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.
An elderly man reads the book "The Princess Bride" to his sick and thus currently bedridden adolescent grandson, the reading of the book which has been passed down within the family for generations. The grandson is sure he won't like the story, with a romance at its core, he preferring something with lots of action and "no kissing". But the grandson is powerless to stop his grandfather, whose feelings he doesn't want to hurt. The story centers on Buttercup, a former farm girl who has been chosen as the princess bride to Prince Humperdinck of Florian. Buttercup does not love him, she who still laments the death of her one true love, Westley, five years ago. Westley was a hired hand on the farm, his stock answer of "as you wish" to any request she made of him which she came to understand was his way of saying that he loved her. But Westley went away to sea, only to be killed by the Dread Pirate Roberts. On a horse ride to clear her mind of her upcoming predicament of marriage, Buttercup is kidnapped by a band of bandits: Vizzini who works on his wits, and his two associates, a giant named Fezzik who works on his brawn, and a Spaniard named Inigo Montoya, who has trained himself his entire life to be an expert swordsman. They in turn are chased by the Dread Pirate Roberts himself. But chasing them all is the Prince, and his men led by Count Tyrone Rugen. What happens to these collectives is dependent partly on Buttercup, who does not want to marry the Prince, and may see other options as lesser evils, and partly on the other motives of individuals within the groups. But a larger question is what the grandson will think of the story as it proceeds and at its end, especially as he sees justice as high a priority as action.
