[MUSIC] My name is Robert Kraft.
I'm not the owner of the New England Patriots,
though, when I'm in Boston,
I get a lot of advantages when I try to make a restaurant reservation and say,
"Robert Kraft, I'd like a table for four."
It's always a good table.
I've been absolutely fortunate to have had a very varied career all-around music.
I started playing piano when I was probably five or seven years old,
and knew very soon thereafter that I wanted to be a songwriter and have had
the great opportunity of having many different simultaneous careers in music.
I've written songs for myself.
First, I was a performer in New York City with my own band and made records,
on two or three major labels as a recording artist,
I then moved to California where I started to write songs for TV shows and films.
Somehow simultaneously morphed into both a record producer in my record career,
and started to produce many recording artists,
and also started to compose film scores at the same time.
I was unsure whether I was a producer or a composer.
Both of those led to another series of careers.
As a producer, I had produced The Little Mermaid soundtrack and that led to
the Jim Hansen company asking me to consider producing Muppet records.
I suggested to them that they start a record label called Jim Hansen Records.
Suddenly I was not only producing Muppet records,
I was the head of the Jim Hansen music department,
which is basically me and an assistant.
Suddenly I was learning about starting a record label and producing.
After being a recording artist,
I was asked by my friend who wanted to be an actor.
He got a job on the show Moonlighting.
He was offered a record deal.
My first album was producing the first album of the actor Bruce Willis.
I'd never produced an album and he'd never made one.
We made a record that coasted along on the strength of the fact that
he was so famous and popular at that moment,
that we sold several million records.
Suddenly I had a career as a record producer.
Both happen simultaneously in the film composing.
I went on to write the score for a movie called The Mambo Kings play songs of love.
The song that I wrote,
that's the centerpiece of the movie because the movie is about a song.
It's about two brothers who write a song.
I ended up writing that song.
It was called Beautiful Maria Of My Soul.
It was nominated for an Academy Award and a Grammy Award and a Golden Globe.
I thought I'm done.
[NOISE] I rang the bell.
I was so excited to have that happen with
this song that I never imagined it would go anywhere.
All of this great good fortune led to a call out of the blue from the chairman
of 20th Century Fox asking if I'd be interested
in the job of being the head of music at a movie studio,
which made me extremely nervous because everything I'd done
prior to that was artistic and creative,
and I hadn't really worked for someone.
I'd done my own work on projects,
but I was basically my own boss.
But with some terror and reluctance,
I took the job which turned out to be basically the next two decades of my life.
It was the perfect fit for me because it
combined everything I had learned to date, record production, film,
scoring, songwriting, being in charge of
my band was just a good lesson on being in charge of a department.
I liked movies.
It was a wonderful gig.
After 18 years at Fox,
I decided that what I still hadn't done was make my own movie.
I liked movies and I like music.
How about I make movies about music?
That's what I'm doing now.
I recently produced my first film,
which is called Score,
a film music documentary,
where I made a documentary about all the film composers that I'd worked with.
I'm working on several films and television shows right now,
and hoping to see them on the bigger little screen shortly.
Ain't no stopping us now as they said,
I'm just about the next project.
Duke Ellington was once asked," What's your favorite song that you've ever written?
"Sometimes I'm asked," What's your favorite project that you ever worked on?"
I always say," The next one."
[MUSIC]