Ultimate Dolph

You have 10 films set to come out within the next year, including the Coen brothers’ Hail Caesar! Is this the busiest your acting career has been?
I do these smaller roles. I find something I want to do that’s a smaller picture and I don’t have to produce or carry the movie. That’s why I have more entries on IMDb [right now]. Hail Caesar! is this really small role in a really big movie. Some of the other ones — it doesn’t have to be all action. It can just be an interesting character, stretch a little bit.

Anything else about Hail Caesar!?
It’s a smaller walk-on part. The Coens called me and wanted me to play this Russian character, and I told them I thought I’d played too many Russians already. But I read the script and it was very funny, and I understood why they wanted me for that role. It was great to work with them. I have a scene with Channing Tatum, and he was great and fun to work with. Of course, my 13-year-old daughter was shocked and excited — so I took a few selfies with him and sent them to her. It was really fun. He turned out to be a bit of a fan of my action movies. And the Coen brothers — they’re really special.

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Reunion reshoot Saturday #hailcrew #hailcaesar #setlife #ilovemyjob

He likes to see as much of the film as possible before scoring it.
"I enjoy reading the scripts," explained the composer. "But I'm not usually writing anything until there's some part of the picture in front of me. I respond to the visuals. The script doesn't tell me about the pacing or whether the film is blue or gray, so I always wait until there't something. And the filmmakers I know well, like the Coens, they'll wait until there's just one scene, they'll show me one and they feel comfortable enough letting me in early in the process. But other times I'll see the film totally cut. I always do a lot of research."

Working with the Coen Brothers is challenging (but rewarding).
Burwell has forged a long-running relationship with the notoriously eccentric Coen Brothers. "They will send me a script and sometimes even a set of scripts. At one point, they knew they were doing 'No Country for Old Men,' 'True Grit' and something else so they sent me all three to work on for a couple of years," he told the audience.

In order to make sure the film is the best it can be, it's important for both the Coens and Burwell to discuss just what they plan to do with the film. "We talk before they shoot about what the problem the movie presents," he explained. "So for 'True Grit,' it was that it was a Western, but we didn't want to necessarily do a Western score. I read the book, I read their script and I noticed one of the things that isn't in the script is that the book is written from the point of view of this girl, and she's constantly reading scripture. I thought that the churchiness wasn't in the script, so I thought we'd use hymns in the score of the movie. But sometimes I don't know until we have the picture."

But even after their 30-year long collaboration, Burwell still can't claim to know everything the Coens are thinking. "They are very taciturn though, I do miss the face-to-face because on the phone they are people of very few words. They hate to ever talk about what their movies are about, so sometimes it can be difficult to claw out of them, they refuse to discuss the meaning. So it's a challenge."

'Hail Ceasar' is one of his most ambitious scores yet.
The Coen Brother's latest collaboration with Burwell is their upcoming "Hail Ceasar," a slapstick romp whose stuffed-to-the-brim cast includes George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. "We had to try so many things because it's a film with many films within it," Burwell said of the film. "There are five or six films within the film, and they're all different styles: there's a Western, there's a Roman swords-and-sandals movie, an Esther Williams water ballet, and the question becomes how they come together to make one movie. It's something we're still figuring out."