Musician Owen Pallett has revealed that he is currently composing the score to John Cameron Mitchell’s upcoming drama “Rabbit Hole” but will have to leave his work potentially incomplete and in the hands of producers.
“I think I’m actually not going to be scoring it, despite the fact that I’ve scored it,” reveals Pallett, the braintrust behind, Final Fantasy, and sometimes a member of the Arcade Fire, who has now reverted back to his real name and shied away from his video game nom de plume for legal reasons. “The producers are really, really happy with the work that I’ve done so far, but I was clear with them really early on that I had to stop working as of, like, this week because I’ve got to tour a record and they haven’t even locked the picture yet.”
Pallett is touring on and off this year for his new album Heartland and seeing that producers went into this partnership fully knowing it would end prematurely, surely the work he has put in so far will end up being utilized, no? But Pallet is fairly skeptical.
“I know [the score] would be really good for the film, but it doesn’t work like that in Hollywood. You have to have 20 people happy with every nuance of every instrument and, basically, they didn’t get it to me early enough for it to work with my time schedule. Which sucks, because I’ve been working on it for the last three months.”
Adapted by David Lindsay-Abaire from his own Pulitzer-Prize winning play, “Rabbit Hole” the project stars Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as a young couple trying to cope with the accidental death of their young son and has already been earmarked as a potential 2010 Oscar contender. The involvement of Pallett, indie-rock’s go-to guy for string arrangements, would definitely add another layer to the already impressive bow that is the film. Here’s hoping it all pans out.
A renowned string instrumentalist and composer, Pallett collaborations include the likes of Grizzly Bear, Beirut, Patrick Wolf, Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner and is also reportedly working with the Arcade Fire on their upcoming third album. This isn’t Pallett first venture into cinema either; he previously worked with the Arcade Fire on the score for Richard Kelly’s “The Box” and hopes to collaborate with director Cary Fukunaga and musician Beirut on a potential upcoming musical should that project ever get off the ground (Fukunaga is set to shoot an adaptation of “Jane Eyre” in March and the musical feels like it’s a few years off). [Owen Pallett photo by Ashley Jordon Gordon]