Film on the Radio

14 Jan 2020

San Junipero – Transcript

CARLA: Hello and welcome, I’m Carla Donnelly and this is Film on the Radio – your weekly deep dive into the scores and soundtracks of the films you love. Thanks to This Australian Life for bringing us in with intimate stories from our LGBTIQA+ community.

Last week we discussed the magnificent score to the 2013 film Under the Skin. Go back and listen if you haven’t already. It’s a wild ride. Composed by Mica Levi – she was the 5^th woman to be nominated for a Best Original Score Oscar. Which is disappointing considering the category has existed for 84 years. We talked a lot about women in composing, specifically film composing and how few there are. But never fear we will be covering some amazing female composers in the last 2 weeks of this summer series. Next week we’ll be listening to Bjork’s incredible score to the film Drawing Restraint 9, and the final show I will do a roundup of Sia’s extensive film and TV work.

But speaking of women in composing – listeners I have amazing news as in the past week a woman has won the Golden Globe Best Original Score – Hildur Guðnadóttir won for her work on Joker. A classically trained cellist (I’m seeing a theme here), she has worked and toured with many punk and drone bands like Throbbing Gristle and Sunn. Additionally, she is the FIRST SOLO FEMALE COMPOSER TO WIN THIS CATEGORY. That is insane. Such wonderful news and one to seek out dear listeners.

This week. We’re covering the score to the San Junipero episode of Black Mirror. If you’re not familiar with the series Black Mirror is dystopian anthology series on Netflix, with each episode containing a single storyline. Black Mirror examines where technology can take humans in the not so distant future (spoiler it’s all pretty horrific). San Junipero is universally considered the most upbeat of all the episodes. It follows the love story of Yorkie and Kelly, staged through the online world of San Junipero – a Miami type beach city. The women follow each other, temporally jumping into different decades. I will try to not spoil it for you because you really should see it.

The temporal shifts and nightclub setting provide an incredible backdrop for the soundtrack and score. I’m choosing to focus on the score today by Clint Mansell but I will also play a few songs from the enormous, unofficial, soundtrack. Let’s kick things off with the “San Junipero” title track and “Faith, Hope, Fear & Falling in Love”. You’re on Joy.

MUSIC: “San Junipero (80s-90s-00s-??s)” – Clint Mansell, “Faith, Hope, Fear & Falling in Love” – Clint Mansell

CARLA: Welcome back! You’re on Joy 94.9 and this is Film on the Radio. Each week we dive deep into a soundtrack or score of a single film – except we’re mixing it up a bit this week and covering a TV movie San Junipero which is also an episode from the Black Mirror anthology series. Widely considered one of the best TV episodes of 2016 – it won two Prime Time Emmys – for writing and television movie. It follows the lesbian love story between Yorkie and Kelly – let’s listen to the trailer.

CLIP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrQjjYncvDg

CARLA: You’re on Joy and that was the trailer to the Black Mirror episode called San Junipero. A must for all of you who seek queer content. The score is written by Clint Mansell who is a very well-known composer. Some you may be familiar with his work – his most popular scores are Requiem for a Dream, Moon, Black Swan and Ghost in the Shell. He has worked extensively with the director Darren Aronofsky. This score was released on vinyl (of which I’m happy to say I was able to get a copy recently) which created a flurry of interviews about his work on this show. Here’s an interview from the Quietus discussing his work on the San Junipero score:

“A lot of people say this episode is the most critically acclaimed of the series, and definitely by having a happy ending it’s fairly different. Why do you think people were particularly attracted to this episode?”

Clint Mansell: I think it’s a really great bit of writing and it’s a great story. The way it unfolds is sort of surprising without it feeling forced upon you. I think the fact that yes, it has a happy ending, but also the fact that it’s a same sex affair and relationship and that the ages are quite different—it just has so much going for it. The performances were really good and the writer and director sort of pushed me into a slightly different area than I usually work in, sort of like John Hughes movies, which is as far from my work as you can generally get. I think the director Owen Harris came to me and needed something completely different than what I’m normally used to, and, though I don’t think I went entirely John Hughes, he sort of pulled me in that direction.

“I suppose something that you could say is different about this project is that you have to lead in and out of pop music from multiple different eras, whether it be ’80s club music or ‘Heaven Is A Place On Earth’ at the end. Was that particularly challenging or is that something that influenced your work?”

CM: You get to do a fair bit of that in film, really, but it just depends on the piece. I did Filth which has quite a lot of songs in it and getting in and out of those is basically the same as trying to blend from one cue to another. You just have to blend with the incoming or the outgoing and I try to make it all a bit cohesive. Maybe if you listen to it all together you can actually still pick up the story. You don’t want to pop your audience out of the story, unless you specifically want to do that for some reason, but not intentionally.

The songs were already in place, obviously the big one being Belinda Carlisle, but then the scene where they first dance together but Yorkie runs off—there’s a moment there where the song fades out and the score fades in and to bring that together it also had to be very choreographed with the source music. But that song was already in place so I didn’t have to worry about it changing, and that helped me work with it.

“The score for Black Swan worked very directly with Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan Lake’. Was there anything for ‘San Junipero’ that you drew on specifically for inspiration?”

CM: It was quite a difficult time for given me given the subject matter because I was still grieving over the death of my girlfriend that happened just over a year before I was working on it. That undoubtedly shapes your output and the things that you hear, and I partly heard it differently because of my emotional state. Those things combined with the John Hughes-influenced, calm electronic score gave me inspiration. The characters are going through similar emotions to what I had been through. It took us a while to find the music that plays on the beach, because even though I had that piece written quite early it floated around as whatever stage I had it at and whatever the stage the rest of the score was at it wasn’t all sitting together right. With some pushing and pulling it eventually all came together. I’m fortunate in the way that lots of people I’m working with will give me broad strokes to allow me time to experiment and find what I’m looking for. So I guess all of that bundled together was my inspiration.

“In writing music that does drive the emotion of the piece so much, do you normally find yourself associating with a specific character or moment to get that tone across?”

CM: It’s a process that for me isn’t very analytical. I really like to absorb the project and watch it and work on the music a lot and just get the feel for it until eventually a moment comes where I know I’ve got it. A lot of it is trial and error. Some days a piece of music doesn’t work and then the next day a different piece doesn’t work and then the third day another piece of music finally says something and works with the picture and suddenly casts a light on all the other stuff you’ve done—probably because my mind is getting to understand it and the piece is educating me. I always feel like the score is in there already somewhere and I just have to channel it and accent it. The show and the storyboard will let you know what’s working for it and what isn’t if you listen to it.

Let’s listen to some more of Clint Mansell’s work, these tracks are “Tick Tock (Clock of My Heart)” and “Night Drive” from the San Junipero score. You’re on Joy.

MUSIC: “Tick Tock (Clock of My Heart)” – Clint Mansell, “Night Drive” – Clint Mansell

CARLA: You’re on Joy and this is Film on the Radio. Each week in this special summer series we are diving deep on a soundtrack or score. Talking the creation process, interviews with the music supervisor or composer. Talking the marriage of music to film and its power. If you’d like to hear more, please add us to your favourite podcatcher – our entire back catalogue is there. We also have transcripts of each episode if you prefer that or know someone who would appreciate it.

If you’d like to get in touch you can message our social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter @filmontheradio. You can also email us at filmontheradio@joy.org.au. I’m your host Carla Donnelly and if you like my work you can check out my other podcasts Club Soderbergh (about the films of director Steven Soderbergh), re:Discovery (a Star Trek Discovery recapper)and Across the Aisle which was a Melbourne performing arts criticism podcast.

This week we’re discussing the score to the Black Mirror episode San Junipero by composer Clint Mansell. I was lucky enough to see him perform a collection of his scoring work in 2015 at the Melbourne Recital Centre. It’s been the only score related concert I’ve been to. Not by design as I would like to go to more but I’m not a huge John Williams fan and these seem to be the only scores that are played by orchestras (Star Wars… Home Alone). Video game scores also get a fair bit of live performance, again a genre I’m not that much of a fan. I don’t really play video games so I’m not that familiar with these scores. I’d adore to see any of the scores that I’ve done a show on, performed live. Especially Phantom Thread – is there any super connected people out there that can advocate this for me? Get in touch!

And you dear listener – have you gone to see any scores or scoring performed live? I’d love to hear from you if you have, tell me what you saw and what drove you to go. Reach out to filmontheradio@joy.org.au.

San Junipero is a rare beast that is just as much score as it is soundtrack. The score was released on vinyl a year after the episode and is now a rarity in its picture disc form. But the soundtrack is equally compelling. It is not released officially – Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror’s creator and this episode’s writer, also served as music director. He created a playlist of all the songs in the episode, and songs he wanted to be in there but couldn’t get the clearance. I’ll link to it in the show notes but it’s a whopping 42 song playlist. Here’s Charlie Brooker in Vogue:

“Why did you choose to set the characters of “San Junipero” in 1987? Why that specific year?

Several reasons: One, I wanted to do a period episode. Two, I’d read that some people were worried that after Black Mirror went to Netflix it was going to be all Americans. So I thought, “All right, fuck you. Opening scene: California.” I was deliberately trying to upend what a Black Mirror was. If you think about the first episode of the third season of Black Mirror, you probably picture it’s someone in the year 2045 scowling at the app store. So I thought, let’s not do that. So 1987—I think I would have been about 16—it felt like a really good era to anchor it in. It was shiny, it’s aspirational, and it just felt like the perfect place to revive this sort of simulation, with this heightened, movie-fied version of 1987. And then there’s huge nostalgia for me. All the music I said I hated, I secretly loved all of it; T’Pau and all of that. It was a great way for me to indulge in all those guilty pleasures. To go back and revisit all of that music people claimed to hate in 1987. In the ending, I did want to do something where you saw them in loads of different eras, like in the 1920s. It’s so much fun when it jumps to 1980, and 1996, and 2002.

Let’s listen to a few tracks from Charlie Brooker’s music direction here’s T’Pau with “Heart and Soul” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” by Whitney Houston.

MUSIC: “Heart and Soul” – T’Pau, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” – Whitney Houston

CARLA: You’re on Joy and that was T’Pau with “Heart and Soul” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” by Whitney Houston. These tracks can be found on the unofficial San Junipero Black Mirror playlist. Which I have linked in the show notes on our website.

We’re coming to the end of our show and as regular listeners know I love wrapping up with some film trivia… here’s some quotes from IMDB:

“This episode’s soundtrack is somewhat unique in that it was ultimately released on all four listening platforms: CD, digital, vinyl and cassette (the latter two being an obvious nod to the main time period in which the episode is set).”

“Charlie Brooker heard the song ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’ whilst jogging when it came on a 1987 Spotify playlist. He immediately knew it was perfect for the story and couldn’t relax until they had cleared the rights to use it.”

“Every song played in the episode is somehow related to the plot.”

“San Junipero (or St. Juniper) was a friar during the early 13th century. One of the most famous stories about him is The Legend of the Pig’s Feet. He was known to aid the dying by granting any task they would ask in their last days. Much like the “cloud” in the episode, which helps the dying experience what they did not or could not do in life, “their dying wish,” as it were.”

And this is from an interview with the Telegraph with show writer Charlie Brooker:

“Though Brooker originally conceived the story with a heterosexual couple, he thought twice about his own assumptions and decided to make his lovers women. “I think it gives it an extra resonance,” he told EW, “because they couldn’t have legally got married in [the real] 1987, so we’re gifting them that in this world, in this story of second chances. That adds a whole extra subtext about reliving your life and exploring things you didn’t have a chance to do.”

The upbeat tone also moves the show away from the “dead lesbians” TV trope, where a disproportionate number of lesbian characters are killed off tragically onscreen (Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lexa in The 100 are notorious examples). Brooker conceived the happy ending partially to subvert that trope – though technically both characters do die to achieve their idyll.

The film shot in and around Cape Town, which episode director Owen Harris says allowed him to “create a version of California that felt slightly heightened because of this slightly strange quality.

“That heightened feel is only emphasised by the on-the-nose use of Belinda Carlisle’s hit Heaven Is A Place On Earth – a song the production cleared before doing anything else. “I would have been absolutely distraught if we couldn’t have done it,” Brooker said of Carlisle’s song.”

We’ll end the show on Heaven Is a Place on Earth – that has now been adopted as a lesbian anthem. But until then let’s play some more music from the score. Here’s “Waves Crashing on Distant Shores of Time” and “Endless Summer”. Thanks for listening this week. Coming up next is Triple Bi-Pass. You’re on Joy.

MUSIC: “Waves Crashing on Distant Shores of Time” – Clint Mansell, “Endless Summer” – Clint Mansell, “Heaven is a Place on Earth” – Belinda Carlisle