CARTER BURWELL

Hopefully each film can be given a musical voice of its own, which is not to say that the instrumentation is always unique, but that the relationship between the sound and the image is unique.

John Barry was my hero when I was about 13. His scores to the James Bond movies were the scores of my life back then.

I'm one of those people who is actually inspired by a deadline. I might not sleep for many days on end, it may not be good for my health, but it definitely helps.

Most films I work on, the people making the film are constantly second-guessing the executives of the studio, the producer, and the audience. It is very hard to accomplish anything in that situation.

I think being a little nuts is helpful.

I like business and personal life to be distinct.

Death is always around the corner, but often our society gives it inordinate help.

Conducting, I tried it once off the cuff, and quickly realized there were subtle aspects that I was missing. There is a lot more to it that I was able to grasp simply by watching conductors.

The jarring change going from an urban environment to an extremely remote natural environment is extremely inspiring. It's constantly stimulating, it's like a slap in the face.

Big Sur is at the end of the continent. It attracts really crazy people.

A carefree quality is a whole aspect of life that I will never understand. I don't think I have ever been carefree and can't see the pleasure of it.

I almost never try to make the audience comfortable. I wouldn't want that if I were in the audience.

I just love the sheer mess of New York.

Los Angeles is an industry town, and it has great facilities and personnel. The disadvantage is that everyone there seems to talk about the same subject matter.

If someone suddenly lost their director the day before shooting and wanted me to step in, I'd be willing to. But I'd do brain surgery the same way. I'm always up for something new.

Carefully execute every instruction given to you by the director, producer, and studio. But that would be a life not worth living.

If not bliss, ignorance can at least be fun.

Even if I went off to some other career, I hope I would still be doing Coen films.

How does my music connect to an audience? That is just a complete mystery to me.

I think I've only done one horror movie, Psycho III. That was a walk in the park compared to a romantic comedy.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

I write music to please myself. Hopefully the director's enjoying it too.

I don't personally see my work as being dark. What interests me is a balance between light and dark.

I would like to do a science fiction film some day. Star Wars seems really to have destroyed the genre, which at one time offered great musical opportunities.

Music is the subliminal connecting adhesive in film, or at least in narrative feature films.