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Portrait of Carter Burwell

Carter Burwell

(1954) Composer United States

43 quotes in 231 categories

Carter Burwell is a composer from the United States, best known for Twilight - The Score: Easy Piano Solo.

Quick Facts About Carter Burwell

Born: November 18, 1954
Nationality: United States
Profession: Composer
Notable works: Twilight - The Score: Easy Piano Solo
Spouse: Christine Sciulli

About Carter Burwell

Carter Benedict Burwell is an American film composer. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score for Todd Haynes's Carol (2015) and Martin McDonagh's films Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) and The Banshees Of Inisherin (2022). He has frequently collaborated with the Coen brothers, having scored most of their films. He has also scored films by other directors such as Bill Condon, Spike Jonze, James Foley, Brian Helgeland, and John Lee Hancock.

Biography source: Wikipedia

Awards & Honors

British Independent Film Award for Best Music

Quotes by Carter Burwell

In mainstream romantic comedies, I'm usually tearing my hair out. It's just a devastatingly difficult genre for me.

Comedy

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I'm one of those people who is actually inspired by a deadline. I might not sleep for many days on end, it…

Be good

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Music is the subliminal connecting adhesive in film, or at least in narrative feature films.

Adhesive

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Carefully execute every instruction given to you by the director, producer, and studio. But that would be a life not worth living.

Directors

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Even if I went off to some other career, I hope I would still be doing Coen films.

Career

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If not bliss, ignorance can at least be fun.

Bliss

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There is not much irony when people are being happy on screen.

Being happy

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Big Sur is at the end of the continent. It attracts really crazy people.

Big sur

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Hopefully each film can be given a musical voice of its own, which is not to say that the instrumentation is always…

Film

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On Being John Malkovich and the cinema of the absurd, I do enjoy it. I wish there were more like it. The…

Absurd

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I write music to please myself. Hopefully the director's enjoying it too.

Cinema

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I dont find myself lobbying for projects. Filmmakers almost always come to me.

Filmmaker

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I just love the sheer mess of New York.

Love

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How does my music connect to an audience? That is just a complete mystery to me.

Audience

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Death is always around the corner, but often our society gives it inordinate help.

Around the corner

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Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

Interest

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The flow of Guiness into the studio was inspirational as well as nutritive.

Flow

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I prefer a life in which we don't take ourselves too seriously.

Life

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I would like to do a science fiction film some day. Star Wars seems really to have destroyed the genre, which at…

Cinema

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New Yorkers may think they're on some cutting edge, but that's not especially true. It is, however, the most exciting heterogeneous mess…

Cutting

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Connection is what one is after in probably most media, but certainly in film, which is an immersive medium.

Cinema

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All my music is very simple in that melody is usually clearly stated.

Melody

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John Barry was the first film composer I was aware of. As a teenager I owned several of his Bond soundtracks.

Composer

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Los Angeles is an industry town, and it has great facilities and personnel. The disadvantage is that everyone there seems to talk…

Disadvantages

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I have always loved Scottish music - all sorts of Celtic, Gaelic music.

Celtic

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Carter Burwell by topic

Cinema (9) Music (8) Film (8)