HEART OF THE BEAST is doing very well it’s 3rd week out! The film has grossed a worldwide total of $131.4 million!
After a harrowing plane crash, Special Forces officer James Belmont (Brad Pitt) and his combat dog, Odin, find themselves stranded deep in the Alaskan wilderness. Together, they are forced into a brutal fight for survival against the elements. From acclaimed filmmaker David Ayer, HEART OF THE BEAST is an intense adventure thriller that explores the unbreakable bond between a man and his best friend as they face their greatest battle yet.
The Paramount Pictures film starring Pitt, J.K. Simmons and Anna Lamb is in theaters now
In his review, Jim Batts says the film is “a journey full of terror and surprising tenderness. It’s this love and devotion that propels and powers the HEART OF THE BEAST.”
Composer Jared Michael Fry’s score for HEART OF THE BEAST, the third for director David Ayer, truly conveys both the danger and vastness of the external forces the protagonist faces while reaching into his most intimate emotional life.
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In my recent interview with Fry, we discussed his authentic, culturally specific score. Combined with the vocalizations of the award-winning Alaskan Inuit group Pamyua, the musicians anchor the film with just the tone of their voices and their language, evoking an earthy sound. The composer found himself “reinventing the wheel” for a compelling, emotional score for THE HEART OF THE BEAST.
Michelle WAMG: Hey Jared, how are you?
Composer Jared Michael Fry: I’m good. Thank you very much. Nice to be here to chat about some music
Michelle WAMG: I loved the film. I’m a huge David Ayer fan, so when I saw the two of you were working on a third film together, I was super excited.
Composer Jared Michael Fry: That’s awesome.
Michelle WAMG: I want to ask you first, how were you brought onto the project? Did he say, I got another film. Let’s do it.
Composer Jared Michael Fry: A little bit like that. David is awesome. So, since The Beekeeper, The Working Man, this one’s way different. We’ve just been working together. It’s a good team. It’s a crew. I feel very fortunate.
I mean, the same music editor, the same sound effects team, so really like having worked with David Ayer now a third time, I’m really like, you know, kind of meeting the crew if you will, you know and I know, I know things aren’t always going to be the same like that, but it has been a really cool team and everyone was up for the challenge and we did it. David, I mean, he’s phenomenal. I love what he did on this one. Really opened his heart, I’m so blessed by that. I know a lot of directors have their guy and I’m more than happy to be David Ayer’s guy.
Michelle WAMG: Especially after he and Brad Pitt had already done Fury together. So, when I saw that they were doing another film and especially the subject matter, war veterans, especially combat veterans, Brad Pitt playing James and the service dog Odin, and both of them suffering from PTSD.
Your cues, especially “The Letter” at the very end, and “The Final Mission” were so impactful, so emotional. When you were starting to work on the film, what type of orchestra did you have in your mind that I have got to have these certain pieces of these instruments to really bring across the emotions of the film?
Composer Jared Michael Fry: I think even before that, “The Letter” was one of the first suites or themes that I was writing before I even had a picture. And literally that cue, “The Letter”, I wrote that piece of music, we put it up against that and it was working. Obviously picture changes and we conform and what not.
Early on writing, at the piano, we’re just writing the themes, that chord progression. It’s very simple, but when I read the script and I’m absorbing it and I’m just trying to feel when I read the story, and just to convey that, that’s what came out. I think strings were a shoe in, and there’s a lot of strings in “The Letter”, it’s mostly arranged for strings.
Some woodwinds that were included just based off the early stages, the characters in the wilderness, we’re trying some things out. It’s kind of a spiritual story, the thoughts are brewing about, are we going to bring in the Inuit culture into this story and what not? All those sorts of things were developing, but to get to that stage in the story the journey is at its end.
You’ve got this very American hero, a military veteran, but he’s in Alaska and he’s encountering something and the influences of another culture are kind of coming in. I think in a way that’s sort of like James kind of coming up against his next “battle”. I think it felt good to, to keep it kind of more of that kind of cinematic American sound.
The writing of it was rooted early on the piano, just playing those chords and that theme and that launched quite a bit of the score. “The Letter” certainly was an early piece to hit, to catapult the rest of it.
Michelle WAMG: Can you talk about what you were thinking about when trying to include not only the orchestrations, but those amazing vocals you included?
Composer Jared Michael Fry: We recorded the London voices along with the strings in London at Air Studios and the idea behind that choir was, you look at the landscape, try to match the cinematic depth of what you’re seeing and just getting the voices in a hall like that. We wanted that grandness. The story and the challenge of this score was capturing so huge, but then being extremely intimate at the same time. Hopefully we achieved something, so with the vocals, we had the larger group and then kind of broke them down into kind of a smaller group within that group.
We had some of the vocalists singing more like world vowels, instead of your tame “ahs” and “oohs,” it was “azzz!,” really shouting just to enhance the drama and almost lament some of the drama on screen. I have to talk about Pamyua, the group that I reached out to in Alaska and their group is Inuit soul, but they’re just so connected to the culture that I had from the group, Philip Blanchett. He actually wrote some lyrics too, and their language, their poetry is connected to this story and it was a perfect marriage of the story that we were telling. It was so fitting for this story. And it just works. To bring them in and their culture in so many early discussions, we’re talking about the wilderness as a character, his encounter with death when he goes down in the crash, there was a lot of discussion about is he actually even alive? Is it an underworld journey? That inner kind of story happening inside James that they just have the Inuit culture that Pamyua brought, just studying it and dissecting it and just diving in. There’s just language for the connectedness of you and the awareness of the nature around you. It plays on that big, beautiful, but also threatening and dangerous.
Michelle WAMG: It wasn’t filmed in Alaska, but still these big scenes and then just them playing in the wilderness where he’s letting Odin be a dog and he’s throwing and he’s playing catch with him and the music’s building and it’s just perfect. It’s such a nice blend, the earthy tones and the vocalizations of the Inuit group were just spot on.
Composer Jared Michael Fry: When they’re on many of their journeys, there’s a piece that comes back and I borrowed from a lot of different cultures actually in the instrumentation because I just wanted to add that they’re always connected, like that sound, that music when I wrote their love theme, it has an A section and a B section. It’s in the score, at the beginning when they’re flying, then it’s also on the album, the track “Heart of the Beast” at the end of the album in its full nature that unfortunately is not in the picture, but we recorded it and it was so good.
That B section, I turned that melody into chords and those are the chords that kind of accompany their journey, so it’s always had that connection of their love story, or that bond that they have. Just by bringing all that in and being able to write with them, what a joy. I’m glad it’s got something that has worked and is inspiring.
Michelle WAMG: There were two cues, these soulful piano solos. One of the track listings, “Because You Gave Everything” and then “From Here, Forward” and the film’s credits list Nathan Williamson as piano soloist. There’s all this epic music and what you would expect from this type of adventure of him and the dog and then there’s two beautiful piano solos. When did you decide to go with this?
Composer Jared Michael Fry: I gotta be honest. I actually fought against putting piano in the score. That came down from the producers, from Brad Pitt himself and David Ayer in the end, that intimate piano sound at the very end. As an audience member myself, along with my thoughts and feelings about the score, and my intention for what I think is David’s vision and getting across the story. But it’s interesting, now that the film’s out, I’ve seen it still multiple times, see the response and actually see it for what it is myself, I’m a believer. It was a great decision by the filmmakers to have that intimate piano there.
We actually recorded the score and then we had a pickup session. I didn’t go to London a second time. I’m blown away by Nathan, because in one day he recorded about three pieces and that’s phenomenal. It was such heart with beautiful performances.
Michelle WAMG: The violin (Eloisa-Fleur Thom) and cello (Ian Burdge) soloists were exquisite.
Composer Jared Michael Fry: I think it brought us all to tears when they were recording those solos at the end of the day. I’m just so grateful for the London Contemporary Orchestra and the leader conductor of that, Hugh Tieppo-Brunt, and Ed Farmer who also conducted the last day, but Hugh listened to the music before we got involved and he handpicked these players that were going to perform. They just crushed it.
Every time we get to record live, I’m always blown away by just the human artistry and emotion that comes through because I mock up these demos that over the course of my career have been the final product sometimes, but it is so much better to collaborate with professionals at that level. They’re just so wonderful and when you hear them play and, and then you’re able to convey, “okay, no, but here, just hold back, just to give us a little bit more.” They jump on every bit of that.
Michelle WAMG: Composing for The Working Man and The Beekeeper, very different movies from this. Do you find yourself working on projects like the Jason Statham films, and then you’re presented with a project such as Heart Of The Beast, that’s totally different, where you’ve got to totally shift gears?
Composer Jared Michael Fry: Yes. I had no idea where to go. I had no starting point for this. Out of the many films that I’ve done, I’ve done quite a bit of horror, quite a bit of action. I love it. We all have heart. We all feel things. That’s why we do what we do. Even in the Statham movies, The Beekeeper and Working Man, you’re always looking for the heart. This one just wears its heart on its sleeves a little bit more.
Every project with David is a completely different sound palette, if you will, but when you’re doing action and when it’s Jason Statham, you kind of know this scene needs this, right? To be successful, to be entertaining, to drive it forward. Whereas this one, all those tropes are completely thrown out the window. And we certainly went through a discovery process with this movie quite a bit. At one point, it was a much more adventurous score and much more adventurous story.
It takes hearing, constant collaboration along with revising and talking and dissecting, so it took some time to get to this story when we started stripping back, and the word is restraint, when that became a big theme in the story and letting the picture, the edit, just everything speak for themselves. Our focus was that deeper story underneath it all and playing to that. Things started clicking and I’m glad we found it.