Bonus Reel: Film Composer Alan Silvestri Shares the Best Advice He Ever Received

[Music] what's the best piece of advice you were given when you were starting out best piece of advice I was given Wow I showed up to a piano lesson and I had been asked by my teacher who I loved his name was a dfrazier I had been writing counterpoint exercises every week and I showed up on this day without my homework and so I'm sitting there at the piano abby's over there bent back in the chair with this cigar and so I start to tell Abby you know why I didn't have my homework so long and I'm stealing it and he listens to my excuses and he says to me I think I know what this is and I'm like really what you know teach me he said yeah he said you know I think it's incipient leprosy and I go oh what's that a baby goes well you know it kind of starts like this and and then the next thing you know your hands are going to start to fall off and and then you know you're you know your feet and then you know it'll just kind of keep going and then you know they'll be there'll be nothing left he says why don't you play some Mozart and I remember thinking you know this was almost this would be like what I would consider like a Zen master passing something on to it to a student it's like all of that excuse stuff all of that you know broom it let it go get rid of that it's it's not it doesn't you know you didn't write the assignment that's it let's place in my sock it was just an incredible thing about for instance writer's block and I can't do it and you know so Sandra and I has become a family joke you know if I start to go down that road I know I just can't find my way into the film it's like incipient leprosy you know it's just it's just that that whole thought process doesn't doesn't bring anything to to what you have to do just you know and the other thing I said there was something he said to me when I complained about having to write something and couldn't you know and this was a film or TV thing he kind of you know he didn't dismiss it but he said ah you'll be alright you have an imagination and I've never forgotten that because that really is all the job is is you have to have an imagination you have to take something that's there bring it into yourself and imagine you're in it imagine things that you could do in response to it it's all imagination so those things together you know I just felt you know were great advice the advice of no excuses you can waste your time with all of them I can't get a job I can't you can do it you might have no choice but to do it but know that none of that really is going to be of help better to sit and place them up suck or read a score or anything other than work on your next group of excuses about why it's not happening and if you're even beginning to do this you do have an imagination and that's really all you have so look there

Channel: BMI

Views: 16,819

Keywords: bmi, broadcast music inc, music, BMI Film & TV Awards 2017, Alan Silvestri, Film composition, Cinema, Back to the Future, Polar Express, Castaway, Forrest Gump

Id: MIGkNfyX2GQ

Length: 4min 43sec (283 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 27 2017