Mark Mothersbaugh picks out his favourite film and TV scores
Mark Mothersbaugh might be best known for his role in the iconic New Wave band Devo. Yet the Ohio-born legend has also gone on to compose musical scores for several highly-lauded films and TV series. Devo first wrote a score for Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise when things with the band were winding down in 1987.
Reflecting on his work, Mothersbaugh said of the project: “We started it kind of like how Devo wrote an album. That meant we were doing it so slow that we ate up all the time we had to write the movie until it was two weeks before I had to deliver a final score and we only had about five or six minutes of the thing done.”
Eventually, Devo would split in 1991, and since that point, Mothersbaugh focused mainly on his new venture of providing film and TV scores. He has since become of the most sought-after composers in Hollywood. A few years back, Mothersbaugh selected some of the film and TV scores that he is most proud of making.
One of the most iconic of Mothersbaugh’s scores is the theme tune for Rugrats, the kids’ TV show that premiered on Nickelodeon back in 1991. Mothersbaugh said of the project, “The theme song is kind of Pavlovian. Little kids can be in another room and they hear that fake flute or fake guitar off a Fairlight they go, ‘Oh! That’s my show!’ And they run back into the room so they can watch. I figure that for a certain age group, if I’m homeless someday, about anywhere in the world, I can find somebody that’ll recognize that melody and let me sleep in their garage.”
The iconic film director Wes Anderson would go on to collaborate with Mothersbaugh in several of his movies, including Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. The collaboration began in 1996 with Bottle Rocket, Anderson’s directorial debut, starring Owen and Luke Wilson.
Mothersbaugh said of Anderson: “Wes is a real hands-on guy. He’s a real artist. I haven’t worked with him on his last couple films, but I don’t think that has changed. […] Wes was an awkward guy. He was a true artist, though. That’s what I always loved about him. I remember him trading away his royalties on the films to keep artistic control in areas where the director has nothing to do with, like marketing and things like that.”
There was nothing that Mothersbaugh was afraid of turning his talents to, and he would go on to provide the score for Thor: Ragnorok, perhaps a film that many would not expect him to do. Mothersbaugh said: “I’ll be honest with you. I never had a big interest in Marvel movies before doing this one. I remember going to see one that had come out, Captain America, or something. I don’t even remember.”
He added, “When I met the people at Marvel, I took the job not because of them so much. I took the job because of the director, Taika Waititi. What We Do In the Shadows, I thought, was so clever for a vampire movie. I had just watched it accidentally. I was flipping through the channels one night. I thought, ‘That is really great. Who did that?'”
Mark Mothersbaugh’s favourite film and TV scores:
- Joko Homo (Chuck Statler, 1977)
- Pee-wee’s Playhouse (Paul Ruebens, 1986)
- Rugrats (Arlene Klasky, Gabor Csupo and Paul Germain, 1991)
- Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson, 1996)
- Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)
- 21 Jump Street (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, 2012)
- The Lego Movie (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, 2014)
- Thor: Ragnorok (Taika Waititi, 2017)
- Tiger King (Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin, 2020)
- The Willoughbys (Kris Pearn and Rob Lodermeier, 2020)
