We mourn the loss of actor Robert Vaughn, whose silky charm made him the perfect choice to play the role of the second most famous spy character created by Ian Fleming: Napoleon Solo on the 1960’s television series “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”
He was also one of the original “Magnificent Seven,” the one with a Southern accent and a drinking problem.
He also appeared in “Bullitt” and “The Towering Inferno,” and played the villain in “Superman III.”
Interview: Daniel Pemberton, Composer of the “Man from UNCLE” Score
Posted on August 18, 2015 at 6:58 pm
When director and co-screenwriter Guy Ritchie needed someone to write a cool, sexy, sophisticated score for “The Man from UNCLE,” he went to Daniel Pemberton. The soundtrack is one of the best of the year and I had a lot of fun talking to him about how it all came together.
At what stage of the process did you get involved?
I came on just before they started editing. So I normally try to get involved in films early on, kind of work alongside the film makers and actually kind of have an input and it means you write music that’s kind of a) more unique and b) you can experiment more, you can kind of come up with ideas that don’t work and you’ve got time to throw them out and start again and try to find a way through. It also means you can temp the movie with your own music that you write for that movie. And I think the biggest problem with film music is the fact that so many films are temped with music that that has been temped with other films. It’s all dog eating itself and I like to try and break out of that. It’s a lot more work, it takes up so much more time but I think the end result is worth it because you get something hopefully that people kind of listen and go, “Oh, it’s new, I haven’t heard this kind of thing before.”
How do you create something that feels like it fits in the 60’s but is appropriate for contemporary listeners?
The 60’s was one of the greatest eras of music that we’ve had. I think a lot of that was because there was so much experimentation at that time. The rules were still being written. You remember that at the start of the 60’s it was still three chords played on the guitar and by the end there was this explosion of ideas and I think everyone was influencing everyone else. Everyone would try to outdo each other.
Music was such a big part of the culture and it really pushed people to try out new ideas and so it was a very fertile time. And I think we’ve changed a bit from that and it was great to go back and just kind of pick up on all of those kinds of sounds and ways of writing music and ways of recording music that were around then. That’s how I approached the score. I tried to take the spirit of the 60’s. Everyone has got their own version of the 60’s but I got to try to capture what I liked of the 60s to work. Time generally erodes the bad things and the good stuff sticks around. So you want to find all of the stuff you like about those ideas and then try to put your own spin on that.
You have major characters from four different countries in the film: the US, Germany, the Soviet Union, and England. Do you think about that when you are working on the score?
I see it like a kaleidoscope of international color because you are taking all of these influences from different cultures and the style felt very international. Spy stuff is often international, just from traveling the world and seeing different cultures. They are all being experienced at the same time and that means you can have more fun and pinch from all of those cultures. If it was all set in a grimy London street it could have been amazing but it would be harder to pull off those kinds of sounds. At the London premiere I told Guy we should do the next one in China because I want to do crazy Chinese instruments. He was like, “I don’t want to do stuff in China. We could just do Istanbul.” And I’m like “We can do Istanbul. There are loads of great Turkish instruments like kanoon that I’ve worked with before. And I would have so much fun doing like kind of funky takes on that.”
It seems like spy movies always have to have a fancy party scene, and this movie has a great one.
That scene was hard work. I had to jump between Ilya’S story and Napoleon’s story and have it be a groove that everyone liked. It is really hard because you’ve got this beat and you can’t stop it midway through and jump to something else. Guy would want to do the opposite of what you would expect on these scenes normally: “What would be the normal way of doing that scene? Okay let’s not do that. Let’s do the opposite and try to find a different way of doing something you have seen before.”
Because in a lot of ways this film is sort of a homage to all the great 60’s spy films and action films. And one of the great ways to make it feel new is to take some of those ideas and put a new fresh spin on that and music is a great way to do that. I tried loads of different ideas it’s like, “Hush, this is boring. I have heard this like a million times before in other films” and you would be like, “Oh, okay. Let’s try something else if you don’t like it.” And you know what? He was right because we were doing stuff that was conventional and it was only when I started doing really crazy stuff, that’s when it really came to life. What was clear about this film is that I got pushed to write madder and madder music and I like that.
What was the first instrument you learned to play?
The piano. Badly. Technically I learned the violin when I was about five and then I didn’t like it; it was rubbish. I did about two days on it and then I decided I wasn’t musical. And then I became 10 and I found the piano and started writing songs on it and then I sort of went from there.
Were there any kinds of instruments or technology that you used that were kind of retro?
Oh yeah. I mean we did the whole score at Abbey Road, which was kind of the spiritual home of 60’s music. It was where all of the big music records were made. I worked with a guy who is the number one specialist on all of that stuff and all the antique gear. Abbey Road an amazing studio that is still used today and all the corridors are full of old pieces of equipment, literally like old 60’s things that the Beatles probably used. They are just lying in corridors because there was so much of it. We basically commandeered it all for a recording session. There was a tiny control room full of these old tape machines. There was not a lot of space to fit because these things were ginormous and we kind of nicked them all in the recording. So we had old mixing desks, looking something like a nuclear submarine, I mean they looked insane. They were ginormous and you’ve got the mixing knobs that are like these giant levers you pulled. We had old tape machines. We even used echo chambers studio too which is a room where they used to make echoes. That’s a room in the building where you sent sounds into and record the reverb of the room. The room is all tiled and we used that to create some drum echoes because that was how they used to do it in the 60s before reverb units existed. And then the same instruments, we got like vintage 60s harpsichords, guitars, bases. Everything like even the flute, the main flute, there is a really, really old flute.
I wanted to ask you about the flute because it had that great feathery sound.
That is a great flute player called Dave Heath. He normally plays more kind of classical concertos. A friend always says, “You’ve got to meet Dave, he’s crazy, you would get on with him.” I’m sort of like, “Yeah right, okay let’s meet Dave.” So I met Dave and he is crazy and I did get on with him. He would play some stuff and I would be like, “Okay, show me the sort of sounds you can make that no one asks you to make.” So he would play it and he would start making these crazy noises and I would be like, “Hang on, that, what was that?” He would play something and I would go, “Yeah you’re right, let me write something for that.” So I would go away and I would write some ideas and he would play it and I would be like, “Okay, that’s cool.” And we would work like that a bit and try to come up with how we get these unusual sounds for the score. A lot of that is just him playing. I mean we almost killed him during recording, perfectly intense. It’s like a guy running out of breath. Yeah, I wanted to get these bits where he was running out of breath and I would be like, “Keep playing, keep playing!” There would be someone in the control room saying, “Is he all right? Are you going to kill him?” I am like, “No, don’t worry, he likes this sort of thing.” Most of the effects are analog effects. Everything ended up in a computer but it all went through a bit of analog processing. And I’ve got to tell you, analog distortion on a red desk which is one of these old desks is phenomenal. It just sounds insane. It’s like something you never really heard. You are like, “Wow, what is that?”
Copyright 2015 Warner Bros. Pictures
Guy Ritchie’s update of the 1960’s television spy series is sleek, sophisticated, and sexy, with lively banter, high style, and oodles of roguish retro charm.
Henry Cavill (“Superman,” “The Tudors”) takes the Robert Vaughn role of Napoleon Solo, an army vet turned cool, elegant high-end thief turned reluctant spy in a plea deal to avoid a jail sentence. We meet him as he is arranging an extraction from the divided city of Berlin. An auto mechanic named Gaby (Alicia Vikander of “Ex Machina”) is the daughter of “Hitler’s favorite rocket scientist,” a man who came to work for the United States after WWII but has now disappeared and is thought to be working for some very dangerous people who are interested in his invention, basically a quicker, smaller, atomic bomb. The CIA is not the only group to figure out that Gaby might be the way to find her father. A very tall, very determined Soviet agent named Ilya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer of “The Social Network”) is after her, too. After a thrilling chase, Napoleon delivers Gaby to the CIA only to find out that he has been assigned to work with both Gaby and Ilya to find her father and make sure that the bomb does not fall into the wrong hands.
As with his “Sherlock Holmes” films, Ritchie has a lot of fun with the chemistry between his actors. There’s a fire and ice vibe; Napoleon’s understated confidence and unflappable charm plays off well against Ilya’s smoulder and barely-controlled rage. They call each other “Cowboy” and “Peril” (as in “Red Peril”) and one-up each other with gadgets that are endearingly analog. What they refer to as a “computer disk” looks like a scotch tape dispenser made out of Fiestaware. Vikander continues her unstoppable trajectory into superstardom with another impeccable performance. And then there are the bad guys. Elizabeth Debicki (“The Great Gatsby”) plays Victoria Vinciguerra, “a lethal combination of beauty, brains, and ambition.” She is a 1960’s high fashion vision, part Catherine Deneuve, part Jean Shrimpton, part Penelope Tree, and a femme fatale in the most literal and lethal sense. They should give Joanna Johnston the costume design Oscar right now, and maybe the Nobel, too for her take on 60’s couture, from Courreges to Mary Quant.
Ritchie’s kinetic camerawork, spiced up with some split screen work is accompanied by Daniel Pemberton‘s swanky cocktail-stirrer of a score. With Hugh Grant’s unmatchable dry wit as a spy honcho and charm to spare from the leads, it’s enormously entertaining — with a welcome hint at the end that a sequel is in the works.
Parents should know that this film includes extended action-style violence, chases, explosions, shoot-outs, bombs, torture, some disturbing images including archival wartime footage, sexual references and situations and brief nudity, drinking, and smoking.
Family discussion: How do Napoleon’s and Ilya’s backgrounds affect the way they approach their jobs? Do you agree with their decision about the computer disk? What has changed the most since the Cold War era shown in the film?
If you like this, try: “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation,” “Torn Curtain,” and the old “Man from UNCLE” television series
This week’s 1960’s spy story, “The Man from UNCLE” is based on a television series from the 1964-68 of the same name. It was inspired by the James Bond films, and Bond creator Ian Fleming even contributed to the original concept, including coming up with the names Napoleon Solo and April Dancer (who would appear in the spin-off, “The Girl from UNCLE”). After a decade of westerns, spies were everywhere on television in the mid-60’s, from the very serious (“Secret Agent”) to the very silly (“Get Smart”). “The Man from UNCLE” was glamorous, witty, and sexy, like the Robert Culp/Bill Cosby series “I Spy.”
In the series, Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn of “The Magnificent Seven,” which is also being remade) teamed up with a Soviet spy named Ilya Kuryakin (David McCallum, now better known as Duckie on “NCIS”). UNCLE stands for United Network Command for Law and Enforcement and is a super-secret CIA-ish sort of enterprise with an international reach. The headquarters was reached by going through a tailor shop (this year’s “Kingsman: The Secret Service” paid tribute to that). The boss spy is a Brit played by Leo G. Carroll. The idea that an American and a Soviet would join forces was very daring in the midst of the Cold War, but they had a mutual enemy known as THRUSH, a super-powerful force bent on total world domination.
Here’s the original opening credits.
It was so popular that it inspired some feature films with the same cast.
Copyright 2015 Walden MediaAugust is usually one of the slowest months of the year for major movie releases, but this year we have some prospects that could include both blockbusters and indie critical darlings. I’m especially looking forward to:
August 5
Shaun the Sheep — The latest from the Wallace and GromitChicken Run guys, which means it will have wonderfully tactile stop-motion animation and hilarious, impeccably timed stunts and sight gags.
August 7
Rikki and the Flash Meryl Streep and her real-life daughter Mamie Gummer co-star in this story of a singer in a bar band to returns to her estranged family when her daughter’s husband leaves her. It’s also a re-teaming with Streep’s “Sophie’s Choice” co-star, Kevin Kline, and Streep’s bandmate and love interest is played by 80’s soap star/pop star Rick Springfield.
Dark Places Members of a group who study grisly murders contact a woman who, as a young girl, survived an attack that killed her parents and testified that it was her brother who did it. Charlize Theron stars, and it is based on the book by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn.
August 14
The Man from UNCLE The 60’s television series about two handsome spies stars Armie Hammer, Henry Cavill, and this year’s breakthrough actress Alicia Vikander. It’s directed by “Sherlock Holmes'” Guy Ritchie.
Straight Outta Compton Ice Cube’s son stars in the story of N.W.A., their rise to fame and their influence on music and culture.
Mistress America Noah Baumbach’s second comedy of manners this year stars co-screenwriter Greta Gerwig and “Mozart in the Jungle’s” Lola Kirke as prospective step-sisters trying to be cool in New York.
August 21
American Ultra He’s the next Lex Luthor and appears in next week’s “End of the Tour,” but Jesse Eisenberg also found time to star in this slacker action comedy about an unexpected undercover agent — even to himself. Kristen Stewart plays his girlfriend.
Learning to Drive Katha Pollitt’s bittersweet essay about getting her first driver’s license in her 50’s after a miserable break-up has been adapted for a film with Sir Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson.
