Emmy-winner Jeff Russo scores the 2018 Sundance Film Festival entry Lizzie – a re-imagining of one of the biggest crime sensations of the 19th century.
Premiering at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, Lizzie unravels the mythology of the infamous Lizzie Borden who is best known in the context of the “40 whacks” nursery rhyme. Reimagining the sensationalized crime story of the late 19th century director Craig William MacNeill and star/producer Chloë Sevigny set out to tell the story through the lens of gender and class and shed light on a possible relationship between Borden and her chambermaid (Kristen Stewart).
Having first gained notoriety in the 90s with the band Tonic, composer Jeff Russo has become one of the most prolific television composers in the last five years with notable work on The Night Of, Star Trek: Discovery, Extant, Legion, and his Emmy-winning work on Fargo. Russo is now the composer of the 2018 Sundance sensation Lizzie and spoke with Awards Daily about why the period piece will resonate so strongly with audiences today.
What first drew you to Lizzie?
I had worked with Craig William MacNeill the director on a miniseries called Channel Zero. We really hit it off and worked well together. It was an overall great experience. About a month and a half later he called me about his next project, Lizzie, and asked if I was interested. He sent me the script and it was really provocative. I really like dark and brooding material and I knew I wanted to be involved. It was really great collaboration and timing that made it all happen.
Recently Lizzie Borden has had a resurgence in popular culture with multiple projects exploring the mythology around her. What sets this film apart from the other stories?
The film studies this whole event from a different perspective. It tells the story of Lizzie Borden through the way the whole gender was treated back then. There was the issue of women not being able to inherit their father’s fortune. In this case Lizzie was already past the point of being able to find a husband at her age. So it looks at the story through the repressed female aspect of it as well as the love story between Lizzie and Bridget the chambermaid. It was a great way of telling the story by framing the relationship in a way that affected her relationship with her father and stepmother.
I feel like that type of storytelling is important and resonates so strongly now because of what is happening in the media and the world. That’s what makes more people interested in it is because of the timely topic. It is a way to look at the story in a completely different perspective. I had never thought of it in the way it was told because I had ever only heard her story in the context of the nursery rhyme of 40 whacks.
With Lizzie having just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival general audiences won’t likely have a chance to seek out the film and your score until later on in 2018. How would you describe your work on the film?
I approached the score from a sparse point of view. I’m a person who really enjoys the use of silence to accentuate the incoming score. The score only has as much of an impact as the silence behind it. We wanted to approach the score by not over-scoring the movie and allowing those quiet moments to exist. That was a really important factor.
There is also an emotional through line that I wanted to make sure I followed that underscores the relationship between Lizzie and Bridget. Also, I wanted to keep people off balance because the whole movie is an uneasy feeling. I was trying to walk that line of feeling emotional and feeling uneasy because it was complicated for Lizzie and Bridget.
Did you have any specific musical influences while working on the project?
The choice to use strings in a more baroque way was the direction I wanted to go in because it felt right for the late 1800s. For me the easiest way to get to the emotional aspect was to draw from the violin, cello and viola to drive home the emotions. I didn’t draw from anything specific just my thoughts of what it would sound like with that specific instrumentation.
You have had a long career as a musician and in the past five years your career as a composer has really blown up especially with television. Are there any major differences in the composing process between film and television?
Movies are significantly different from television in terms of many technical issues like scheduling as well as figuring out how to tell a story in a condensed time frame. In general I approached Lizzie musically the same way I approached Fargo, as far as trying to figure out what the themes are for the film and characters, and evoking the themes when it would take the viewers to another level. Overall I wouldn’t say there is much of a difference at all between the two mediums.
Do you have a favorite scene or piece of music from the film?
There are two pieces that I am particularly fond of. I’m particularly fond of the Bridget and Lizzie theme which is fleshed out in a scene where they first have a physical moment together. That was one of the first pieces I wrote and is very near and dear to me.
Another one of my favorite parts is the end credits. The most emotional content of the entire film is in the culmination of the movie, which has the Lizzie melodic theme and is quite evocative to me.
Were there any unique challenges while working on Lizzie?
The unique challenge was that they were mostly doing the post-production in New York while I was here in LA. I was able to spend a few days with the director here and there but then he would go back to New York. He would send me scenes and we would go back and forth. I got to do the scoring session in a vacuum because no one else was here. It was a complex process.
Where can audiences catch your work next?
I have a new show on Starz called Counterpart. I just finished up a little show called Star Trek: Discovery that is finishing up the first season right now.
The most important thing for me that I love and is dear to my heart is Legion. The second season should be coming out this spring. We talked a lot about what the music should be for Legion and I settled on this hybrid of electronic, rock-n-roll, orchestra, and all kinds of stuff. I am so enamored with making the score because it’s so much fun. It’s one of those projects where all bets are off and I get this sandbox and am able to play and have fun. Overall I just love the show.