Thomas Newman

Sometimes the best experiences are when I know nothing about this movie: I've never met the director, and I come and see something and I'm blank, because then it's coming at you in a way it would never come at you if you'd read the script, with an expectation.

I guess there are certain conventions that come with film and with scoring film. So maybe one of those is menace in a lower register. It's trying to evoke some sense of chaos and adventure.

The idea of creating film scores was terrifying for many years, into my 30s. It struck me as a career of doing 30-page term papers the night before they're due.

When you go into something like a space movie, you think there's going to be no music or little music.

Whatever you say to yourself about it being just another movie, and you're going to do the job you always do, it ends up being a 'Bond' movie and a sense of what it is to put music to James Bond and to honor the music that exists.

My uncle Lionel ended up being a bug guy at 20th Century Fox, which my father had been - and, of course, my cousin Randy - you know, one of the great American songwriters. It was a storied family and, in many ways, very tough to emerge from.

It's always easy, I think, to raise the importance of a scene through the addition of music. But it's very awkward to end it unless there's a door slam or a gunshot or something that just takes you right out of it.

The thing I don't want to do as a film composer is reiterate. I prefer to subtextualize or to underline rather than to say, 'This is what you should be feeling.'

I like being the underdog.

There's nothing like desperation to sharpen your sense of focus.

The Starship Avalon' is perpetually mobile. The music is designed to give the impression of endless sleep and endless journey with a significant interruption that guides the story that follows. It's color and pulse followed by great size.

You want to say as little as you can and get the most punch out of it, always with the knowledge that people are not in the theater to listen to your music so much as to respond to the movie. You're a part of that experience.