Carter Burwell

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music. ”

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

John Barry was the first film composer I was aware of. As a teenager I owned several of his Bond soundtracks. ”

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

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. ”

Performing written music, even when I've written it, is not very interesting to me. ”

I think being a little nuts is helpful. ”

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 just love the sheer mess of New York. ”

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. ”