I had just finished back-to-back pictures. I did Cherry 2000 and immediately went into Amerika, which was a mini-series, and immediately after that went to Robocop. I was just getting ready to go on vacation. I think I finished dubbing Robocop in July, and I got this call from Orion Pictures. They said we have this movie, it needs a score and it has to be done in four weeks. So my first question was of course, "How much music is there in the movie?" and it was impossible. It had to have electronics. All electronic scores take considerably more time to produce. Not necessarily to write, but to produce an electronic score effectively takes more time than to stand up and conduct an orchestra and do a three-minute cue in an hour or less. I was thinking there was no time to write and be on the stage to do the electronic portions of the music. It was an unfortunate situation in that it was a replacement score. I had never done that before.

I got into it, met with the producers, looked at the picture and that same day we decided where the music should go. It was somewhat of a mystery, there was a sense of intrigue, of betrayal. I thought there was a harshness about the humanity in the picture: there's this guy who is really a rat who befriends the guy who's a crook and who becomes a murderer. The initial theme came immediately, and that became the basis for the whole picture. The love theme came a little bit later, which was odd because the hero is in a strange position where he's falling in love with the sister of a person he'll ultimately have to arrest. I guess uncomfortable is the word, the whole music made you feel on edge, uncomfortable. I think it was very successful. It was a nightmare in that I was writing all night and recording all day, and that was very exhausting. It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last.