Film music really is about point of view and you can shift it wherever you want really depending on how you look at it.

Music is essentially an emotional language, so you want to feel something from the relationships and build music based on those feelings.

You can find the whole world of a film in one instrument, or you can find a world of sound in the orchestra.

I have to feel something emotionally on the story to be able to write for it. I turn things down if I don't feel I'm really right to tell that particular story.

The art of making films is a collaborative art. As a composer, you're always working with the cinematographer because he's so much the heart of the world they've created on film.

Sometimes you want to use the music in a clarity way to explain something in the film.

When you're working on a film, it's intense and it's very all-consuming. There's not something in particular.

Theater and film are essentially the same - just different kinds of storytelling.

I've been writing music since I was 9. I took harmony and counterpoint classes when I was studying the clarinet. So, I've been writing for an awfully long time. It just became part of everyday life.

I live in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. and spend time in the West Village, where my wife Elizabeth Cotnoir, a writer-producer and documentary filmmaker, has an office.

When you start on a new film, no matter how many you've done before that, I think I've done close to 80 films, but it's always kind of a fun adventure.

When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.

I must be thankful that I get to do intense dramatic roles, because it takes so much more, whereas I've been doing L'Oreal forever, and I can do that in my sleep.

The spirits are an age-old theme, a story from darkest history, and therefore a presentational anchor that can be used with many different magic tricks.

It's east to start a war in any country

Always believe in yourself and never give up because you don't know what success could be right around the corner.

Shoot what you see, not what you think.

It’s much easier to act like a Christian than it is to react like one!

If sadness comes to you one day with an invitation, tell it you are committed to joy and will be faithful to it your whole life long.

I'm hoping to become a recording artist and make albums and go on tour.

It is the University's function to turn out well-balanced persons with an understanding of themselves and of their place in life.