"The Passion of the Christ”

John Debney and Mel Gibson

"The Passion of the Christ” was composed by John Debney.  A life-long Catholic, Debney has composed the soundtrack for such films as My Favorite Martian, Lost & Found, The Hot Chick, as well as Snow Dogs, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, and the first two Spy Kids movies.
It took four months for Debney to complete the soundtrack for Mel Gibson’s historic movie.   Debney tells Ign.com that the project kind of “fell into his lap.”
“I hadn't worked with Mel before. It was a complete fluke. In October [2003] I received a phone call from a friend of mine—a lifelong friend of mine, a guy I grew up on the same street with. He was a producer of the film, Steve McEveety, and he was sort of fishing around a little bit. I hadn't talked to him in a few years and was delighted to hear from him, but my first thought was 'My gosh, I hope his family's okay.' And he said 'No, no, the family's fine and great.' And then we started to talk and he was saying to me, sort of cryptically, 'We're working on this movie and Mel's involved and we're not really sure of the direction of the music and what to do.' Steve then confided in me that it was The Passion of the Christ and I fell off my chair and I said 'You're kidding!' 'cause I'm a lifelong Catholic as Steve is. And I said 'Well tell me about it.' So he did. And I said ' Can I see the film?' He sent the film over that same day. I watched it with my wife and we were incredibly touched by it and I offered to watch some music on spec for Steve with the thought that if Mel was kind enough, would he want to listen to any of it. So Steve said 'God, that would be great if you would want to do that. We're not asking you to, but if you want to, that would be incredible.' So I did that over a weekend and then Mel came over on a Monday, I believe, heard some things I had done, liked the direction of some of the stuff, and a few hours later I got a phone call and he hired me to do it.”
The soundtrack has a very Middle Eastern flavor to it, says Debney, but from the beginning his intention was to compose a World Music score, with “instruments from all parts of the world and all time periods and just, you know, have some fun with it. And that's sort of what we did. And we experimented a lot with different instruments...Then on the other hand, you do have some traditional moments where it's more about orchestra and choir.”
Debney studied the music of the period, which he discovered was very simple, using flutes, a few crude stringed instruments, percussion and vocals.
Some of the instruments used on the soundtrack were quite obscure.  “There were the given instruments like deduk and bamboo flutes and things like that which are usually utilized in this type of score, you know the sort of ancient instruments. But there were a lot of other interesting instruments, like the erhu, which is an ancient Chinese, single-string instrument played with a bow, which I utilized for Satan. It sort of became Satan's motif, as it were. This instrument is very seductive and beautiful and yet it's kind of otherworldly sounding.”
Debney explains that the score is sort of divided into three parts. “First of all the very first reel in the garden is completely a different world than the rest of the film. Therefore the music is different. Then once we get into the bulk of the movie and we get out of the garden there at night, it has another feeling musically. Then from that crucial moment where Mary has the flashback to the end, is literally the third act of the score, as it were. That part of the score—and I think that this is correct and again, this is from Mel—if we had gone emotionally where we star with Mary, if we had done that earlier in the film, Mel's feeling was that it would almost cheapen the fact. He said to me many times, 'John, I don't want any God or reverential music in this thing.' He said, 'We're gonna have it, but we need to wait and we need to make sure that we earned that, so that later in the movie when the score can get bigger and it can get more traditional, it can get more traditionally emotional, I want to make sure that we earned it.' You know, at the time when I was writing the music we would have discussion about it. And I sort of came to the realization that he was right about that. So in a traditional sense, this is a different type of film score, certainly for me. And I think, in general, that it's a different type of score for a lot of movies. It doesn't follow a traditional arc. It's sort of in three acts, as it were."
Debney says it is rare that a director becomes so involved in the composing of a soundtrack.  “In Mel's case, the first few go-arounds with him, we sort of came to the realization that the best process with him would be to invite him to be a big part of the creative process. As we would bring different musicians in, I would invite Mel over and we would work with these musicians together. In that way, I was really able to give Mel his vision. And in many cases he would give out an idea and we would try it and he'd realize 'No, I guess I'm wrong. Let's try it your way John' or 'Let's go back [and try this]’.” 
“Mel has an incredible musical ear, which I discovered,” he adds.  “He's also a pretty decent singer, so he's sort of naturally a pretty musical guy. I even invited him to come in and do some vocalizations and chants with us. Which he did…That's sort of the way we worked on a lot of the score, is with this family atmosphere with everybody sort of trying things.”
“I wouldn't probably be on a list of 20 or 30 composers that one would normally think of for something like this. So literally, in my opinion, 'cause I'm a lifelong Catholic, I guess you could call it a miracle, call it a fluke, call it an accident, but it fell in my lap,” says Debney.  “Every day the thing that got me through was my faith prayer which was, ‘Lord, if you want me to make it to the finish line, then help me make it to the finish line’.”