40+ years into his astounding composing career, Hans Zimmer has truly transcended the world of film. At this point, the man is the soundtrack to our every moment.
Open TikTok, for example, and you won’t have to scroll long before hearing Zimmer’s iconic “Cornfield Chase” from 2014’s Interstellar or “Time” from 2010’s Inception. Wander the streets and you’ll likely hear someone humming the iconic opening voice from “The Lion King” or the theme from “Pirates of the Caribbean”.
In many ways, the moment that crystalized what Zimmer has contributed to culture was his performance at Coachella 2017, a moment that set a new course for the prolific composer, and one that he’s incredibly proud of—”I made grown men cry!” he exclaims to us.
While Zimmer still is turning in some of the best work of his career in film, with Dune: Part 2 set for release later this year, he has also become an incredibly popular touring musician, selling out Dubai’s Coca-Cola Arena this Friday, January 27, with a second show added for January 28, for which some tickets are still available here.
Getting to this point, however, has come after four decades of collaboration with some of the greatest names in film. “I don’t think there’s a director that I’ve worked with that I haven’t learned something from,” Zimmer says.
For Esquire Middle East, Zimmer breaks down some of the most important lessons from several of his favorite teachers.
Hans Zimmer’s greatest teachers, in his own words
Denis Villeneuve
There’s a lot I learned about filmmaking from Denis, but there’s something bigger I learned from him: How to lead with kindness. It’s quite remarkable. I can’t think of any other way to express it, he truly leads with kindness. He has an absolute respect for his crew, and such a love from his crew. And it’s a wonderful thing to see.
David Attenborough
It’s only recently that I really started to do the right thing, and it came after I worked with David Attenborough. I realized that, what I’m doing, what I’m using my talent for—in a funny way—is to seduce humanity into believing in itself and to believe in this planet.
The great thing about what David does is he doesn’t control us, he doesn’t try to bully us into being good about nature and tell us off about how we’re polluting everything. He does something quite different. He just makes us fall in love with nature. And I realized I can help that.
After all, music is a good way to fall in love. I mean, I can’t lie. As a teenager, being able to play the piano has its advantages.
Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas was one of the first filmmakers I ever worked with—I worked on his films Eureka and Insignificance that came out in the early 80s, when I was just starting out. He was one of my first big teachers.
I remember one day he came in and he wanted to hear something. And I said, ‘no, no, it’s not ready. It’s not perfect yet.’
He just looked at me and he goes, “only Allah is perfect.” And I realized what he meant. He was saying, ‘No, play it now. Be courageous. Play it, play it, because there’s always another chance to go to get better, but never don’t have the courage not to play things.’
Years later, as I started making Interstellar with Christopher Nolan, Chris had us look at one of the first movies I did with Nicolas Roeg. I was a very young composer at the time. My name wasn’t even on it. But I could actually turn to Chris and go, ‘you know something, I did that.’ It was a moment I was really proud. After all that time, I remembered those words from Nicolas. He was right all along.
Penny Marshall
I did A League of Their Own with Penny. It was set in the 40s, and it’s all women, other than Tom Hanks, who has a small role, really, even though he got the famous line, ‘there’s no crying in baseball!’
When she approached me for the film, I said to her, ‘I can’t do this. I know nothing about the 40s, I know nothing about baseball, I know nothing about jazz music, I know nothing about America.’ She said, ‘Exactly. That’s why I want you to do it. Let’s go explore.’ She was one of those people who take a chance on you because you’re a bit of an explorer.
I would ask Penny sometimes, ‘how do you make a good movie?’ I would absolutely learn anything I could from her, because she was so smart. She responded, ‘Make a good movie? It’s easy. All you have to do is protect your main actor.’ You have to protect your protagonists. You can’t let them say anything stupid, wear anything stupid, and if you focus on that character and who they are, the story will group itself around them. That kind of focus has helped me.
There’s other things I learned from Penny, too. In Awakenings, she cast Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. I said to her, ‘so you gave Robert De Niro the funny role, and Robin Williams the serious one?’ She goes, ‘yes, because I knew that they could, and nobody ever asked them to. I knew they were going to. Bring something to it that nobody expected.’
She was such a great teacher.
Stephen Frears
We made My Beautiful Launderette together. I loved, loved, loved that movie. There was a young actor on it called Daniel Day Lewis who no one had ever heard of. The film barely had a budget. But from Stephen, I learned what was really important. Even if we had no money, we had ingenuity. We had imagination. And together, we managed to make something very special.
Ridley Scott
I’ve learned 1000 things from Ridley. His voice echoes in my mind constantly. One time he said to me, off hand, ‘sentimentality is unearned emotion’. I always thought that was a good way of putting it. I’m painfully aware of not manipulating with my music—it has to come from somewhere true, and if the feeling isn’t there, you can’t force it.
Sometimes his best lessons weren’t just from a good line, however. I remember my first theme for Thelma and Louise wasn’t very good. He came in to listen to it on a Saturday, and sat there for a moment quietly. After a beat, he turned to me and said, ‘I’ll come back on Monday.’
I said alright, and I worked all weekend, and I gave him the theme that’s in the movie now. He listened to it and said, ‘Sometimes fear is a good motivator.’
James L Brooks
He’s a man who can write comedy like nobody else. He’s a true savant, and one of my best friends, but from years of watching him work, I’ve seen how hard it is to come up with such genius that sounds so easy.
I remember one we made together, the movie came to about five hours long—five hours he’d slaved over, killing himself to make it so funny. And I remember sitting there, watching him throw away an hour and a half of priceless jokes. All of them, straight into the toilet. I can’t even tell a joke, let alone make one. To me that was impossible, but he was right—it was a better movie when he finished.
Tony Scott
First of all, I learned from him total recklessness. I remember a dubbing engineer once said, ‘I just worked on the hardest and worst project of my life, and I just worked on the best project of my life, and both of them are Tony Scott’s fault’. It was always like that.
I learned about color from Tony. I remember Tony wanting me to look at something and I was in London and he was in Los Angeles, and he literally sent a man from British Airways with a small little portable video player with a screen that he had color corrected with the exact colors he wanted me to see to have me experience what the colors were going to be.
I really, truly, and totally loved Tony, but he was a terrible liar. One day he said to me, ‘Ok, on this True Romance movie, we’re going to have a huge budget for music.’ I was so pleased—finally, everything I’ve always desired. Then he finished hooting the movie, and he came to me and said, ‘actually, I spent all the money. We now have money for nine musicians.’
I didn’t take it badly, I thought, ‘yeah, ok, that’s what we’re going to do. What can we do with nine musicians? Let’s use our imagination.’ We ended up using marimbas, one of the most useless instruments in the world, but there’s something charming about them.
Everything we would do together, he would tell me, ‘it’s not weird enough, it’s not extreme enough,’ We used to do commercials together, and it was always the same thing. We would make a commercial we were really proud of, because it was really weird. And we would go show it to the client, and the client would go, ‘this is really weird.’ And we would go, ‘yeah, isn’t that great!’ They would say, ‘No!’ We’d have to go back and fix it, but he made me realize, those restrictions, and that impulse, are why we had to make movies. We had to do it, because we were weird.
Pharrell Williams
From him I learned, listen to your friends, say yes a lot, and then say, ‘Oh my gosh, how are we going to do it?’ Because you’ll make it work.
He persuaded me to go to the Grammys with him, which was a great honour, and I got a text from him saying, ‘can we meet at the Grammy offices on Wednesday at 9am to figure out what we’re going to do?’ I thought it was just going to be Pharrell, and maybe a producer or director, but I walked into the room, late, and there’s a huge long table of people.
The first thing the producer said to us is, ‘you’re not going to do ‘Happy’ again, of course. And here’s the thing—the only plan we had to do was to do ‘Happy’. And we said, ‘no, no, of course we’re not going to do ‘Happy’!’.
This was happening at the time that Eric Garner was strangled, and so I said what we were going to do was have a choir come out, and the first thing you will hear is an inhale of breath. And then the two of us just kept riffing from there, and everyone was clapping for us—for this thing we made up literally on the spot.
I learned that sometimes you just can’t freeze up, you have to trust that sometimes your big brother, as he calls me, or your little brother, as I call him, are going to get you out of trouble. We were just riffing, and by the time we did it at the Grammys, it was really good—it really was.
Pharrell taught me to be more reckless, because life is short. Be more in love. Grab every moment you can to pay attention, to be in love, and to feel joy. And be playful! Music is about play.
Hans Zimmer in Dubai
You can see Hans Zimmer live in Dubai on January 27 and 28 at the Coca-Cola Arena. Tickets are available here.
Find more from Hans Zimmer here.
Video coming soon directed by Faisal Hashmi