How Do You Get Work?
"A director approaches you and starts by apologising about his movie, saying if it had turned out the way he wanted it would be really great, but at the moment it's garbage, and will you come and maybe have a look at it? So you see a very rough cut - it's usually four-and-a-half hours long at this point - and you decide you're not going to write four-and-a-half hours' worth of music.
"This is followed by endless lunches and dinners and phone coversations about whether you think it's going to be all right, and whether you have any ideas, and you usually say you have lots, which is not true. The idea only happens at the very last moment when the deadline is beating you up like crazy."

Previous Jobs?
"I was in a band, The Buggles, annd I was an assistant to a composer, Stanley Myers, who wrote The Deer Hunter. The first thing I did was write one scene on the Nic Roeg film Eureka, then I did My Beautiful Laundrette with Stanley. The first movie I found myself doing was A World Apart, and through that I got Rain Man, and then I did Driving Miss Daisy.
"I did a thing called The Power of One, which was all Africa, choirs, that sort of thing, and the directors of The Lion King someone gave them the CD of the soundtrack - to this day they haven't seen the movie - and they thought, 'This could be diff erent'. I kept saying, 'Why are you offering me this movie? I know nothing about animation', and they kept going, 'Exactly! That's why!'
"After I won the Oscar (for Best Score, The Lion King), I expected things to go back to normal, but it doesn't work that way. If I'd only taken a tenth of the calls I had to take, I'd still have been on the phone all day."

How Do You See Your Job?
"My job is to look for something that doesn't exist yet in the film. I work a lot with friends, like Pey Marshall or Tony Scott, so when Tony starts a movie I know about it years before it starts shooting, and I hear the story every time I see him. So when I see the movie I find out what's left of the story he told me about, annd what actually happened while he was shooting. And then I try to get back to the original reason why we were doing that movie.
"With music, you can express things far better, so what you try and do is express the things they haven't done eloquently. 'Yo, motherfucker!' is not a terribly eloquent line, I could write something much better."

What Is Your Typical Day?
"I wake up around noon, light a cigarette, get a cup of coffe, sit in the bathtub for an hour and daydream, and I usually come up with some ideas. I don't drive, so onne of my assisstants drives me to my writing room, and I have a calendar on the wa ll telling me how much time I have left, annd how far behind I am. I look at it and panic, and decide which scene to work onn. And you sit there plonking notes until something makes sense, and you don't think about it any more. Good tunes come when you'r e nnot thinking about it.
"You get the odd call saying, 'Have you done anything yet?' or 'That scene you've been working on for three weeks, we just chucked it out!' It's a very irresponsible life. The only decisions I make are about the notes I'm writing."

The Long And The Short Of It
"There comes a point where you have to own up that you are either suffering from lack of ideas or you do have something. I normally phone the director and ask him over, and wonder what in hell I'm doing, but I know I then have to play him something, so I don't go home and I don't sleep. I have all these computers and keyboards and synthesisers, and I rattle away.
"For instance with The Lion King, I wrote over four hours' worth of tunes, and they were really pretty, but totally meaningless. So in the end I came up with material I liked. On Crimson Tide, on the other hand, I just went in and within seconds I k new what I wanted."

How Long Does It Take?
"There's no average time. We worked on The Lion King for four years, but I wasn't toying until the last three-and-a-half weeks properly. Crimson Tide was three months, which meant I got to Nine Months a month late, which meant I had three weeks to w rite annd one week to record, which meant I got to Something To Talk About late, and I had two weeks left to do that one. And this holiday I was going to have for two months is now down to one week. So unless I start having longer years, I'm going to be in trouble all the time."

What Next?
"The Muppet Treasure Island, then Broken Arror, the John Woo movie, (starring John Travolta and Christian Slater), so you can't get more extreme than that. Then I'm probably doing a film with Tony Scott if he ever starts shooting. There are m asses of things flying around and I'm saying no to everything. I think I did a lifetime's career in five years, and then the Oscar put a stop to everything, so now I want to try something completely different."
CAROLINE WESTBROO K
THE LION KING IS NOW AVAILABLE ON VIDEO TO BUY. NINE MONTHS IS RELEASED ON OCTOBER 20 AND IS REVIEWED ON PAGE 40. CRIMSON TIDE WILL BE REVIEWED IN THE NEXT ISSUE.

Name: Hans Zimmer

Age:37

Born:Germany

Occupation:Composer

Film scores (as co-writer): Eureka(1982),Moonlighting(1982),Success Is The Best Revenge(1984),My Beautiful Laundrette(1985),Insignificance(1985),The Nature Of The Beast(1988).

(As composer): A World Apart(1987),Double Exposure(1987), Burning Secret(1988), Paperhouse(1988), The Fruit Machine(1988), Rain Man(1988), Driving Miss Daisy(1989), Diamond Skulls(1989), Black Rain(1989), Twister(1989), Bird on a Wire(1 990), Chicago Joe And The Showgirl(1990), Days of Thunder(1990), Fools of Fortune(1990), Pacific Heights(1990), Green Card(1990), The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter(1990), Backdraft(1991), Regarding Henry(1991), Thelma and Louise(1991), Where Sle eping Dogs Lie(1991), The Power of One(1991), Radio Flyer(1992), A League of Their Own(1992), The Assassin(1993), Younger and Younger(1993), True Romance(1993), Calendar Girl(1993), Cool Runnings(1993), The House of Spirits(1994), I'll Do Anything(1994), Renaissace Man(1994), The Lion King(1994), Crimson Tide(1995), Nine Months(1995), Something To Talk About(1995)