David Shire

David Shire has scored for both film and theater, though he has unfortunately not been getting many film assignments the last several years. He has written the music for the Broadway shows Baby and Big as well as the plays Closer than Ever and Starting Here, Starting Now. On the film front, he has written scores for All the President's Men, Short Circuit, 2010 (the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey) and Saturday Night Fever. For Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation, Shire used distorted piano to underline the film's sense of paranoia. For The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, he wrote an innovative, complex, yet still highly entertaining twelve-tone funk score. Return to Oz enjoys the benefit of Shire's full-bodied, soaring, emotional, and thematically complex music and is one of the most compositionally satisfying film scores ever. Shire had a recent triumph with his score to David Fincher's Zodiac, where he composed brooding melodies and angular themes reflecting the film's mystery and ambiguity. Shire used to be the wife of Talia Shire (Francis Coppola's sister) and is currently married to Didi Conn, who is best known for her roles as Frenchy in Grease and as the train station manager in the children's show Shining Time Station. It would be great if other directors followed Fincher's lead and used Shire's considerable talent on their films.

Return to Oz**
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three**
Zodiac