I recently had the opportunity to interview Carter Burwell, one of today's most popular film music composers, who got his start in the film business by scoring Blood Simple, followed by Psycho III.

How did you get hired to do the music for Psycho III?
I received a letter in a seldom-used mailbox, from Universal Pictures' music department.  It said they wanted to speak to me about a film project.  At this point I believe I'd only scored one film, Blood Simple, and didn't have plans to do another.  They put me in touch with Tony Perkins, who was directing, and we met up at his suite at the Plaza Hotel.  He told me he'd liked the music to Blood Simple and wanted to do something with the music in Psycho III that would be different from the previous Psycho films.

How was it working with Anthony Perkins and what were your impressions of him?
The only time I remember being star-struck in this business was working with Tony.  I was a big fan, and this did somewhat get in the way since I was initially tongue-tied.  His sense of humor was so dry that I still don't really know whether he was joking with me a lot of the time.  I assume he was. They did additional photography on the film - because the studio had requested more blood, according to Tony - so I did spend some time on the set.  He seemed to direct in a more "collegial" way than I've ever seen - asking the entire crew to offer comments or suggestions after every shot.

Explain your collaboration with the many artists on the music of the film including legendary saxophone player David Sanborn. Also, according to the original soundtrack album, Scream of Love was originally set to be the title song to the film.  What happened that caused this change?
My friends Stanton Miranda, Steve Bray and I wrote and recorded a lot of the "source" music which issues from jukeboxes and radios in the film.  The basic tracks of "Scream of Love" were written for one of scenes in the film - I believe it's in Jeff Fahey's character's room.  After the film was completed Universal raised the question of having some kind of pop single on the soundtrack album.  This was in the days when having such a single playing on MTV provided free promotion for the film.  Tony objected to the idea of placing a song unrelated to the film in the soundtrack just to satisfy these PR concerns - although that's of course what is normally done.   We tried a few directions.  We had Stan Ridgeway write some lyrics to my main theme (the one playing as Maureen walks across the desert in the beginning of the film).  Danny Elfman and I worked on a track based on samples of Hermann's original string licks.  In the end we decided to just call "Scream of Love" our "single".  We developed the piece further, with David Sanborn layering sax tracks.  The record company moved the track to the first place on the album and had Arthur Baker do a remix of it.  And, somewhat unbelievably, they shot a music video with me and Tony.  Tony played the video on a Halloween MTV special when he was the guest VJ.

What was your impression of the movie when you saw it complete with music?
It's not a great film, but it was my first experience in Hollywood and I'll always be thankful to Tony for it.

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