Quotes from Brian Reitzell

The older I get, the more I think birds are the best musicians on the planet.

I think for a horror experience to be really scary, something has to be a bit of a shock and a surprise. It's like something you've never experienced before.

I'm not a sports fan, but I remember watching highlights with post-rock guitar instrumental music over these slow-motion shots of football players. It's triumphant, and it's emotional, and that's what sports are for.

I think that this television medium, or whatever we call it now, is a really great frontier to turn people onto music - to new music or old music. It's a great platform where you've got people's ears, and you can throw something at them. I like to use it to the fullest that I can.

I love collaborating because I come from the world of being in bands.

The library companies have made it so that music is so cheap to license. They do sound-alikes of every band, and it makes it harder for the actual bands to get any decent paychecks for licensing.

An orchestra can add some class, a historical vibe, but I believe you can get the same emotion from pottery wheels.

Music as a business is a dirty thing.

I'm always full of ideas. I just haven't stopped doing what I did as a teenager. Now I just happen to get paid for it!

The thing about me is that I'm a total music freak.

With 'Hannibal,' it's like reactive scoring so I don't get ahead. I don't read a script; I don't want to know what's going to happen until its happening in front of me and I'm able to have an instrument in my hands that I'm playing to make some kind of a map, some sort of tonal map, that I can then build on.

With 'Hannibal,' I just really want people to feel something.

'Hannibal' is not reality; the whole show is not reality. It's heightened reality: they want music the entire time.

With 'Hannibal,' it's almost like the music is part of the furniture, so as a character goes from one room to another room, or we go from one place to another or whatever, the music is just going with it the whole time the same way that the audience is sort of tracking it and following along.

One of my first favourite records of all time, as a kid, was 'Tommy' by the Who. Now that wasn't really a soundtrack, but it was.

To me, 'Auto Music' wasn't work. It was in-between work.

'Loveless' was a really big record for me. It was what was keeping me alive when I was still touring with Redd Kross.

I approach horror music differently than anything else. The very first time I watch an episode, I want to be playing an instrument to it so I can get that shock into the show.

'Lost in Translation' was a year of my life, if not more, and then 'Marie Antoinette' was about three years of my life.

The movie I worked on that had the most problems and interference came from the smallest indie movie I've ever done. I couldn't believe what the director had to go through; he was destroyed.

I work on everything, whether it's a film or TV show - I wouldn't even consider 'American Gods' a TV show. I don't even know what it is.

I really don't like the way most movies and TV shows are supervised - I hate when there's someone singing over dialogue, songs just thrown in there.

I've put a lot of records out and a lot of soundtracks, and 'Hannibal' is kind of a special one.

My dad had a candy-apple red sparkle drag boat with a giant hemi engine in it that he raced professionally. The sound of that engine was the most incredible sound ever.