Age: 69
male
John Cardon Debney (born August 18, 1956) is an American composer and conductor of film, television, and video game scores. His work encompasses a variety of mediums and genres, including comedy, horror, science fiction, thriller, fantasy, and action-adventure. He is a long-time collaborator of The Walt Disney Company, having written music for their films, television series, and theme parks. He has also collaborated with film directors such as Jon Favreau, Garry Marshall, Tom Shadyac, Peter Hyams, John A. Davis, Brad Anderson, Howard Deutch, Mark Dindal, Robert Rodriguez, and Paul Tibbitt. Debney has been the recipient of three Primetime Emmy Awards and an Academy Award nomination for his score for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004). The son of Disney Studios producer Louis Debney (Zorro, The Mickey Mouse Club), John was born and raised in Glendale, California, nearby to Disney. He began guitar lessons at age six and played in rock bands in college. Debney earned his B.A. degree in Music Composition from the California Institute of Arts in 1979. After ending his career with Disney, Debney worked for Mike Post. Debney furthered his hands-on training by working with Hanna-Barbera composer Hoyt Curtin. After this, Debney went on to score television projects as diverse as Disneyland, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, SeaQuest DSV, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, The Cape, The Lazarus Man, Piggsburg Pigs!, The Further Adventures of SuperTed, Doctor Who, Cagney and Lacey, Tiny Toon Adventures, The Young Riders, The New Yogi Bear Show, Police Academy: The Animated Series, Fame, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, Dragon's Lair, Freshman Dorm, Pop Quiz, and Dink, the Little Dinosaur, for which he won an Emmy for Best Main Title. In the early 1990s, Debney began to score indie films and Disneyland attractions. In 1991, Debney composed the music for Phantom Manor and It's a Small World (also used at Disneyland from 1993 to 2002) in Disneyland Paris and SpectroMagic at Magic Kingdom. In 1993, he scored his first studio feature, the Disney comedy Hocus Pocus starring Bette Midler. In 1994, Debney wrote Friends Forever with Greg Scelsa from Greg & Steve's album We All Live Together, Vol. 5. Debney has since gone on to have a career composing scores for many films, including Cats & Dogs, The Passion of the Christ, Bruce Almighty, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Elf, Sin City, Chicken Little, Liar Liar, Spy Kids, The Scorpion King, The Princess Diaries, and Predators. Debney has also composed scores for the video games Lair and The Sims Medieval. In 2010, he composed the theme music for the Nickelodeon television series Supah Ninjas. He composed some of Disney Parks's Nighttime Spectaculars, including World Of Colour Celebrate! in Disney's California Adventure, The Magic, The Memories And You! and Celebrate the Magic in Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom and Celebrate! Tokyo Disneyland in Tokyo Disneyland, as well as an arrangement of "When You Wish Upon a Star" as a fanfare for the Walt Disney Pictures logo from 1985 to 2006. Description above from the Wikipedia article John Debney, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
John Debney
Composer
for Composer in SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN' TO TOWN (Live Action)
Suggested by castingsinmyblood
Based on the stop-motion animated Rankin/Bass short film. A mailman has to deliver letters to the North Pole, and most of them ask questions to Santa, like "Why do you wear a red suit?"; "Why do you go down the chimney?"; "Why do you deliver toys?"; "Why do you have flying reindeer?" The mailman (who delivered to Santa for years) decides to answer those questions for him. The story starts off in a glum gray town called Sombertown, ruled by a corrupt and selfish mayor. His guard captain shows him a baby that was left by his door, and the Burgermeister orders the kid away from him. By mishaps, the baby gets whooshed away into the woods, inhabited by a grouchy warlock. But the animals bring him to safety and bring him to the Kringles, who name him Kris and raise him to be a toymaker. When Kris grows up, he decides to bravely take the toys to Sombertown, where along the way, he becomes friends with a lost penguin, and he falls for a schoolteacher. After an accident involving a toy, the Burgermeister declares all toys illegal, and so Kris daringly delivers the toys in secret.
