When I was a kid, I wanted to make movies. In particular, I loved animation and would love to have been an animator.
My great uncle, my mom's uncle, had an appliance store in Philadelphia, and it was called Peter's TV. They sold stereos and televisions and washers, dryers, all kinds of stuff.
'Lost' is such a thematic show that I'm always afraid that if I know something's going to happen at the end, I'll subconsciously write something in where someone who's astute will go, 'Oh, he used so-and-so's theme: that must mean so-and-so is coming back!'
As an audience member, everyone I talk to is like, 'I'm so excited to see 'Super 8.' I'm so excited to see it.' And part of that is because of his drive to make sure that it stays hidden until the last minute.
I was obsessed with 'The Twilight Zone' as a kid, and one of those things I didn't realize until I was in college was that I had been listening to Bernard Herrmann all my life.
I've always looked at guys who I've admired, like John Williams and Lalo Schifrin and Max Steiner, and looked at the choices they made and always try to take a cue from that.
I think that one of the things I'd learned from being so attentive to the careers of the people I've admired is the fact that they would say 'no' a lot. Early on, I took that as a cue to only work on things that I knew I would be passionate about.
I have tons of drawings of 'Star Wars,' whether it be stormtroopers, Darth Vader, Star Destroyers, or the whole thing.
My dad had these great Benny Goodman albums that I was obsessed with, and Louis Prima's another guy I loved, and Peter Niro the jazz pianist. I loved international music: Irish music, Mexican music. I love the different colours that they all have.
I grew up with so many different sounds, and 'Lost' allows me to express all of it, the melodic and the atonal.
There have been several movies that I've done over the years that have got a bad shake - 'Speed Racer' was one of them. I loved that movie, and the fact it got such a bad reception was disheartening.
The very first game I worked on was for DreamWorks Interactive's 'The Lost World: Jurassic Park.'
I think the Wachowskis are two of my favorite people on the planet; they're the best.
I love Glenn Gould. Max Steiner. John Williams. Louis Prima. Benny Goodman. Miles Davis. John Philip Sousa.
I love percussive instrumentation.
I always loved movies like 'King Kong' and 'Planet of the Apes,' monster movies, Ray Harryhausen films, all of that stuff. I always loved the music in them, too.
Scoring animated films, I have the exact same approach and philosophy as I do for a live action. It's all story- and character-driven. I don't care if it's a mouse or Tom Cruise.
I think my writing has an old-fashioned feel to it for whatever reason. I'm just so influenced by the music that I listened to growing up, a lot of it out of the '60s, so it has a natural tendency to feel like it's from another era.
For some reason, as a kid, I felt outwardly embarrassed to say that I liked rock music. I don't know where that came from. For me, it just wasn't cool - orchestral music was cool.
I loved 'Planet of the Apes,' and I loved 'Star Wars,' and I loved 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' and to me, the goal always was to work on something as cool as that.
