‘The Gray Man’ Composer Henry Jackman on Re-Teaming with the Russo Brothers and the Complexity of Composing
The Gray Man is Netflix’s latest original blockbuster. Helmed by the Russo Brothers and based on the 2009 novel of the same name, the film revolves around a CIA operative (Ryan Gosling) who becomes hunted by a rogue sociopathic assassin (Chris Evans) after discovering damning secrets about his agency.
The film is a globe-trotting game of cat and mouse, equipped with the effervescent vision of the Russos. That vision is only enhanced by Henry Jackman’s insightful score. From the 17-minute long titular opening suite to the pulse-pounding closer “Always Gray”, he delivers one of his best sets to date. It’s so good, in fact, that you probably wouldn’t believe that he began working on it days after becoming a father for the first time.
Speaking exclusively with FilmSpeak’s Griffin Schiller, Jackman says, “The original idea was, I wasn't going to do any work.” This was in March of 2021. The Russo Brothers were busy shooting the film , and Jackman didn’t really have to work on the score until that December. “I was actually going to be a good dad and change diapers and stay up all night,” Jackman adds. And he basically did that…until one call from the brothers got his wheels turning.
He says, “They called and said, ‘Hey Henry, I'm sure you're gonna get like a big thing going and all that action stuff, but [we wanted] to put it out there to remind you. There's this other emotional thread. And you might want to think about that musically.” Almost instantly, Jackman says he was inspired to work on something. Without any of his profession equipment nearby he explains, “I did this little piano thing, which I just banged into my iPhone, as a sort of contemplative, moody, slightly dark, slightly troubled harmonic piece that would sort of represent this ghost in the machine. And I thought nothing of that.”
But that little piece of inspirational improv evolved into the previously mentioned 17-minute long suite. Not an entirely unconventional piece, but one that you wouldn’t find in most film scores. When asked why he thought he would be given the freedom to work on something so ambitious for the film, Jackman called the Russos “brave.” He says, “There's a sort of this radius of creative possibility [surrounding them]. It isn't infinite, but it's very wide.” He also compared working with them to training under a Jedi, in that sense that there were a few times where he became unsure if he was the right one for the job. He recalled one particular piece that he spent two days on. Despite his growing doubt, he said that Joe and Anthony always reassured him by telling him, “Take a big swing at it. What’s the worst that could happen? You could miss, but at least you took a swing.”
Jackman built up that trust and relationship with the Russos after working with them on Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, and even their last film Cherry. The latter of which he believes they did not get the respect they deserved. He says, “People want to think that either you stay away from big blockbusters, and you're a kind of well respected indie filmmaker, or you're a great talent who is very successful with big movies.” Between their Marvel movies, Cherry, and now The Gray Man, Jackman believes the Russos are capable of both. “I would be very disappointed if they don't [continue to] seize the opportunity to do other movies,” he added.
Jackman didn’t just speak about The Gray Man or his admiration of the Russo Brothers though. He also discussed his idea behind the music in Captain America: Winter Soldier. He said that a lesson he learned from Hans Zimmer early on in his career propelled his approach. “The greatest education I got from Hans is music must always serve story,” he said. “I was just thinking, the Winter Soldier, if it means anything, is a tortured human soul, sort of like Robocop gone horribly wrong… there's a tiny bit of him still in there, but there's a screaming tortured soul inside a metal case. And he's the sort of ruthless assassin. So I thought to myself: ruthlessness, brutality, human tortured, entity stuck inside metal.”
Jackman also spoke about how that similar thought process helped him arrive at some of the themes in The Gray Man. “It doesn't have all of the DNA,” he says. “There are things that came into being as a result of doing the individual cues for the film. There's an arpeggio motif that shows up in the score, which came to denote the sort of nefarious espionage kind of lurking [in the background] and the underworld as it were, which wasn't in the suite.”
It wasn’t long before he came up with creating the film’s iconic “screaming” percussion. “That percussion [was] a natural, creative reaction to the actual story and the circumstances that give rise to that villain,” Jackman adds.
He explains that The Gray Man’s overture similarly has each character’s themes built in, and then as the film goes on “everything gets deconstructed.” He then described how Chris Evans’ Hanson was a prime example. “When you first meet Hanson, it's those brass boards,” he says. “It's a much slower character cue, but it's the same brass chords - literally the same voicings - as they show up in the [opening] suite.”
In the interview, Jackman also opened up about why he’s such a fan of octatonic scale. Frequently used and made famous by one of Jackman’s personal influences Alan Silvestri (Back to the Future, Avengers: Endgame), the eight-note scale presents contains limitless possibilities. At least according to Jackman, who praises the technique’s “scrunchie, weird” tonality. He goes on to say that whenever a film’s harmony isn’t explorative enough, he becomes “bored”, and thinks it’s easy for the audience to become bored too. “I don't mean that everything has to sound like John Williams, with notes flying around all over the place,” he says. “Modern film scores quite often will have a slow rate of harmonic movement…I'm not saying it has to be very thematic or melodic, or casually virtuoso or anything, but just the simple act of exploring harmonies and chords, particularly when someone's crazy or villainous, it's always [enjoyable].”
Jackman concluded the interview by once again praising the Russo Brothers and how seamless the transition from script to execution was. Comparing his experience working on The Gray Man to his time scoring Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer, he says, “The script was a long, long way from the book.” He added that the knowledge he’s acquired since then, as well as the previous experience working with Joe and Anthony was a proved to be a plus in this instance. “The more experienced you get, the more when you read a script, it stops being a bunch of words and character names and space. It starts to evoke things.”
He explained, “If you read a script, there's so many different ways to skin a cat that the same script in the hands of three different directors [could] be completely different movies.” But he also emphasized how the importance of knowing the “tendencies” of his collaborators. That familiarity was not only a cog in the larger machine, but the key to effortless success.
“Once you really start working on some ideas, they often take on a life, where you feel like you've lost control, but the ideas are asking you to follow them and pursue them.”