James Horner (1953–2015)

Born: August 14, 1953 in Los Angeles, California, USA
Died: June 22, 2015 (age 61) in Santa Barbara County, California, USA

2 time Oscar winner for TITANIC (Best Musical Score. Best Original Song)

I had no idea who Jerry Goldsmith or John Williams were before I did The Hand (1981). I’m sure that I was influenced by Goldsmith’s large orchestral scores when I started out, and that was because the people who employed me wanted that kind of sound. I wasn’t in a position to say, ‘Go to Hell!’

[from an interview in December, 2014] I’m much choosier. I don’t want to be doing these movies that now 85 or 90 composers want, as opposed to five or six. And now all these movies, action movies. I don’t get offered all the movies obviously, but I see a lot of them and I do get asked to do a lot of them, and I just know they’re not asking me to do something that I can do something original, they’re asking me to do a formula and I’m too rebellious.

[from 2009] My job — and it’s something I discuss with Jim [James Cameron] all the time — is to make sure at every turn of the film it’s something the audience can feel with their heart. When we lose a character, when somebody wins, when somebody loses, when someone disappears — at all times I’m keeping track, constantly, of what the heart is supposed to be feeling. That is my primary role.

[about his creative process] I don’t use a computer when I write and I don’t use a piano. I’m at a desk writing and it’s very broad strokes and notes as colors on a palette. I think very abstractly when I’m writing. Then as the project moves on it becomes more like sculpting.