Life of the Party composer Fil Eisler on the key to staying inspired

As Life of the Party hits theaters, composer Fil Eisler talked to Culturess about growing up in Czechoslovakia, loving movies, and not repeating himself.

Fil Eisler is nothing if not versatile. Born in former Czechoslovakia and raised in England, the composer has amassed a résumé that ranges from thrillers (Proud Mary), indie dramas (To the Bone), soap operas (Fox’s Empire), and even documentaries (Newtown). Listen to any of his scores, and you hear a symphony of sounds, from classical melodies to electronic beats to jazz riffs — sometimes within a single cue.

Most recently, Eisler contributed to the Warner Bros. comedy Life of the Party. Directed by Ben Falcone and starring Melissa McCarthy, Life of the Party follows a divorced woman who goes back to college and enjoys it — perhaps, a bit too much. The movie comes to theaters this Friday, which gave Culturess an opportunity to chat with Eisler.

During our telephone conversation, the composer touched on everything from Soviet censorship to Star Wars and the thrill of cinema. (This interview has been edited for clarity and length.)

I’ll start by going into a little of your background. Growing up, what kind of music did you listen to? How did you get into music?

As you might know, I was brought up in what was then Czechoslovakia, which is now the Czech Republic. I was born in Prague, and I was there until I was about nine, when we moved to England. So, my earliest musical memories were of my grandmother, who was English — a piano player and a music therapist. She used to come to Prague, and we had a grand piano in the house that was hers. My earliest musical memories are of just playing with her on the piano. [We were] sort of making up stories more than music. I think as a kid, you think of everything as stories, and that’s probably stuck with me as I’ve gotten into writing soundtracks for movies.

The other thing was that, growing up in Prague, we had very little music from the West. I was brought up on the eclectic, rather odd handful of records that my parents brought over from their time in England in the ‘60s. So, I had a bunch of the old Beatles albums and became a massive Beatle-head. And then, later on, we had Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces (which I still think is like a songwriting bible…), a couple of Deep Purple albums, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Dark Side of the Moon. What else is there? And a handful of jazz records — Oscar Peterson, Roland Kirk, Miles — and then a lot of classical stuff. So, that was the beginning, really, and it went from there.

What kind of music was available in Czechoslovakia? Was it mostly classical or traditional?

Well, music censored by the state then. The things that passed through were pretty hokey, pro-Communist things that, even as a kid, kind of felt like bulls***. But the classical music I remember from my parents was classical-classical music: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms. They weren’t much into the Romantic era, so I didn’t get into Mahler and Strauss and even Holst, stuff like that, until much later. Here’s the thing, and I should probably ask my parents: I don’t know how much modern music was around at that time. Stravinsky, and there were a lot of Russian composers who had a tenuous relationship with the Russian state before I was born. I wonder how much of that filtered through into Czechoslovakia in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. I’d have to look into that.

You mentioned that you played the piano. So you had sort of a classical training?

When I was very, very little, that was my musical education. I played the piano; I sang in the choir. But when we moved to England, that all kind of stopped.

I distinctly remember [that] not long before we emigrated, my dad picked me up from school with a guitar in his hand. I don’t even know where he learned to play! He just picked me up one day, and he had an acoustic guitar in his hand that he bought from the department store. He used to play songs for me, and I pressed him to play more and more until his fingers were almost bleeding. When we moved to England, I started pressuring him to teach me how to play.

So, around about the age of 8, I took up the guitar, and that just became my instrument. I fell in love with it, and that was pretty much all that existed for me throughout my teenage years: guitar and bass drums. Piano sort of fell by the wayside. It’s a shame because I have an absolutely useless piano player now.

How did you get into writing for film and TV? What made you decide this was what you wanted to do?

I spent most of my 20s wanting to be in a band. From my teen years to my early 30s, I was in a band. I played with Robbie Williams for about five years. It was a great experience. I got to tour the whole world; I got to play everything from clubs to football stadiums. It was a great thing to do when you’re 20. I wanted to move on, because I wanted to write music and not really perform somebody else’s music. But at that point, I wasn’t really thinking about film and TV.

To your question, I had a very interesting discussion with Marti Noxon [creator of Lifetime’s UnReal and AMC’s Dietland] a few days ago. This is the fourth project we’ve done together… so we talk about movies and music a lot. We were having a discussion about a movie called After Hours, which is a film that Martin Scorsese directed in, I think, the early ‘80s. We both went, “Oh my god, I loved that film.”

I remember that the cinema was like a religious experience for me. Every time a Scorsese film came out, it was like, when are we going to see it? At the end of that conversation, I thought, I guess that was sort of me preparing myself for what I was going to do later in life, even though I had no idea that’s where I was going to go. When I did start scoring movies, it all sort of clicked: oh, that’s what I was doing.

So, you enjoyed going to movies when you were young?

I was a huge movie buff. Scorsese and then Tarantino, Michael Mann… I remember seeing Goodfellas in the theater; I remember going to see Pulp Fiction in the theater; I remember going to see Heat in the theater. Those were really formative experiences for me. And what I liked about it was that there was no agenda at that point. It wasn’t like, I’m going to score movies; I need to study. None of that. I was just in love with it, and I was in love with it as I was in love with making music.

Was that after you moved to England?

Yeah, I wouldn’t have been watching Goodfellas in Prague. [laughs] That’s for sure. In fact, one of my earliest memories of watching movies in England was my dad sneaking me out of school to see Empire Strikes Back and [A New Hope] in a double bill. I had no idea what Star Wars was. In fact, I could barely speak English at the time. I remember being really confused by the American accents because I’d just learned to speak English with an English accent. I remember seeing Harrison Ford drawling away and thinking, what the hell is he saying?

The other thing I remember is, that was back in the day when double bills ran continuously. So, we came just at the end of [A New Hope], and it went straight into Empire. I was like, what is this story about?! I had no idea what was happening. After that, I watched [A New Hope] and went, ohhh, okay... I remember that really well — just being like, what is this? This is amazing!

Since your work is also something you enjoy, it can be easy to think of it as work and stress out about it. What keeps you passionate about music and film?

You know, I never consider it work. Absolutely, it’s hard work. It’s stressful. Deadlines, pressure from the studio, pressure from producers, pressure to deliver over and over and over again — those things are stressful. But I don’t ever think of it as a job, really.

It’s funny. I used to think of myself as lazy because I felt like I ever only worked at the things that I loved. But as I got older, I realized that’s a good thing. Because why would you want to waste your life, unless you had no choice, doing something you don’t love? A lot of people don’t have that luxury. And I think if you’re lucky enough to be able to do that, you should honor it. So, I feel very fortunate that I’ve gotten here. I never say, “I’m going to work, I’m going to the office.” Because it doesn’t feel like that. I’m going to play.

It’s definitely tough. Being a musician in general — if you’re on the road and you’re away from family and friends a lot — or you’re a composer, and you’re sedentary but you’re in the studio so much that you may as well be on the road, it’s tough. It’s tough on the people around you – it’s almost [tougher] on the people around you than it is on you. But it still doesn’t feel like work. That’s one thing: if I could bring that love of what I do to my kids, it would feel like I’ve done something right at least.

I understand that.

It’s a beautiful thing.

What inspires you to choose the projects that you choose?

Everything’s different. It usually starts with a story somewhere. If I’m lucky enough to be there at the early stages of something, it starts as a conversation with somebody — the director, or sometimes a producer, or even a writer — about an idea they have for a story.

Funny enough, I often get my first ideas for things then. Think of the first time you read The Hobbit, or Alice in Wonderland. Your mind has a reaction to it that you’re never going to have again because it’s the first time you’re hearing a story, the first time you’re hearing an idea. Right or wrong, I think those first ideas are quite precious. It’s the same with seeing a film for the first time. You’re never going to be able to replicate that reaction.

The more you watch a movie, the more it becomes about other things — about refining your ideas and… solving a puzzle, in a way. I think the first time you have a reaction to a film or a TV show or a script, or whatever it is, is the most visceral. And that is always what inspires me, and I try to hold onto that very tight.

For instance… on something like Empire, we’re about to do season five. It’s gotten beyond the point where we’re talking about story in terms of characters and stuff like that, because we know who these people are. We did that in the beginning. But now, I prefer it go to spot sessions. I don’t watch early cuts of the show. I wait to go into spot sessions, and I watch them with the director or the producer or whoever it is in this case, and I have my reaction to it there and then with them so we can discuss it… I think that’s what I find most exciting: sitting in a room and getting excited about a story with other people. That’s where all the sparks come from. Then, I just have to lock myself in a room and write, because that’s when ideas usually come.

There’s just something different about not knowing where a story is going. Like, if you watch it again, you can appreciate it in different ways, but it’s not the same.

Yeah. And you have to hone that as a skill too. Because you’re going to be in a situation as a movie composer where you have to watch things over and over, and you still have to come up with something.

The other thing is that your first ideas may not be the idea that sticks. They’re always a springboard that you can bounce off of. Even if it leads you somewhere completely different, even if it leads you down the wrong path, you sort of have to fail to do something great. Maybe the first thing that came into your head is not the best thing, and that’s fine. You have to get used to murdering your best idea, or what you think is your best idea, because if it doesn’t serve the film, then it’s useless. Think of something else.

But you’re right: your first reaction, you have to hold onto that. There’s a spark there that’s never going to be quite the same. You do a movie, and you watch it a hundred times. You can always try to remind yourself what that feeling was like — how that thing made you feel when it first clicked.

How did Life of the Party come about?

I just did a movie at Warner Bros. with Dax Shepard, and we had a great experience on that film – CHIPS. We just had a brilliant time on it. And one of his best friends is Ben Falcone, Melissa McCarthy’s husband and the director of [Life of the Party]. Ben was looking for a composer at the time, and Dax just literally rang him up and said, “You’ve got to hire Fil. Don’t look to anyone else.” We met up, and we got on great. It was so much fun. Ben’s an absolutely lovely guy to work with. Melissa’s lovely. They’re just nice people. You know what I mean? Considering that making movies can be a bit of a pressure cooker, it was just so genial.

That’s good. It probably helps that it’s a comedy, so you don’t necessarily have to go to a dark place to get into the mood. Do you approach comedies differently from how you approach, say, Empire, which is more of a melodrama?

Yeah, but at the same time, I try to approach everything with a blank slate and not going into things thinking, it’s a comedy! Therefore, we’re going to be using this. Even [with] a comedy, you still have to find a story. So, it doesn’t matter whether you’re approaching it via the emotions of the story, or maybe you’re doing something completely bananas. People still have to buy into the story on some level. So, it’s really the same conversation. It’s still about, what’s the story? What are the characters doing? Why are they in this situation? Why should I believe this?

That’s what’s really important to musical choices, not “How do we make this funny?” It’s either funny or it’s not. Music can’t make something funny unless you were really going for a broad, old-school slapstick approach. Even then, they were [also] melodramatic; there’s still something that gets to the heart of the characters… So, in that sense, my approach is not that different.

But, obviously, how the music ends up being formed and being orchestrated is very dependent on the material. It would definitely be different for something like Life of the Party than Empire. Oh, I would love to see what would happen if you transposed the Empire score onto something like Life of the Party. Maybe it would be brilliant in a completely unintentional way. Who knows?

Do you have a say in how the final score gets mixed into the movie?

I have been in situations where I’ve not been invited to be part of that process. But in general, I think the filmmakers that are most confident in what they do — and this isn’t just filmmakers, you can say this for pretty much anyone, but especially anyone who’s creative — they’re not afraid to surround themselves with people with strong opinions and people with a point of view.

I mean, that’s why you hire somebody, typically. You don’t tend to hire people for their lack of a viewpoint. I certainly wouldn’t be sitting at a mix looking over the mixer’s shoulder, because I’m not there to get in his way or tell the mixer how to do his job. But where I’m asked to, I certainly try to be part of the process from start to finish. Because when people want you there, you should be there for them. You have to protect your director.

That’s the whole thing. When you’ve been having conversations about a movie from the get-go –you’ve been discussing who these characters are and what the story is and what the shape of the movie is, and you’ve been there for the entire molding of it — I think it’s your responsibility to try and bring it to term. So, if I’m welcomed into that process, I try to be part of it.

You’re known for doing different kinds of music and different genres. Do you have a preference? Do you purposely try to keep your resume eclectic?

I do enjoy lots of different kinds of music, and one of the things I enjoy the most is trying not to repeat myself. If you think about bands that you really love — let’s take the most basic example, say, the Beatles… Please Please Me and “The White Album” are like two different bands. But you can still hear the same personality coming through. I think that’s exciting in any musician’s career, to be able to grow.

So, I definitely don’t have a genre preference. You know what my preference is? Great movie. That’s it. Just really good material. Movies and TV shows, whatever it is, it’s just getting to work with talented people. I think part of the attraction with film is that it is so eclectic. It’s a problem-solving thing, rather than waking up in the morning and going, ah! What am I going to write today? You kind of know what you’re going to write today. And that inspires you. That’s a gift, man. It’s so great to sit in… my studio and watch something and get excited about what the combination of music and picture should be. That infinitely excites me. I could never get enough of that.

I have one last question, which is: what do you think a good score is? How do you judge a score?

What makes a good film score? Well, that’s a very hard question to answer quickly. There’s no one-word answer… I think everything we’ve talked about for the last 20 minutes has been about something that elevates the movie that you’re watching.

Really great film scores stand alone as well; there’s something that’s very listenable away from the movie. But you have to remember that the picture dictates the music. So, sometimes it takes something incredibly minimal, which might not be the most exciting to listen to on its own, but when you combine it with the images it suddenly takes on a whole new life. I find it incredibly exciting and fresh when you watch a movie with a minimal score, but it’s just right. And it’s not minimal because the composer was out of ideas or too shy to make a statement, but because it’s right.

I think the best film scores are film scores… While it’s great if they can stand on their own two legs and be played at concert halls or whatever, a film score is [really exciting] when it just kicks the movie up to another level and pulls you deeper into the story. Because that’s why you’re in that theater. That’s why you paid money to sit in a dark room with a load of strangers and be thrilled and wowed and transported. So, that’s what a really great film score does: it transports you to that place, wherever it is.

Anything else you want to mention to our Culturess readers?

You know what? We talked about Dietland a little already, but that is something I’m incredibly excited about. Talking about eclectic, I know I’ve never written anything like that before. I’ve also never seen anything like it before. Whether that means it’s going to be successful, I have no idea because it’s out of my control. But I do know I’m incredibly proud of the work and everybody on it. So, that’s one to look out for.

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You can catch Life of the Party now in theaters. Dietland premiers Monday, June 4 at 9/8 p.m. CT.