Says Andrew Dominik Only Liked Half Of An Early Score He Wrote For ‘Jesse James’
It was very likely going to be case anyway but Australian musician Nick Cave has now confirmed that he’ll take on scoring duties for John Hillcoat‘s upcoming adaptation Matt Bondurant‘s “The Wettest County In The World,” which he also wrote the script for.
“I’m doing another one with John Hillcoat,” Cave explained to Triple R. “I’ve written the script and it’s been greenlit, it’s set in West Virginia, or Virginia actually. He’s filming in Georgia, that’s all going ahead. It’s about the moonshining industry back in the depression. It sounds terrible, I know, but its really good. It’s very exciting, exciting watching it developing from the sidelines. Then I’ll come in at the end to do the music.”
The cast currently boasts Shia Labeouf, Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke and Dane DeHaan for the story of three brothers running a bootlegging gang during Prohibition whose moonshine dynasty in Franklin County, Virginia is threatened by the authorities wanting a cut. Labeouf and Hardy will play two of the three brothers with the final lead still unconfirmed (possibly Clarke?) or uncast.
The interview also touched on Cave’s past Playlist-favorite cinematic work including Hillcoat’s “The Proposition,” which Cave also scripted, and Andrew Dominik‘s “The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford,” of which Cave praised Casey Affleck for his performance and Brad Pitt for helping Dominik stick by his guns. — evidently a move he pulled on Cave and collaborator Warren Ellis as well.
“[My work on ‘Jesse James’] was being recut all the time, I mean, Andrew Dominik is a friend but he really knows what he wants. We handed in a score for that film and he came back saying, ‘Well I like half of it and the other half I don’t like.’ We’re like ‘What!?’ (laughs)… He kept sending us back in. We went in [the studio] about three times and did that extra stuff and worked on — which is kinda normal stuff for scores we found out. But he really pushed us and and got us to do something I think that’s really extraordinary with that score. It was largely due to his vision that that score is as accomplished as it is.”
In addition to this, Cave also has an adaptation of his novel “The Death of Bunny Munro” in the works which was set to reteam him with Hillcoat and Ray Winstone for a HBO-style series for U.K. television.