Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score to David Fincher’s “The Social Network” is an incredible piece of work vacillating between ominous, yet melancholy tracks (“Hand Covers Bruise“) and the more pulsating electronic tracks (“In Motion“) that keep the already fast-paced picture propelling forward. While it won’t be recognized by the Academy come Oscar time, score aficionados are likely going to be rocking it on their iPods long after the film has been released.
And yet when Fincher first approached the Nine Inch Nails frontman to do the score, Reznor said he wasn’t in a good state of mind and actually turned down the gig. “And of course it gnawed away at me,” Reznor said in a recent L.A. Times interview. “I got back in touch with him in late winter or early spring and apologized again and asked him to keep me in mind in the future [on other projects].
Of course the tenacious Fincher knew all along that Reznor was doing the score and had never taken his no for an answer. “He said, ‘No, what are you talking about? You’re doing this one.’ ” And that was pretty much that.
While the “The Social Network” filmmaker had already directed the Nine Inch Nails music video “Only” in 2005 (see below), the reasons why he pursued him for the score were simple. “I wanted to work with Trent,” Fincher said matter-of-factly at the recent New York Film Festival Q&A. In fact, he was planning it all along, long before he had even contacted the musician with his proposal. “We had [the rough-cut] temped a lot of the movie to Nine Inch Nails’ [2008 instrumental and experimental album] Ghosts I–IV already, the conceptual studio album they did in like two weeks,” Fincher noted.
Conversely, and contrastingly, the film closes with The Beatles “Baby You’re a Rich Man” which in a very Fincher-ian way, is transformed into a much more sardonic and acidic kiss-off given the way the drama concludes. It’s a musical stroke of genius and transports the film to another level.
“When we were shooting the final deposition scene and I was listening to my iPod and I heard the Beatles song and I thought, ‘We might be able to get away with this,’ ” Fincher noted in the Q&A. “I played it to Jesse [Eisenberg] and he nodded his head which, you know, is his form of approval and then we tested it. We laid it under the scene and then [before we watched how it worked] we played the entire movie and I remember going, ‘yeah, I think that’s gonna work.’ “
“The Social Network” score by Reznor was released on Tuesday September 28th. The film has already opened in New York and for the rest of the country it hits tomorrow, Friday, October 1.
NIN’s “Only” directed by David Fincher