Things and that was terribly fun." It was a funny answer, but I got a sense that it really helped him, that it was a very collaborative and a very warm set or a warm group of people.

Jerskin Fendrix: Sure. I think both, The Zone of Interest is just such a phenomenal work of cinema. I think that every single person who worked in both, I think 50% of our conversations about film while we were doing the press or were just about The Zone of Interest. I think it truly speaks to Johnnie's abilities as a sound designer, that he can go between two thematically such contrasting films, and also just in terms of atmosphere. Anyone who's seen both knows really what a different ask both of those jobs are, and he pulled off both perfectly.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Jerskin Fendrix. He is nominated for an Oscar for Poor Things, for Best Original Score. Bella travels the world, Paris, Alexandria, London, there are the different themes in your work. Was it too on the nose to listen to the music about that place or did you just take it from the script?

Jerskin Fendrix: I think that what we didn't want to do is have Bella arrive in Alexandria or Paris or Lisbon, and at least for the actual score, the non-diegetic score to feel like it was somehow connected to the traditional music of that place. You wander into stereotype and passage very easily in that regard. I think so much of the way Tony formed the script made it almost a bit like a morality play. I don't think the locations are more stand-ins for a specific experience or specific lessons that Bella learns.

I think really easily see someone or something teaching her something and her personality being quite specifically molded as a result. I think the music for each place, like Lisbon is kind a lot of wonder in the discovery. Alexandria has its first real shock of horror and death, and I think the music in Paris gives more of a sense of which when she gains a lot more of a purpose and a drive. I think by the end of that, she really has a sense of what she wants to do with her newfound ability. I was really framing it more in that sort of way, still again, from Bella's psychological interior.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to that track, Paris.

[MUSIC-Jerskin Fendrix: Paris]

Alison Stewart: I read that you wanted to focus on wind instruments.

Jerskin Fendrix: Sure. I think this was very early on in the process and I was so much of the mise en place in terms of what textures were being used in relation to the materials I've been given was really important. I was looking at a bunch of medical documents and I thought that the idea of breath and the idea of the manipulation of life is such a big part of this film. The manipulation of life from a medical point of view, but also from, I guess, more of a sociological sort of thing and so working out different ways we can manipulate breath.

Some of that involved really heavily processing with instruments, some involved singing and putting human voices through various processes to alter their identities, and also ideas about wind instruments that are operated by humans that have a human breath. Then wind instruments that are operated by machines like pipe organs and accordions and bagpipes and so on, where almost, you've animated them that they have a mechanical breath, it's a non-human breath. Then what happens when you try and process them to sound more human, often as a result of that experiment came up with some really eerie sounds, which is really interesting.

Alison Stewart: I think we hear a little bit of that in Bella and Max, let's take a listen.

Jerskin Fendrix: Sure.

[MUSIC-Jerskin Fendrix: Bella and Max]

Alison Stewart: You are listening to the work of Jerskin Fendrix. He is Oscar-nominated composer for Poor Things, for Best Original Score. This is part of our Big Picture series, talking to creatives who work behind the camera. The scene, the Portuguese dance scene. The Portuguese dance scene is great fun. It's a pivotal role in this scene. Bella and Duncan, they're in Lisbon. The music just takes her into this frenzy. [laughs] Let's listen to it and we can talk about it on the other side.

Bella: Understand, we never lived outside God's house.

Duncan: What?

Bella: So Bella's so much to discover and your sad face makes me discover angry feelings for you.

Duncan: Right. I've become the very thing I hate, the grasping succubus of a lover. I’ve pried many of them off me and now I’m it. [beep]

[MUSIC-Jerskin Fendrix-Portuguese Dance II]

Alison Stewart: This is one of the most entertaining, exciting scenes. She's just like all in on the dance floor. It's just the music's making her move pelvic forward, a time it shouldn't be in that time. Was the choreography specifically towards the music? How did that work? Because you said you recorded most of the stuff beforehand-- I mean, created most of the stuff.

Jerskin Fendrix: Yes. This worked differently. Later in the process, I was asked to write the music for these dance scenes in the film. It was a big collaborative thing. We worked with this phenomenal choreographer called Constanza Macras, who had also worked with The Favourite beforehand. I was basically given this brief for the scene and then got to Hungary where Poor Things was being filmed, got together with a bunch of Hungarian musicians from the various music schools there in Budapest.

We just rehearsed I think for a couple of days, and then the whole actual scene, it was put together more like a theatrical thing, like all the music's being played live during the shooting. Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo were dancing to us, actually, playing as part of it. There's also the stunts, there's the dialogue and it's such a complicated thing to film. Yorgos says he's so committed towards them too, he doesn't like things being stitched together on post, he really wants to capture what's actually happening.

It took us a few days to just rehearse the entire gamut of that dance and those fights and everything that was going on there. It was a huge amount of fun. It was also extremely stressful, but great.

Alison Stewart: The musicians we see in the film are Hungarian musicians, or is that just [crosstalk]?

Jerskin Fendrix: Yes. I was just told to write a thing and then I get some people together. We rehearsed together for like a day or so, then we rehearsed with the choreographer. I sent a draft of the music to the choreographer in advance and there was a lot of slowly building up everything for the dancing extras as well as Stone and Mark Ruffalo and just putting everything together was such, by the time the whole thing was flowing, it was extremely exciting. It felt like you had such a real performance.

Alison Stewart: We spoke with Shona Heath and she had never worked on a film either. She's got a very, obviously big presence in art and design. You said you haven't been a composer on a film before. What is something you think helped you not knowing about film composing?

Jerskin Fendrix: Sure. I think it sounds like too much a coincidence to really to be that lightly, but the fact that it is a story about someone experiencing things the first time. It is a story about seeing the world through this lens of through this total alien new perception of everything. It was really important for Yorgos that so many of the aspects of the film hadn't really been seen before. I think the way in which Shona approaches design, if you know anyone's who's ever worked with her and James Price will agree with me.

If you hear her talking about her process, it's what's going on in there, I have no idea how that brain was developed either. I think for me as well, I was doing a lot of things which I probably wasn't supposed to do and getting it wrong quite a lot. Sometimes I learned from the mistakes and sometimes we left the mistakes in there. I think all of these aspects the way Yorgos has curated us as a group really helped communicate the way Bella sees the world and everything about the films and the craft point of view reflects Bella a lot.

Alison Stewart: Jerskin Fendrix, thanks for your time.

Jerskin Fendrix: Thank you so much. Lovely chatting.

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