Daniel Lopatin: There was this Lewis song “Like To See You Again” that I thought might work for the end, but it was too involved tracking him down. My manager said something like, “Think big,” and I said, “Iggy Pop.”

I went back to the studio and wrote this weird ballad and a top line to it, because obviously I do not sing in a baritone. I heard this tune in my head, so I sampled some Tuvan throat-singing, just to give him some general reference to what I was thinking. But I just wanted him to do whatever the fuck he wanted to do. Iggy’s like a poet laureate to me. The man couldn’t be sweeter, and when we talked he was sharing these stories of having grown up in a trailer community in Michigan. These stories were in and of themselves just like listening to a crazy Richard Brautigan poem or something. We were just all really in awe. Anyway, Iggy was like, “Hey, I watched the movie. What I get from it is that essentially, paraphrasing, but everybody’s fucked. Nobody gets out.”

Your first soundtrack was The Bling Ring, but I did find a credit you have for this 2007 short film, The Replacement Child.

That’s my friend Justin who I grew up with. He basically gave me an opportunity to do something I didn't know how to do. It is quite weird, because you start asking yourself all of these questions: How tethered does the music need to be to the film? What’s the formal relationship between the beats of the music? How do I get to one point in a timeline to another? Do beats matter?

It wasn’t until I was working with Brian Reitzell on The Bling Ring that I was getting some hot tips. There was a sex scene that didn’t even make the movie. It was day three, and Brian was like, “Okay, sex scene, go.” I was like, “Fuck, this is so confusing. What do you want me to write? People are having sex and then you’re just playing some melody over it?” It forces you to think about all of these crazy implications—the meaning that’s suddenly attached to your decisions. The most important thing he taught me was: “Don't tether anything to anything. Just intuitively work around the visual beats of the film. Find a way for the score to rub up against it without mirroring.” That made perfect sense to me, because that’s how I approach things anyway. I'm trying always to find some kind of contrasting thing that will somehow feel more truthful. It’s the same reason I’m worried that my more recent stuff has been running too much on the grid. I need weird breakages to happen for music to feel true to life, and I think that also applies to good film scores.

Did you turn down projects after The Bling Ring?

Yes. When you’re working in service to a big project, there’s always the question of, “Is there total freedom to do what I think is right artistically, or is this a job?” It’s okay for things to be a job. I’m perfectly comfortable working. I don’t need to sit around and quench whatever personal artistic thirst I have at all times.

It wasn’t until I hooked up with the Safdies that I felt okay, like they were going to give me as much rope as I want but that I understood what they needed. They sent me a mood board with SpongeBob on it. Good Time is a heist film, a crime thriller, so there were images from “Cops,” Raising Arizona, ’80s horror film posters, and these photos of hyenas. Then there was some SpongeBob blotter. I was like, “All right, these kids are definitely doing something I’m interested in.”