A couple of posts ago, I talked about working with my composer, John Powell. Out of all the different people I work with on my films, I’m most consistent with my choice of my music team (aside from my agent, my lawyer, and David Bartis, my business partner). After making Swingers, I started doing commercials, and my producer, Suzanne Preissler, encouraged me to hire a new crew on every commercial. I was shooting commercials back to back, and her theory was that if you use the same crew over and over, you become a hack.

I don’t follow this advice on my features, but I do like to work with new people a lot, circling back to certain people but not, usually, on consecutive films. For example, I worked on Swingers with Vince Vaughn, we went our own ways, and then we worked together again on Mr. & Mrs. Smith. We’re orbiting planets. I’ve worked with many different writers, although I’ve had ongoing professional relationships with both Simon Kinberg and Jez Butterworth. With music, however, I’ve been unwavering in my commitment to my team. My music supervisor, Julianne Jordan, was working as a music assistant when I was making Swingers, and I hired her for a couple hundred dollars, launching her career. She’s terrific, and since then she’s been the music supervisor on all my movies and television shows. Through her, I met John Powell, who has done every one of my movies since Go.

So John has started working on Fair Game, and just like almost everyone else, is cutting his rate to get this film made — it is a true labor of love. A great advantage of having a long relationship with John is that I can be really blunt, if necessary, and while I was in L.A., John played me his first pass at writing music for the movie, and I rejected every cue. There is a tendency when you’re giving notes to want to reject most cues but not all. It’s human nature that if you’ve rejected the past eight cues, you feel as though you need to like the ninth, but because I respect John and he knows that, I don’t feel the need to just say something nice. If you’re a creative, a key to success is to surround yourself with people who will be really blunt. Directors, composers, writers all get themselves in trouble when people begin to tell them that their shit doesn’t stink. I surround myself with people who are never intimidated to speak the truth, and as a result, I in turn tend to be a little more blunt and harsh than the people you work with. I — more than others, I’m told — am able to separate the work from the person. On occasion I’ll have a meeting and be told afterward that “so and so is upset,” and I’ll be told to call and apologize, and I won’t even know why. I was just speaking my mind about a creative issue.

This time, on Fair Game, I was able to be my usual blunt self with John, but I felt slightly bad about it because, as I mentioned, he is doing the film for much less than his normal rate. When we met again, the day after I’d given him notes shredding everything he had done, John said one of the nicest things that’s ever been said to me in this business. He thanked me for being so blunt. He said he’d relistened to what he’d presented, agreed with me, and would redo the cues. He’s since sent me new cues that are incredible. I feel like this is a special relationship and collaboration. The tone of Fair Game is not similar to my other films, all of which have slightly unique tones. For the longest time, we had trouble identifying what genre we wanted for Mr. & Mrs. Smith. It had action, comedy, suspense, and love story, and all of those things competed with each other so that when it came time to compose the music, it was extremely challenging to nail down. The music actually tells you what genre a movie is, and I don’t think John and I have struggled harder on any movie than we did on Mr. & Mrs. Smith. It is also, by far, my favorite score that he’s done for me. Fair Game’s a tough nut as well. It is a political, humorous, love-story, thriller, spy movie. I can’t just use fun music, because then you lose the thriller and love story aspect, and vice versa. I can have a comedy scene and the next scene makes you cry, and the next scene is sex and spy thriller, and that can all work, but the person whose plate it tends to end up on is the composer’s. The challenge is for the composer to find some unifying theme to bring all of those disparate elements together. Thank God I have John.

Related posts on 30ninjas.com:

• Doug Liman Blog: Ahhh … Picture Lock
• Doug Liman Blog: Fair Game and Covert Affairs Collide in DC
• Doug Liman Blog: No Wonder I prefer New York — L.A. Is Exhausting!
• Doug Liman Blog: Editing Fair Game — Freedom in a Locked Room
• Doug Liman Blog: Drinks With Scarlett Johansson and Naomi Watts: Fun. Watching My Ex Diss My Screenwriter’s Work to His Face? Not So Much.
• Doug Liman Blog: How To Light Your Producers’ Office on Fire