I flew to England to see the rough cut of ‘Revolutionary Road.’ I was quite moved. As a married man, it’s kind of disturbing to see a couple try so hard to work things out and fail so miserably. – Thomas Newman
My father used to say it was just there, the opportunity. It was all teed up for him. The talkies were starting, and here was Hollywood waiting for people to come from New York who had the training, who could do music with a sense of dramatic context. – Thomas Newman
In general, I probably have a shy nature. So the idea of poking out with my music is probably not something I want to do. – Thomas Newman
In live action, sometimes a mood or a feeling can go on for quite a while. Animation is a lot more effort. There are a lot more notes. – Thomas Newman
The fun for me musically is that you never quite know what works and why. So why pretend you do? Why not just put things together and discover, in the creative process, if and why they work? That approach has served me well. – Thomas Newman
‘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. – Thomas Newman
After the music that had been created by my family, I thought there was no way I could stack up. – Thomas Newman
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. – Thomas Newman
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.’ – Thomas Newman
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. – Thomas Newman
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. – Thomas Newman
Robert Altman was a very jovial guy and obviously a famed improviser and perhaps less effective in post-production, which is like the crystallising process. So I found myself at sea often with him because we’d have conversations about what music is, and in the end, I don’t know how interested he was? – Thomas Newman
It’s always nice to remember that there was a time when I loved something that I didn’t know much about; it just reached my ears and moved me. – Thomas Newman
When you go into something like a space movie, you think there’s going to be no music or little music. – Thomas Newman
There were certain things in ‘Nemo’ – just this low hum of ocean and watery sound – that was enough to imply water, as opposed to restating it over and over again. – Thomas Newman
We’re all shocked by new ideas, and we’re less shocked when we hear them again. And less shocked when we hear them a third time. – Thomas Newman
I think I compose as a listener: improvising and listening back excites me because I get to ideas that never would have occurred. Then I bring in the computers and samplers… and I begin to loop and process and change them. – Thomas Newman
I realized so much of my life hasn’t been in a well-lit room, and I realized the importance of documenting my experiences as a way to memorialize them. – Thomas Newman
What satisfies me most are those nonverbal moments with players, when I sense them thinking and responding. And I think, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ Hollywood gives us the money to do this. I want to be grateful for that, and I also don’t want to waste it. – Thomas Newman
‘Sugarcoat the Galaxy’ is inspired by color-inflected photographs of galaxies. It likens sounds to spun sugar and confection, wrapping static harmonies inside energy and pace. – Thomas Newman
Music is such an odd thing when you think about it – behind an image until you take it away, and then you realize a movie sounds blank without it. – Thomas Newman
The rare opportunity of writing music for a movie about the making of ‘Mary Poppins’ was impossible to ignore. The fact that it could provide emotional content in relief of the struggles that the Sherman brothers and Walt Disney endured was reason enough to take on the challenge. – Thomas Newman
