Composer’s Notes

Sundance 2019. Steaming on Hulu.

Reviews: Los Angeles Times, Decider, Wall Street Journal.

The documentary is (rather astonishingly) made 100% from archival material.

The team wanted an overtly electronic score. This may seem unconventional, but this was an intentional contrast to the visual limitations of older 4:3 archive video. The directive was also to say - we are looking how Wallace’s past shaped today. So we took a current approach to the material.

The flip side is that the score is nearly always working under network broadcast dialog. Which tends to keep a certain pace designed to hold the viewers’ attention on its own. So the music’s goal was to provide the context, what we knew of Wallace’s emotions at the time, and keep the dialog at the center.

What I saw in Wallace, beyond his obvious confrontational nature and showmanship, was a deep restlessness. Searching.

Ultimately, his job was simply to ask questions. And what emerges (rather brilliantly) in the edit of the film is that Wallace was not merely asking questions for the sake of a good interview. He seemed to asking because he really wanted to know the answers.