KUSC’s Brian Lauritzen and Emile Mosseri
For almost every film, the score is the last element to be added – after all the other editing has been done, and the actors have moved on to their next projects. But composer Emile Mosseri approached his score to Minari another way, writing many of the original themes when there was only a script, and the film hadn’t yet been shot.
He says he sent director Lee Isaac Chung sketches for the score even before he was officially hired as the film’s composer, and thinks that the music would have had a less important role if it had been written later.
Emile Mosseri | Photo by Olivia McManus
Mosseri has only scored a handful of films, including the critically acclaimed The Last Black Man in San Francisco and Miranda July’s Kajillionaire, yet won this nomination (one of six for the film) with a score about the intersection of two cultures that doesn’t try to sound like either of them.
Want to hear from this year’s other Oscar-nominated composers? Listen to our extended interview with James Newton Howard.
