Sedona Film Festival: Bruce Hornsby

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You’re close friends with filmmaker Spike Lee. Tell us about your work with him and your work in the film industry.

Hardly just friends – we’ve been cohorts for 24 years. We’ve been working together since 1992. I’ve been involved in the music for 10 to 12 of his films, and I’m scoring my fifth or sixth film right now. The first film I worked on with him was with Chaka Khan for his 1995 movie Clockers. I wrote and performed the end title song for Bamboozled. I did music for his Kobe Bryant documentary [Kobe Doin’ Work], and I did some music for Oldboy, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise – I could keep going. Two weeks ago, we were recording in Brooklyn. We walked around on the street on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and it was like walking with the king of Brooklyn.

Arguably, your biggest hit was The Way It Is, the title track from your 1986 debut album. The song has been sampled by numerous musicians and rappers over the years. It has been featured in television shows and films. What is the importance of a soundtrack and a score to a film?

I can only really speak to my work with Spike because those are the only films I’ve scored. Songs in movies, that’s different. Songs have a different role. When you’re scoring a film, you’re trying to capture a certain feeling or enhance a certain emotion that’s occurring. That’s what I try to do. Right now, I’m working on a remake of one of Spike’s first movies, She’s Gotta Have It. I’m trying to portray or enhance, musically, what’s happening on the screen. There are a lot of light-hearted moments in She’s Gotta Have It. Spike’s dad, Bill Lee, wrote the original score, and a lot of it was sort of jazzy and swingin’. I’m doing my version of the same thing and some other styles as well. I also did a couple of songs for Ron Howard’s Backdraft – The Show Goes On and Set Me in Motion. And here’s a funny story. Kevin Costner’s golf movie, Tin Cup, was directed by Ron Shelton. Ron Shelton called me out of the blue and asked me if I would write a song for the movie. He showed me some clips from it. It was a movie about golf, so I took it literally and wrote a song about golf called Big Stick. [Ron’s] first reaction was, This is not what I was expecting. I think he thought I was going to write a nice love song, a nice ballad. At first he was surprised and thrown by what I sent him, which was a Cajun golf song – no piano. After a while, he realized it had a real place in the movie. There was a great scene with Costner hustling a bunch of local golf club players, and Big Stick worked perfectly. It’s an upbeat song – it’s comedy and the song is comedy. It was a good match, and it worked out well, but originally I don’t think Ron was so happy with what I sent. It wound up having a prominent place in what was probably one of the most memorable scene from the movie.

Have you ever visited Sedona? What are your plans while you’re in town?

My wife and I visited Sedona maybe 15 years ago. We took a little trip to get in touch with our vortices [laughs]. I’m going to think about seeing some films – I hadn’t really thought that far ahead since the festival is in February. I have a feeling I’m going to be up to my neck in film scoring myself at the time, but I’d like to see a copy of the schedule. I was actually at the Sundance Film Festival just a few years ago because of having scored a Spike Lee movie called Red Hook Summer. I went out there with the great writer James McBride, who co-wrote the film. He wrote a great novel called The Good Lord Bird – this should be an advertisement for it. So I have been to some film festivals and been involved in films shown at film festivals. I love to sample the wares.

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