I’ve literally had dreams while making my movies that somehow I met John through my buddy Steven S. (Hey, I was dreamin’) and was watching him score my movie. It sounded awesome! But then I had to wake up! In fairness to the talented composers I have worked with, I am deeply proud of all my movie scores, and very grateful for their dedicated work.

Italian maestro Ennio Morricone’s beautifully haunting flutes and clarinets in The Mission (one of De Niro’s few miscasts) makes it one of the most glorious soundtracks of all time. Ennio also composed all the masterful Sergio Leone Westerns, the ones that launched Clint Eastwood’s career with his infamous character: “The Man With No Name.” One of my special career thrills was working with “Tuco,” the “Ugly” in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The brilliant actor Eli Wallach was cast in the Family Honor series I directed. When I called him “Tuco” on the set, he would give me that evilish, cold-blooded “I will eat your heart out for breakfast!” look with that killer Tuco smile. Eli is a class-act professional. I was privileged to meet him and to work with him. Eli received an Honorary Oscar, on November 13, 2010, at the Academy’s Governors Awards. His latest film role is in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Eli is 95 years of age. A salute, Eli.

I had the great Bill Conti, who did the music for Rocky, at my home, trying to talk him into working for a poor indie filmmaker for the measly salary budgeted on my ultra-low-budget film Lookin’ Italian. I even had my two Italian lead actors there, Jay Acovone and Matt LeBlanc, to sway him to do it for the goombahs since Conti is, of course, Italian. He was very kind, but it was a no-go as he was too busy and gently turned us down. A few months later, he was conducting the orchestra at the 1994 Oscars, a somewhat better-paying gig. Oh well, next time, Bill.

A helpful trick while editing is to temporarily lay down favorite music pieces to scenes and see how they play. For a while, you have the thrilling luxury of using an Elton John or Bruce Springsteen or Rolling Stones song in your movie. It helps not only to set the mood but to discover the right timing of a scene. If your temp tracks work, you can ask your composer to come up with something similar or with the same tempo or structure as those “amazing violins answering the horns” or that “cool guitar riff” in the melody.

The right music marriage is so important in film that I believe it was responsible for a Best Picture Oscar win. Though it is a wonderfully made movie (kudos to its director Hugh Hudson), the instrumental score by Vangelis made Chariots of Fire a huge worldwide winner in 1981. The theme music played on every radio station across all platforms. In the final Olympic race, the character Eric Liddell (a priest and a 100-meter sprinter running the 400 for the first time due to Sabbath scheduling reasons), throws his head back and (in slow motion) starts running faster than he ever has while the music soars. It is a magical, unforgettable film moment as we hear the actor’s narration: “Where does the power come from, to see the race to its end? From within. God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.”

With the crescendo of Vangelis’ hero music peaking, that scene was almost enough to convert me right then and there! Music and film are truly one of the great magnificent unions on earth—the closest thing I know to a divine marriage of crafts. You get to create your own magical combo every time you make a movie. It doesn’t get much better than that for a filmmaker.

I read a recent article in the LA Times about one of the hottest and most prolific directors, JJ Abrams, whose idol is Steven Spielberg. Of course Steven has been a filmmaker hero to most of my generation and I myself used to fantasize being best buddies with him. The only time I was ever in the same room with him was when he came to the American Film Institute to speak when I was a Fellow student there in late 1977. Also, one of my best friends, Joe Alves, was Steven’s brilliant production designer on JAWS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.

What was touching about this article was to see someone as successful as Abrams who told the story of how as a young filmmaker he had the incredible luck of being hired by Spielberg’s company to frame-by-frame repair the frayed 8mm movies Spielberg had made in his youth? A super luck job?

Well, as I mention often in my new memoir, Kiss Me Quick Before I Shoot, luck is huge in building film careers and cinematic destinies, but making your own luck is the key…putting yourself in position to get lucky. Abrams was a young hungry filmmaker who was 15 when his home movie played at the Nuart Theater in LA during a Super 8 festival of young filmmakers, and when interviewed, he mentioned his idol: Steven. By being an ambitious young filmmaker who made a film and entered this festival, he put himself in position to get lucky. Out of the blue, he gets the dream call from Spielberg’s office (who had just finished RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK) when someone on his staff had read (a lucky newspaper day?) about Abrams’ home movies at the fest. They bring him in to meet Steven. JJ got hired!

They become friends through the years, and now, Spielberg is the producer of JJ’s big summer movie SUPER 8. Yeah, it doesn’t happen to everyone, but it’s great to know it happened for JJ Abrams…who made his luck happen. Cheers to both and good luck with the movie JJ and Steven.