I always go back to the original material. I want a good connection as the composer and writer of the score to the director and to the source material. It's really important.

I look at the film without any music or sound. I try to grasp the story from the screenplay. I try to write to the novel or book if there is one. I try to create music that's honest and true to my heart for the story.

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

Piano is very elegant. I also think it's a very truthful instrument.

I usually work with the director and it's just a collaboration between me and the one person. I think you make good movies that way. If the director and the composer can have this common goal and this excitement about making something great, then you're going to do something good.

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

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.