Behind the Music: Thoroughbreds’ Erik Friedlander

As Thoroughbreds hits theaters nationwide, Hidden Remote has acquired the opportunity to interview a key crew member of the film: the composer, Erik Friedlander.

Behind the Music is an ongoing series that seeks to interview and gain an introspective on both established and up-and-coming composers. These composers, who have worked for everything from television to film to commercials, share their experiences, work ethic, and more, here on Hidden Remote. For this edition, we interview the composer for the Cory Finley film, Thoroughbreds, cellist Erik Friedlander.

Erik Friedlander has worked in the music industry for well over 25 years, experimenting with a wide variety of sounds, from avant-garde jazz to more classical music. A frequent mainstay veteran of the downtown scene of New York City, Friedlander has collaborated with musicians ranging from Laurie Anderson to Courtney Love, as well as with frequent collaborator, John Zorn. Now, he collaborates with playwright-turned filmmaker, Cory Finley, for the dark comedy thriller, Thoroughbreds, and with the film currently playing in theaters now, it’s a great honor to be able to speak with Friedlander on the film. From his humble beginnings as a music-loving boy in a music-filled house to his experience on working on the film and so on, Friedlander sheds a lot of light on the behind the scenes of the film and we at Hidden Remote took great pleasure in speaking with him.

Hidden Remote: To start things off, we’ll let the audience dig a little into who you are. Was music always a passion for you as a child or how did you first involve yourself in it?

Erik Friedlander: I started playing guitar first at age five, then went to the cello at age eight. I was always a musician. I played in rock bands in high school, played electric bass and evidently, I sang a lot as a kid, although I don’t sing anymore. I think music has always been a thing for me. I grew up in a house with my father, who was a photographer, but he was a music lover, an absolute fan. He would play music while he worked in a dark room and played it loud in the house, so I heard it from upstairs in my room, so I would hear music all the time. R&B, classical, jazz, all different kinds of music, so I’ve always been around music. I think with my history with my father as a photographer, it’s kind of given me music and picture together and I think it leads to an affinity I have with scoring.

HR: What would you say are your biggest influences in music and how do you incorporate them into your music, if at all?

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E.F: I would say my influences start with guitar players like Steve Howe, from yes, Jimmy Page, and Jimi Hendrix. I also got into other people, such as U. Srinivas, the Indian mandolin player, as well as The Mountain Goats. I mainly gravitate towards musicians who are expressive, like Alexandre Desplat, for movie composers. I think (Ennio) Morricone is great, I think (Henry) Mancini is great. I’m a fan of SZA and Chance the Rapper. I would say I like people are both expressive and willing to do something interesting in their music.

HR: Your fascination with jazz shows through in your music consistently. What would you say is the type of jazz that you prefer to stick to in your music? Or do you enjoy experimenting often?

E.F: So with jazz, it’s more of a tool that I use, and I don’t use it all the time, although it does allow to me to have a functional understanding of harmony that is very jazz-based. But I don’t use it all the time. Sometimes, I use more modern classical-sounding things or a world-music sounding approach. It really depends on what the project demands. For instance, Thoroughbreds demanded a kind of ‘outside the box’ modern-classical approach, which was not very jazz-inspired at all. My most recent project for a quartet is called Artemisia, a piece inspired by absinthe and its murky history as a brain-bending hallucinogenic and the pieces in the project are sometimes jazzy, but other times, meditations on obsession that sound more semi-classical. All in all, it really depends on what the project needs and that’s what I try to bring to the table.

HR: Moving onto Thoroughbreds, the dark comedy crime thriller by Cory Finley. Was this a project you had been planning on working on for awhile or was this more of a surprise project for you?

E.F: I came into Thoroughbreds as part of a group of composers who had their name in the hat for possibly doing the project and I got lucky and got selected! The weekend before Cory was going to sit down with Sue Jacobs to decide who was going to score the film, I got a chance to see the rough cut of the film and I went home and called my friend, a percussionist named Satoshi Takeishi, and he came in and did a bunch of tracks that I felt might work for the film. I sent them on Monday and evidently, they did help me get the job. Satoshi ended up being a big part of the film, getting a credit at the end of the film. Percussion definitely was a big part of the film overall.

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HR: Your work is arguably the driving force behind the film’s incredibly dark and disturbing tone. It highlights the elegant setting and background while playing up the inner dread of the situation. What would you say was the process of heightening the disturbing tone with music?

E.F: The music is definitely highlighted in the film, but the real driving force behind the film’s tone is Cory Finley. He’s monitoring the tone and his judgment and sensibility is truly what made the film what it is. He gave me a lot of freedom within the bounds of his taste and sense and as a result, I pushed the boundaries and came up with some wild stuff sometimes, other times not so wild. I think there’s a nice tension between the elegant setting of the film and the incredible house, which is like a character on its own, along with the beautiful cinematography.

The camera work is just so gorgeous and its elegant, but yet some of the music is kind of rough and dissonant and even a little funny, I think. Like some of those sounds I do on the cello are like humorous weeping sounds of sorts.

My favorite cue, right now, is when Mark (Paul Sparks) is playing tennis with himself, with the ball being shot over the net and he’s just having a rough time while Lily is watching him and it’s very disturbing, but it’s funny at the same time. I really feel like I came up with a great cue for that. But I do think that the tone of the film is something Cory talks about monitoring and keeping track of all through the process and he was the man for that.

HR: Is this score something constructed after viewing the film or was the film created and edited around your musical score?

E.F: Thoroughbreds was cut, created, edited, as usual with most films, before the involvement of the composer and it was the same for me. It would be great to be part of the process beforehand, but that’s rarely possible for me, at least at the level I’m at as a film score writer. Some of the bigger names get involved with the film way before it gets shot, I think, and that would be great for the future. But for me, when I got the film, it was edited, fully constructed, maybe in need of a little fine-tuning after I started, but there weren’t any big problems. I didn’t need to rewrite many cues and as it stands, the film was already cut when I did the score.

HR: One of the most noticeable aspects of the music is the heavy use of loud percussion to accompany otherwise mundane sequences. Did you intend the unnerve the audience with this musical choice? It certainly added to the film’s unusual tone.

E.F: Yeah, there was definitely an element of that, in terms of the music. Cory definitely pushed me in that direction and I thought it was great. I mean, there’s something outside the world of this movie that the music has, the drums, the piano, the cello being kind of sarcastic in tone. All of these things are not really part of the fabric of what you’re seeing onscreen and its otherness creates a kind of tension and it emphasizes the pathology that exists between the two lead women.

There’s also an element of horror in this film. I mean, it’s not a horror film, at all, but it’s got those elements going on and Cory’s playing with it. It’s kind of a fun hybrid and the tension of all these different elements, the play between the two leads, the beautiful, unbelievably rich house and environment they live in, the music, the cinematography, all of it contributes to a kind of uneasy brew.

HR: From its filming in 2016 to its Sundance debut last year to its eventual release this March, it seems to have been quite a ride for Thoroughbreds. How does it feel knowing that the film is finally out for everyone to see?

E.F: It’s been great to have the finally released and especially looking so beautiful! The performances just get better with each viewing, for me. We’ve been keeping this under wraps for about roughly a year and a half, at least, while waiting for it to come out and it’s just great that Thoroughbreds finally getting the attention it deserves.

HR: Would you ever consider working with Cory Finley again in the future?

E.F: I would love to work with Cory again! Absolutely. I think we had a great working relationship, not just with the two of us, but the team, with Suzanna Peric, the music editor, and Sue Jacobs, the music supervisor. The four of us would gather every week and go over the cues and make notes and Suzanna was just great in how she would experiment with the editing. For example, I would write a cue for one scene and she would take that cue and try it with a different scene and say “Oh Erik, this really works great here. You just gotta do it with a different ending” and so on. I just loved working with her because she had a lot of ideas. Plus, Sue was great at keeping a structure and everything felt organized. She also had some great ideas and it just felt like a great team, overall. I’d love to put the team back together in the future.

HR: For some more personal questions, it’s time to list out the favorites. What would you say are your favorite musical projects that you’ve done over your years in the business?

E.F: The Mosada String Trio with John Zorn, as well as the Bagatelles with John Zorn. A really fun project was my most recent project, Artemesia, with a band called Throw a Glass. I’ve also done some music for silent movies with Matthew Nolan over in Dublin and that’s been a fun project that we’ve been working on as well. Then again, I’m always in love with my more recent projects, which is a fault I think every composer has.

HR: Would you like to work on another film project later on?

E.F: Yeah, I’m totally down to write music for another picture, I love it. I would definitely be up for doing more films later on.

HR: Why should audiences go and see Thoroughbreds, out in theaters now? Besides the music of course.

E.F: Well, you got two young actresses who are fantastic and make an incredibly strong impression and impact on this film. Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy are just great. They’re subtle, they’re witty and just amazing. Plus, Anton Yelchin is amazing. He kind of plays a wannabe badass and in the end, he’s kind of sad, along with a wonderful mix of elements. Definitely not the kind of badass that he wishes to be and it’s a wonderful performance. Not to mention, you’re seeing the first film of Cory Finley, who is certainly going to be heard from again and he’s a director who’s got it all, so it’ll be interesting to see what he does in the future.

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HR: Lastly, do you have any advice/words of wisdom for any up-and-coming musicians and how they can succeed in the business?

E.F: Practice, be flexible and able to a lot of things in the industry. But at the same time, be able to find your own voice. Write music, play with people, network (in a gentle way). Get your music out there so people can hear it, which is tough, because it’s a crowded stage now. Everybody’s throwing music at the wall, so you gotta be clever in how you get attention. But in the end, it’s worth it.

Thoroughbreds is out now in theaters.