Damien Chazelle

What's great about musicals is their energy and go-for-brokeness - stopping the story to sing and dance. How can you not love that?

If you look at 'West Side Story,' a lot of those numbers are actually pretty cutty, but the cuts are always musically motivated.

Mozart was born Mozart. Charlie Parker was born Charlie Parker.

Being famous gets me good concert tickets, good tables in restaurants, good seats at sporting events and that's really about it.

Influenced by Pete Seeger and the Weavers, McLean proudly wore the mantle of troubadour in the early 1970s, when 'American Pie' topped the Billboard charts, and has never shed the cape.

I always dreamed of writing in an orchestral context. But when you finish a piece, you want to hear it. So we played everything with Phish.