Seattlest Interview: Mac McCaughan of Portastatic

SIFF saved one of its most intriguing film events for the last weekend of the fest: freaky director Tod Browning's silent film The Unknown, featuring Lon Cheney and a young Joan Crawford as circus folk. Creepy and twisted, the film itself warrants a viewing, but throw in an original score performed live by North Carolina-based band Portastatic, and this becomes a bonafide must-see. Seattlest talked to Mac McCaughan, indie rock godfather, about his work on The Unknown.

How did your experience creating the score for this film compare to that of scoring [Japanese silent film] Page of Madness a couple years ago?

Well the main difference is that for Page of Madness, it was a collaborative effort between all of us in Superchunk, but for this one I've just been writing on my own, and writing for instruments I'm not accustomed to, but ones that seemed like they'd work well together (trombone and oboe for instance). There was more improvisation in that score, and it was more "rock"... the instrumentation here -- strings, oboe, trombone, plus guitar, bass, and drums -- lends itself more to music that's possibly more dramatic and definitely less "pop," though I don't ever get away from that completely, I don't think.

Do you find it more challenging to score a film that's been out for decades, as opposed to the scores you've written for "modern" films like Who Loves the Sun and Looking for Leonard? There's certainly different considerations when preparing a score to perform live versus a score that you'll record in the studio.

Preparing to perform an entire score live is more intense in a way, because when writing and recording the score for Who Loves the Sun, I could do it in chunks, and also wasn't trying to fill up every minute of space in the film with music, whereas for The Unknown, since it's silent, I feel the need to keep stuff happening pretty much all the time, though some silence is effective. And live you only get one shot to play it, and you're playing for an hour straight, with not much room for error, in terms of losing where everyone is at in the movie -- all 7 of us have to be on it.

Another difficult thing about a narrative film like this (Page of Madness wasn't so linear) is walking the line between playing music that works but doesn't fit TOO easily into the storyline...we're trying to play against the super-dramatic feel of a silent film in some places, just to keep things interesting and slightly off-kilter.

Did you find yourself going to some very dark, weird places when working on The Unknown? After all, there's a lot of bizarre circus freakiness in that film, considering Lon Chaney stars as an armless knife-thrower.

It is a pretty wild film, violent and surreal in places, but I've seen it so many times now I think I'm past the creepiness and now tend to notice the humor in it in places where maybe I missed it the first time.

What's next? Besides holding down gigs in two bands, running a record label, and working on both live and recorded film scores, what else are you up to in your busy busy life?

This weekend I've been working with director Phil Morrison (Junebug) on some photos for the cover of the next Portastatic album, but basically at the moment I'm just consumed with The Unknown.

The Unknown with Portastatic
Friday night, 9pm at the Moore
Tickets: $20, some still available.