Interview: Hellraiser Composer Ben Lovett

ComingSoon was given the opportunity to speak with composer Ben Lovett about his amazing work in David Bruckner’s Hellraiser remake. This is the latest collaboration between the composer and director, who previously worked together on 2007’s The Signal, 2017’s The Ritual, and 2020’s The Night House, among other projects.

Jeff Ames: What’s it like jumping into a project like Hellraiser?

Ben Lovett: It was a new experience for both of us. When you step into something as ever and believed as Hellraiser you can’t ignore the influence of everything that came before you. the question becomes how much you want to emulate everything you’ve sen and heard from that world and how much you want to reinvent. We figured the right answer was finding the right balance between those two things. Part of that’s a lot of homework, admiration, and attention to detail defining what people consider a Hellraiser film to be — what are those components narratively and stylistically. David and I are very story focused. For us, it’s about breaking all that other stuff down so we can find ourselves in the characters and the story. We’ve known each other for so long that we have a unique history and ability to have conversations about these themes and stories that we can go to a deeper level with because we’ve known each other for 20-something years.

What was the key to unlocking your score for Hellraiser?

It would definitely be the influence of the original scores to the original films by Christopher Young. Those scores are some of the most famous pieces of music in the genre. They have such a distinct sound. Back in 1987, putting this very lyrical, gothic, romantic type of music to these very corse, raw images was very inventive and unique. Nobody had ever seen anything like that. I think it’s in that relationship and that juxtaposition is what gives Hellraiser its unique place and standing in this world of movies.

So, coming into it, knowing that its a very musical franchise and how associated those original Christopher Young scores are to what people identify as the world of Hellraiser sort of gives you a sonic roadmap. It gives you a sense of the landscape in how these films operate and where you can go with that. As fans of the original, it wouldn’t have felt like a Hellraiser movie if we just ignored that. We felt like the best thing to do would be to honor that by capturing some of the spirit and the sound and the style he wrote in that pairs with this kind of imagery, and really strive to bring those themes and melodies from the original movie into our score. That was a new thing for me to be able to do was to try to incorporate the work of another composer from 35 years ago and try to change and adapt it into what I was doing but in such a way that people could still identify it and they could still hear those original themes in the music.

So, which do you prefer: adapting someone else’s music or starting off with a blank slate?

I always prefer new challenges. I’m almost more nervous when I’m trying to redo something I’ve done before because I only have so many tricks (laughs). I only have so many ways to do this. I need the challenge of the unknown to find unique ways to explore my work. With Hellraiser, it is sort of nerve-racking because no matter what you do somebody is going to hate it. You kind of know you’re walking into something that it’s impossible not to be compared to. I didn’t even try to convince people that I could compete with Christopher Young — you know, “I can do that too!” Let’s do a love letter to that but with everything else that I’m bringing in, let’s make it a whole different sound for this unique world. We’re bringing in 808s and unique beats and synthesizers and guitars and all of this other stuff to try to pair it with this more straightforward orchestral writing with brass and harp and strings.

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I was very fortunate that Mr. Young gave us his blessing for me to go in and tinker around with these ideas and themes. But it was also a real gift that he had sort of already established such a wide parameter and all you can do in a Hellraiser score. As you will find out when you go and watch Hellraiser, it’s all about too much and pushing extremes and limits. The music helps reinforce that, because it can be so gonzo over-the-top, but it still works because it never feels like it’s too much.

I assume you’re brought in very early on to look at the script and begin tinkering around with ideas. Does your score change when you finally see the first rough cut of the film?

It does. The real benefit of getting to start early right from the script is that you’re unencumbered by all of that and you can just let it fly. You can use your imagination. Like I’ve told people before, your imagination doesn’t have a budget. So you can imagine anything and then you sort of see and you have to recalibrate some of those ideas into something that will work with what’s on screen. And sometimes that just means you were sort of going one direction and then you realize the actors and the camera and the direction were going another. Then you realize all of that stuff is there to re-inspire you — there’s a lot you can draw inspiration from. That happened to me with the characters. Anything I had thought or written for the Pinhead character was thrown out the window as soon as I saw what Jamie Clayton did with the character. That was so unique and different I decided to start entirely from the standpoint of being influenced by the actor and the performance. She’s just bringing a certain energy to it that’s totally unique and new. That was an are where I’m just kind of chucking everything I had imagined off of my own reading on it because I’m too influenced by things I’ve seen previously or other versions of the character.

Another way is that our movie captures a little more of the magic and wonder of these stories on screen whereas in the original films that’s what Chris Young’s music brought. I think it was his style of writing and that kind of music that really brought the fantasy into the story. It made you feel the supernatural, otherworldliness of it. And with ours, there’s quite a bit of that in the visuals. What Bruckner kept pushing me to do was to make it a little meaner and a little uglier. Anytime I would come in with something prettier he would want me to rub it around in the dirt and put some slime on it. So, we still have these beautiful passages and melodic music in there, but it’s just sort of shrouded and drowning in dissonance at times. He wanted to smell the music. He wanted the stench to come through. So, those were new ways that you sort of had to recalibrate once you’ve seen what they’re doing on set.

You mentioned Christopher Young, so what was his take on your score? Or has he sort of washed his hands of Hellraiser at this point?

I’m not sure what his relationship to the material is. They’ve made so many films. He was involved with the first two and they set the tone for everything. They’re the ones most commonly referenced as the two pillars for it all. It was a bit of a challenge because I didn’t have access to Chris or the scores. Usually, you’ll get access to the music and the scores and we didn’t have any of it. For a long time they were still trying to work out an arrangement to be able to do this because the studio didn’t own the rights to the music. For a long time I couldn’t reach out to him because they were figuring out a way to make it all work. So I just had to sit in front of Spotify at a piano and figure it out. It’s one of the many ways the logistics of filmmaking sometimes interferes with the creative part and you just have to work around it. We ultimately got his blessing but it was through a much more formal channel. But we worked hard to do his work justice and I feel very fortunate that he allowed us to take these ideas and work them into what we were doing. I hope he feels like we honored it in some way.

Did this experience teach you anything you’re excited to take into future endeavors?

In a lot of ways, so much was learned, but most of it you need time to process them. You won’t really know what those things are until you’re on the next thing and you find yourself navigating it differently because of what you instinctively picked up from the last one. We learned a lot from this one because of the amount of scars and bruises it gave us. Hellraiser really kicked our asses just because it was so challenging in every way imaginable. It was the most minutes by far of any score I’ve had to write, it was the biggest scale — 83 musicians, 97 minutes of music. It’s a massive thing to have taken on. And there was the pressure of knowing we were the first ones to reopen the box, if you pardon the pun, and go back and reinvent the source material and this world.

Typically, for David and I — and really this goes with every filmmaker I’ve worked with — there’s no movie and then there’s a movie. There’s not a lot of people sitting around with high expectations about what it’s supposed to be and they have their own ideas of what they want it to be. Typically you’re evaluated on the merit of the thing you made. On Hellraiser, you have to contend with people’s expectations and ideas and what they’d prefer it to be. There’s no way to hit every target in there and so you just kind of go in and approach it like everything else. All of that other stuff is there to inform you but it doesn’t help you to sit around and think about that because you can paralyze yourself trying to please everybody. Even though I spent a lot of time writing music that was reminiscent of and in the style of Young’s original scores, it was also brought to my attention by the people who I’m collaborating with on this project that they hired me for a reason. “We also want this to sound like you! We love what you’re doing but it doesn’t sound like you. We hired you for the job and we want you to do you.” I guess if learned anything it’s you being here is not an accident. You’re here for a reason and people want you to bring what you bring. For me I had to identify what I think what that meant and figure out what was cool to me. What does your taste tell you is the right thing to do?

Is there a moment in the score that you want fans to pay attention to?

There’s a track called Riley’s Choice. It’s at the end of the movie. It’s not the original Hellraiser stuff, it’s just a modest theme for our character. It’s not one of those moments where a hundred things are knocking your head off. It’s just sort of a moment where you go, with all the monsters, angels and demons and torture, it’s still just a journey about one character. It’s a story you can tell without all of that stuff. It was really important to get that moment — for all the fun and spectacle of it all — to just really connect to the human emotion and all that was going on with the main character and the consequences of her choice. That’s one David really likes. That moment feels like what it feels like to make movies with my pal Bruckner.

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