I usually work with the director and it's just a collaboration between me and the one person. I think you make good movies that way. If the director ….

I have to feel something emotionally on the story to be able to write for it. I turn things down if I don't feel I'm really right to tell that partic….

I grew up in repertory theaters, so it was comedy one night, drama the next. I'm used to going from one to the other. And I worked for years in telev….

I live in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. and spend time in the West Village, where my wife Elizabeth Cotnoir, a writer-producer and documentary filmmaker, has an ….

I have kind of an intuitive feeling as a composer as to what would be appropriate for those groups and how to feature certain paths in a certain way,….

Saturday Night Live was actually started with a show that Lorne Michaels and I did at a summer camp called Timberlane in Ontario when we were 14 and ….

Film music really is about point of view and you can shift it wherever you want really depending on how you look at it..

I never shied away from a challenge and I love doing big, epic films. They're interesting to me just on a pure music level, just in terms of the amou….

There are many things that have stayed consistent. But the biggest change, of course, is technology, the way it's used, the way films are shot, the f….

The technology certainly changes. I think, in terms of making films, that's been the biggest change. But many things stay the same. I mean, there's s….

Music is essentially an emotional language, so you want to feel something from the relationships and build music based on those feelings..

The art of making films is a collaborative art. As a composer, you're always working with the cinematographer because he's so much the heart of the w….

I had great inspiration from a Japanese composer named Toru Takemitsu. He wrote over 90 film scores and a lot of concert music, a lot of classical mu….

I look at the film without any music or sound. I try to grasp the story from the screenplay. I try to write to the novel or book if there is one. I t….

You don't always want to be using the music in a way to express ideas inherent that are on the screen. You might want to work more around the fringes….

I've been writing music since I was 9. I took harmony and counterpoint classes when I was studying the clarinet. So, I've been writing for an awfully….

When you start on a new film, no matter how many you've done before that, I think I've done close to 80 films, but it's always kind of a fun adventur….

When you're working on a film, it's intense and it's very all-consuming. There's not something in particular..

Theater and film are essentially the same - just different kinds of storytelling..

Sometimes you want to use the music in a clarity way to explain something in the film..

The techniques of different directors are very different, and people have different ways of expressing ideas in film. I'm happiest when working with ….