“Once [Damien Chazelle’s] movies — once there was a movie for me to score, that’s all I wanted to do because that’s what I had studied,” Justin Hurwitz explains. He continues:
“I had studied film scoring. It’s what I wanted to do. It’s, by far, what I’m most passionate about, what I’m better at than writing jokes and stuff. But writing for some sitcoms was definitely a fun and interesting way for me to keep myself busy until I could do music full-time.”
Hurwitz also describes a brief moment in 2018 when he was preparing to write music for Chazelle’s astronaut film “First Man,” when he had to opportunity to write for “Curb Your Enthusiasm” again. He says he turned it down in favor of doing music. The two disciplines, he says, are diametrically opposed, and he needs to be in very different mindsets to work on them. When talking to journalists, Hurwitz seems to get the question a lot. One, he feels, is more creative, while the other draws for a more authentic place of wry cynicism:
“People always ask me, the writing and the music, what are the similarities? And I always say, ‘There are none. They’re just different sides of your brain. Music is its own thing.’ And I’m usually being very earnest and very emotional and serious about it. And then the writing on ‘Curb’ and all that, it’s just whenever something awkward happens in my life or I put my foot in my mouth or something, I have a dark idea, a cynical idea, that’s an outlet for it. […] So I usually say there is no connection. There’re just totally different parts of your brain.”
After a moment of reflection, though, Hurwitz does notice a particular similarity.