BACKSTAGE INTERVIEW
CATEGORY: Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)
INTERVIEW WITH:
FILM: "Toy Story 3"
SONG: "We Belong Together"
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Q. Congratulations, Mr. Newman. I just wanted to say that this is your second win.
A. Yeah.
Q. And I'm just wondering, is it sweeter the second time around?
A. It's pretty sweet both times. This is really very nice, you know. I didn't totally expect it. You know, last year, I was nominated for a couple of songs from PRINCESS & THE FROG, but I knew it wouldn't win. I knew the country thing wouldn't win. This time, I thought I might. It didn't help me prepare anything to say, but it was very nice, as it always is, when people want to give you something.
Q. The writing for these songs, do they come easier for you over time or is it difficult or just something that just came on and you just crank out?
A. They have always, compared to everything else I have to write, songs for myself, scoring for the pictures, they come easiest because there's information they tell me; it should be happy, and it should be fast, it should say this in general, and I can usually do it fairly easily and fairly quickly. I don't want them to know that, so don't print it, but it's true.
Q. As a musician, what comes next? What's the next challenge, and what do you hope to achieve?
A. Well, I would like to still get better, you know. What I have been doing since I was 15 is writing songs and making records. There's a lot of evidence that people do their best work before they're 25, you know. These pants are 25. And my last record I thought was good and not inferior to anything I've done. I like to get better at that, at what I am doing. And writing music is difficult, I find. And there's a lot of challenges to it just inherent in the field. It's just not easy for me.
Q. I'm curious, of the previous nominations, although understanding that the winners before, I am sure they are great that they won
A. Yeah.
Q. What's something earlier that you did where you thought: Damn, that actually was really good. That made it?
A. Well, you know, you learn that that doesn't enter it. One of the, I think, nominees this year was complaining that this is not my best work. It just doesn't have that much to do with it. I mean, this isn't the most consequential thing I've ever done for a movie by a long shot. You know, I remember I thought the score of A BUG'S LIFE really helped. TOY STORY 2 also. THE NATURAL.
Q. THE NATURAL?
A. Yeah. RAGTIME. AWAKENINGS, which is a movie I thought I helped. Not enough, perhaps, but I helped. So, things like that. Not that I want to win anything for it, but I thought highly of them at the time.
Q. I guess, you know, just with the music business being so hard to break into these days how practical would it be
A. Who would want to break into it? It's like a bank that's already been robbed.
Q. Exactly. It's crazy.
A. It's over. But go on.
Q. So, how practical do you think it is for college kids to actually major in music? Do you think they should just maybe major in business or something practical and realistic and just do music on the side?
A. No. Keep doing it. If you stayed in it that long, you must love it. I am the only person I ever heard of that just never loved it but just kept going because I was sort of good at it in some ways. But, I mean, you keep doing it. The Juilliard graduates, 50 percent of them or more don't go into music, and that's as high as you can go in promising musical people. It's a really tough living to make, but, no, you shouldn't. If you love it, do it and see what happens. It's not going to hurt you. It's a very complicated thing. You can study it for the rest of your life and to your benefit. It's not a vocational school, USC, you know, really. It's a great music school.
Q. Thank you so much and congratulations.
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