Whether it be an all-knowing young geek, a friend-zoned sap, a bunch of sarcastic tech bros and two oldster Hollywood mensches, leftie rocker-turned-composer Jeff Cardoni knows how play with the band for an eccentric company of men. But though he’s scored dumb as a board to smart as a supercomputer guys, Cardoni’s encounter with the administration-wrenching dunderheads called The White House Plumbers sets an impressive new record when it comes to playing any number of tunes to bring down one dirty administration.
When Justin Theroux’s fascist-loving G. Gordon Liddy gives testament that “we will be laughed at as third-rate burglars forever,” he couldn’t have imagined that his foiled democratic break-in at the Watergate Hotel would net its biggest prize in a Nixon mocking cottage industry of movies and tv shows, nearly all of which take aim at his incompetent operatives. But it’s HBO’s show, courtesy of “Veep’s” David Mandel, that really goes for the sardonic, and then serious gusto of the bromance conspiracy between Liddy and Woody Harrelson’s haplessly strait-laced E. Howard Hunt, one that only nets them and their hapless commie-hating cohorts’ national disgrace at bringing down the kingpin they wanted to serve at any cost.
The charm of Jeff Cardoni’s score for this 70’s-set show is potpourri of styles that assembles its own plumbers from the inspirational likes of “Oceans 11,” “The Conversation,” “JFK” and of course “All the President’s Men” in evoking the most awesome secret agents these neo-fascist nitwits are in their own heads. Effortlessly swinging from jazz grooves to melancholy piano, clock-ticking rhythm and throbbing, bell-gonging modernistic suspense scoring, Cardoni’s soundtrack is far more dexterous than its subjects that it hears as inept, vile, likeable, pathetic and by the end empathetic as the show gets decidedly more dramatic. It’s an evocation of a 70’s scoring era that couldn’t sound more contemporarily vital, while at the same time grooving with nostalgia for republican lackeys who’d like to swing the national clock scarily back if not for American history’s biggest dyke burst.
Tell us about your scoring start.
I had as long and windy a way into scoring that anyone else had. Forced to play piano at a young age, rebelled by learning drums and guitar. Played guitar in Indie rock bands which led me to LA via a music supervisor friend. I took film scoring classes at UCLA Extension, then just spent a bunch of years trying to find any type of scoring jobs. Hung flyers at AFI, cold called the back of the Hollywood Reporter, got some little things here and there, and then got my official big break in 2003 when I got a chance to demo for “CSI:Miami” when they were moving on from Graeme Revell. and the rest, as they say, is history.
The first movie where your music struck me was “Just Friends,” a truly hilarious romantic comedy that captured the geek-to-man anguish of being friend-zoned.
I have nothing but fond memories of “Just Friends,” one of the great joys we sometimes get doing this. Besides it being my first studio film, which just the odds of landing is just unfathomable, but it was my first time with a big real orchestra. Another tidbit, the whole main theme came to me in my sleep, like I literally woke up in the middle of the night and sat at the piano and it just came out fully there. I put it on a little recorder and went to bed. I woke the next morning, and it sounded good still and I started trying it in the film and it was a risk, because it was nothing like the direction of their temp music and I was this unknown entity and probably shouldn’t have rocked the boat so early. But the first time I played it, the director Roger Kumble was like Oh, that’s not what I expected, but ok, I like it.” And that was it!
Two hit series for you were “Silicon Valley” and “The Kominsky Method.” What were those experiences like? And in a way, do you think that playing the misfits of “Silicon Valley helped set you up to score “White House Plumbers?”
“Silicon Valley” kind of moved the needle for me in some ways. I mean, I was just excited to get an interview with Mike Judge, being a huge “Office Space” fan. I didn’t really think I had a shot. The pilot had no score at all, but I just demo’d up some ideas and thought that there should be more music in it. So, Mike was open to the idea, and honestly even the show is a comedy, most of the music played the more emotional and thriller aspects musically. This, ended up being very ironic, as I got a lot of calls for comedies after “Silicon Valley” and I’m like “did you ever listen to the music”? Hollywood….
“The Kominsky Method” was just a stellar experience all the way. I got a call from Chuck Lorre, who is not someone that someone like me gets a call from. I actually thought I was being fired from “Young Sheldon.” But he said that he had a new show and wasn’t sure what he wanted musically and asked me to come in and take a look. With no music, it was just so good, I mean Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin, they can read the phone book and I’m all in. But again, I didn’t want to do anything funny musically, so I tried to play the drama and the came up with a little waltz-like tune that became the theme of the guys. There wasn’t a ton of music, but I felt like it really meant something emotionally when it was there. Chuck came from the multi-cam world, so scoring things in a more cinematic way was a learning process. He’s one of the most brilliant guys I’ve ever met, so he would always be open to trying an idea and always had the most eloquent ways of shooting you down, if he didn’t’ think it was right. I was sad to see the show end, although I think it had one of the most satisfying endings that you could ask for.
Tell us about collaborating with “White House Plumbers” creator David Mandel,” who’d won an Emmy for his HBO series “Veep?”
It was a true collaboration and artistic back and forth, from the first day David was in my studio listening to melodic ideas, to the last little blip in the score on the day of the dub. By the time I was on board, it was a mad dash to just try and get done. They had struggled for a while with what the music was going to be, and by the time I was lucky enough to get hired, they had not a day to waste. It was a five-hour movie that I had to write and record an orchestra on in about six weeks. David is a cinephile and knows everything about the most obscure 70s film so there were many big picture thoughts and reference points. But the way I ended up getting in the mix was through a picture editor on the show, Grady Cooper, who I had worked with in the past. I kept writing demos and trying to get a meeting for a year, but when they ran out of time, I think a few of my demos made it to the temp score, which kind of gave me an opportunity, so you just never know.
What would you say are the similarities and differences between “Veep” and “White House Plumbers?” in dealing with incompetents in office?
I’m embarrassed to admit that I did not see all of “Veep,” and by the time I was on “White House Plumbers,” I didn’t have time to think of any comparisons except the 140 cues I had to write.
Did you do your own break-in to find out more about the Plumbers before scoring them?
I’d done a bunch of research and reading about the project just because I was chasing it for so long! Also, I lived in Washington DC for a bit in the 90’s and would drive by the Watergate building all the time. Plus, when I got there, I was kind of oblivious to politics and found G Gordon Liddy’s radio show entertaining, which I don’t think I would today, given the insane political climate.
Was it difficult finding the right tone for “Plumbers?” And would you describe most of it as taking a “serious comedy scoring” approach?
I mean, I think most of my career, I try and find ways to score any comedy I get hired on as straight and non-comedically as possible. My first pass on the “White House Plumbers” pilot was really dark, totally dramatic. It was my best David Shire-esque kind of score, and I thought it worked well. But after seeing all episodes in context, I realized that after the first botched break in, I kind of had to let up on the drama a tad, just so we had somewhere to go emotionally after the actual break in with episode three and all the drama that follows. So, the concept eventually became clear – let’s have these recurring motifs – the Hunt and Liddy theme from the main titles, the G. Gordon Liddy theme, the family/Dorothy emotional theme, and the melody for Dita Beard. I kind of kept them alive throughout, but the instrumentation went from small ensemble bass/drums/keys/ small strings to a larger orchestra and more distorted percussion, as the stakes and personal toll on their lives kind of unraveled.
“White House Plumbers” has a punchily brief opening title sequence. What’s the challenge of impactfully getting across a musical idea for a television world that rarely has main titles anymore?
I totally agree on rarely getting a main titles sequence these days. I had the benefit in the pilot of having more time to work with. That was literally the first cue I wrote and it stuck pretty much from the first time I played it. I had some room to establish the groovy sound when they couldn’t find the keys and kind of built the brass crescendo into the title cards and then that little chromatic riff was just kind of liked from the start and became their thing. Also, the little jazzy flute riff at the end, I always knew I was going to have Katisse Buckingham play flute on the score (he did the hilarious flute scene from “Anchorman” if you remember) so I wrote every note kind of hearing his playing in my head. The main titles for this was one of the easiest things, which is rare, when you usually have to do 5000 versions. Sometimes, we get lucky. Although, I surely made up the difficulty in the rest of the score.
What kind of retro styles did you want to reference? And how did you go about recreating them with a modern flair, particularly when it came to the funk jazz?”
I honestly was hearing David Shire’s piano thriller scores and Lalo Schifrin’s “Bullitt.” I knew there had to be some type of groove element with 70’s instruments, once I realized that playing it serious orchestrally the whole time wasn’t entirely correct. David Mandel’s input from day one was that he wanted a modern seventies type of score. So, with regards to the jazzy stuff, I suppose the percussion gave it a bit of a modern edge. I recorded drum set that I played, but would loop sections of it, to give it a tad more of a modern production. That’s about it, all the sounds were pretty vintage. I guess it’s inevitable that anything groovy with those type of sounds will get compared to “Ocean’s 11,” but so be it.
In addition to the “Oceans” heist sound, did you want to pay homage to such scores as David Shire’s “All the President’s Men” and “The Conversation,” John Williams’ “JFK?” and any number of conspiracy soundtracks by Michael Small?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. All of my demos, even before I saw the show, were cut from that cloth. Mainly, I think a lot of the more chromatic harmony and a bit denser harmonically stuff form that era would be applicable to the score of the show. Even the main title “melody” is very chromatic and kind of jazzy. So, sure, the comparisons are inevitable but for me, that’s a really fun sandbox to play in that we don’t get to do all the time. So, I was going to go all in an enjoy it to the fullest.
What was your ensemble like?
This series presented a unique challenge as a composer in that, the sound had to evolve as the series progressed, from lighter and heist, to death and people’s lives falling apart. So, my solution was to increase the size of the ensemble as it progressed and to make the percussion get more distorted and nasty. So, the first 3 episodes I had a chamber group of 13 strings and 2 horns and then for the later stuff, we had a full 52 strings and 4 horns, to kind of increase the dramatic weight as the characters experienced it on screen.
Talk about scoring the Watergate break-in.
To me, the break-in itself was the least interesting thing about scoring the show, only in that there’s no surprise, everyone knows it’s going to happen. So, I really scored the show much more about the relationships between the characters and the toll that Hunt and Liddy’s actions took on their families. So, yeah, the break-in itself happened at the halfway point of the show, and for the score it was the end of the jazzy fun and the start of the darkness to follow. So, I used it more of a turning point musically, than building up to a conclusion that everyone knew was coming.
How did you want to play Gordon and Howard as the ace secret agents they view themselves as in their own minds, particularly with the big Bond-like scoring?
I thought that subtlety was not the way to go with both of them. In fact, there was a scene in episode two where Liddy is holding a gun where David even discussed scoring with a Bond-like parody which thankfully didn’t work. I thought we just play the music as serious as possible, which made their egos, especially Liddy’s even larger than life. There was a scene on a bench where Liddy is talking to Hunt about the honor of what they do, and I suppose there’s a world where you could play that with a light comedic touch. I went the polar opposite direction and played it with French horns and brass and strings, playing these heavy dense chords, going full seventies political thriller and I think it made their earnestness even funnier, perhaps a bit sad how much they kind of drank the Kool-Aid.
How did you want to capture both the bromance and the personality contrast been Gordon and Howard?
We tried scoring a lot of those early scenes between them kind of highlighting the bromance and it was funny, but again in context of the whole series, it seemed like it was trying too hard. At the dub stage, we eventually ended up muting many of those cues and let them play dry and real, instead of commenting and think the show is better for it. When the acting and writing are so good, I think it’s best to stay out of the way, especially when anything comedic can really ruin or cheapen a joke that’s already working without.
You have to “like” Gordon and Howard to stay the course of the series. How did you want to give them sympathy beyond their buffoonery and outright villainy?
For Liddy, it was to try and accentuate his dedication to the cause, to the government and for what he thought was a greater good. I used his theme on brass and in a patriotic way, to kind of have his earnestness make up for his blundering on some other things. I did this first on the airplane in episode one and several times later, to kind give some gravitas to him. For Hunt, it was to again kind of show his family life struggles – from him being absent for many of his children’s events and trips, to his strained relationship with Dorothy. There’s a moment in Episode 4, where Dorothy is basically leaving him at the airport and I reprise their theme on piano on strings, and it’s, if I don’t mind saying, really devastating, especially given what happens five minutes later.
“Watergate Plumbers” takes a turn from being very funny to be quite serious in its final two episodes. How did you want your scoring to segue to real darkness in that way, and was it particularly difficult turning comedy to drama and real suspense with consequences for the country?
Yes, like I said before, this was a challenge. I think keeping the melodies and motifs consistent through the episodes, made it easier to kind thread that needle, given the evolving tone as the series progressed. It was a unique challenge to this show, although I think it did succeed in that when I listen to the soundtrack, it feels like somewhat of a journey with a beginning middle and end and a connective tissue between.
How do you think you own political sympathies played into the score?
Honestly, they played no part whatsoever. The biggest revelation to me was that some of their dialogue and lines, such as ‘the radical left’ is still right at home 50 years later. I mean, I’m a California liberal, but no, that really never entered my mind. Both Woody and Justin answered that same question at the premiere in NY, and they basically said that while they disagreed with just about everything they said and stood for politically, they had to admire their dedication to what they believed in.
What do you think makes “White House Plumbers” relevant both as a show, and as a score?
I mean, if “White House Plumbers” had a sequel in 2024 called the “Mar A Lago Housekeepers”, I think you could recycle half of the dialogue and it would still work and be timely. The commentary on the media and all of that, is still disappointedly still the same. And musically, well I suppose some things are just timeless – a piano, a violin, an upright bass, real instruments seem to stand the test of time and are both comforting and relatable regardless of the time period in history. At least up to know, 20 years from now, who knows. You’ll have to ask the machines…
What would your score for the “Trump House Plumbers” sound like?
Maybe all of the instruments would be plated in gold. Or maybe you would just do it by deconstructing “YMCA” and using that to score it – come to think of it, that might be interesting. Someone call me!
Watch “The White House Plumbers” on HBO and Max, and get Jeff Cardoni’s score album on WaterTower Music HERE
Visit Jeff Cardoni’s website HERE
Special thanks to Kyrie Hood of White Bear Publicity