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

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

Any film which views the darker side of life, which is death with a sense of humor, is very much to my taste.

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.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

I dont find myself lobbying for projects. Filmmakers almost always come to me.

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.