MRH: I’m curious how you feel about how your style of writing and the sounds you produce seem to work well with stories involving deep, dark psychological issues and characters that have a certain kind of traumas – either overt, or as an undercurrent that eventually percolates to the surface in a climactic scene?

CM: I seem to get chosen for those kinds of films, not that I choose those films; those films choose me. It seems to work. I like do to things that are kind of character driven.

[Even in] the dark action-oriented ones like Drive, it seems like the underscore kind of goes and highlights the psychological component of the film more so than the action part of it. I guess that’s what I do best [and] that’s what people like about my style.

MRH: I find your style is really organic in terms of the way it’s balanced between dialogue, sound effects and sound design, and the fact you don’t always score exactly what’s happening onscreen.

If there’s a chase sequence, you may choose not to score all the action; you may decide to score the emotional intensity of the actors, what they’re going through during a particular sequence where they’re being chased, or their mental state as they’re trying to hunt someone down, which I find more interesting.

CM: Yeah, I kind of like to go for the character-driven in that the situation. Sometimes there’s other considerations. In Contagion, rhythm and pacing were a big part of what the director was looking for, but it varies from film-to-film. It’s usually characters first and foremost for me, but I tend to look at the scene or the film like a doctor looks at a patient, trying to figure out if anything is wrong or missing that the music can help with.

MRH: Are there any composers that influenced you, or composers that you admire, either current or from the past?

CM: Of the old guys, I really enjoyed Bernard Herrmann. One of my first memorable scores was The Day the Earth Stood Still which I used to see once a year on television; that was a score that stuck with me.

Current guys? Thomas Newman, Harry Gregson-Williams – all the guys that are kind of rugged individualists. When I think of my early development, I probably listened to people that were not film composers for inspiration, people like Philip Glass and Brian Eno.

MRH: I’m sure other interviewers have raised this question as well, but you’ve had a 20+ year relationship with Steven Soderbergh. Do you find at this point you have a shorthand with him, where you don’t need to have a large discussion over what’s required for a scene - you sort of know what kind of music he likes – or do you feel that each time you start a project, everything begins fresh?

CM: Well, having done ten films with him, I do know his likes and dislikes, but at least in the last several film we’ve done together, Steven still has given me some pretty specific direction of what he’s looking for.

For example, with Contagion, initially he had a temp score with sounds from The French Connection [by Don Ellis], The Battle of Algiers [by Ennio Morricone], and Marathon Man [by Michael Small].