Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross Announce Inaugural Future Ruins Fest Celebrating Film Music
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have announced the inaugural Future Ruins Festival, featuring many of cinema's top composers performing their scores live for the first time.
In addition to the Oscar-winning duo of Reznor and Ross, Future Ruins — heading to Los Angeles on November 8 — will also include sets by Devo singer and Wes Anderson composer Mark Mothersbaugh, horror director and composer John Carpenter, Oscar-winning Joker composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, and Questlove performing the film scores of Curtis Mayfield.
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'It's about giving people who are, literally, the best in the world at taking audiences on an emotional ride via music the opportunity to tell new stories in an interesting live setting,' Reznor said in a statement.
Other artists on the lineup included Danny Elfman, Stranger Things duo Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein, Italian group Goblin, Terence Blanchard, Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow, Isobel Waller-Bridge, a performance of Howard Shore's Crash score, and more.
According to the organizers, across three stages at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, 'Each artist is encouraged to take big swings and reimagine their work for a live audience. Ranging from electronic sets and live bands to orchestral performances, fans have the chance to experience live debuts from composers who rarely appear onstage.'
'There's no headliner. There's no hierarchy. This is a stacked lineup of visionaries doing something you might not see again,' Reznor and Ross added.
Check out the Future Ruins site for ticket information.
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Los Angeles Times
37 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
What Cynthia Erivo is doing on her (very short) break from ‘Wicked'
Cynthia Erivo sits in a Century City recording studio on a recent afternoon, mulling over her choice of footwear the other night. The British singer and actor — whose overlapping work in music, film, television and theater have put her an Oscar win away from EGOT status — has just returned to her adopted home of L.A. from Houston, where she performed with that city's symphony orchestra in a gig that featured her interpretations of songs by or associated with the likes of Nina Simone, Etta James, Tina Turner and Ann Peebles. 'It's one of my favorite things to do,' she says of the concert, a version of which she's booked to bring to cities across the country this year. 'I do my own makeup and I do my own styling — just bring along whatever I bring along.' Erivo, 38, is widely regarded as one of musical theater's premier showstoppers thanks in large part to her role as the green-skinned Elphaba in the blockbuster big-screen adaptation of 'Wicked,' Part 1 of which climaxed with her earth-shaking rendition of 'Defying Gravity.' (Part 2 of the film, which co-stars Ariana Grande as Glinda and imagines the two witches before the events of 'The Wizard of Oz,' is due in November.) On Sunday night in New York, Erivo will host the 78th Tony Awards, nine years after she won the prize for leading actress in a musical for her Broadway debut as Celie in 'The Color Purple.' Yet for shows like the one in Houston, Erivo is aiming for something looser, more spontaneous, slightly lower-key. 'The concert before that one, I'd taken off my shoes partway through,' she recalls. 'I was like, 'I'm sorry — I'm taking them off.' Then I thought: What if I just started without?' She laughs. 'Sometimes you want the look and you want the heels, and it feels good. I'm good at being in heels. But other times you just want to feel connected.' It's a spirit that carries over to Erivo's new solo album, 'I Forgive You,' which comes out Friday. Softer and more intimate than the roof-raising she's known for, the LP ponders the personal drama of romance and sex — from flirtation to commitment to betrayal and back — in songs that set aside musical spectacle for emotional realism. Says Erivo: 'You can only do so many 11 o'clock numbers, you know what I mean?' With its sensual grooves and breathy vocals, 'I Forgive You' also represents a return to Erivo's roots in the soul music she loved 'before I met the musical theater version of myself,' as she puts it. Among her faves: Marvin Gaye, Musiq Soulchild, Roberta Flack and Brandy, whose 1998 album 'Never Say Never' — released when Erivo was 11 — she singles out for its sophisticated ideas about harmony. Erivo is a devoted student of R&B history and an eloquent assayer of what distinguishes the classics; she can talk in depth about the precision of Flack's arrangements and about the peculiar changes in 'Day Dreaming' by Aretha Franklin (whom she portrayed in Season 3 of National Geographic's 'Genius' series). Her knowledge and talent have made her something of a fixture at the Kennedy Center Honors, where she's paid loving tribute to the likes of Dionne Warwick and Earth, Wind & Fire. Yet she's no mere revivalist: As a musical thinker, she's always searching for ways to individualize the hallmarks of a tradition; as a queer Black woman, she's always raising questions about whom any tradition is meant to welcome. 'There's something very special about Cynthia,' says the Los Angeles Philharmonic's music director, Gustavo Dudamel, who calls Erivo 'a unique presence — not just a voice, but a storyteller who is deeply connected to every note.' In April, Dudamel invited Erivo to join the L.A. Phil at Coachella, where she performed a churchy rendition of Prince's 'Purple Rain.' 'She brings this incredible authenticity, generosity and intensity to everything she does, as if she is living inside the music,' Dudamel adds. That flair was on display earlier at February's Grammy Awards, where Erivo sang 'Fly Me to the Moon' with Herbie Hancock accompanying her on piano as part of a tribute to the late Quincy Jones (who arranged Frank Sinatra's definitive 1964 recording of the jazz standard). 'They asked if I could do it, and I was like, 'I can, but I'm not Frank,'' she recalls, curled on a sofa in the studio's control room. She's wearing a long, drapey skirt with high slits that reveal her tattooed legs, and her signature nails click against one another as she gestures with her hands. 'Frank did 'Fly Me to the Moon' how it was supposed to be done for him, so I had to find out how to do it for me. I told them, 'Is there a way we can find space for rubato, pianissimo, glissando — all of that — so we can really play in the music?' 'It took a little convincing, but they let me have it,' she says. The result was a stunning yet subtle deconstruction of the song — an exquisite little two-hander that felt like a conversation between Erivo and Hancock. 'When I went out into the audience afterward, I bumped into Beyoncé,' Erivo says, grinning at the memory. 'She was like, 'You're an alien, and I love it.'' The daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Erivo grew up in London and studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After graduating in 2010, she performed in various theatrical productions around the U.K.; her big break came in 2013 when she was cast in the 'Color Purple' revival in London that eventually transferred to Broadway. In 2019, she was nominated for actress in a leading role at the Academy Awards for her performance in the title role of Kasi Lemmons' Harriet Tubman biopic; a second actress nod came for her turn as Elphaba in 'Wicked.' Erivo recorded much of her new album in this very studio while on breaks from shooting 'Wicked.' She'd sit in here with her producer, Will Wells, and build what she calls a 'vocal pad' from 20 or 30 overdubbed Cynthias — Enya was a key inspiration, she says — then write a melody and a lyric based on the vibe of what they'd laid down. 'Maybe there's a part of me that's a bit of a psycho,' she says of taking up a second project amid the pressing demands of a first. 'But I feel like doing 'Wicked' opened up my creative juices. Once you're doing something creative, everything else is sort of fed by it.' Indeed, with 'I Forgive You' and the Tonys on the way, Erivo has also been preparing for another upcoming gig: In August, she'll play Jesus Christ — 'That's a funny sentence,' she says with a laugh — in a production of 'Jesus Christ Superstar' at the Hollywood Bowl that will co-star Adam Lambert as Judas Iscariot. 'I was like, 'Well, this could be a challenge — a new way to use my voice,'' she says of Andrew Lloyd Webber's early-'70s rock opera about the final days of Jesus' life. 'I have no intention of changing any 'he's' to 'she's' or anything like that. It's about telling the story as truthfully as I possibly can. But the music often feels like it's not necessarily …' She trails off, searching for the right words to describe Lloyd Webber's oeuvre, which also includes the mega-musicals 'Cats,' 'Evita' and 'The Phantom of the Opera.' 'I'll say it: It doesn't necessarily belong to Black people,' she says. 'But I think that's because of how a lot of it has been performed. If you really listen to some of it …' Erivo sings a few lines from 'Memory,' the old 'Cats' warhorse, bending notes and inserting little vocal flourishes here and there. 'This might be a reach, but that sounds a bit like Toni Braxton,' she says. 'It's about who is singing it and what they hear in the music.' Lambert, the one-time 'American Idol' runner-up who's gone on to a varied career in music, theater and television, points out that when 'Jesus Christ Superstar' premiered, its rock sound was controversial in the context of a religious story. 'It pissed people off,' he says. 'In 2025, rock music is not going to challenge anyone anymore — it's no longer considered transgressive in any way. But the idea that you're challenging people's idea of this icon by casting someone like Cynthia — I think that's brilliant.' Erivo has similar thoughts about her physical appearance, which has grown more distinctive — and perhaps more provocative — as she's gotten more famous. Asked to name the musicians she thinks of as her style icons, she mentions Skin, the frontwoman of the English rock group Skunk Anansie. 'She carved out her own space and just occupied it,' she says of Skin, a Black woman who appeared on the cover of Skunk Anansie's 1995 debut wearing camo pants and a shaved head. 'It's in your face, how she looks, and I think the confrontation of it is probably what I'm drawn to.' Though Erivo says she's felt embraced by Black women in Hollywood, 'a lot of straight white men don't know what to do with a Black girl who's bald and has all these piercings.' She laughs. 'But this isn't for the male gaze,' she says. 'I don't think it's for anyone's gaze. It's for me — that's where I start.' Erivo, who's in a very private romantic relationship with the filmmaker Lena Waithe, became an almost inescapable pop-cultural presence during the epic press tour for 'Wicked,' which with estimated worldwide box office sales of more than $750 million is now the highest-grossing adaptation of a musical in movie history. As she readies herself to promote the second film, is she feeling pre-exhausted by the interviews and the red carpets and the glad-handing to come? 'I'm not pre-exhausted because I have no idea what we're going to do this time,' she says. 'I'm tentatively excited about what we might do, what we might bring, what it will feel like. It has to feel different because this movie is very different to the first.' Looking back at the viral 'holding space' meme spawned from a chat Erivo and Grande had with a journalist from Out magazine, Erivo says she understands why it became such a phenomenon: 'It's brilliant because we're in three different places — we're all having our own experience simultaneously.' Yet for the most part, she and Grande 'were sort of surprised by how fascinated people were with us as a pair,' she says. 'We were just doing what we had been doing whilst we were making the film. I mean, we'd spent a long time together. When you spend that much time with a person, you're either going to grow to love them or grow to hate them. And we just happened to grow to love each other.' Grande's opinion was one of the first Erivo sought as she assembled 'I Forgive You'; the pop star, Erivo says, 'is one of the most intelligent producers and songwriters that exists. She has amazing ears.' Has Erivo ever thought about which Glinda song she might like to sing if she and Grande swapped 'Wicked' roles? She considers the question in silence for a good 10 seconds. 'There's a new song that she has [in Part 2], which I would love to try,' she says. 'But I'm not going to say what it is because I don't want to get in trouble.' She'd also relish the chance to perform the show's opening number, 'No One Mourns the Wicked.' 'But I so love what her voice does on it — how open her coloratura is — that I'll leave that for her,' she adds. That's likely how many fans feel about Erivo's take on 'Defying Gravity,' which has been streamed more than 145 million times on Spotify and even charted on Billboard's Pop Airplay tally — a rarity these days for a tune from Broadway. Is Erivo tired of the song? 'I don't think I am, because of what it means to people,' she says. Asked what her favorite part of the song is, she says she has three, each of which she sings to demonstrate. 'Right at the beginning: 'Something has changed within me / Something is not the same / I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game.' I love the weird interval there. So I love that, and I love 'Unlimited / Together, we're unlimited' — just that note progression. 'Then there's a particular part of the end. Yes, the war cry is delightful to sing,' she says, referring to the heroic vocal lick that brings down the curtain on Part 1 of the movie. 'But there's a bit that comes before that — 'And nobody in all of Oz / No wizard that there is or was / Is ever going to bring me down' — that's like a burgeoning of something before you get up there. You have to earn it.' Given her deep attachment to the song, anyone watching March's Oscars ceremony — where Erivo and Grande performed a medley of songs from 'Wicked,' 'The Wiz' and 'The Wizard of Oz' — had to be amused by the glimpse of a prompter showing Erivo the lyrics to 'Defying Gravity,' as though she might need them. 'You can see I'm not looking at it at all,' she says with a laugh. 'It's definitely one of those things that's ingrained in my brain forever.' Even so, 'Defying Gravity' doesn't currently have a place in Erivo's concert set; nor does 'I'm Here,' her showstopper from 'The Color Purple.' 'I'm sure they will at some point,' she says of the songs, both of which tend to take up all the available oxygen in a room. 'Give me 20 years.' Speaking of which: Whose career does Erivo view as a model as she continues to move between singing and acting? 'Probably Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross — those are really the two women who were able to navigate making albums and being on-screen,' she says. 'With Barbra, she's navigated the stage as well. I don't know if there's anyone else who's been able to do that as fully. The amount of music she has is insane. Her first album came out in — what — '62, '63? And that was before 'Funny Girl'?' Erivo shakes her head in admiration. 'That reminds me,' she says. 'I'm going to put 'People' in my set.'
Los Angeles Times
37 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Inside the making of ‘House of the Dragon's' ‘spectacular' aerial battle
As an Emmy-winning director on 'The Sopranos,' 'Mad Men' and 'Game of Thrones,' Alan Taylor has made a name for himself on some of television's most highly regarded series. Still, when he learned that he would be helming the most consequential action sequence in the history of 'House of the Dragon,' he took a moment to consider the enormity of the task at hand. 'I hadn't really realized what a big deal it needed to be,' Taylor said. Action set pieces rarely come bigger than the three-way dragon battle that concludes 'The Red Dragon and the Gold,' the fourth episode of the fantasy series' second season. A landmark event in 'Fire & Blood,' author George R.R. Martin's fictional history of the royal Targaryen clan that inspired the show, the so-called Dance of the Dragons sees a trio of fire-breathing beasts clash in the sky, leading to the death of one major character, the hideous disfigurement of another and countless soldiers killed in the fallout. To bring the roughly 12-minute sequence to the screen required a serious battle plan, one that involved multiple departments and took more than a year to execute. 'Everything I was doing with the dragons was trying to make them feel real and palpable and alive,' Taylor said. 'Dragons have to be characters, not just transportation or weapons.' The sequence begins with Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) leading an army toward the castle of Rook's Rest. He intends to claim the territory on behalf of King Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney), who is at war with his half-sister Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy). But the assault is really a strategic ruse. Cole and Aegon's mercurial brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) expect Rhaenyra to launch an offensive of her own at the site and plan to use Aemond's enormous dragon Vhagar to kill her. Instead, Rhaenyra's lieutenant Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best) arrives on her dragon Meleys to take on Cole's forces. To her great surprise, the king himself rides his dragon Sunfyre into battle, hoping to prove his valor. Once Rhaenys orders Meleys to attack the king, Aemond rushes forward, commanding Vhagar to unleash a torrent of fire. The blast strikes Aegon and sends the young monarch and his dragon plummeting to the ground. Locking talons, Meleys and Vhagar collide, but the larger beast gains the upper hand. Soon, Rhaenys, Meleys and Sunfyre are dead, while Aegon barely clings to life. 'We had to dramatize this thing that everybody's been so afraid of, which is dragon-on-dragon war,' said showrunner Ryan Condal, who wrote the episode. 'You see how terrible it is, and also how stunning and spectacular, as these gods are fighting in the sky.' Working with his longtime partner Jane Wu, director Taylor began storyboarding the sequence in the early weeks of 2023. During their research, the pair discovered footage of birds of prey engaging in midair, and they chose to incorporate those movements into the dragon fight. 'One usually turns upside down, so they meet talon to talon,' Taylor said. 'That means they're locked together, so then it becomes a death spiral. The idea of doing that but with [creatures the size of] two 747s seemed like it would be appropriately big.' Wu's images became the foundation for the previsualization, or 'previs,' of the Rook's Rest battle. Serving as a kind of road map, the 'previs' allowed the filmmakers to plot out every detail of every scene — from what camera angles would be used to how the CG dragons would move. Understanding precisely how and when each creature would bank, tilt, soar or nosedive was necessary for planning the dragon-riding scenes. For those shots, largely filmed at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, the series' production headquarters, the actors were seated on a buck atop a motion-controlled base surrounded by large blue screens. The base was then programmed to simulate the specific movements of each character's dragon, while wind machines and special lighting re-created aerial conditions. 'Trying to find a way to make these clashes look as violent as they would really be while keeping the actors safe was a challenge,' said visual effects producer Thomas M. Horton. 'How do we shoot this with a buck and a motion-controlled camera so it looks like they're being spun around at 90 miles per hour but actually they're not?' It's not the easiest environment in which to create authentic emotional moments, noted Taylor, who singled out Best for delivering heartbreaking work under difficult circumstances. 'She's doing a very intense, subtle performance while she's being slammed around on this bucking bronco with wind machines and a robotic camera,' Taylor said. 'She was a trouper.' Mitchell described the buck work as something of a thrill ride that greatly informed his performance. 'Having that feedback from what is effectively a machine, it really brings the scene to life,' the actor said. 'It's almost like a horse jockey. I'm leaning over as opposed to sitting back handling the reins, really putting all my body into it.' To capture certain shots of Aemond and Vhagar against the Rook's Rest tree line, a makeshift buck was brought to Bourne Woods in the English county of Surrey, where the physical battle was filmed — the first time the series attempted to do buck work on location. 'To be suspended 30-40 feet up in the air? Nothing beats it,' Mitchell said. 'It's escapism to the max.' During the roughly 10-day shoot, which took place in August 2023, drones approximated the dragons' flight path so the actors on the ground knew where to look when they craned their necks toward the sky. Stunt performers posed as knights, donning layers of protective gear beneath their costumes so that they could safely be lighted on fire and burn for up to 15 seconds before being extinguished. The ground was also littered with artificial burning bodies to simulate the dragons' victims. 'Obviously, there's a safety issue with real fire, but for the most part, it's a help because it motivates the ability to put lots of atmosphere through [the shots], and putting lots of atmos and smoke into the shot helps photographically,' said cinematographer P.J. Dillon. The various elements of the sequence were stitched together during postproduction, with the final scenes completed just weeks before the episode aired. 'Three dragons, buck shots, fire, we had to create the castle, the whole cliff and the sea, there was a big army enhancement as well — the ratio of super complex, very heavy-lift shots in that episode is off-the-charts high,' said VFX supervisor Daði Einarsson.
Los Angeles Times
37 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
For these documentary directors, HBO is the anti-'Predictable Content Channel'
When Oscar winner Alex Gibney sent HBO Documentary Films executives an early cut of his new movie, 'Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos,' he was blindsided by the feedback he received. 'God bless HBO, they said, 'This is so good — make it longer.' I rarely get that note.' In the streaming world, documentaries have exploded, with newcomers like Netflix and Hulu chasing the next binge-worthy sensation. But HBO Documentary Films, which started in a nascent form in the late 1970s, remains a distinguished player, regarded as an especially prestigious and director-driven home for nonfiction fare. To understand why, it helps to talk to filmmakers who have recently worked with HBO — including Gibney, whose two-part documentary chronicles both Chase and his groundbreaking series across a sweeping canvas. 'I have a hard time making short docs,' jokes Gibney, whose 2023 MGM+ documentary 'In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon' stretched 3½ hours. ('Wise Guy,' initially two hours, is now roughly that length.) 'But [HBO] said, 'You've got all this great stuff. You should lean into this and that.'' Many directors echo this appreciation for the freedom HBO affords them to do what they want in a commercial space often dictated by algorithms and house styles. For Matt Wolf, the man behind 'Pee-wee as Himself,' about Paul Reubens and his alter ego Pee-wee Herman, it was important to craft a nuanced portrait. 'We had a lot of autonomy and made the film very independently,' Wolf says, 'until we were at the postproduction stage, when HBO became vital partners,' alluding to Reubens' shocking 2023 death, which revealed that the performer had privately been battling cancer. 'Some partners might've said, 'Paul's passed away, this is newsworthy — we need a film in a few months,'' Wolf says. 'But HBO was amazing in seeing that this is an evergreen story and that it wasn't a rush. It was more about doing something with gravitas that could be profound and emotional. That takes time, and they gave me that time.' Still, HBO offers its filmmakers plenty of notes — and has from the start. In 1979, Sheila Nevins was hired to run the channel's burgeoning documentary programming, eventually becoming president of HBO Documentary Films. 'Back then, HBO was a haven to make these really cool films,' recalls Oscar-nominated director Nanette Burstein, who first worked with Nevins as a co-writer and editor on 1995's 'Before You Go: A Daughter's Diary.' 'Sheila was the queen, and she was great at it. She gave pointed notes: 'This is what I think should happen.'' In 2019, Nevins left HBO for MTV Documentary Films, but Burstein, whose HBO documentary 'Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes' recontextualizes the Hollywood legend through a never-before-heard interview, credits current heads Nancy Abraham and Lisa Heller, along with Senior Vice President Sara Rodriguez, with continuing Nevins' championing of the director's voice. That said, Burstein adds, the present regime is 'very much respectful of a filmmaker and less — what's the diplomatic term?' She chuckles. 'Sheila had a very strong opinion. [Now] it's more of a discussion.' 'Sheila Nevins deserves enormous credit, not only for documentaries at HBO but documentaries, period,' agrees Gibney. 'She showed that they can be wildly entertaining, even when they're not about celebrities. She had a sense that they have to be viscerally powerful — they can't be like spinach.' But like Burstein, he acknowledges Nevins' firm point of view: 'I had some difficult conversations with her [about my films]. I would argue with her. Sometimes I accepted [her notes], sometimes I didn't.' Lance Oppenheim, director of 'Ren Faire,' a juicy soap opera about a battle for control of the Texas Renaissance Festival, was grateful HBO doesn't impose a mandate for how its movies look and feel. 'That's really admirable in this day and age when other buyers and streamers algorithmically make stuff,' he says. 'You can see it in some of the things that feel like they're being spoon-fed to us. They were always so open to the stylization [of 'Ren Faire'] that maybe other places would be a little bit intimidated by — or would've asked me to tell the story a little straighter.' No one expects a straightforward documentary from Eric Goode, director of Netflix's 2020 hit 'Tiger King.' His follow-up, 'Chimp Crazy,' is similarly outlandish, following a former nurse, Tonia Haddix, who's obsessed with collecting chimpanzees — even as PETA wisely tries to stop her. Goode's unconventional techniques, including hiring a proxy director to get close to Haddix so she was unaware of Goode's involvement, provoked criticism from documentary purists. But he argues that it's all in the name of promoting animal rights. 'If you want to make a difference, you can't just preach to the converted,' says Goode. 'You have to make a big bang. So many [advocacy] films feel like you're in school. You want to preach to people that don't know the issues. And the only way to do that is to do things that are entertainment, that are going to make people scratch their head and say, 'Wait a minute, I just watched this whole thing and there's something disturbing about this.'' When asked if HBO had qualms about his methods, Goode replies, 'It may have come up but not with me directly.' Executives' hands-off approach worked: 'Chimp Crazy' was the most popular HBO documentary in years. These five projects — a combination of celebrity portraits, true-crime thrillers and oddball sagas — suggest the breadth of HBO Documentary Films' strategy for an art form that has blossomed on the small screen. Balancing compulsive watchability with a touch of class, the company is still trying to break the mold while simultaneously catering to the masses. 'It feels very fresh,' Gibney says of the company's broad slate. 'It feels like a film festival — as opposed to 'Here comes the Predictable Content Channel.''
