SPOILER ALERT: This story contains minor spoilers for “Behemoth!” in theaters Dec. 4 Tony Gilroy’s “Behemoth!” bowed at the New York Film Festival Friday, and Lincoln Center’s Tully Hall seemed a fitting place to showcase a film about a musician. Written and directed by Gilroy, the film stars Pedro Pascal as a cellist who returns to Los Angeles after a life on the road. Music is in his DNA — his parents were musicians, as were his grandparents.
Music serves as a storytelling device, with Alex’s performances, whether on stage or in films he worked on, triggering flashbacks that reveal why he left Hollywood and what brought him back. Gilroy wanted distinct scores for each film Alex works on. Rather than rely on a single composer, Gilroy turned to nine composers: Michael Abels, Emily Bear, Lukas Frank, Michael Giacchino, James Newton Howard, Henry Jackman, Nami Melumad, Brandon Roberts and Alan Silvestri, known as the Behemoth Collective, to deliver distinct cues for the fictional movies Alex works on.
In doing so, each composer brought their unique voices to the film. Speaking with Variety, Gilroy explains that he had been sitting with the idea for years. He recalled the first time he walked into the John Williams Scoring Stage, steeped in Hollywood history.
It’s such a place of work, and then this incredible magic thing happens and there’s no place for the music to go except into the microphones and into your ears. It can’t escape that room.” He went on to say, “It’s a vivid emotional trigger and I just kept wondering every time I went there — why didn’t anybody make a movie about this? Every time I went, I was like, ‘God, there’s got to be a movie here somewhere.’ I couldn’t figure it out.” He wrote a script that is a love letter to movie music and the art of scoring, carefully curating a story that allowed him to seamlessly integrate the work of the Behemoth Collective into the film.
Gilroy didn’t want one composer. He gave me the enthusiasm to keep going forward with it. I talked to some people that I knew.
I knew I wanted Michael Giacchino for the cartoon cue. I knew that I’d bring Brandon back,” and so the collective eventually came together. Variety spoke with all nine composers to break down their cues and the key instruments they used to bring the “Behemoth!” score together.
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