John Powell Talks Happy Feet and Mad Max 4

Happy Feet enjoyed a second weekend at the number one spot in theaters over the Thanksgiving holiday. Given its focus on music it's no wonder a heavy burden fell onto the shoulders of composer and arranger John Powell. He recently sat down to talk with SoundtrackNet to discuss Happy Feet, X-Men: The Last Stand and some of the projects in the works.

When asked how he got involved with Happy Feet and its director George Miller, Powell explained "I first got a call four years ago to meet with director George Miller about two projects. One was Mad Max 4, and the other was Happy Feet. I spent a day with George, and he asked me to do both films. Mad Max 4 didn't happen, but Happy Feet has taken up all of his time, and certainly a lot of my time over the past nearly four years. It will be four years in January, ever since I first sat down with George to go over the movie and figure out how we were going to do all of this music."

Four years is an extraordinarily long time to work on a film's score, but when music is such a big part of the film it makes a lot of sense, especially when you're starting from scratch. He continued, "[The music] was all suggested in the script, but not specifically in any way. There were some specific things in there, but I can't remember if any of them stayed; the ideas were there, and we had to turn it into reality. George didn't know exactly how he wanted it to go. He wanted to play "chicken and the egg", basically with it. So we'd start with an idea, I'd take it, do something, then he'd react to it, pass it back, and so on and so forth for four years."

Speaking of Mad Max, Powell shared freely his feelings on the script and his interest in working on the film if it came around again. Would he do it? "I hope so!" he said. "I mean, they hired me for it before, I hope they'd hire me again. I think George enjoyed doing the music for Happy Feet, the scoring and everything we did together. It's an amazing script - I saw the script four years ago, and it's quite an extraordinary script!"

You can check out more of the interview at SoundtrackNet.

For more information on the Happy Feet sound track, check out CB's Review.