Bugonia Composer Jerskin Fendrix Finds Inspiration on the Toilet

Photo courtesy of Jerskin Fendrix.

Welcome to SOUND ADVICE, Interview’s weekly destination for playlists curated by our friends, enemies, and lovers. In recent weeks, we’ve featured playlists from Harris Dickinson, Maggie Lindemann, and DJ Thank You. This week’s installment comes from Academy Award-nominated composer Jerskin Fendrix who—like Hans Zimmer and Christopher Nolan, John Williams and Steven Spielberg, and Joe Hisaishi and Hayao Mizayaki—has found the director who matches his freak. That would be Yorgos Lanthimos, who’s enlisted Fendrix to score his last three features: Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, and now the the debauched dark comedy Bugonia, a remake of the 2003 South Korean sci-fi comedy film Save the Green Planet! The film follows two conspiracists who kidnap the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company, played by Emma Stone, believing her to be alien. But it’s Hendrix’s big orchestral sweeps that really had us hooked, so we asked him to make us a playlist, linked below, and answer our Sound Advice questionnaire, in which the 30-year-old composer sounds off on pop queens, guilty pleasures, and Bugonia‘s “flatulent” soundscape.

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Earliest memory at the movies? Zero such recollection. My older brother got to see the Disney’s The Hunchback Of Notre Dame in the theatre and regards it as the best opening five minutes of any cinema experience ever. I am still jealous.

All-time favorite film score? This is difficult, there are so many of such surpassing emotion, beauty, intensity. I think often of the Norm Macdonald quote, “It’s one thing to make people laugh, it’s another to make people smile.” So I elect the theme from Wallace & Gromit, by Julian Nott.

Where do you discover new sounds? On The Toilet.

Dream collaboration, dead or alive: I’m going with alive just in case this provides any leverage. To be in the same room as Joanna Newsom making a song would destroy my heart. And also Bob Dylan.

Describe Bugonia’s soundscape in three words: Emotionally Violent. Flatulent.

Who do you think is secretly an alien? That nice little boy from E.T.—the one in the bike basket. Always looked kinda funny to me.

Name a song in this playlist you wish you wrote: I think wishing to have written someone else’s song is like wishing to wear someone else’s skin. I have been doing a lot of piano shows recently, and any time I listen to a Nina Simone concert I have such desire to be able to play like her, and to sing with such clarity, like jamming a giant hypodermic needle into someone and inserting the feeling. Also, I remember stories about songwriters getting really mad at Bob Dylan’s song Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright. To have whipped out such an effortless, perfect, devastating breakup line. Anyway, I am feeling the same rumblings in the community about Geese’s Au Pays Du Cocaine.

What did Yorgos Lanthimos teach you? How to trust.

What’s a music taste red flag? Non-existent. Seeing any music taste as a red flag is the red flag. Would you see someone’s baby photo as a red flag?

Favorite sound effect: Jaw Harp Boing. Illustrated masterfully by Justin Hurwitz’s theme for Babylon. Alt: First yawn of the morning, from someone you are in love with.

Where do you dance? In the shower, hungover. Whenever I take a shower hungover I listen to The Wanderer by Dion, without exception. Also I like to leave the door unlocked on the off-chance one of my friends will stick their hand through the curtain and proffer me a “shower beer.”

What was it like filming with Emma Stone for your music video “Beth’s Farm”? Semi-daunting, but the amount of support for my solo music shown by Emma and Yorgos and the rest of the troupe astounds me with its kindness. For every single take Emma did I took about five takes to get it right. So if I am even one-fifth as good as Emma, then that’s good enough for anybody. Also her acting advice is extraordinary, and I will selfishly guard it with my life.

What is your guilty pleasure? Gossip.

What was your reaction to your first Oscar nomination, and what was a memorable moment from the ceremony? Here’s the secret—it doesn’t process and it never does. It is a thing to share with your loved ones, rather than for yourself. You have long-suffering friends and family who struggle with adjectives to politely explain your weird dumb songs to people. Then you get to gift them a little signpost instead. I took my family to the ceremony. Once you get to take your mum to the Oscars, everything else is just a bonus.

Who is the Queen of Pop? SOPHIE. I do not believe any musical death in the 21st century has so violently altered the trajectory of pop music than hers. I think about what she would have done next, even though I would be so powerless to execute it.