MRH: Are you familiar at all with some of the Italian composers of the seventies, because I found that ‘the caper sound’ crossed the ocean, carrying to Europe some of Jones’ and Schifrin’s recognizable sounds. The Italians, for example, seemed to emphasize solos and improvs, and fixated on keyboards and organ.

JLD: I wasn’t too aware of it at the time. You know, it became pop music; it was very lightly influenced by jazz, but it was more really influenced by pop music. To me, those are sort of ‘the Morricone Lost Years,’ those small ensembles with the cheesy organ.

I’m not as enamored with that music, but once again, it definitely struck a chord, and with film music, boy, you’re really trying to draw an audience in an immediate kind of way, so it’s fair game. I’m not surprised that it was kind of widespread in the world.

MRH: Part of that music style is really anchored to these driving rhythms around which you can build almost any kind of ornamentation. Is it hard to create different rhythms, or do you find the scenes in Leverage help you figure out what works, as well as what specific instruments to use for specific types of suspense scenes?

JLD: I think you’ve hit upon something. The approach is rhythmic because the whole idea is you’re trying to lay a groundwork for ‘the caper’ and how you’re going to pull it off, so you need ‘a motor,’ and the motor in this case ends up being some sort of funk rhythm.

As a matter of fact, if you’ve noticed by listening to the music of Leverage, there’s a distinct absence of soloing, and there’s really simply one reason for that, and that’s Dean doesn’t like to hear it.

Anytime I would play a solo that would go on for a couple of bars, the comment would be ‘No, it’s too noir.’ I guess the idea is that maybe the reference to the past is either too overt or is attracting too much attention, or that if you can keep the rhythms in the forefront, you can really have extended sequences with some complex machinations and cutbacks and switcheroos happening, and you’re able to absorb that visually better, I suppose, so it’s the interaction between the two.

‘Is it difficult to come up with rhythms when it’s all you have?’ [My] answer is No. It’s a lot harder for me to orchestrate for a 100-piece orchestra and making sure that the counterpoint remains intact and all the woodwinds are in their proper place – it’s a lot more detail – whereas this is really just about keeping the rhythmic feeling going, which I don’t think is particularly difficult.

That’s what’s so great about it. It’s just easy: you lock onto a groove [and] as long as it encapsulates the mood of the scene, you’re half-way there.

MRH: In caper films, the music score was always about supporting ongoing action, but it seems to be that since the eighties and nineties, that style of funky writing is also written around snappy dialogue. I think you even mention it in the CD liner notes that dialogue is like scat improv vocals.

JLD: There’s not a lot of montages. In Leverage, we don’t have that luxury. It isn’t the situation where I have a minute or minute and a half long montage to do anything. It’s all really carpet for what goes over the top, and that’s what it is; you accept it. You really just usually have a blast or two to punctuate the end of a scene, or change of location or a dramatic change in the direction of the plot.

MRH: I just find that instead of the music being restricted to what used to be traditional montages, now it’s part of many dramatic scenes. Each cue compliments the next cue and furthers whatever dramatic ideas are being pushed by the actors. I think that style is more involved now than it was before.

JLD: And really, we’re discussing television here, too. The idea of doing extended visual sequences is really something that tends to happen more in movies, although I’m working on a series now that has a lot of great opportunities for extended montages with music, so it just depends.

MRH: For the Leverage soundtrack album, were the cues expanded for the CD, or are those the actual cue lengths in the series?

JLD: It’s a combination of both. As I mentioned, some of the music actually had existed before and became a very identifiable part of Leverage, [whereas] the majority I think comes from specific scenes, but the music is retooled a lot in Leverage. Any one of those cues could take on ten or twelve different versions throughout the season because some of them have been so identified with a situation.

This is once again something that Dean has made a really interesting decision on, and a good decision: the format…When the heroes are on top and have successfully either foiled the bad guy or are really in high gear on the move in their caper, there’s a theme for that; this is going to be the same from week to week, and I think it’s a way of once again making it that much more fun for the viewer to participate.