We called him up and he was up to the task. I went to dinner at somebody’s house and he whistled a medley of all of his Ennio Morricone things. We were talking about how to make the Western section - all the different parts of Legoland have their individual sounds and we were talking about how to make the Legoland sound unique and I suggested why don’t we see if we can get Alessandro? I had met him once. In the scene that’s set in a Western milieu, you can hear the song being whistled by none other than Alessandro Alesandroni, who is famous for lending his lips to Sergio Leone. I’m glad that people are responding to it. How did they get that smart? I don’t know. I’ve got to say those guys really did have a good idea with that song. By the end of the movie, the same lyrics kind of take on this twist of a meaning where it becomes about people working together and cooperating to do something bigger than they could do by themselves. It starts off like this irritating commercial, a 30-second long thing that just drives people on and gets the people of Legoland to make sure they show up at work on time. The score has a whole bunch of other jobs to do than the song. I saw them as totally different purposes. Since “Everything is Awesome” is weaved throughout the film, was that song a starting point for the entire score? You have all sorts of interesting things that you are responsible for. In “Rugrats,” you have to create an orchestral sound of a diaper wrinkling while a kid stumbles across a floor. On the other hand, you have other chores. Sonically, that many players bring life to the movie. You feel it in a way you don’t feel with samples and you don’t feel it with synthesizers or just one or two people. There’s nothing better than 80 or 100 humans all bowing a string and blowing into a horn because even if you don’t see them, you feel it. That’s why you almost always hear an orchestra in an animated film. Animation needs the help of humans, the feel of humans with music. There are bugs in the ground that you can’t see, but they’re moving around, there’s wind blowing that even the best, most sophisticated animation hasn’t matched yet. You have much more heavy lifting to do in animation than you do in live action because in the best animation you don’t see things happening. Is animation a different beast than live action? As working partners, we met for ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 1’ because fortunately for me, they didn’t have a long list of composers they were interested in meeting. They say we met when they were working as storyboard artists at “Rugrats'”and got fired 15 or 16 years ago. Since it seems like a perfect mix of sensibilities, how did you and Phil Lord and Chris Miller initially meet? A singular pop culture confection that continues a tradition of introducing generation after generation to unique sounds ever since he first took the stage as the frontman for Devo, “The Lego Movie” would seem to offer a showcase for Mothersbaugh’s entire career, sonically adventurous throughout as the score weaves together the mischievous electronica he’s best known for with the more traditional orchestral work he’s been doing as a film composer on such films as “Rushmore” and television shows as “Enlightened” as it runs through all the settings the Danish company has created from the wild west to the high seas.Įmploying 35 synthesizers, a 40-person choir and even the legendary whistler Alessandro Alessandroni of “Once Upon a Time in the West” fame at one point, Mothersbaugh makes Legoland his own, something he’s done with numerous artforms throughout his eclectic career and shortly after the release of “The Lego Movie,” he took time to reflect on creating soundscapes from scratch, the infectious “Everything is Awesome” and a few of his favorite current film composers. Whether or not Mothersbaugh was instrumental in the hiring of Lord and Miller, the “21 Jump Street” writer/directors who share the musician’s subversive streak, there’s no doubt that his instruments laid the groundwork for the film. “I basically got them their job and the movie wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for me - I doubt that’s true, but I’m thinking about starting that as the new legend.” “I just happened to mention that I’d just finished a film with Phil and Chris and he should check it out,” recalls Mothersbaugh. Instead, he called the composer Mark Mothersbaugh, who as usual knew just the right note to strike. When Dan Lin, a producer of “The Lego Movie” was putting together a sizzle reel five years ago to convince the studio that a film based on the building bricks might be as enjoyable as playing with them, his first call wasn’t to an animator, a writer or a director.
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