Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have a plan to soundtrack everything
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - best friends and Nine Inch Nails bandmates - found unlikely creative fulfilment (and a couple of Oscars) by reassessing what they had to offer as musicians. Now they're thinking even bigger, and imagining an artistic empire of their own making.
By Zach Baron
Photography by Danielle Levitt
3 April 2024
This year, Reznor and Ross are also starting a yet-to-be-named company, built around storytelling in multiple disciplines: film production, fashion, a music festival, and a venture with Epic Games ... One day this winter, Reznor greeted me at the door of their studio - in the course of reporting this story, I never saw him anywhere else - wearing a black hoodie made by the synthesizer company Moog, black jeans, and black running shoes. He led me back, past walls of unused gear and several black-clad mannequins, all of which startled me, to their primary workspace, where Ross - a tall west Londoner (he grew up in Ladbroke Grove) with a stern face and a pleasantly reedy voice - sat at a computer, also all in black (Once, I asked the two men whether their upcoming clothing line would feature any colour. ‘No,’ Reznor said, incredulously. ‘Of course not.’) ... They were on deadline for two films at the moment, including Luca Guadagnino’s forthcoming ‘Queer.’ The other film project Reznor and Ross were on deadline for was Scott Derrickson’s ‘The Gorge,’ a science-fiction thriller starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy.
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Now it was Monday. “I thought about that over the weekend,” Reznor said. “It’s like, Why are we doing this? The idea comes from what we think is a good place of ‘Let’s break it up. Let’s get sent down the rabbit hole on certain things and feel like we’ve got tasks being assigned to us rather than us just blindly seeing what happens creatively.’” But, he said, “I think coming out of a stretch of a number of films in a row, I want some time of seeing where the wind blows versus: there’s a looming date on a calendar coming up and we’d better get our shit together. And certainly in the last few weeks I’ve been itching to do what we often do, which is just come in and let’s start something that we’re not even sure what it’s for.” Some of that energy, he and Ross said, would probably become the next Nine Inch Nails album. Doing soundtrack work, Reznor said, had “managed to make Nine Inch Nails feel way more exciting than it had been in the past few years. I’d kind of let it atrophy a bit in my mind for a variety of reasons.” But now, “I do feel excited about starting on the next record,” Ross said. “I think we’re in a place now where we kind of have an idea.” And then there was the company, which Reznor and Ross spent the last two years putting together, piece by piece, with the help of John Crawford, their longtime art director, and the producer Jonathan Pavesi. The idea was, what could they do that they hadn’t already done around storytelling? Some of that might take the form of examining Nine Inch Nails from yet another angle - “we’ve been working on homegrown IP around Nine Inch Nails, stories we could tell, and we’re working on developing those in a way that are not what you think they’d be.” (As in: not a biopic.) They also have a show in development with Christopher Storer, the creator of The Bear, they said, and a film with the veteran horror director Mike Flanagan. Reznor put on a pair of black-rimmed glasses so that he could examine a piece of paper next to him. “We just wrote some notes because I knew I’d forget what the fuck I’m about to say.” There was a short film coming with the artist Susanne Deeken. There was a clothing venture, a T-shirt line made in collaboration with a notable designer whose name they’d like to keep secret for now, which will arrive this summer. There was a music festival that they were currently planning, “where we’re going to debut as performing as composers along with a roster of other interesting people,” and a record label, both scheduled to launch around the same time. And for two years they’ve been working with Epic Games on something that is not exactly a video game, in the UEFN ecosystem Epic has built around Fortnite - “It’s what Zuckerberg was trying to bullshit us into calling the metaverse,” Reznor said. “You can’t say that word any more, but in terms of the tool kit, thinking about it through the lens of what could be possible for artists and experiences, we thought that would be an interesting way to tell a story through that.” They were nervously contemplating the prospect of having day jobs again, of being responsible for more than just themselves. Early on, as they contemplated launching the company, they’d sat down with David Fincher to ask him about movie production: how does it work? “And he’s like, oh, you’re fucked,” Reznor said. “I can distill a two-hour conversation into that. Because, he said, ‘I know you guys, and no one’s going to care more than you do, and you will not be able to let it go.”’ Anyway, Reznor said, turning to Ross, “That was a longwinded way of saying, when we talked about this company, I just said, ‘Be aware of what success might look like because it will turn into something that eats up lots of cycles and time and attention and energy.”’ But, Ross said, taking on new responsibilities was, paradoxically, also a way to stay a little younger. “I know we’ve all been talking about being dads and being adults and all that,” Ross said, “and there is a part of me that thinks: it’s important to keep the kid alive.” Meaning the child inside yourself, rather than the one you’re responsible for. He told a story about him and Reznor visiting the director David Lynch at his house to work with him on the 2017 revival of Twin Peaks. “And I don’t know how old he was at the time,” Ross said, “but he was older. But just walking in there, and he had the room set up and there’s a screen there, there’s some chairs here and there’s some musical instruments there and he’s smoking a cigarette. There’s nothing old about that dude. You know what I mean?” Lynch showed them some Lynchian footage. It was incredible, even if they didn’t quite know what they were looking at. Lynch was probably 70 or 71 at the time. “But it’s that thing of it doesn’t matter how old he is,” Ross said. “He is alive. It’s that bit of it all that one doesn’t want to lose with age.” The point was, Reznor said: “Let’s try some stuff. We’re bored. We are. You know what I mean? We’re grateful. We enjoy doing films. We can write a better Nine Inch Nails record, I think. We can put on a cooler tour. We are aimed to do that. But man, what if we try to do
that?” Meaning, the company. “What if we could take what we’re good at, like we did with film? We identified something I think we’re good at and we figured out how to apply it to something else. What if we take that theory and try it on some other things? And that’s led us into: we’re not beaten down completely yet. And it feels exciting. That’s what matters to us right now.”
— words by Zach Baron for @gq.
Baron for @gq. Photos by Danielle Levitt. (@daniellelevitt)
Link in bio to read the fully story.
Styled by Mobolaji Dawodu
Grooming by Johnny Stuntz using Dior Capture Totale
Hyalushot
SFX Makeup by Malina Stearns
Grills by Alligator Jesus
Tailoring by Yelena Travkina
Set design by Lizzie Lang at 11th House Agency
Produced by Emily O’Meara at JN Production
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