I like to feel and understand people's contentment with what I've done.
I don't know the names of any pop musicians. Pop music is standardised; it's made to please the largest audience possible. I also compose to please a large audience, but when you listen to my music, you understand that I have studied and applied the whole history of composition.
I was offered a free villa in Hollywood, but I said no thank you, I prefer to live in Italy.
They're all my children... every score I've done.
In music, what is very important is temporality of space and length, based on the breathing space the director gives the music within the film, by separating the music from various elements of reality, like noises, dialogues... That's how you treat music properly, but it doesn't always happen this way. Music is often blamed, but it's not its fault.
You can see my decision as either a distinctive factor or as a limitation. I don't feel it is a limitation.
I also used these realistic sounds in a psychological way. With The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, I used animal sounds - as you say, the coyote sound - so the sound of the animal became the main theme of the movie.
I come from a background of experimental music which mingled real sounds together with musical sounds.
Everyone has to die. I'm not particularly scared about it. What really frightens me is that if I go before my wife, I will leave her alone, and vice versa. The ideal would be to die together.
I can't be enthusiastic as soon as I write something on the music sheet. The music sheet is only the beginning: it has to be listened to, played by the instruments, and then heard by the director, but most importantly, it has to be listened to by the public.
It had a very good arrangement by Herbie Hancock, but it used existing pieces.
My more risky or avant garde music is not that well known to a wider audience, but I wish it was.
When I have to score a film, I watch the movie first and then start thinking about it. And from that moment on, it is as if I were pregnant. I then have to deliver the child, so from that moment on, I think always about the music - even when I go to the grocery store, I think about it.
I was born in 1928, so in 1943, 1944, we had the war in Rome. There were a lot of hardships, a lack of food, many shortages. So when I worked with the Americans, the English, and the Canadians soon after the war, when I played with them, they paid me with food. That will give you an idea how widespread poverty was at that time.
There was a theft! But, of course, if it was up to me, every two years I would win an Oscar.
Music needs room to breathe.
Some movies work really well with music from Bach or Mahler that existed long before the film, so music has its own autonomy.
I have to see a definitive cut of the film before I even start thinking about the music, I tell the director what my feelings are and what I would like to do. He accepts what I say or discusses it or destroys it. Eventually, we have to find a compromise.
It could have been extremely boring to write musical scores for only westerns of horror films. It was really exciting for me to work in all these various genres.
If you scroll through all the movies I've worked on, you can understand how I was a specialist in westerns, love stories, political movies, action thrillers, horror movies, and so on. So in other words, I'm no specialist, because I've done everything. I'm a specialist in music.
