HOT TRACKS TRENT REZNOR

Trent Reznor, creator of Nine Inch Nails, is not your average Hollywood movie composer. The industrial-rock pioneer is an extraordinary musician, performer, and Internet innovator who's made music available for free and created complex online scavenger hunts.

So, it makes perfect sense that he (along with his collaborator Atticus Ross) scored the movie about the founding of Facebook. Here, Reznor talks to Lisa Robinson about how he made the compelling music for The Social Network.

LISA ROBINSON:

You'veproduced movie soundtracks and contributed music to movies (Natural Born Killers, Lost Highway), but you've never done a full score. How did this one come about? TRENT REZNOR: David [Fincher] approached me a year ago with the idea of scoring the him. I've always had great admiration for his work and was always intrigued by the idea of properly scoring a him. I read the script several times; David showed us a rough cut of about 30 minutes that gave me a sense of the pace and tone—then Atticus and I went to our studio and composed a couple of hours of music that just... felt right.

L.R.Did David Fincher give you any direction about the music?

T.R. He didn't want to go the traditional route of using an orchestra; [he] referenced some iconic electronic-based music like the score from Blade Runner and the work of Tangerine Dream. We used that as a blueprint, then jumped right in to blindly compose from a place of intuition and instinct rather than working to picture (which we didn't have at that point). We limited ourselves to various instruments; the acoustic piano, for example, represents the emotional center of the film.

L.R.What were your thoughts about the movie?

T.R. For me, this was a him about creation— the spark of an idea and the pursuit of following and nurturing that idea to its fullest realization regardless of the consequences. It centers on a hawed individual who wants to ht in, but manages to always maintain isolation. These themes are not unfamiliar to me.

L.R.Whose idea was it to adapt Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King''?

T.R. We were finished with the entire rest of the him, and I believe I may have actually said, "Wow, that went surprisingly smoothly." Then David suggested "In the Hall of the Mountain King"—"in the style of Wendy Carlos"—to tie in with the customs and dress of the actual Henley Royal Regatta. We spent several long weeks trying various ways to make that work.

L.R.Did your childhood classical piano training help you with this work?

T.R. Absolutely. After all that piano training, I spent years trying to "undo" some of the theory [as well as] the "correct" ways to do things as I moved into composition. With that said, I now am grateful for the foundation of knowledge because it really applies when arranging and voicing my work.

Of note, on-screen; While the best country music needs drinking and dialing, hard times and heartbreak, Gwyneth Paltrow delivers her songs in Country Strong with conviction; the movie's soundtrack also includes such "real" country singers as Lee Ann Womack, Hank Williams Jr., and Patty Loveless. In Black Swan, Tchaikovsky is accompanied by Clint Mansell's excellent score. Kanye West's short film Runaway also has ballet dancers, a bird-woman, themes about artistic conflict—and music from his latest masterpiece, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Additional standouts from movies this past year include Bryan Ferry in Somewhere,Serge Gainsbourg in Public Speaking, Iris DeMent in True Grit, Dinah Washington and Brian Eno in Shutter Island, Marideth Sisco's Ozark mountain songs in Winter's Bone, and Ray LaMontagne in The Town. (Oddly enough, Eminem's powerful "Not Afraid" was used only for the trailer and DVD ads for The Town—it's not in the actual film. Ditto for Kanye West's "Power" in the early ads for The Social Network.) And among the best music set to film was the New Orleansbased soundtrack for HBO's Treme and the early White Stripes song "Hello Operator" in director Antoine Fuqua's fantastic TV ad for Converse sneakers.

L.R.