‘Nope’ Composer Michael Abels on Creating His Most Ambitious Score to Date for Jordan Peele’s UFO Drama
22.07.2022 - 20:47
/ variety.com
Jon Burlingame editorDirector Jordan Peele launched Michael Abels’ film composing career five years ago with “Get Out.” Now, for Peele’s “Nope,” the two-time Emmy nominee has written his most ambitious score to date.“It has all these different elements,” says Abels. “There’s the awe and wonder that the characters experience, but then there’s also the satire.
The Western aspects are both legit and satirical.”“Nope” combines science fiction, horror, and movie and TV sendups into a sometimes funny, sometimes horrifying experience. After a freak accident kills their father, Hollywood horse-trainer siblings OJ and Emerald (Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer) discover that there is a UFO hovering in the clouds over their ranch, and it just may be malevolent.
Their neighbor, a former child star (Steven Yeun) who runs an Old West theme park, finds a way to cash in on the phenomenon. It fell to Abels to find the right music for all of this.
He even wrote the theme-park music heard emanating from the bushes and buildings while tourists stroll by, inspiring him to brilliant takeoffs of both the classic American Western score (Jerome Moross, “The Big Country”) and the Italian spaghetti westerns that followed (Ennio Morricone, “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly”) for the same movie.“You can tell how much fun I had,” laughs Abels.The composer’s early music for “Nope,” relaxed and pastoral, gives no hint as to the frightening events to come. “Some cues have a heart, because this is really the story of OJ and Emerald, their relationship as brother and sister, and this adventure they find themselves on,” he says.Yet the wonder and mystery they experience as they realize they are on the verge of capturing footage of a real UFO turns into something
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