Where did you grow up and what was the first instrument you played?
I grew up in Glendale, California, so I’m a Valley boy, born and raised. The first instrument I played, and still play, is the guitar. That’s my main instrument. I was six years old. My mom was a folk music fan, and she played. And then so, you know, by osmosis, I started taking lessons and just never gave it up.
And is that what you still use to compose on, or do you use a keyboard?
I use a keyboard in the main, but I get to play guitar on my scores for fun. Usually I replace it, but nonetheless, it’s always there.
This is a different kind of a story for Garfield. It’s got a little more heart, drama, and excitement than we are used to with him.
It was such a fun movie to work on. My good friend Mark Dindle, our director, and I have done three movies together in the past. We did “The Emperor’s New Groove” and “Chicken Little” for Disney a number of years ago. He called me about Garfield at least two years ago, talking about the type of score he’s thinking of, and we had a lot of chats about that. He explained that it was probably going to be a bit of everything, meaning that there’s a big emotional arc to the story plus a lot of action music and heist music. So, it was fun for me. I got to do a big action type fun animated adventure music and I got to do some kind of spy-ish music and then I also got to write melodic emotional stuff.
We talked about the characters. We talked a lot about the emotional relationship between Garfield and his dad. That was kind of cool about the story, I felt, was that not only is it a fun sort of romp for Garfield, but you get an emotional scene that would represent Garfield and his dad, and we get to learn what happened and what develops in their relationship.
One of my favorite genres for film is the heist movie and this one had a lot of mechanics. How was that reflected in the score?
You’re right, there were a lot of mechanics. All of a sudden, midway through, the whole movie becomes a heist movie. And Garfield and Odie have to train, and there’s a funny guy they meet that they train with, and then a lot of that middle part of the movie, and through the end, is all about the heist, and the heist is a very funny, without totally spoiling it. They have to steal a lot of milk, and so they have to break into the milk factory, which is of course a heavily guarded, top secret kind of place, and there’s all kinds of antics that go on in there when they have to jump a train. And then they get to the milk factory and you find out some interesting things about the history of the milk factory, and then they have to break in. So it takes that turn, but in a funny, entertaining way.