Carter Burwell Quotes

I don't generally find myself listening to the music of a film unless there's something awfully wrong with it. I almost never try to make the audience comfortable. I wouldn't want that if I were in the audience. Music is the subliminal connecting adhesive in film, or at least in narrative feature films. I don't personally see my work as being dark. What interests me is a balance between light and dark. On Being John Malkovich and the cinema of the absurd, I do enjoy it. I wish there were more like it. The very fact that there can't be more like it is one of the reasons it's admirable. I prefer a life in which we don't take ourselves too seriously. 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 like business and personal life to be distinct. In mainstream romantic comedies, I'm usually tearing my hair out. It's just a devastatingly difficult genre for me. When the systems we expect to help us actually hurt us, we have tragedy. 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. Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music. John Barry was the first film composer I was aware of. As a teenager I owned several of his Bond soundtracks. 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. I write music to please myself. Hopefully the director's enjoying it too. I like the fact that New York looks a bit backwards, toward the Old World, rather than resolutely forwards. I had piano lessons when I was a kid, like most people. And hated them, like most people. And quit, like most people. I have always loved Scottish music - all sorts of Celtic, Gaelic music. How does my music connect to an audience? That is just a complete mystery to me. I dont find myself lobbying for projects. Filmmakers almost always come to me. 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. I just love the sheer mess of New York. If not bliss, ignorance can at least be fun. There is not much irony when people are being happy on screen. 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. I think I've only done one horror movie, Psycho III. That was a walk in the park compared to a romantic comedy. I think being a little nuts is helpful. 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. 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. Even if I went off to some other career, I hope I would still be doing Coen films.