Settling the Score With Linda Cohen

The music supervisor for "There Will Be Blood" and "Pieces of April" on bringing tunes to films.

“Pieces of April”

This film was written and directed by the very talented Peter Hedges (“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”). Stephin Merritt was our composer. As the whole movie leads up to an end sequence where Katie Holmes character has her estranged family over for a Thanksgiving meal, we decided that the piece of music for that scene was the most important and needed to be written first. We talked about it with Stephin and he went home to write and came back just a few days later to play us what he had written. We thought he was going to bring us a CD of the track, but instead he came in with his ukulele and played the song he had written for us in the bathroom down the hallway — for added reverb effect! When he finished, Peter and I were blown away by the result. It was a very unique experience.

“American Splendor”

Because the story of “American Splendor” centers on the comic book writer Harvey Pekar, who has a love of jazz music, we naturally included a lot of jazz music in the film. To make it more authentic, we asked Harvey for a list of his favorite tunes and put several of them in the film, one of them being “Ain’t That Peculiar” by Marvin Gaye. Harvey’s friendship with fellow comic book writer Robert Crumb also led us to using music by Crumb’s band — R. Crumb and His Cheap Suit Serenaders, a string band that plays music in the style of the ’20s. Every film dictates the type of music needed and leads you to new discoveries. It’s one of the reasons the job is so fun — you get to experience different types of music on every project.

Linda Cohen’s latest work includes the forthcoming biopic “Amelia,” the George Clooney military satire “Men Who Stare at Goats” and another collaboration with the filmmakers of “American Splendor,” called “The Extra Man,” which just wrapped shooting in New York.

[Additional photos: "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," Columbia Pictures, 2008; "American Splendor," HBO Films, 2003]

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