Emile Mosseri and Joe Tal­bot: ​‘We’re just fol­low­ing the feel­ing of what we like’

Best known for his com­plex, melod­ic film scores, the work of com­pos­er and musi­cian Emile Mosseri has lift­ed the dra­ma of a num­ber of films into some­thing almost spir­i­tu­al – take Minari, Lee Isaac Chung’s sto­ry of Kore­an dias­po­ra in rur­al Amer­i­ca. The same can be said of one of his ear­li­est film scores, The Last Black Man in San Fran­cis­co, a film direct­ed by Joe Tal­bot. That col­lab­o­ra­tion changed the way they think about film­mak­ing and music respec­tive­ly, and since then they have become close friends and cre­ative partners.

They’ve col­lab­o­rat­ed again on a music video for ​“Greedy Heart”, a song from Mosseri’s new album, Heav­en Hunters – his first stu­dio album as a solo artist, full of vul­ner­a­ble intro­spec­tion (the music video is Talbot’s sec­ond, after Adele’s ​“I Drink Wine“). We facil­i­tat­ed a dis­cus­sion with the two about what they learned from each oth­er, chas­ing down a strange altered song dis­cov­ered on Limewire, and tak­ing dips in LA ponds.

Reduc­tive­ly speak­ing, I sup­pose your work­ing rela­tion­ship in the past has been you pulling from the images and com­pos­ing from that, and this feels almost the inverse. 

Emile Mosseri: It was very much an exten­sion of our process and our dynam­ic. It was invert­ed in a way, but the line’s pret­ty blur­ry. Joe’s the most musi­cal direc­tor I’ve ever worked with and he gets into the weeds and under­stands music in a way that’s real­ly sin­gu­lar. So there’s an ele­ment of trust with him. I joke all the time about what a pain in the ass he is and how he’s a ball-buster, just he push­es every­body. He push­es the medi­um real­ly far and it only works because there’s a trust. I trust that his notes are mak­ing the score bet­ter. He’ll push me to places that are out of my com­fort zone in that medi­um too, and I think we push each oth­er back and forth in a way, and then we’ll push back. The biggest dis­tinc­tion is with this video and with this album, this is my record and my vision.

With film scor­ing it’s safe, even if you’re mak­ing bold choic­es. With Last Black Man in San Fran­cis­co, Joe pushed me in that direc­tion as he’s the direc­tor. So scor­ing films is very col­lab­o­ra­tive, which I love, but there’s a cush­ion there. Where­as with a record when you’re putting your­self out there and it’s your face and your voice, it’s way more vul­ner­a­ble. So it was real­ly fun to get togeth­er with Joe and make our album cov­er and make these press pho­tos, show posters, the music video. That was a real gift and a real treat for me, and you want it to feel like your­self. You want to feel out of your com­fort zone, but you also want it to feel like you.

So you spoke about push­ing each oth­er to do new things, but I since Emile struck out on his own with this – Joe, what’s your impres­sion of the album itself?

Joe Tal­bot: I hear some of those melod­ic influ­ences and even just in terms of the pro­duc­tion on his album and what Bob­by Krlic did, who pro­duced it, they’re fun for me because it’s hear­ing some­thing that I’m real­ly famil­iar with in some ways. Some chord pro­gres­sions, I thought, ​“that’s Emile and that sounds so much some­thing we would write togeth­er.” But the rea­son it feels that way is because there’s a cer­tain part of our shared musi­cal love that Emile’s pulling from.

Where­as oth­er cor­ners of the album are more for­eign to me, but still feels some­what famil­iar because they come from the mind of some­one that I know real­ly well and that I’ve cre­at­ed with­in that space. Each song’s going to be some dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tion of those things. I would love to do a video for every song on the album, and I don’t feel that way often.

What did you want to keep and what did you want to change from your expe­ri­ences com­pos­ing for film?

Mosseri: I feel like there’s things that I sub­con­scious­ly kept. I think I had writ­ten and record­ed this album after I’d scored a few films and I think, and Joe’s in a huge way main­ly just pushed me to not be afraid of that line of being earnest.

I feel like, myself includ­ed, a lot of peo­ple in indie film and in indie music, like Joe has said before, can be afraid of being cheesy. So you sit in this safer space of ambi­ence so no one’s going to hate it, but it might not move some­body as much. So I think a part of that found its way into the album, not in a cal­cu­lat­ed way, but just since I’m a dif­fer­ent artist than I was before I start­ed scoring.

And then what I want­ed to do dif­fer­ent­ly was, I guess, was to use lyrics and my voice. It’s not instru­men­tal music. But I was also inspired by Joe’s movie and the films that I scored after Joe’s – Miran­da July’s Kajil­lion­aire and my friend Isaac’s Minari. All three of those films were pret­ty much rip­ping their hearts out and putting it on the big screen. It’s fear­less and bold, and I want­ed to do my ver­sion of that with the record.

Tal­bot: This is not ful­ly relat­ed, but I was think­ing but there’s a fun­ny thing where I some­how feel some con­nec­tion to those movies, even though I had no cre­ative con­nec­tion to them what­so­ev­er. I imag­ine he might feel that way with some of the things that I work on out­side of him. There aren’t a lot of col­lab­o­ra­tions in your life where you feel that way with some­one where you’re not quite con­nect­ed at the hip, but check­ing in with each oth­er about the oth­er things you take on because they affect each other’s lives in a fun­ny way.

Mosseri: Yeah, no, I def­i­nite­ly feel that. I feel like you did have a hand in those projects too because we’re so close and you’re in my brain.

Tal­bot: I’m sor­ry about that.

Mosseri: I was in a band with two guys from when I was 15 years old to when I was 33, and when I write music, they’re also still always in there.

Tal­bot: Art is a cer­tain point reflec­tive of the peo­ple around us, peo­ple that chal­lenge us or push us. My co-writer on my next film, she’s just bril­liant, and Emile and I have got­ten bet­ter too in the last sev­er­al years and sharp­er in our col­lab­o­ra­tion and we’re more artic­u­late and able to com­mu­ni­cate bet­ter. Even though there’s one per­son that’s named the direc­tor, you’re always a prod­uct of the peo­ple around you who are push­ing you in these inter­est­ing directions.

In terms of instru­men­ta­tion, what did you get to exper­i­ment with on this album that you didn’t have a chance to in your scores?

Mosseri: I think a big part of that was work­ing with Bob­by Klich, who’s a close friend and bril­liant artist. He scores films too, he scores Ari Aster’s films, he’s worked with Björk and Father John Misty and all these great artists. He and I met when I had lived with my songs for so long that I was too close to them, and I need­ed some­body like Joe to push me out of my com­fort zone.

And Bob­by, when I played him my demo of the album, he found moments that were instru­men­tal­ly or orches­tral­ly big that could be big­ger, or moments that were inti­mate that could be even more stripped down. So he took my record and made it much more dynam­ic, alive and much more colourful.

I remem­ber when Bob­by sent me the first thing that he did. Before I even lis­tened to it, I told myself, ​“OK, you’re gonna hate it, but you’ll learn to like it, you trust him” and I lis­tened to it and I loved it instant­ly with that one. But there were oth­ers where like for the first 24 or 48 hours, I fuck­ing hat­ed what he did. But then it would become one of my favourite moments on the record! It only works if you trust some­body. I mean, Joe, as a direc­tor this is prob­a­bly what you’re deal­ing with times 1000. You ever feel like that?

Tal­bot: There’s a weird dis­con­nect some­times between what will work real­ly well for a scene some­times ver­sus what melody I like. Emile and I write a lot of music before I ever shoot the movie. So he’s been writ­ing music for the film that I’m mak­ing next. Once you shoot a film and you have the scenes in front of you, the scenes don’t lie and the music doesn’t lie. Emile and I are pret­ty good, I think, at dis­tin­guish­ing that.

But we’re in a fun­ny space right now where I’m writ­ing the script with my co-writer, and then some­times I’m work­ing on music with Emile, and some­times his music is guid­ing the screen­writ­ing, and oth­er times the scenes are guid­ing what the music should sound like. It’s weird, like two unfin­ished pieces inform­ing each oth­er, we’re just fol­low­ing the feel­ing of what we like.

Typ­i­cal­ly a com­pos­er comes on at the very end of the process and writes music for a locked cut. But I do think that some­times because of that, music feels less inte­grat­ed into the films. What we’re doing, it’s more of a pain in the ass for Emile, but it’s fun, at its best hope­ful­ly you’re able to cre­ate some­thing where the images and the music are dri­ving the oth­er at all times. And get some­thing unique out of it.

In a sim­i­lar sense we did our own ver­sion of the song in the video – in a lot of ways, it’s the same one that appears on the album, but we added these oth­er sort of ele­ments on top to dri­ve parts of it for­ward. So it’s fun for peo­ple that I think will love Emile’s music and will lis­ten to the album a lot to see the video because of that slight difference.

And hon­est­ly, the first time I ever thought about that was back in the Limewire days, there was a ver­sion of Tupac’s ​“Thugz Man­sion” that when he ref­er­ences Miles Davis on that song had this like jazz sam­ple that came in for a sec­ond. And I remem­ber think­ing ​“that’s so cool” when I was like 14, and then I’ve nev­er been able to find that ver­sion again. It’s kind of like this! We shot the video and made a bespoke ver­sion of the song after we shot the video. And part of the rea­son we did is because then it helps mas­sage the video in inter­est­ing ways. Also it was fun to see Emile light up doing it, it was like he was scor­ing his own music video.

Mosseri: I like to tease Joe and say he found a way to actu­al­ly give me notes on my own record.

It was actu­al­ly kind of the most fun part of the process, it ele­vat­ed the video and I wouldn’t have thought to do that. Also that Tupac thing is amaz­ing because it rais­es a big ques­tion: is the art all of ours?

This is maybe a ran­dom asso­ci­a­tion. I used to see these jam bands play when I was a teenag­er. And there was this girl that would go to all these shows like at Irv­ing Plaza in New York, she’d bring her own flute and she’d jam along with the band, in the audi­ence, and she would be like [Emile mimes play­ing the flute] The stones it takes to do that. In a way, it’s like the guy adding that Miles Davis sam­ple to the Tupac track.

Do you think you’d be inter­est­ed in a Limewire edit of one of your songs?

Mosseri: Being on the oth­er end I could see why peo­ple would be sen­si­tive to it. The oppo­site of that is George Costan­za going to the movies and, and, and scream­ing out ​“That’s got­ta hurt!” when a boat explodes. And every­body laughs, so he becomes part of the movie and then he keeps going back to the the­ater. I think I would enjoy that if some­body said ​“That’s got­ta hurt!”

Tal­bot: Basi­cal­ly what it comes down to, it’s just got­ta be a good addi­tion. Like with the per­son play­ing the flute, it’s sink or swim.

Speak­ing of swim­ming – I want­ed to ask about the shot in the music video where you’re sub­merged in the water. 

Mosseri: I went under, it was dis­gust­ing. The water was stinky, it smelled like duck farts. It was high­ly embar­rass­ing and uncom­fort­able. [Laughs]

Tal­bot: He was in the water and there were all these like peo­ple sit­ting around and they were kind of like, ​“Oh man, what’s that guy doing?” And we were real­ly rag­tag, we just had one, 16mm cam­era and there were about four of us. So it didn’t look like some big pro­duc­tion, it just looked real­ly des­per­ate and kind of strange. But also you’re in LA and there’s a lot of des­per­ate and strange going on all the time. So peo­ple were kind of rolling their eyes but then Emile got out smelling real­ly bad.

And this guy goes [Joe does a ston­er voice] ​“Hey man, are you Emile Mosseri? I love your music.” I thought, ​“Oh man, that’s got­ta be bru­tal”, But Emile was real­ly touched by it because the guy was such a fan, so it was actu­al­ly real­ly sweet.

Mosseri: It was like a gift from God. That hap­pened when I was at my most vul­ner­a­ble. Being rec­og­nized, for me it’s not a nui­sance, it’s more of a high­light with where I am in my career. It’s not like I’m get­ting has­sled on the street.

So peo­ple were tak­ing out their phones, film­ing me in the water around there like, ​“Oh my God, I can’t believe this fool is get­ting into this water”, you know, and I’m try­ing to look cool and shit in the water and just trust­ing Joe and Gem­ma, the DP, that it’s gonna look beautiful.

Tal­bot: I think there’s a real­ly good ver­sion of this video that might pop up one day online where some­one adds in the cell phone footage. That’s their Tupac ver­sion of it.

Mosseri: I would rather not have to see that version.

Tal­bot: That’s why we’re lucky we had Gem­ma, who actu­al­ly made it look a bit like heav­en. I don’t think the cell­phone footage looks near­ly as dreamy as what she was doing.

Mosseri: It’d look like a guy stomp­ing around in a lake also Joe kept on being like ​“I didn’t tell you to put your head under, that’s fuck­ing gross, what are you doing?” Since I also had this old gui­tar under­wa­ter and it would fill up with water and sort of cap­size me. But it did kind of cre­ate this cool effect where for the last shot there’s this sort of cir­cu­lar rip­ples that are just sort of ema­nat­ing from me, like a beat­ing heart, and that’s because the gui­tar was cre­at­ing bub­bles. So if I were you Joe, I would just tell peo­ple I thought of that.

Tal­bot: I missed a real oppor­tu­ni­ty there.

Emilio Mosseri’s debut solo album, Heav­en Hunters, is out June 9.