Robert Zemeckis has been working on The Polar Express for a few years – at what point did you get involved?
One of the things about this film was that Bob – when he was exploring the story originally – had talked about the idea of also wanting to explore the possibility of having some songs built into the fabric of the film. So the whole thing really began with Bob starting an almost “stream-of-consciousness” expansion of the original Chris Van Allsburg book, and while he was in that process, in a sense, the music had an opportunity to be right there and be part of that. So when I heard that he was looking for a substantial song involvement in the movie, I immediately called my pal Glenn Ballard, who I had been looking for the right project to team up with – and this seemed like a great one. This was two-and-a-half years ago – we sat with Bob, talking about where he was headed with the story. Talking about ideas of what might be possible song placements that would have some kind of narrative value in the film, and not just be a dropped in song. We went through that process through the whole
