Carter Burwell’s one of those rare science-meets-art geniuses who could easily—if he were the wrong type of man—sell his vast intellect to the aerospace industry, trading doomsday machine schematics jotted down on cocktail napkins for millions of dollars and a life of cushy excess. Luckily for us, he’s instead used all that massive brain power to score some the most innovative American films of the past quarter-century with music that consistently defies expectations. Boasting a Harvard degree and resume bullet points like “protein analysis software designer,” “pioneer in the field of digital animation,” and “new wave session musician,” it was almost blind luck that found Burwell writing music for films in the mid-80s.
Best known for his collaborations with the Coen Brothers, Burwell has been involved with plenty of bizarre and rad projects from the experimental theme song to cable TV’s first “post-modern” game show in 1990 to, of course, Where the Wild Things Are. Browsing through the anecdotes on his personal website is like meeting a Hollywood veteran on a random studio backlot who’s more than willing to let you in on the joke. For instance: Burwell recalls working on the Anthony Perkins-directed Psycho III and being forced by Universal to record an MTV-friendly pop song tie-in, resulting in an “unbankable” single called “Scream of Love.”
It clearly had no potential for radio play, but it was the only solution Universal was going to get so they went with it. They had Arthur Baker do some dance remixes on 12″ vinyl and we even made a music video featuring me, Tony and a Hitchcockian blonde. Eventually Tony [Perkins] presented the video on MTV as a guest VJ.
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I totally remember this!!!
He totally looks like Paul Dano!