Only God Forgives

Director/Composer Interview: Nicolas Winding Refn & Cliff Martinez

Nicolas Winding Refn and Cliff Martinez are one of the best director/composer duos working in the industry, and are bringing the spotlight back to auteur filmmaking in a time where studio-curated franchises dominate theaters. The two have worked together on Drive and Only God Forgives, and The Neon Demon marks their third collaboration together. In this unique interview we get to hear from both Nicolas and Cliff together. We discuss how they met, why they work so well together, what it means to be an auteur in today’s industry and their process for working on The Neon Demon. Enjoy this short but sweet interview from two auteurs who are blazing their own path.

Interview produced and presented by Kaya Savas with Film.Music.Media

Cliff Martinez sends a warning:
‘The Knick’ season two will be ‘darker’

Cliff Martinez is hard at work on the score for “The Knick” season 2 for Steven Soderbergh, is mulling music for Nicolas Winding-Refn’s “The Neon Demon” and has at least seen the script for Harmony Korine’s next “The Trap,” which is perhaps his next firm gig.
Those names have been, erm, instrumental to Martinez’ rise as an in-demand composer (though for some reason he just can’t seem to hold down those outside, one-off commercial projects, dang it). Weaving organic, odd instruments in with electronic sources, the musician/writer has found natural creative companions in equally odd, forward-thinking and intuitive directors.
Martinez has been in these pages before, after massaging a cold, macabre and grand score out of bloodlusty “Only God Forgives.” His electronic soundtrack for Cinemax period drama “The Knick” is so gorgeous, the tracks stand boldly on their own. – by Katie Hasty

Read the full interview at HITFIX

VICE : NOISY : An Interview With Composer Cliff Martinez

Cliff Martinez is probably most known through his collaboration with filmmakers Steven Soderbergh and Nicolas Refn. The composer of Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Drive, Solaris, and Only God Forgives, Martinez has had the chance to set the mood for some of the best movies of the last few decades. In fact, a cursory glance through Martinez’s filmography will reveal a nearly flawless tract record. It isn’t just through his composing, however, that Martinez has received recognition. Beginning his musical career in the late 70s/early 80s punk scene, Martinez has had a career as diverse as they come; including putting in time with bands like the Dickies, Captain Beefheart, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, which awarded him a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Following the release of his latest work, the score for the HBO film Normal Heart, we caught up with Cliff to ask him about his transition from an LA punk to Grammy-nominated film composer. – Joseph Yanick, Jul 15 2014

Read the full interview at NOISY, Music by Vice

The accompanist: Cliff Martinez on scoring for Soderbergh, Winding Refn

Cliff Martinez at the Neuchatel Fantastic Film Festival

Meet the man who links Captain Beefheart, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pee-Wee Herman, Only God Forgives and the films of Steven Soderbergh.

Cliff Martinez is a movie composer with a difference. He is self-taught and comes from a rock background (he played drums for both the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Captain Beefheart). Since his first feature film score, for Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies and videotape in 1989, he has written music around 30 features, including several collaborations with Soderbergh (most recently 2011’s Contagion).
Alongside his Hollywood credits – Traffic, The Lincoln Lawyer, Arbitrage, Spring Breakers – Martinez has also worked with European directors. He was one of the guests at the recent Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival where he spoke in detail about his work with Nicolas Winding Refn and reflected on a career which has taken him from the Los Angeles punk scene of the late 1970s to composing for films of every shape and size. He is currently working on Fred Cavayé’s new action-thriller Mea Culpa. – Geoffrey Macnab

Read the full interview at BFI Film Forever

Cinematic Orchestrator:
Cliff Martinez recaps over two decades of film scoring

Cliff Martinez playing his Baschet Cristal

With Only God Forgives about to hit DVD, composer, former Chili Pepper and Captain Beefheart collaborator Cliff Martinez looks back on more than twenty years of soundtrack composition. It was his minimalist electronic score for Nicolas Winding-Refn’s Drive which brought Martinez to widespread recognition – his pulsing, understated compositions were absolutely vital to the film’s slick appeal, and with a deluxe vinyl edition released in the UK by Geoff Barrow’s Invada imprint, suddenly Martinez’s name was on the lips of every hipster and film fanatic … – by Bram E. Gieben

Continue reading at THE SKINNY

Cliff Martinez discusses composing music for DRIVE and ONLY GOD FORGIVES

Nicolas Winding Refn and Cliff Martinez

The director and composer behind Drive talk about karaoke, the beauty of camp, and their polarizing new film, Only God Forgives, starring Ryan Gosling.

Cliff Martinez photo by Ricardo De Aratanha

A few hours after my conversation with Refn, I ask Cliff Martinez, who composed Only God Forgives’ sparse, droning score, what he thought of the film after seeing it for the first time. “Nicolas called me right after I finished watching it,” the 59-year-old former Red Hot Chili Peppers and Captain Beefheart drummer laughs, with a hint of unease. “He seems to take pride in not listening to anybody, but he’s always all over you, like, ‘What’d you think?’ So I said, ‘Where did all the dialogue go?’ Nicolas’ answer was, ‘I never shoot everything on the page. If I did, there’d be no element of surprise, and where’s the fun in that?'” Refn then asked Martinez about one of Only God Forgives’ most graphic scenes, in which (spoiler alert) Julian plunges his hand into his murdered mother’s open stomach wound, apropos of nothing. “I told him it was really weird,” remembers Martinez. “He said, ‘What do you think it means?’ I said, ‘If you think it’s important that it means something, you might want to tell me.’ He never did.”

See the full interview at Pitchfork.com

Interviewly – Cliff Martinez on Reddit AMA – July 2013

REDDIT: Is it true that Beefheart pushed a guy down the stairs after he didn’t understand how to ”play a strawberry” on the drums?

CLIFF: The stairs story appears in Drumbo’s book but I don’t recall the line about “play a strawberry”. That’s very Beefheart though. I was asked to play “giant blue babies levitating over the mountain….you know, like Fred Asparagus dangling through the teacup”. I must have played it correctly because he didn’t throw me down the stairs.

Read the entire interview at Interviewly

“Ask Not What Art Is, But What It Is Not”: Nicolas Winding Refn And Cliff Martinez On ONLY GOD FORGIVES

It’s a little past 11 at night and I’m sitting in the bar adjacent to the Slaughter Lane Alamo Drafthouse in South Austin, Texas. Amidst the din of diners and drinkers I’m reading and rereading then rewriting my own scibblly notes I took from the just-attended-screening of Only God Forgives. The film’s director Nicolas Winding Refn, and its composer Cliff Martinez, are sitting in a dark corner of the joint, wrapping up an interview. I’ll then be up to bat. It’s still hard to fathom that six hours ago the three of us were amongst a small group firing guns at an indoor range (To read of that adventure click here). My first experience with a gun just mere hours behind me causes the violence in the film (especially the gun play) to feel ten times as powerful in its precision than it normally would. Slowly but surely I begin to understand the almost zen-like qualities one must be instilled with to truly and effectively enact violence on others. As I sit and wait, now doodling Ninja Turtles, this thought makes me a little uneasy. But I do not shut down to it. I stay aware of it. I stay awake to it. – Ben Umstead

Read the full interview at TWITCH FILM

ONLY GOD FORGIVES Advance Screening at Alamo Drafthouse in Austin with Director Nicolas Winding Refn and Composer Cliff Martinez

Alamo Drafthouse is proud to announce an advance screening of ONLY GOD FORGIVES in Austin on June 19th, with director Nicolas Winding Refn and composer Cliff Martinez live in person!

Most American audiences were introduced to Refn with his wildly popular thriller DRIVE. With ONLY GOD FORGIVES, Refn reunites with DRIVE star Ryan Gosling and composer Cliff Martinez to deliver one of the most talked about moves at Cannes (the film received simultaneous boos and standing ovations at its premiere).

ONLY GOD FORGIVES Advance Screening at Alamo Drafthouse

ONLY GOD FORGIVES – Cliff Martinez’s Mobile Studio

Cliff Martinez scores Refn’s ONLY GOD FORGIVES on his MacBook Pro in a hotel room in Thailand. Martinez often travels with gear in tow and is alarmingly productive considering how compact his setup truly is. Much of the score for Only God Forgives was composed in this very room using nothing more than what is shown here. -SCORE KEEPER

Read the full article at Birth, Movies, Death

Cannes Daily Buzz: Cliff Martinez Scores Again

Even though this was composer Cliff Martinez’s first trip to Cannes, his movies have been screening at the festival for years. He first made his mark on the event with his work on Steven Soderbegh’s first film, sex, lies and videotape, back in 1989. This year he was back in Cannes with Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives.

Martinez is an acclaimed composer; in addition to recent work with Refn and numerous projects with Soderbergh, he recently collaborated with Skrillex on music for Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers. – By Eugene Hernandez

Read full article at FILMLINC DAILY from Film Society Lincoln Center

‘Only God Forgives’ Composer Cliff Martinez
on Reuniting With Nicolas Winding Refn

It might be hard to believe, but this year’s Cannes Film Festival marked the first one to host in demand composer Cliff Martinez, whose work with frequent collaborator Steven Soderbergh helped land the then first-time filmmaker the Palme d’Or for his debut “Sex, Lies and Videotape” back in 1989. The former drummer (he played for the Red Hot Chili Peppers among other acts) has since had another film featuring his music, Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive,” play on in Competition. This year he made his first Cannes appearance in support of his second project with Refn, the ultra violent revenge saga “Only God Forgives.” – by Nigel M Smith

Read full interview at INDIEWIRE