‘Saltburn’ - Interview with Composer Anthony Willis
Emerald Fennell took a bold swing to followup her Oscar winning film, Promising Young Woman, with Saltburn. Fennell crafted a perverted fairytale of manic infatuation and greed starring Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, and Alison Oliver. The gothic narrative follows two college students at Oxford as a mystery unravels one summer. Offscreen was lucky enough to speak to the Composer, Anthony Willis, about his work on the film.
Jillian Chilingerian: Very excited to talk about this movie with you. Because I loved it. I've seen it twice so far. Definitely will do repeated viewings. So this is very exciting. So first, I want to start off because this is your second time working with Emerald Fennell and how was that to reunite on something that just feels so Emerald, but also so different from what we previously saw with Promising Young Woman?
Anthony Willis: I mean, I think everyone's caught on to the fact that Emerald is just such an imaginative filmmaker, and like, she's the best she's so amazing to work with, and I think brings out something special in every department, she just has that way about her that she sees things in a way that, none of us can quite predict, but also are just so enthralled by. She couldn't be more raw, and couldn't be a more rewarding partnership for me. When she sent me the script, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so clever. You're not like conforming to some expectation that you are going to make a girly movie. It's like, this is a movie about boys, she's brilliant and it was so much fun.
Jillian Chilingerian: Yeah, I feel like she's very, like pop cinema that we don't really like. I love that she chose the early 2000s because that is so on-brand for her. So like, how was it like creating the score around that? It's similar to Promising Young Woman, we had like toxic and then here we have The Killers and we Murder on the Dance Floor and all these really fun beats mixed with this Gothic vampire dark tone.
Anthony Willis: Yeah, one of the many things I love about Emerald is that she's got this really egalitarian sense of musical colors. So a dirty part-time synth to her is kind of on a level with a French horn, but she knows that they have different roles to play, but ones that she totally loves to embrace. She's like a really cool old soul, she loves a lot of old classical music and there's a beautiful, laudable hopefulness recording that sends the movie in really prominent scenes, beautiful choral music. I mean the movie is opulence and romance, that's the center of the score, and Oliver is trying to aspire for both those things, you know, the grandeur of Saltburn and then his love for Felix. So the kind of the way into that was this very classical language, starting with Zadok the Priest, which is a coronation anthem, a very traditional English English piece that if you grew up in an English school, most likely you would have heard many, many times. And so when Oliver arrives at Oxford, it's this idea that he's made it so Emerald saw that as the starting point for his fantasy. Although, of course, there's a little piece that isn't as well known as Toxic, but it's a it's similar kind of Trojan horse where this different version starts and it's more broody and romantic and alert. So that's sexy, and there's a longing to it, and then it grows into the original that's well known. So that kind of classical language was a big clue of all of his character, he's trying to possess Saltburn and he's trying to have this kind of classical language. And so obviously, by the end of the movie, he's absolutely swimming in it.
Jillian Chilingerian: No, I love the score and the music and what it really says about the characters and the relationships. I think right from the beginning, when that Saltburn logo comes up and like that music just hits you, and you're like, oh my gosh, what am I about to get into? I was reading, like interviews from Promising Young Woman and you mentioned building Nina and Cassie into the score, their relationship. There's kind of a similar thing we have obviously much darker between Felix and Oliver. So was that something that you noted as you were going through how to build their really tumultuous relationship and we learned so much about all of them as time goes on and he changes while Felix is a very constant.
Anthony Willis: What's so clever about this movie is there's a world where we want to project, there's the images that we want to project to people about how we live and what we have. Then there's the way we actually want to behave behind closed doors. There's this kind of opulent classical language, but then when it actually came to Oliver and Felix, it's actually Oliver expressing his kind of innermost desires, and it's lust for Felix and that's where the score becomes more embracing colors that actually you wouldn't necessarily expect. Like taking a heart which we associate as a feminine romantic instrument, but playing it really low, out of its register, so it has a more guttural, primal feeling. Saltburn as a word, and Felix as words are very kind of primal, so that's kind of in the score, as well as the sort of throbbing, like those rhythms punch. Oliver's a little bit more fanciful, so those are kind of rhythms I also put in the music, so you everything's kind of on the tip of your tongue. But yeah, the low heart organ was something that we really wanted to embrace the Gothic nature of the film, but also we used it in a more central way from Felix, almost using it like a dance set. There's a very prominent throbbing element that runs through a lot of these more sexy uses, it's primal and lustful and then taking quite romantic string chords, but playing them with quite a visceral Tambora is quite a juxtaposition of chords that you expect to hear in quite a pretty way but actually have a more visceral tone to them. So that was the sex and the romance, swelling, organ chords, there's an intimacy to them, which you don't normally hear in. An organ is normally a spiritual instrument, but in the sense that, Felix is a god to Oliver, there's a slightly pagan kind of worship thing going on, especially when he's watching him in the bathroom, so that the organ is actually a very prominent thing there as well.
Jillian Chilingerian: Wow, I love that you say primal because you mention the bathroom I love how there are the close-ups of the skin and the hair and the sweat and then you hear this throbbing beat in that background and can sense what's going to happen here. I think as the viewer it heightens your emotions because there is a bit of a love story there, but you never know. Is it love? Or is it lust? What are the clear motives of Oliver in this relationship? The score has a lot of good cues to kind of back these emotions.
Anthony Willis: Oh, thank you so much. It's like the most fun you can have with a story and there are romantic moments, there are moments especially the conclusion of the movie where all of the fantasy really comes into view. Like it's incredibly juxtaposed, but it's very romantic music and it's very optimistic music. So it was really a lot of fun in that in that final act.
Jillian Chilingerian: When you were working on the score and then going to see it onscreen, did you have any moments that you were looking forward to to see how that would play out? Or like different beats or cues?
Anthony Willis: Oh, yeah. I saw the movie, just under a year ago for the first time I saw Emerald's Director's Cut, she came to LA to screen it. It's just that moment where you just like looking forward, and you lean in. I think it's funny, everyone needs just five minutes to go and walk around after the movie just to like, process. So yeah, I mean, the scenes are phenomenal. The cinematography, the performances from everyone, the writing, the editing, the production design, I mean, it's just a feast that movie. So yeah, definitely having all of that I was longing to kind of get my, get my claws into.
Jillian Chilingerian: I saw it at a guild screening and then went to a more public screening here in LA with some friends because I wanted to see how they would react. Just watching their faces, at multiple parts and the electricity of the crowd, you would never, I don't know, expect because I feel like we reserved those for like really big, like Blockbuster franchise movies. And it was like everyone was so like, attentive and like, following along. And just like, the facial reactions, it was such a memorable experience of like, watching people kind of submit themselves to like Saltburn in this world that we're spending, you know, two hours in that are very memorable.
Anthony Willis: Yeah, I mean, totally. I think people need to see this in the theater. It was actually very similar to a film I did called Megan last year, that the infectious nature of being in an audience, and the humor, the comedy. But like some of the performance, I mean, it's just comedy gold. So that infectious spirit in a big audience is the way to see it, for sure.
Jillian Chilingerian: Yeah, I think a common theme you see is the juxtaposition of romance and the grittiness that just balances so well. Were there ever moments where it was challenging or did it kind of just come together? Going back to Emerald, I think she has such a clear vision from an audience perspective and it seems like all the pieces came together for that to work.
Anthony Willis: I think when you're trying to do something a little different like Emerald does, there's always a degree of uncertainty as you step forward, but you just have to set off on the path, and then you start to get excited about things that hopefully bring out a certain feeling against the movie, and, you know don't be afraid to explore and that's what we did. There are scenes where we did them, like lots of different ways just to experiment and see what resonated and sometimes scenes needed less than we thought, and sometimes they needed more. And that's really fun to do. I think you have to do that in a film like this.
Jillian Chilingerian: Thank you so much for your time. I love the film. I also feel like this would sound really good on vinyl, so hopefully, that comes out. Congratulations on everything, and I can't wait to tell everyone that I know to go see it because it's just such a special movie. And your work is amazing.
Anthony Willis: Oh, thank you so much. I'm really excited to get the soundtrack out and we're working on that. I'm so lucky and we're all so lucky to be a part of this and it's really this is what films are about, just seizing the moment and everyone's hopefully going to live the Saltburn summer.
You can read our review of Saltburn, here.