"My job is to look for something that doesn't exist yet in the film. I work a lot with friends --like Penny Marshall or Tony Scott-- so when Tony starts a movie, I know about it years before it starts shooting, and I hear the story every time I see him. So when I see the movie I find out what's left of the story he told me about, and what actually happened while he was shooting. And then I try to get back to the original reason why we were doing that movie. With music, you can express things far better, so what you try and do is express the things they haven't done eloquently. 'Yo, motherfucker!' is not a terribly eloquent line; I could write something much better."
"I don't drive, so one of my assistants drives me to my writing room, and I have a calendar on the wall telling me how much time I have left, and how far behind I am. I look at it and panic, and decide which scene to work on. And you sit there plonking notes until something makes sense, and you don't think about it any more. Good tunes come when you're not thinking about it."
"I have all these computers and keyboards and synthesizers, and I rattle away. For instance, with The Lion King I wrote over four hours' worth of tunes, and they were really pretty --but totally meaningless. So in the end I came up with material I liked. We worked on The Lion King for four years, but I wasn't toying until the last three-and-a-half weeks properly. On Crimson Tide, on the other hand, I just went in and within seconds I knew what I wanted."