Carter Burwell  Carter Benedict Burwell (born November 18, 1954) is an American composer of film scores. He has consistently collaborated with the Coen brothers, having scored most of their films, including "Blood Simple", "Fargo", "The Big Lebowski", "No Country For Old Men", and "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs". Burwell has also scored three of Todd Haynes's films and all the films of director Martin McDonagh. He has received Oscar nominations for Best Original Score for Haynes's "Carol" (2015) and McDonagh's "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" (2017). Other notable film scores include the Spike Jonze films "Being John Malkovich" (1999), "Adaptation" (2002), and "Where the Wild Things Are" (2009), David O. Russell's "Three Kings" (1999), Lisa Cholodenko's "Olive Kitteridge" (2014), and Charlie Kaufman's "Anomalisa" (2015). Burwell was born in New York City, the son of Natalie (née Benedict), a maths teacher, and Charles Burwell, who founded Thaibok Fabrics, Ltd. He graduated from King School in Stamford, Connecticut with George Hofecker and other notables and Harvard College, where he was a cartoonist for "The Harvard Lampoon". As a film composer, Burwell has had a long-working relationship with the Coen brothers, providing music for every film they have made (except for "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "Inside Llewyn Davis", which had folk music soundtracks produced by T-Bone Burnett). He enjoys working with left-field directors, such as Spike Jonze. Among his best known film scores are "Miller's Crossing" (1990), "And the Band Played On" (1993), "Conspiracy Theory" (1997), "Hamlet" (2000), "The Spanish Prisoner" (1997), "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" (2007), "In Bruges" (2008), "Twilight" (2008), "Where the Wild Things Are" (2009), "The Blind Side" (2009), and "Breaking Dawn Part 1" (2011). Burwell wrote and recorded the original score for the film "The Bourne Identity", but his version was replaced by director Doug Liman for one by John Powell. Ultimately the ethos of the punk rock movement gave Burwell the impetus to start performing.