Day One

The inception of Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar score is very similar to Gustavo Santaolalla’s Brokeback Mountain soundtrack. With the latter, Ang Lee sent a script to Santaolalla, who wrote and recorded the entire score before a single frame was shot. Lee’s genius was deciding where it all went — he played the music to the actors, and listened to it himself during filming. Those minimalist guitar motifs ended up guiding the making of the movie, and Santaolalla won the Oscar for Best Original Score.

With Interstellar, Christopher Nolan proposed a similar exercise — except there wasn’t even a script…