{"id":861,"date":"2010-10-20T15:11:46","date_gmt":"2010-10-20T19:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=861"},"modified":"2010-12-27T20:24:57","modified_gmt":"2010-12-28T01:24:57","slug":"douglas-pipes-michael-dougherty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=861","title":{"rendered":"DOUGLAS PIPES & MICHAEL DOUGHERTY"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Exclusive Interviews & Profiles<\/a> \/\u00a0Composers<\/a><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

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The 2009 release of <\/em>Trick \u2018R Treat<\/em><\/strong> (2008) is notable because it finally allows horror fans to see and hear the film and music of writer\/director Michael Dougherty, and composer Douglas Pipes.<\/em><\/p>\n

To film music fans, Pipes is best-known for <\/em>Monster House<\/em><\/strong> (2006), a witty and lyrical score that captured the right tone of what it\u2019s like to be drawn to a creepy presence even though it could very well eat you alive.<\/em><\/p>\n

Monster House<\/em><\/strong> was ostensibly about a home transformed into the physical vengeance tool of a wronged woman, with total disregard if the souls swallowed up were kids, adults, or seniors. Of course, there was a simple rule you had to follow to avoid being physically usurped: stay off the damn property. You could look at it safely from the sidewalk (public property), but don\u2019t do it for too long\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

That fascination with, hesitation and need to touch the dangerous ground and do some exploring is what Pipes\u2019 music nailed, and it\u2019s that deft combination in an orchestral environment that made him ideal for <\/em>Trick \u2018R Treat<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Michael Dougherty\u2019s first foray into film was the animated short <\/em>Season\u2019s Greetings <\/em><\/strong>(1996), which introduced a nascent version of Sam, the physical symbol of Halloween in <\/em>Trick \u2018R Treat<\/em><\/strong>. The filmmaker was also involved in the writing of <\/em>X2<\/em><\/strong>(2003) and <\/em>Superman Returns<\/em><\/strong> (2006) for director Bryan Singer, as well <\/em>Urban Legends: Bloody Mary<\/em><\/strong> (2005), the second sequel in the horror franchise.<\/em><\/p>\n

Trick \u2018R Treat <\/em><\/strong>is Dougherty\u2019s directorial debut, and while the film\u2019s production and long period in limbo are addressed in the film review (as well as an extensive spread in Rue Morgue\u2019s 2009 Halloween issue), our Q&A with Dougherty and Pipes focuses on the music, and why the score and film will slowly age into small seasonal classics in coming years.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Mark R. Hasan<\/em><\/strong>: As a first-time director, Michael, it\u2019s obviously exciting to select the key people with which you\u2019re going to be working, and I wonder if you could describe some of the steps you took in searching for a film composer, in terms of your own research, and what made you decide on Douglas?<\/em><\/p>\n

Michael Dougherty<\/strong>: Well, I\u2019m a pretty big collector of film scores (it\u2019s been that way since I was a kid), so I have a pretty big library in my head of the type of sound that I\u2019m looking for, and even when I was writing the screenplay, there was a whole list of different composers and soundtracks that I was listening to draw inspiration. When it came time to actually find somebody, it was difficult, because we were a low budget film; there were a lot of names that we just flat-out knew we couldn\u2019t afford.<\/p>\n

As as luck would have it, I think it was the day we officially got greenlit (it was summer \u201906). I sat down to watch\u00a0Monster House<\/strong>, and when that score started, I knew [Douglas] was the guy because it had a sense of fun to it; it was foreboding, because it was a scary kid\u2019s movie (but it wasn\u2019t too scary); and most importantly, it had melody and it had themes, which were really important for me in\u00a0Trick \u2018R Treat<\/strong>, because I wanted the film to harken back to eighties horror movies.<\/p>\n

I knew he was the right guy because he was a young, up-and-comer like me; we were both willing to go above and beyond to get it right, and we both had something to prove.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/em><\/strong>: I wonder if Douglas can provide some brief details on his intro into film scoring because he\u2019s still fairly new to movies, and I think like Michael, I was really impressed with <\/em>Monster House <\/em><\/strong>because it had a great deal of lyricism, and it was a really fun score.<\/em><\/p>\n

Douglas Pipes<\/strong>: I grew up in a family of musicians, and being a musician I kind of got introduced to film scoring from someone who\u2019d come to me when I was playing music\u2026\u00a0It was a student filmmaker who had made a $100,000 film, and I scored that one and a couple of others after it, but I realized that I wasn\u2019t the composer I wanted to be, so I stopped and went back to school and studied composition and orchestration.<\/p>\n

Then as luck would have it, when I was in school [at UCLA] I met Gil Kenan and scored his project, and he was enough of a fighter to do the big bold step of bringing me on to score his first feature film [Monster House<\/strong>], which was a pretty amazing thing.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/em><\/strong>: I guess that\u2019s one of the most difficult challenges for a new director \u2013 to bring along people that he\u2019s worked with in the past, and sometimes deal with a studios\u2019 preference for a larger-name composer who may not be appropriate for that particular film.<\/em><\/p>\n

Douglas<\/strong> Pipes<\/strong>: I think it\u2019s just understanding that they have money and they don\u2019t want to risk things, so it\u2019s not easy for them to throw a bunch of money at something that hasn\u2019t been proven. You get it; but on the other hand, there\u2019s something to be said for bring emerging talent into the pool.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/em><\/strong>: For myself, <\/em>Trick \u2018R Treat<\/em><\/strong> feels like a Grimm\u2019s Halloween fable, and I wonder if both of you could articulate how you arrived at the score\u2019s style, since there are so many stylistic and technological options for horror movies?<\/em><\/p>\n

Michael Doughtery<\/strong>: Well, I think it was a conscious effort to go backwards a little bit but not go too far \u2013 we don\u2019t want to get too caught up in making too much of an eighties horror film.<\/p>\n

The initial goal of the film was to have a slightly nostalgic flavour. I initially wrote the script out of dissatisfaction with the horror films being created in the late nineties, because that was a point when we were just drowning in\u00a0Scream<\/strong> knock-offs. I love\u00a0Scream <\/strong>(1996), but success unfortunately gave birth to all the rip-offs of\u00a0Scream<\/strong>, so every movie had a cast of twentysomethings on the poster in half profile staring at you, and as we were just drowning in these movies, I wanted to try and give rise to something else.<\/p>\n

I grew up loving\u00a0Tales from the Crypt<\/strong>,\u00a0Tales from the Darkside<\/strong>,\u00a0The Twilight Zone<\/strong>, and old horror comics, so every element of the movie was meant to be slightly nostalgic for the holiday, for the horror genre, and I think with the score we wanted to make sure we retained that; it wouldn\u2019t make sense to go and make this kind of Grimm\u2019s fairy tale style of a horror movie, and stick a moody electronic\u00a0Saw<\/strong> score on it.<\/p>\n

The fairy tale atmosphere that I think you\u2019re feeling \u2013 that was meant to be in it; it\u2019s modern day folklore, modern day urban legends campfire stories. When I sat down with Douglas to talk about it, we definitely wanted to retain some of it. That\u2019s why there are parts of the score which are very gentle; they\u2019re like a lullaby at times, and that grew from my appreciation of a lot of Jerry Goldsmith stuff.<\/p>\n

If you go back and look at Goldsmith\u2019s scores for\u00a0The Omen<\/strong> (1976) or\u00a0Poltergeist<\/strong> (1982), he has absolutely terrifying cues in there, but to contrast that, he also has some very gentle, subtle, almost beautiful theme music in there. I think there was that contrast that made those scores powerful, and I knew they would be effective for this movie; it\u2019s also a style that we just don\u2019t see too much anymore. Modern horror scores are just obsessed with being moody-moody-creepy-dark-scary, and because there\u2019s no lighter contrast, there\u2019s no yin or yang, and it actually loses its potency.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/em><\/strong>: I think for <\/em>Trick \u2018R Trick<\/em><\/strong>, Douglas\u2019 music has an elegant, sweeping quality, and some subtle allusions to Bernard Herrmann, but there\u2019s also a really lovely use of children\u2019s voices, which is a nice tie-in to the children that died on the bus, as well as the overall nature of Halloween (that it\u2019s primarily for kids), and the grim qualities that kids play with because the season offers things that are funny and frightening.<\/em><\/p>\n

Douglas<\/strong> Pipes<\/strong>: Hopefully the score speaks to the Halloweens you\u2019ve experienced throughout: from being a kid to being a young adult, and all the fun times you\u2019ve had on Halloween; they\u2019re so well presented in the film that the score makes sense of the experience.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/em><\/strong>: The soundtrack album is quite long (it\u2019s a good solid hour) and it\u2019s nice to see a film where, as Michael mentioned, the composer basically had an entire film to play with. \u00a0There weren\u2019t a lot of source songs that got in the way, which is one of the problems (and clich\u00e9s) in some of the eighties films: you have music montages and the songs date the films, whereas Douglas\u2019 music gives <\/em>Trick R Trick<\/em><\/strong> a genuinely timeless quality because it\u2019s not affected by music styles that have come and gone.<\/em><\/p>\n

Douglas<\/strong> Pipes<\/strong>: I think that\u2019s what in our earliest conversations we wanted the function of the music to do. It was that \u2018Why can we watch\u00a0Poltergeist<\/strong> and not know that it didn\u2019t come out yesterday?\u2019<\/p>\n

Michael Doughtery<\/strong>: It\u2019s funny about that because there are a lot of theatres in L.A. which will do these cool revival screenings. The\u00a0Arc Light<\/a> recently showed\u00a0Poltergeist<\/strong>, and I\u2019ll never forget this moment where I walk into\u00a0Poltergeist<\/strong>, and it\u2019s completely sold out \u2013\u00a0every seat is taken <\/em>\u2013 and it\u2019s six o\u2019clock on a Tuesday afternoon or something\u2026 Just out of curiosity I walked across the hall to see how this big, giant, $180 million dollar summer tent-pole movie was doing (the movie shall remain nameless), and I walk in, and it\u2019s the middle of the screening, and there\u2019s like eight people there.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like\u00a0Poltergeist<\/strong> was competing directly with it; it\u2019s just clearly that film still has a following to this day, it has an appeal, and a big part of it is the score, because I\u2019ve always heard that people were very nervous about that movie until Goldsmith wrote that score.<\/p>\n

What movies being made now, what scores being written now, are going to have that same strength and that same appeal two decades from now?<\/p>\n

MRH<\/em><\/strong>: One of the things Douglas was able to draw from was the extraordinary visual design in <\/em>Trick \u2018R Trick<\/em><\/strong>, and I imagine the striking compositions, editing, and tones gave him strong ideas, as well as such effective themes for the film.<\/em><\/p>\n

Douglas<\/strong> Pipes<\/strong>: Absolutely. As one of the last players to come in on the process, [Michael\u2019s] goal was to make a classic Halloween movie that people would pull out every Halloween.<\/p>\n

The cinematography\u2019s amazing, the set design\u2019s amazing, the actors are great, the script is sharp, and then it comes down to the music. Again, with our conversations [we asked ourselves] \u2018How do we make the music hold up to all these other fine elements?\u2019 They were definitely inspirational. The colours of the orchestra make sense with all the autumnal colours, and the dark colours [are] something that the orchestra does so much better than electronic things.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/em><\/strong>: My next-to-last question is just about the character of Sam \u2013 the child-figure who moves through the interconnected stories wearing a half cute\/half chilling costume comprised of a burlap sack and worn-out red pajamas.<\/em><\/p>\n

From a composer\u2019s standpoint, I wonder if he one of the toughest characters to create a theme around, because he\u2019s still somewhat ambiguous; you\u2019re not sure if he\u2019s a motif, if he instigates some of the events that happen, or if he\u2019s kind of like a moral barometer who teaches people lessons when they don\u2019t abide by the core seasonal rules.<\/em><\/p>\n

Douglas<\/strong> Pipes<\/strong>: Yeah, I think something from all three, and I would say as kind of the protector of Halloween. His theme was luckily one of the first things that happened.<\/p>\n

Michael Dougherty<\/strong>: Douglas just nailed it quickly, and it was just one of those \u2018Aha! I\u2019m so stupid! Why didn\u2019t I think of that?\u2019 moments, because he called me up on the phone in Vancouver (he was still in L.A.) and he kind of played it over the phone, and it was like capturing lightening in a bottle; it was so obvious.<\/p>\n

In my mind, Sam\u00a0is<\/em> Halloween. He is the spirit of Halloween. He is the\u00a0Great Pumpkin<\/a>. If Linus would wait in the pumpkin patch long enough on the right night, that\u2019s who he\u2019d cross paths with (which would be interesting), but my whole goal with that character was to create the equivalent of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Leprechaun, the Cherub.<\/p>\n

All these other holidays have identifiable quintessential mascots, and with Halloween we have witches and goblins and ghosts and vampires and lots of different characters and imagery, but there wasn\u2019t one guy. I love Michael Myers in\u00a0Halloween <\/strong>(1978), but I didn\u2019t really consider him to be a proper mascot either, because he lacked the mischief and fun of the holiday. He\u2019s just a dreadful grim reaper presence, and to me, a really good Halloween character has to abide by the various aspects of the holiday \u2013 the cute and the creepy and the scary and the funny \u2013 \u00a0so when Douglas came up with his musical theme, it was perfect. It\u2019s the equivalent of hearing \u201cJingle Bells\u201d when you see Santa Claus.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/em><\/strong>: Lastly, is there a chance Sam might return in another film, if not some kind of multi-media venue with Douglas\u2019 music?<\/em><\/p>\n

Michael Dougherty<\/strong>: We\u2019ll see. I\u2019m not exactly dying to come up with a next one yet, having just finished this one. [The DVD] came out yesterday, and it\u2019s selling really well, which I\u2019m happy about. It\u2019s selling just as well if not better than a lot of big movies that didn\u2019t get theatrical releases.<\/p>\n

I have ideas on how to continue the franchise, but I just need a break right now. I think it lends itself to more stories being told [and] it would be fantastic if you could put one out every Halloween or every other Halloween; maybe four stories done by another director, and I\u2019m just producing or helping guide things along; or we do a graphic novel or only do short films.<\/p>\n

Anything is possible, and I think Douglas would have to play a very large role in this.<\/p>\n

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KQEK.com would like to thank Douglas Pipes and Michael Dougherty for speaking about <\/em>Trick \u2018R Treat<\/em><\/strong>, and Beth Krakower at CineMedia Promotions for facilitating this Q&A.<\/em><\/p>\n

For more information on <\/em>Trick \u2018R Treat<\/em><\/strong>, visit the official website <\/em>HERE<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

All images remain the property of their copyright holders.<\/em><\/p>\n

This interview \u00a9 2009 by Mark R. Hasan<\/em><\/p>\n

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Related external links (MAIN SITE)<\/em>:<\/p>\n

BR\/DVD\/Film: \u00a0Halloween<\/a><\/strong> <\/a>(1978) —\u00a0\u00a0Urban Legends: Bloody Mary <\/strong>(2005) — Trick ‘R Treat <\/strong>(2008)<\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Exclusive Interviews & Profiles<\/a> \/\u00a0Composers<\/a><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Exclusive Interviews & Profiles \/\u00a0Composers . The 2009 release of Trick \u2018R Treat (2008) is notable because it finally allows horror fans to see and hear the film and music of writer\/director Michael Dougherty, and composer Douglas Pipes. To film music fans, Pipes is best-known for Monster House (2006), a witty and lyrical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,22,48,49,4212],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-dT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=861"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1986,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions\/1986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}