It's pretty much done, pretty much recorded and mixed. There's one or two things we're still working at, but it's in the bag.

It is. It's set at a high school, but to describe it as a high school movie would be completely misleading. It's about a high school election, which in the original book was something of a metaphor for politics in America today. It surrounds three student characters and a number of the teachers, and what their vested interests in the results of the election are. It involves every possible facet that you can imagine of a high school election, lust, power, all the machinations of power which are there in some way.

Alexander Payne also directed Citizen Ruth, which I also scored, and there's a certain common thread. The music has a lot of different flavors to evoke. In Election, it's got a bit of Spanish guitar and castinet stuff, but full orchestra as well, and some quirky elements, sort of western banjo and things like that.

I never thought of it as a disease movie at all. I love the film. I hope it still has a good afterlife on video and television because I think it's great and has a lot of interesting colors to it, a lot of interesting stuff. The writer, Richard Hawkins, took unusual twists and turns in the plot, and it's not your standard Hollywood product at all.

It's true. When I first got the tape and I looked at it, I thought, Helena Bonham Carter as a paraplegic -- please! 15 minutes later, I was completely sold. I loved the film. She does an amazing performance. She was very intimately involved in the scoring of the film as well.

I did the score here in Los Angeles, and she was here. The director and writer were back in Britain, so Helena had expressed an interest in basically being able to provide to some degree the way the film was being finished, and that definitely included the music, which she was very definitely interested in. We'd talk frequently about the kind of music that we wanted in the film, how certain scenes should be approached. She was very right on the ball, she was great to work with. When I first was asked to meet her, I kind of shied away from the idea. Composers and actors don't necessarily have much common territory, but she was so in the case with every aspect of post-production and was generally concerned about the way that the film was finally delivered. It was very pleasant working with her.

I'm just starting on a film. It doesn't have a title, other than the "Untitled Eric Blakeney Project," but it's a film with Liam Neesom, Oliver Platt, and Sandra Bullock. Again it's a dark comedy, a contemporary gangster comedy. It's really wonderful, full of charm. It's a very ironic film, and I'm just getting started on that. It's going to be enormous fun.

This one is ultimately going to come out with Buena Vista. Of course, Election is a Paramount/MTV co-production, but they've both got very independent spirits. It's something that I'm actually comfortable in because the films are so sharp and so well put together, and I like something with a little intelligence behind it, or more than a little! I don't mind where they are, in the independent sector or foreign or studio. Obviously the independent sector tends to have some very interesting things to offer.

There's a couple out. Theory is out, and Slums of Beverly Hills is on CD. I believe Sire Records have expressed an interest in putting out Election, including some score, so hopefully this will continue. What composer wouldn't like having stuff on CD? It's nice to be aired a little more and think that there are people interested in the music even outside of the original context.

That certainly seems to be the case.

I do some work in London, but mostly I work in L.A.

It was fun. It was the first time I worked with Pam Martin, the editor, directly, but she'd actually cut The House of Yes, so we already had sort of a remote rapport. That film was interesting. We spent a little while talking with Pamela Jenkins, the director, about what the needs of the film were, and the key words were when she said, "Oh, these are poor people, they don't get a rich score." Musically I would think, oh, great, we can use banjo, tuba, accordian, things like that. So that's what we ended up doing. I was really pleased with the result. A friend of mine said that their five-year-old is addicted to it. I don't know why! It's all written in swing, maybe that has something to do with it. If a five-year-old has to have that soundtrack, that's about as high a compliment as I have ever received!

I don't have any problem at all with integrated the songs. Sometimes I'm asked for my opinion and recommendations, but it's not something that always happens. They often go to music supervisors for that. I'm delighted to work with other music. One case would be Citizen Ruth where on location they'd actually come up with some tunes for a religious situation. I integrated some hymns into the score later on, so for some things there's a combined credit because the director would have come up with a little hum which they were using in one situation in the film. Because we used that in the score, it gave it a great sense of being one piece with the film and score. One thing I always like about Disney animation is when they take the tunes from the songs and use them extensively in the score because it seems to make the whole thing work very well. I have no problem with that at all. With Theory of Flight there was one cue written specifically to run into "The Sunny Side of the Street," and that cue didn't make it onto the CD. I knew that song was going to be there; I liked the song; so it made sense to actually try and blend the two.

I think that's fun. It's an interesting way of integrating the collage of sound and music and songs, everything, to the best effect.