Production
Richard Kelly (director) commissioned Michael Andrews, a San Diego musician and television and film composer who had worked as a member of a range of bands, including The Origin with Gary Jules, whose two solo albums he had produced, and The Greyboy Allstars. Kelly said that he was confident that Michael Andrews could do the job: "I met with Michael and I just knew right away that he was really, really talented and that he could come up with a really original score. He would allow me to be in there and be really kind of editorial with how I wanted the score to be."
Michael Andrews relocated to Los Angeles to work on the film between October and December 2000. As Michael Andrews states, the low budget for the project encouraged him to play a diverse range of instruments for the soundtrack:
"The film was pretty low budget so my portion of the money was pretty thin. I couldn't hire anyone, it was just me. I played everything; piano, mellotron, mini marimba, xylophone, ukulele, organ. I also brought in two female vocalists Sam Shelton and Tori Haberman. But no guitar because Richard said no guitar or drums; he just wasn't into it. I was down with that - I've played guitar my whole life."
Like many of his role models for soundtrack composing such as John Barry and Ennio Morricone, Michael Andrews wanted to put a song on his otherwise instrumental score. He eventually chose "Mad World" (1982) by Tears for Fears, who were one of his and childhood friend Gary Jules' favourite bands while growing up. Andrews enlisted Jules to sing the song, while Andrews himself played the piano. Other songs from the film include "The Killing Moon" by Echo & the Bunnymen (another of Andrews' and Jules' favourite bands), Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart", The Church's shimmering "Under the Milky Way" in the cathartic party scene, and "Proud to Be Loud" by the '80s incarnation of the metal band Pantera.
Michael Andrews's derivative style of composing owes much to the ground-breaking Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) by Henryk Górecki, to which Cherita mimes on stage. An excerpt of For Whom the Bell Tolls as composed by Steve Baker and Carmen Daye starts the credit sequence at the end of the film. This music was however not included in the album-version of the soundtrack.
In the subsequent director's cut, a number of musical choices are changed. In the film's opening, "The Killing Moon" by Echo & the Bunnymen is replaced by "Never Tear Us Apart" by INXS. "The Killing Moon" later replaces "Under The Milky Way" by The Church during the party scene. "Under The Milky Way" can be heard in the car scene with Donnie and his father, played on the radio. Many of these tracks were originally meant to be on the soundtrack, but could not be obtained for licencing reasons.
Read more about this topic: Donnie Darko (soundtrack)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)