Journalism is a funny business, and it’s changed a lot since I started in 1973. I saw Phantom Thread on November 25 and immediately felt that Jonny Greenwood’s score could be a serious Oscar contender. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have gotten an interview with him the very next day. But my story was due the day after that, and there was only room for a short piece in the Variety music section that was published December 11. So I condensed a 1,400-word Q&A down to 400 words. Since then, he’s been nominated; there’s a great deal of talk about it; and he’s coming to L.A. for the Oscars on March 4. So we decided to publish the complete interview, which sheds considerable light on the music and the scoring process with director Paul Thomas Anderson.
Tag Archives: Jonny Greenwood
Analysis of the original-score Oscar race
Every year Variety asks me to analyze the music races for the Academy Awards — not really handicapping them, as that entails choosing favorites, which I don’t like to do. But examining the five nominees, quoting the composers, hinting at what’s important about each, and subtly suggesting what Academy voters might be thinking. Alexandre Desplat’s The Shape of Water is the current favorite, but I think you cannot count out Jonny Greenwood’s Phantom Thread or Carter Burwell’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Hans Zimmer’s Dunkirk and John Williams’ Star Wars: The Last Jedi are admittedly outsiders at this point… but the Oscars love to surprise us. This story appeared only in print, so please click on the images to read it here.
Oscar music nominations analysis
As always on Oscar-nominations-announcement day, I have written a kind of “instant analysis” of the song and score categories — who was nominated, who was not, and a bit about the background of the nominees. The lead of my story — the fact that two major pop names, Diane Warren and Jonny Greenwood — remained intact even though editors chose to highlight a “Taylor Swift snub” in the headline (something I have nothing to do with). But that’s about attracting readers to the story. The story itself is solid and filled with data about John Williams’ 51 nominations, Greenwood’s past history with the Academy, Warren’s failure to win despite eight previous nods, and whose recent wins may be a factor in whether they win again. It’s on Variety‘s website today; I will be writing new stories on the topic for print over the next two weeks.
Jonny Greenwood on “Phantom Thread”
Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, who rarely grants interviews, made an exception to talk to Variety about his music for Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film Phantom Thread, starring Daniel Day-Lewis in what may be his final acting role. Greenwood was fascinating, talking at length about his mostly piano-and-strings score for the period piece about an enigmatic London couture figure and his model/lover. Of Greenwood’s four films for Anderson (including the remarkable There Will Be Blood), this score stands the best chance to get the composer his first Oscar nomination.
This year’s Oscar contenders for best score, song
Every year we try and assess who has the best shot at a nomination for the original-score Oscar. Eight of the 12 profiles in this year’s Variety Oscar-music section are mine: Marco Beltrami, Danny Elfman, Michael Giacchino, Jonny Greenwood, Henry Jackman, Clint Mansell, Thomas Newman and Steven Price. (Colleague Tim Greiving penned the other four: Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard, Gary Yershon, Mark Mothersbaugh.) Tim and I also collaborated on this year’s overview of Best Song possibilities.