How ‘White House Plumbers’ Composer Gave ’70s Drama a ‘Caper Movie’ Sound Using a Jazz Ensemble
Jon Burlingame Composer Jeff Cardoni found precisely the right sound for “White House Plumbers,” the five-hour miniseries about the Watergate burglars that debuted Monday on HBO: He revisited the 1970s musically, and it’s both effective and ultra-cool. Cardoni, whose credits range from “CSI: Miami” to “The Kominsky Method,” scored “White House Plumbers” like a caper film, using both a small jazz combo and a larger, string-based orchestra depending on the scene. He likened the approach to a David Shire score from the ’70s, along the lines of “The Conversation” and (no surprise) “All the President’s Men.” Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux play E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, the ex-CIA and FBI agents recruited by President Nixon’s re-election committee to dig up dirt on his Democratic opponents, bungled the job so badly that they wound up bringing down the entire Nixon administration. Director David Mandel plays it for both laughs and tragedy as their plans constantly go awry.