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Darius Holbert: World's Greatest Composer
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DH: If I could bump Carter Burwell off his gig with the Coen brothers I would do that in a heartbeat. But I would feel bad because Carter is also one of my heroes.
MM: Maybe you could work together.
DH: Yeah, there you go. But I’ll tell you this. I was at my parent’s house in northern New Mexico a couple weeks ago, listening to some old cowboy music—like old 1940s, Sons of the Pioneers, Roy Rogers-type stuff. All of a sudden the theme from Raising Arizona comes on as part of one of the songs I was listening to and I was like, ‘You gotta be kidding me. Carter didn’t write this?’ Like [the singer] totally did that yodel thing from Raising Arizona. And that’s one of my favorite scores. It was like one of my heroes had totally died. It was like when you found out Rafael Palmeiro was doing steroids. It was like part of my youth had died. It totally affected me. It was terrible.
MM: At what stage of production of a movie do you like to start working?
DH: Typically, I try to get in when the movie is locked—when the edits are all done. Even if a director gives me something and says, “Oh yeah, we’re at picture lock right now,” invariably there’s gonna be some tweaks—even after I get my hands on it.
There have been times where I have gone in at the script stage, especially if there are scenes where the actor has to seem like they are playing music or they need to dance to a particular number or if music is more of an actual integral part of the story. When you get more involved in the conceptual stage there’s a lot more probability of spinning your wheels. Take for instance, if somebody says, “I want this character’s theme to be like this.” I’ll go back to the studio and I’ll work up the theme and then maybe a week later they’re like, “Well, with this new draft we totally cut that character out.” You end up writing a lot of music that may not even make it in.
As far as efficiency is concerned, get in when the conceptual side is already set. But I like getting involved wherever. In some cases, like I have some new stuff in the Kevin Spacey film Shrink, which actually premiered at Sundance. But I didn’t have anything to do with it at the time of the premiere. Getting involved after a movie has premiered is rare, and it’s as far down the line as you’re gonna get. I really run the gamut as far as getting involved really, really early on or getting involved as late as possible.
MM: You have music in another movie, World’s Greatest Dad, that is coming out soon. What was your experience like working on it?
He called me up and said this is directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, who’s the guy from the Police Academy movies. I grew up watching those movies, so of course I said I would get involved. He’s sort of established himself now as a real quirky writer-director of these great dark movies. And Jerry has worked with him on these films, pretty much every single one. So he called me up and said that Bobcat needed a song with a 1920s-style crooner tradition about smoking weed. So I went into the studio, hired some players. We got together in a room and we banged out this tune and we had Tom Kenny, who is the voice of SpongeBob, come in. He’s a friend of Bobcat’s apparently, so he was doing all the singing like “I wanna get high” in this 1920s-style, crooner-style song. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. It was outstanding.
But I’ll tell you one of the best stories of that experience was when I first met Bobcat. Everyone else was setting up or whatever, in the back room eating pizza. I had never met him before and we totally hit it off. We started talking about what we had done and our careers. Somehow it turned into some kind of “lame-off.” Where I was like, ‘I musically directed for Kevin Federline for “The Tonight Show,”’ and he goes, “Well I was in Police Academy 4, so I win.” It was hilarious.
MM: Thanks for all your time.
BH: Oh, I have this record coming out this month that I gotta plug by dariustx. You can check it out online at dariustx.com. I’m excited about that. Thanks for the time. I really appreciate it! Say hi to New York for me!
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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT 
- Comment by Jeff on 8/20/09 at 10:02 pm
World’s GREATEST Composer? Get out of here…
- Comment by Jimmy on 8/28/09 at 3:33 pm
If you would have read the article, Jeff, you’d see that he worked on the film “Worlds Greatest Dad”, not that she thinks he is the world’s greatest composer. Another dead giveaway is that the “World’s Greatest” before “Composer” is in italics.
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