Composer

The first thing is, you can't write movie music if you don't know how to write quickly.

In a time when directors did not fear composers with a strong voice, Morricone wrote scores like operas or symphonies, with passion, scope, bravura and intelligence.

You do movies because you love movies and you write music because you love writing music, and sometimes there's this magic combination.

I always say that to compose is to think. Playing is good, it's useful, but it's how your intellect puts the ideas together that will bring hands to write or to play. So, it's really a combination of many things; hearing sounds, hearing layers of counterpoints, of chords.

Music can make you go from sadness to an immense sadness. There is a limit; if you go too far, it becomes schmaltzy.

I'm being offered great movies by great directors and that's what I love, that's what I've dreamed to do, and that's what I do all day long. So I have to do it.

Composing is to think. It is to have your mind trying to find what is the best sound that the movie is going for: the best melody, the best texture, the best structure and dramaturgic arc for the film. Then you discuss that with the director. He's the leader. He's the one showing you the path to follow to find the soul of the film.

Yea, there is no way you can get away from critics. It's all over the net. Sometimes it's useful to read things, good or bad. Sometimes it's painful. Sometimes it stupid because they say stupid things.

In my early teens, I started collecting soundtrack albums.

I saw the finished version of 'The French Dispatch' quite a while ago, and it's just amazing. It's so incredibly strong and different... the way that Wes is expanding his talents to another dimension with each film is just wow.

Some directors can become concerned when it comes to music, because it's the end of the process and they're tired. They're worried that the music will intrude or waste something, that a composer will overwhelm the story.

The great directors, I've learned, have a great sense of rhythm.

My training in music has been very eclectic - as first a flute player from classical chamber music to jazz, Greek, Brazilian and African music to contemporary concert music.

I guess the passion I have for cinema is as strong as the one that I have for music. And I've always tried to be a character in the film, not just a composer that throws his music to the film. That's the main element that connects me with directors.

When a theme is beautiful, it's a pleasure to rearrange it or to interweave it with your own music.

Godzilla' took two months because it required a two-hour-plus score. 'Imitation Game' was three weeks.

In 'Secret Life of Pets,' it's a huge orchestra - really, really big.

Berlin was the first, the very first to give me an award. I am eternally grateful to them. It sits on my desk - the Silver Bear. All the others are stored away. It's the only one I look at. It watches me while I work.

There's a quality to the sound of a trumpet that you can really twist for any kind of sound and mood that you want to create.

I usually like to introduce the film and the music with the opening titles. It's a great help for a composer to bring the audience into the work that we're going into.