Emile Mosseri On His Favourite Film Scores

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Making a list of my favorite film scores feels a bit daunting, there’s so many that I love, and then add to that this sort of self-imposed pressure to pick something cool, and not too obvious, it can feel overwhelming. To be honest I don’t have that deep a knowledge of film scores, and sometimes I find myself in conversations with people that really know their shit and I realise I have a lot of holes. I also identify more as a songwriter and singer than composer so I wanted to write about a few films that are populated with songs that hold them together. That’s also my dream so maybe writing about it will help put it into the universe. The dream for me is to write songs that find a home in a film without feeling shoehorned in there and elevate the whole thing; something that feels like the directors have had the songwriters knocking around in their brains while writing those scripts cause they don’t feel overlayed. 

There’s a sort of symbiotic calibration that you need for it to work. That’s why it’s so rare and special.  Think Leonard Cohen’s songs in McCabe and Ms Miller, Elliott Smith in Good Will Hunting, and then the most obvious example would be The Graduate. Those three to me are the highest marriage of film and music. Some of the best songwriters of all time have their songs live in these three classic films. It all just clicks. It’s cool too when you hear songs weave in an out of score seamlessly. The last time I saw it done at that highest level was Thom Yorke’s tunes and score in Suspiria. So haunting and effective, it blew my mind.   

McCabe and Ms Miller was one I wanted to write about cause it’s effortlessly beautiful, and it’s hard to imagine the film without those songs. Specifically ‘Stranger Song’ by Leonard Cohen, his words serve as narration in this cool way. There’s a line in that song that was sort of a tent pole mantra for my record.  I called my record ‘Heaven Hunters’ to try to capture this idea. The line in ‘Stranger Song’ is, “like any dealer, he was watching for the card that is so high and wild, he’ll never need to deal another”. The idea being that we all are chasing some big score, that will absolve us or free us from suffering. That’s what “heaven hunters” means to me, chasing this kind of heightened living in hopes to transcend your humanity and then hitting your late thirties and realising it doesn’t really exist. When trying to figure out how to talk about the themes of the record, it’s nice to have a line from ‘Stranger Song’ to point to. It’s also just a masterpiece of a film full of incredible songs.  

Good Will Hunting also hit me at a young age, discovering Elliot Smith’ songs that were the soul of the film. There’s also this masterful hand-off from Danny Elfman’s score into ‘Miss Misery’ that closes the movie, and leaves you with such a feeling.  

Speaking of Danny Elfman, there are so many examples on the film composition side, it’s hard to pick just a few, but I can talk about the one that got me into film scoring as a kid. Edward Scissorhands was my first love in film music. It was the one that made me aware that that was even a job. It came out when I was 5 but I discovered it when I was around 10-years old. The music was so fearlessly romantic and haunting and exciting. It’s the type of score where you hear three notes and the soul of the whole film comes flooding to you all at once. It also had this warped re-imagined element of teen romance and impossible love that made it more poignant. It made my 10-year old brain fall even deeper in love with Winona Ryder than I would have anyways; it made their love story feel tragic and grounded and also fantastical all at once. A real magic trick. It was so youthful in it’s spirit. I remember learning all those cues on the piano and wanting to score films when I grew up because of Danny Elfman’s music in that film. Such powerful stuff. 

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Emile Mosseri’s debut album, ‘Heaven Hunters’ is out now.

Words: Emile Mosseri

Photo Credit: Joe Talbot