Something started rattling in my gray brain. Sydney. And I said, "Wait… Mad Max?" Because I knew they were working on that film. And Darren said, "Yeah, I’m sitting here with [Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller], and he’s very curious to meet you. He wouldn’t believe that if I called you, you would be up for flying out immediately to meet him." And I said, "Uh, hell yeah."

So off I went to the airport. I was super excited. And on top of that, I’ve got an insane fear of flying. I’ve never canceled a gig in my life, but I have an insane fear of flying. And this is a 17-hour flight. So I leave at 11:00 at night. I take some ant-axiety pills, but I stay awake because I’m so excited about this meeting. I arrive at the airport at 7:30 at the morning after being up for 17 hours straight in the plane.

I finally get to his office. It’s 8:30 in the morning. I meet his lovely assistant. She says to me, "Why don’t you go see the film before you talk to George?" So I went into the screening room with Darren. I’ve been up for god knows how long, and I see the film. It doesn’t have a beginning and it doesn’t have an end. The first shot I see is a crazy red guy on a truck playing guitar. That’s the first thing I see! And the rest is just one big chase. I came out of that screening room like, "What the hell just happened to me?" And then I meet George, who’s this amazing, friendly guy. We have this really fun talk about all kinds of different things. He was very interested in who I was, where I came from, who my parents are. And then he says, "You know what? I need to go a meeting, but why don’t you go to the hotel, chill out, and tomorrow we’ll meet at 9 a.m. And I’d love for you to present a plan for how you’d like to do the score."

"Darren said, 'I'm sitting here with George Miller, and he's very curious to meet you. He wouldn’t believe that if I called you, you would be up for flying out immediately to meet him.'"

So Darren and I left. I’m still up. It’s been 40-something hours. We go to the hotel. We have a nice dinner. I’m so excited, so I stay up another night and make a mood board, with YouTube videos and scribbles on paper. I have a drive with me, with all kinds of music I’ve made over the last 30 years. I made a playlist on iTunes.

The next day, at 9:00, we were there and George was there. And I did this Powerpoint presentation. Besides the fact that George is a legendary director and an amazing person, he’s an incredibly good listener. He just sat back, and he didn’t say anything for three hours. I was playing music and pointing things out in the film. After three hours, he stood up and gave me his hand. And he said, "Tom Holkenborg, I would like you to be the composer for my movie, Fury Road." And that was that. I went back to the airport to fly back home. And I passed out on the plane.

What was really funny is that, in the beginning, George felt he didn’t need any score. There was the sound of the cars, the drummers in the back and the guitar player. But the music of the drummers and the guitar player didn’t make all that much sense. So I had to redo that. And that was the first thing I attacked. Which was a tricky one, because it had to look as if they were playing the music I wrote. There’s the tempo, and when you see the hands move, it needs to make sense with what the drummers were playing.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

The Sinister Six [a supergroup formed to collaborate on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 score] is a typical Hans idea. He’s extremely good at a lot of things, but this is what he’s really good at: To find the right people to do things with. He got Pharrell, he got Johnny Marr. A really good team. Basically, the idea was: "Let’s make a bunch of songs together, and out of that, we’ll make a score."