Carter Burwell
Carter Burwell
Carter Benedict Burwellis an American composer of film scores. He has frequently collaborated with the Coen brothers, having scored 15 of their films. Burwell has scored three of Todd Haynes' films, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score for Haynes' Carol. Other notable films scores include the Spike Jonze films Being John Malkovich, Adaptationand Where the Wild Things Are, David O. Russell's Three Kings, Olive Kitteridge, and Anomalisa...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth18 November 1955
CountryUnited States of America
I dont find myself lobbying for projects. Filmmakers almost always come to me.
I don't generally find myself listening to the music of a film unless there's something awfully wrong with it.
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.
A carefree quality is a whole aspect of life that I will never understand. I don't think I have ever been carefree and can't see the pleasure of it.
I just love the sheer mess of New York.
I have always loved Scottish music - all sorts of Celtic, Gaelic music.
I almost never try to make the audience comfortable. I wouldn't want that if I were in the audience.
I don't personally see my work as being dark. What interests me is a balance between light and dark.
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.
I prefer a life in which we don't take ourselves too seriously.
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.
When the systems we expect to help us actually hurt us, we have tragedy.
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.
Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.