Recording - February 2018 - 65

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Malpaso office on the Warners lot. So we met at
the soundstage. I had had no time to demo it,
so I just sat at the piano and here comes Clint
in a white T-shirt.
Did he remember you from the tennis game?
No, and if he hadn't been Clint Eastwood, I
probably wouldn't have remembered him
either. And I didn't say anything, I just played
the song. I was nervous; I didn't know if it was
good or not. I just played the song and he just
said, "Play it again." And I played it again. He
had an entourage with him, and he said, "That's
the song." Then he pulled me over and said,
"Have you ever scored a movie?" And I was this
close to saying no, and in that millisecond of a
hundred milliseconds I changed my mine and
said, "Well, I sure would love to." I didn't lie.
And he said, "OK," and that was my big break.

ness. Because some people don't do well with
rejection, and some people just let it slide off
the back and on to the next. I think
fortunately-and maybe my mom instilled that
in me-I'm able to... You know, I get
disappointed and I think, well shit, you missed
that one, but I always feel like the next day I'll
come back with something and try it again.
Do you ever worry when you experience rejection
that it's over?
Every job I do. After every job I do I think it's
the last one I'll ever do.
Maybe that answers the question you and I were
talking about at lunch when I said, "Do you have
any clue why, when you go to the ASCAP or BMI
Awards and somebody wins an award, 13 writers

come up onstage?" It's like, no, I don't get that
either. Almost everything you've written has been
maybe with a single co-writer, or two at the most.
Maybe that's why those guys that write with 13
people write with 13 people, because it's some
sort of insurance policy.
No, I think the business has changed so much
with the advent of technology, and literally
anybody can just create something just by hitting one note on a keyboard that does
everything for you, and the songs that go up
and down the charts that you never hear again.
Yeah, I think anybody today is capable of having a hit or two. Sustaining a career takes a
little more doing.
Don't miss Part 3, the final part of this interview
in next month's issue!

Amazing story, Forrest. [applause]
I gotta tell you guys, again, the book is a bunch of
stuff like that and you just go, "How does anybody
get that lucky?" By the end of the book I was sitting there thinking this was not an accident. Steve
was in those places to have those things happen,
because he put in the hours and did the work to
get himself there.
Yeah, I would say, because I'm asked a lot.
Because I have been very lucky, but I do think
to some degree you have to make your own luck
in this business...or in any creative business,
whether you're a screenwriter or an actor or an
actress or an orchestrator or a guitar player trying to do sessions. It takes a lot of skill, and it
takes a lot of luck, and it takes a lot of being at
the right place at the right time, and what I call
happy accidents. And sometimes a happy accident can be that my hand goes to the wrong
note and I'm not hearing the chord that I was
hearing, but I go, "I like that." And sometimes
I've based a whole song around a happy accident that I had no idea what I was doing. So I
think there are elements of that and elements
of luck, but the there is a lot of rejection and a
lot of disappointment-far more of that that
I've experienced than the happy accidents. It's
that 85%-15% thing that I talk about.
Right, the under-the-water part of the iceberg. So
how do you deal with the rejection? Maybe all
rejection feels the same, but I would imagine that
rejection from a Barbra Streisand-level
artist...more?
No, I think handling rejection is up to the individual. Some people just can't handle it. And I
always tell people if you're not prepared to pick
yourself up and dust yourself off about 150
times a week, it's probably not the right busi65

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