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You see that in this film, with the grandkid he doesn’t want to let go of. So it is clearly from your heart.

LK: Yes, it is. Very personal.

MK: And we have a lot of friends all around the country since our time at the University of Michigan. And we have kept in touch with them. And now everyone is starting to have grandchildren. The first thing we say when we talk to them is, “How are your children?” We send pictures of our grandchildren, back and forth, it’s huge.

LK: People who don’t have any kids find this extraordinarily boring (laughs). They don’t want to see the pictures necessarily or hear about it. But for the people in that age, it becomes just so important. It’s exactly the renewal you are hoping will come. As your own life peaks, you see this whole new life. So the generations are kind of a reminder of the cycle you went through.

Your films have a lot of music in them. The Big Chill and The Bodyguard sold millions of albums combined. Is that something that influences you while you are writing or does that aspect come afterwards?

LK: I love music. On The Big Chill, Meg was actually the music coordinator.

MK: It was a fun job (laughs).

LK: That album has sold seven million copies.

MK: Larry has worked with James Newton Howard many times and his contribution to these movies is gigantic.

People don’t realize what music can do for a film. The score for Star Wars is almost a character in itself.

LK: It is everything. If you turn off the music while watching a film, you see it very differently. … I am writing a script right now for a thriller and I often come to a spot and I’ll write-in, whether it will be in the final screenplay I do not know, but for my own benefit, it says, “music begins here. Music plays over, plays over, continues to play, music ends,” because it is so much a part of how I see these things.

MK: But that is also a note to James who is a good friend of ours.

With all of the craziness aside, is there a memory of Whitney Houston you’d like to share? (ed. note, this interview took place on April 6th, two days after the coroner’s report was released)

LK: I had very little to do with her at that time. We were making Grand Canyon which we had written together. They wanted me to direct The Bodyguard, but I couldn’t do both things so I produced it. It was my original script and they pretty much shot the script I wrote in 1975. I was around somewhat and Whitney was always delightful with me. It was a good period in her life. Kevin was very protective of her in a great way. She had no idea what she was doing acting wise and he helped her a lot. I’m not crazy about the movie, because I wasn’t crazy about the way it was directed, but the rest of the world went crazy for it. It was twice as big as it was overseas as it was here and it was huge here. In adjusted dollars, I saw recently that it made something like $700 million. So it was nuts. I am sure if I directed it, it wouldn’t do as well (laughs).

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