There's nothing like desperation to sharpen your sense of focus.
With film music, endings are often more difficult than beginnings, because a beginning is an underline, a way of exciting a moment, and then you have to find a way to dissipate that.
If you fail, fail fast enough so you can regroup and do it better.
The golden age of Hollywood was the conceit of the movie and the style of the movie.
In 'Saving Mr. Banks,' the challenge was just transitions. Time transitions from 1961 to 1906; how do you follow a character in one environment to another? And sometimes these transitions were quick, so how do you do that?
I had ideas. A lot were good, but in many ways, I had no idea or experience about how to carry them out.
Robert Altman was a very jovial guy and obviously a famed improviser and perhaps less effective in post-production, which is like the crystallising process. So I found myself at sea often with him because we'd have conversations about what music is, and in the end, I don't know how interested he was?
I didn't listen to any of my dad's scores.
There are moments when I invoke my dad and think about him on the podium, but in a very positive way. I don't feel at all intimidated by him. I feel like I've found my own voice.
The idea of creating film scores was terrifying for many years, into my 30s. It struck me as a career of doing 30-page term papers the night before they're due.
The fun for me musically is that you never quite know what works and why. So why pretend you do? Why not just put things together and discover, in the creative process, if and why they work? That approach has served me well.
The experience of a film is immersive, and music is supposed to underline and help that experience.
I first came to Abbey Road Studios in 1994. I scored 'Little Women' there. What I remember most about it was how hard it was to come to London from Los Angeles and conduct when you're jetlagged.
The rare opportunity of writing music for a movie about the making of 'Mary Poppins' was impossible to ignore. The fact that it could provide emotional content in relief of the struggles that the Sherman brothers and Walt Disney endured was reason enough to take on the challenge.
My uncle Lionel ended up being a bug guy at 20th Century Fox, which my father had been - and, of course, my cousin Randy - you know, one of the great American songwriters. It was a storied family and, in many ways, very tough to emerge from.
'Sugarcoat the Galaxy' is inspired by color-inflected photographs of galaxies. It likens sounds to spun sugar and confection, wrapping static harmonies inside energy and pace.
It's a practical matter. If you're useful to others, you'll be hired.
I flew to England to see the rough cut of 'Revolutionary Road.' I was quite moved. As a married man, it's kind of disturbing to see a couple try so hard to work things out and fail so miserably.
What satisfies me most are those nonverbal moments with players, when I sense them thinking and responding. And I think, 'Wow, this is amazing.' Hollywood gives us the money to do this. I want to be grateful for that, and I also don't want to waste it.
In animation, action is changing so quickly that there's really not a lot of suspended moments.
