Carter Burwell's Quotes

If not bliss, ignorance can at least be fun.

In mainstream romantic comedies, I'm usually tearing my hair out. It's just a devastatingly difficult genre for me.

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.

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

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

Music is the subliminal connecting adhesive in film, or at least in narrative feature films.

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

There is not much irony when people are being happy on screen.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Most films I work on, the people making the film are constantly second-guessing the executives of the studio, the producer, and the audience. It is very hard to accomplish anything in that situation.

New Yorkers may think they're on some cutting edge, but that's not especially true. It is, however, the most exciting heterogeneous mess of a town I've ever seen.

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.

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.

Death is always around the corner, but often our society gives it inordinate help.

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.

I think being a little nuts is helpful.

I think I've only done one horror movie, Psycho III. That was a walk in the park compared to a romantic comedy.

The flow of Guiness into the studio was inspirational as well as nutritive.

When the systems we expect to help us actually hurt us, we have tragedy.