Director and writer Matt Ruskin has never shied away from dark and complicated stories. With previous works including Crown Heights, The Hip Hop Project, and Glen of the Downs, Ruskin has become known for his sensitivity and sharp ability to present complex stories thoughtfully. For his latest film Boston Strangler, Ruskin continues this conscious streak by focusing less on the eponymous monster hiding in the shadows and more on the women who dragged the case into the light.
Between June 1962 and January 1964, the lives of 13 women in the Boston area were cut brutally short. Initially brushed off by the Boston Police Department as unrelated, individual incidents, it was an ambitious lifestyle journalist named Loretta McLaughlin at the Record American who first linked the first four cases. Determined to protect and fight for the women of Boston, McLaughlin and her colleague Jean Cole pushed against social, professional, and political boundaries at considerable risk to their careers, families, and personal safety.
By shifting the film’s attention to McLaughlin (portrayed by Keira Knightley) and Cole (Carrie Coon), Boston Strangler effectively sidesteps the true crime slime puddle that so many similar projects, unfortunately, fall into. Giving a huge helping hand to the film with this is the score by the BAFTA award-winning, Emmy and Ivor Novello nominated composer, Paul Leonard-Morgan. With film credits including Limitless, Dredd, Best Sellers, and Tales from the Loop (alongside Philip Glass), concert works, video games like Cyberpunk 2077, and band production work, Leonard-Morgan was a perfect pick to support Ruskin’s unique vision.
Brilliantly able to translate energy, mood, emotion, and character into music, Leonard-Morgan effectively applies all these skills to Boston Strangler. He captures McLaughlin’s evolving spirit by delicately manipulating strings, percussion, and piano with subtle hints of electronic elements. Ebbing and flowing with the narrative, this execution simultaneously fuels the dangerously dark dance between McLaughlin, her environment, and The Strangler. To learn more about walking this delicate line between supportive and sensationalizing, I sat down with Leonard-Morgan to dig into what scoring this remarkable story required.
Film Cred: Boston Strangler is openly inspired by real-world events and people, which can be tricky. What were those early conversations with Matt like about the film’s musical direction and initial inspirations that helped guide the film’s musical direction?
Paul Leonard-Morgan: There are so many true crime documentaries, films, or podcasts, but I never pigeonhole things. It’s like if you go into a record store: everything is categorized as far as indie rock, prog rock, et cetera, et cetera. And I just always think, from a music point of view, music is music, right? Good music is good music, so it’s really hard to categorize it. It’s the same with good filmmaking. I understand that film companies need to go, “It’s true crime. It’s this or that,” but it’s just a bloody good film.
So Matt and I got in touch — must have been about May of 2022. I didn’t know him, [and] had never spoken with him, but he said, “I love your work, and we’d love to have a chat about this.” So I was like, “Sure!” He was talking about the Boston Strangler and the case by which the script is inspired, and how he’d had access to some of the families.
And, I’m British. So, I was aware of the Boston Strangler case, but not as much as maybe people over here. I started reading up on it and was like, “Oh my God, this is insane.” There were so many murders, no one could work out who did it, and this and that. So I’m suddenly seeing the parallels in his script. I’m awful at reading scripts, but I read this script, and I was just glued to it. It had to be the equivalent of people listening to their podcasts or their true crime things. I was reading the script being like, “I need to know what happened!” It was great.
So when we got [to] chatting about it, we were talking about the style, and it would be so easy to go down that true crime thing. But for me, it’s not about that in the film. It was much more about Loretta, who was a journalist in the ‘60s, who wants to solve this case, but also [who] wants to be taken seriously. As a journalist, she’s a woman in a man’s world. Oh, hello, 2023. You know, nothing changes, right? I mean, things do change, but this is so ‘of its time’ like that. And that’s what I said to Matt.
For me, that story is about Loretta taking on things she “shouldn’t” be doing because she’s a woman in the 1960s. Her insistence and perseverance — that’s where the story was for me. Yes, it’s a thriller. Yes, it’s about all this other stuff. But it was really about the human side of it: Loretta’s journey and finding out who she actually is. That, for me, was a starting point with Matt in trying to find the sound of the film. It was much more about Loretta than just dark, dark, dark.
FC: Once you had that inspiration, how did you embody Loretta’s character in the music and translate that to a sound palette?
PLM: Palette’s a great word. That’s what I always say. It’s like cooking or like a menu. Once you’ve got the recipe and the ingredients, you’re good to go. It’s like finding what kind of band is playing this soundtrack. Is it an electronic band? Is it a rock band? Is it an orchestra band? Because once you’ve found that color palette, the soundtrack’s easy. It’s then finding the sounds that go with it. That’s always the fun part.
So I’ll be chatting away with Matt and kind of go, “I picture her as piano and quartet, so it’s quite an intimate soundtrack.” And [in] her main theme, which we hear for the first time about 20 minutes in, when she’s going into her house with the family for the first time, there’s some unhappiness going on (without giving games away), and then her theme is this [sings a repeated set of three ascending notes] as she starts typing away.
So every time she’s typing and investigating and suddenly finding that side, [it’s] this piano motif that’s going on. We’ve also got a quartet, which is very intimate, playing. You’ve got that contrasting against the sound of the Strangler, which is this massive orchestra. It’s really deep and bendy, treating the orchestra through processing and distortion. You’ve got the innocence and naivety of Loretta to begin with against this real darkness of the Strangler with the electronica there in the orchestra.
Then, the two gradually progress. You’ve got Loretta’s Theme, which then gets taken over by The Strangler when it looks like The Strangler is gonna be winning. So that, [sings the same melody as before] suddenly gets played on ten basses going [sings same progression much lower in pitch]. There’s not loads of action from a point of view of car chases or this or that, right, but you are really on the edge of your seat. So the idea of this little motif was to help drive the momentum of the movie — to help take you through without overriding the film.
FC: Let’s talk about that idea of pacing a little bit more. Even in moments where it’s simply Loretta and Jean digging through papers, your music propels the story forward in such a stimulating way. How do you determine where those key driving moments are and ensure they gel with the larger score cohesively?
PLM: Sure. That’s a really good question, and hats off to Matt, because it’s so much a collaboration with a director working out where that’s happening. My least favorite soundtracks and least favorite films are where music signposts. It makes you want to feel something, you know? It’s like, “Oh, now you must feel sad, so here’s my lonely violin.” I don’t like it when music tries to make you feel something, because for me, it has the counter effect and draws me out of the moment. I like music where you don’t even know when it’s come in, and that’s the hardest thing with music.
Chatting away with Matt about these things and what you were saying about them going through records, that was one of the longest conversations Matt and I had. The scene works great, and he’s done a great job in it. It also works great silently, without any music. It’s still got momentum, but I said to him, “Look. For me, this is about what’s gonna happen.” It’s like, “If we don’t solve these cases soon, there’s gonna be more murders in the city.” There needs to be a sense of stakes [in] it.
The scale is no longer Loretta on the piano and quartet. The scale of it is that the stakes are really being raised. So suddenly, you’ve got the orchestra coming on, getting larger and larger and larger, and it was one of those moments where [we were] trying to work out what is too much. That was a conversation Matt and I had throughout, because you don’t want to overpower. It’s a wonderful script with great performances by Keira Knightley, Carrie Coon, and Chris Cooper, so it’s about helping the story.
There are other moments where the momentum and the motion is literally me whacking a piano. I’ve done a prepared piano and put lots of things on the strings and stuff. Then, you sample it up. I’m underneath it at 2:00 a.m. I’ve got my little LED lights underneath this grand piano, you mic it up, sample it, you detune it, and put on loads of effects, and it suddenly becomes this heartbeat.
At the very opening of the film, you get this “boom, boom, boom,” and there’s no actual percussion in any of that. It’s just prepared piano that gradually speeds up as the film goes on, ever so subtly. It’s these things that muck around with the psyche. The pace is gradually picking up, but you’re not even gonna really know. Every time she meets The Strangler, it goes up 10-15 BPM. It’s just trying to work out little things that keep you on the edge of your seat without you realizing why.
FC: Did the film’s period influence any of your decisions or how you utilized those electronic elements? I ask, as you commonly use electronics in your scores, and this one felt very sensitive and consciously subtle with their application.
PLM: All of these are really great questions. I’m not just saying that. It’s wonderful hearing it because when you start off a soundtrack at the beginning, these are exactly the questions that you have. [When you] set off on a path of a soundtrack, you don’t know where it’s gonna end up. It’s almost an intellectual point to begin with.
It’s a period film. It looks glorious. The cinematography is phenomenal. Hair, makeup, all those things are absolutely wonderful, but I didn’t want to do a period soundtrack. It would feel too expected, and that’s not going to get me on the edge of my seat. If it was too electronic, it’s going to totally detract from the fact that it’s a period piece. So it was like, “What can we do in between?” That was the thing. Subtle layers of electronica take it away from being a classical soundtrack. And I’ve written lots of classical soundtracks, but for me, it [would be] too glossy if it was like that.
So taking that piano and quartet as an example. You start with that, but then you gradually layer in all these atmos and drones, and little bits that go on top when you’ve got The Strangler or this massive orchestra blending in with that. It would feel really weird going from The Strangler to [Loretta], from The Strangler to [Loretta], but by use of all these electronics, it then merges them together and feels a lot better.
One of the things we did was take a double bass, times it by ten, and [run] it through this machine that puts it through a whole load of electricity. It’s like, 8,000 volts of electricity, and doesn’t sound like a double bass by the end of it. It sounds like this really bendy thing. It’s a subtle effect which then comes in every time you see The Strangler, and you don’t realize it. It’s like Pavlov’s Bell with the dogs; every time you hear it, it’s like, “Oh, something’s happening.” By the end of it, you understand why you are hearing this little motif.
So, it’s the use of orchestra in a non-traditional way. Obviously, it is also traditional in some places, but that’s what I like doing because that way it’s not what you expect. It’s about using things in a different way to keep it fresh, but also because it’s what the film is calling out for. It’s a period thriller, but it could be of any time. The subject matter, everything, is just about feeling on edge.
FC: One of the most unsettling aspects of this story that always gets me on edge is the lack of resolution. To this day, there are so many unanswered questions about this case. Did that uncertainty influence or make its way into the score at all?
PLM: In a traditional film where there is a resolution, you’ve got a payoff straight off. There [would be] that bit at the end where she’s the hero because she solved the case. She wins, he loses, you’re done. And she does win, but she doesn’t necessarily win in a traditional way. She wins because she finds inner peace.
The ending of the film, without talking too much about it, is about her. She’s fought her demons. She’s also solved her obsession, which has taken over her life. [It’s also about] the sacrifices that a woman has to make to do this.
It sounds utterly ridiculous, me speaking as a man, but I have a wife, two kids, et cetera, and I see the things that they go through in their everyday struggles. I’m just like, “God. If you are going through that now, what was it like in the ‘60s? When you’ve got a woman with a husband and a couple of kids [and that] work-life struggle?” On top of that, she’s taking on the all-male Boston police force, the typical male newsroom, and all of that. She’s taken on all that for however many years and beaten every single male journalist to solve this flipping story!
So, for me, the resolution is about her and her story. That’s the bookend of it for me. The Strangler is absolutely not a secondary part of the plot. He’s integral to it, but the two are so important together, because without The Strangler, she couldn’t find her inner self as well.
Going to the last cue, it’s not a big triumphant “Ta-da!” It’s more of what I would call a pensive cue. It’s not sad, and it’s not happy; it is somewhere in between. That was one of the hardest ones to write. Matt was brilliant with it, and the amount of conversations we would have about what was going on in their heads, it’s crazy, isn’t it? What’s actually going on in her head at that moment, that’s what informs those kinds of cues.
FC: You mentioned the newsroom, and I wanted to ask you about that, as it is quite a noisy environment for your music to contend with. Did you have any relationship with the sound designer on this? How did you navigate those naturally noisy moments?
PLM: It varies from film to film, but on this one it was more of a conversation with Matt. Matt was dealing with the sound team while I was head down here in the studio, but you are very aware of those moments when you spot the film. So, you’re chatting away, and you’re saying, “Ok, look. This bit’s gonna be music led. This bit’s gonna be sound led.” And so on.
But when you’re talking specifically about the newsroom, it was exactly that. It’s like, what is the sound of a newsroom? How many typewriters do you have? It sounds utterly stupid, but one doesn’t tend to realize when one watches a film the amount of thought that goes into it. Is it too busy? Are there too many typewriters? Is there too much typing? Are they doing a big novel or are they just going, “dink, dink, dink”?
When you focus on Loretta, and I can’t emphasize the cinematography in this enough, it’s just wonderful. So, you’ve got Loretta there doing her typing, and the sound of the typing is focused on her, but you’ve also got her motif. You don’t want that to interfere with the sound of the typing. So, I’m kind of going, “Ok. That bit’s gonna just be cut down to piano, and we’re gonna keep the quartet out there,” but then, as the camera pulls back, then we bring in the quartet, because the sound of the typing is moving further away. It’s all those different elements joining together that create the hustle and bustle of the newsroom.
FC: Speaking of hustle and bustle, you’ve created music in so many different ways for so many different formats and purposes. How do you think that variety has made you a better composer, and why is that career diversity important to you?
PLM: I get bored very easily. [Laughs] I also love working on different things. I always have. I find that one thing also informs something else. For example, years and years ago, I was working on a Disney project for the EPCOT center. It was a ride that was going there, and I’d just finished a film called Limitless. [Disney] heard Limitless and the Dredd soundtrack and said, “Oh, he’s quite cool. He’s electronic.” So, we fly over to the EPCOT center with the Imagineers, [and I hear] my music blasting out of a rollercoaster, and I’m thinking, “This isn’t really a job, is it?” [Laughs]
At the same time, I’d just started a game called Battlefield Hardline. I’d never scored a game, and I’m always pretty honest with people if I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just like, “Look, I’m a good composer, I’m a good producer, but I have no idea about the technical aspect of this. You’re gonna have to hold my hand.”
Having just done the Disney ride, when you line up for a ride, you might be in the line for 90 minutes, and every single room that you’re in as you go along the way has things of interest. Now, how do you score a piece of music for 90 minutes and keep it interesting? It’s got lots of different layers and lots of things. So, [that way] when you go into one room, it’s not a cacophony, and it’s not clashing with the music that you hear from the other room, which you’re still hearing, but from afar. You’re working with different layers.
So, I started working on Battlefield Hardline and realized that games work in the same way. It’s all layers. You’ve got gentle atmos to begin with, and then as the baddies come up, you’ve got the “boom, boom, boom” or whatever, but there’s different layers to help the tension. It’s exactly the same as the Disney thing.
Then, I happened to be working on a theater piece, and theater is very traditional. It’s just “here’s some stereo tracks” that they feed in, and they have wonderful sound designers that will cue up the music. I was at the Olivier Theatre in London, and a part of it wasn’t working. So I just had a chat, and I said, “Well, is there any way that you could use a layer under this? Literally just a stem you put underneath as this person’s coming through.” They thought, “Well, we don’t really do that in theater,” and I was like, “Yeah, but could we?”
Then, I started working with a filmmaker named Errol Morris, a wonderful documentary maker. Errol had heard some of the stuff that I’d done for the theater thing. I worked on Wormwood with him, and I’ve done five films with him since and another film at the moment. So all of those things have this knock-on effect. It’s not so much about contacts, which a lot of people look for. I just like writing different kinds of music, and it seems that people react well to the fact that you do different things. It’s not an intentional thing, I just like it. My brain goes off in a different direction by working with bands, by doing a game, by doing this, or by doing that. They’re all “work,” but they’re just different sides of it.
20th Century Studios’ Boston Strangler is now streaming on Hulu in the US and on Disney+ in the UK. Additionally, Leonard-Morgan’s score for the film is now available to stream on all major streaming platforms via Hollywood Records.
