Robert ToTeras: Takin A Walk with a Hollywood Composer

Hi, this is Buzz Knight, the host of the Takin a Walk podcast series today in New York City. Astor Place is the area I’m in, and I’m here to take a walk with composer Robert Toteris, whose new film The Walk has recently been released. Now, with the benefit of my podcast hosting platform PodBean, we’re going to walk with Robert virtually. He’ll be in La. I’ll be here in Astor Place.

Buzz Knight

Sometimes you just can’t be together, but.

Buzz Knight

You want to make it happen. So this is our first attempt using this technology. So let’s take a walk with Robert Toteris.

Buzz Knight

I’m in New York City right now in the Astor Place area of New York, kind of near the West Village. And I’m really pleased right now to be talking to Robert Toteris who is a composer of the new movie called The Walk, starring a great ensemble cast including Terrence Howard and Justin Chatwin, Robert, are you there right now?

Robert ToTeras

I am here.

Buzz Knight

And where are you physically maybe taking a walk?

Robert ToTeras

I am physically in my yard right now.

Buzz Knight

Describe the scene. I wanted to hear the scene in Robert’s yard.

Robert ToTeras

Okay. So right now I have a house in La. And I have a fairly decent sized yard. My dog loves it. And across the yard is my studio. And so I can step out the doors in my studio and just be in the yard and chill out in the chair. And my girls are playing volleyball, the volleyball net, and not right now, but they usually are. And there’s a bunch of frisbees that my dog chews up even when we’re not throwing them to her. And a nice big porch where we can all sit and have dinner or have coffee in the morning, which is how I start every day with dog running in the yard chasing squirrels and me having a cup of coffee.

Buzz Knight

I love it.

Robert ToTeras

Morning ritual.

Buzz Knight

It sounds like a good life.

Robert ToTeras

It’s not bad. It’s definitely not bad.

Robert ToTeras

I have to say I used to live in New York, so I missed that walk quite a bit.

Buzz Knight

So the scene here like I said is Astor Place and there’s a bunch of folks just sort of hanging around that area there. I don’t know if you know that area. And there’s a number of pigeons here as well. I know that’s shocking to you.

Robert ToTeras

Yes, I remember them well.

Buzz Knight

Yeah. But you’re the first person who took a walk here with some new technology, so I appreciate you taking the leap. Normally, I like doing it in person, and I heard about the walk and the fact that I’ve got something called Taking a Walk. It was too perfect of an opportunity to pass up. But also I’ve had some musicians on the Taking a Walk podcast, but I’ve never had a composer. So I’m honored you to be the first composer on taking a walk so great. I wish I was in Boston. I have been through that area where the Walk is centrally focused and said, I know the movie actually the way movies or film was done in New Orleans, but it looks just like South Boston. Yes. Have you been to South Boston yourself?

Robert ToTeras

I have not been to South Boston. It’s funny, I’m too young to remember the events that take place in the Walk. I love Boston. I spent a lot of time in Boston when I was a singer songwriter in the early 2000s playing in Boston. I used to play Club Pasim in Cambridge and used to play a lot at different bars in Boston as a singer songwriter. But I’ve never been to South Boston and I always had the impression, I think through osmosis, things trickled down and South Boston always felt like a place to me that, well, I’m not sure if I want to go, if it’s going to be like my kind of place. Obviously, things have changed since then. But my experience with Boston, which has been fantastic, has been basically as a musician, which has been welcoming and wonderful. It’s been like 18 years since I’ve been there. But it’s a great town.

Buzz Knight

It is. And Pasim is a great spot. That’s a legendary spot. And yet this story needs to be told. It’s not so many years ago, obviously, that this occurred. And even though Boston has gone through its various shifts and turns like every big city, the story is so important that it needs to be told right.

Robert ToTeras

That’s absolutely true. And, you know, the great thing about The Walk is that it’s a story about people. It’s a small story. Southie or Roxbury, they’re neighborhoods, and in those neighborhoods are people. And it can be quite provincial for good and for bad. And so that’s really what the story is. That’s where it’s not about, obviously, big sweeping things happen and we’re going on, but this is about people. And that’s how those big sweeping things happen through the sort of small, provincial places that we go. And one person makes a change.

Buzz Knight

How do you bring it to around what we’re dealing with today and in the world as well? Because obviously there’s elements of history that always feed the present.

Robert ToTeras

It is so incredibly relevant to what’s happening today. I think the first thing, we had the movie premiere on last Thursday and something someone brought up, which is who was a guy in the audience during the Q and A, basically said, you know, I’ve had trouble as a teacher because they won’t allow me to teach certain things. And I think just the existence of the Walk in terms of what we talk about today is important because there are forces that are interested in stopping teaching history like this. And painting a picture of everything has always been free and hunky dory and all those things. And really, the truth is that if you teach this stuff, we get freer. We become more free by teaching about the problems we’ve had. So I think that is incredibly relevant today. It’s important to teach history so we don’t repeat it and history informs us about what we’re going to do next. It’s an incredibly relevant story for right now.

Buzz Knight

So how do you when you’re approached on a project such as the Walk, so how does your process work as a composer to do your work that you do so beautifully?

Robert ToTeras

Great. Every project is going to be different, right? Sometimes you just start writing from beginning to end, and sometimes and the way I always prefer to do things is to sit with it for a minute and think about what the approach is going to be. I’ll watch it three or four times, really get to know it and just start digging into, like start formulating ideas, but then step back from them for a minute and take a walk. Seriously. I do that a lot, where I’ll start messing with something and formulating ideas and putting things together, sketches, if you will. And then you get a certain kind of fatigue, right? You get ear fatigue. You get fatigued from just working in general. So I step out. I take a little walk in my neighborhood, go walk and get some sushi or whatever, and come back and then keep working. And I always prefer to work that way, even if I’m in a rush. I’ll take those little moments and have that thinking time, that walk time that I’ve been doing virtual reality boxing lately, exercise. So I’ll go do that for a minute or something. And actually, when I come back, it’s so incredibly fresh, it really creates a momentum. Funny how taking a break can create a momentum in that way.

Buzz Knight

I’m so glad that you brought up how you use taking a walk creatively, because that is at the core of this podcast. But in addition, it’s certainly about in a busy world, using mindfulness in the moment, and certainly appreciating that moment, whether you’re in your backyard or New York City or Philadelphia where you’ve spent some time, or I dare say maybe even Las Vegas as well. Right?

Robert ToTeras

Yeah, walking in Vegas is a little bit different because it’s so hot. But yes, definitely. I think wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, I think it’s important to step away from, especially if you’re doing concentrated work, which music always is. It’s about minutiae, it’s about detail. To step away and just look at the bigger world around you take it in and then go back. It just helps and informs everything you do. It really does. And cities are great to take a walk in. I mean, gosh, New York is constant inspiration for good or for bad, wherever you’re going to turn Philly the same way. I mean, I was raised in Philly and so much of it is just you’re walking in history or you’re walking in gentrification and people trying to change not the history, but to change the city, to make it more modern. And the Philly I grew up in is different from the philly that exists now. And Vegas is just like it’s just this sprawl of decades that is just enjoyable to see even if you’re not participating in it. Actually, some of the best walking and sightseeing you can do is just walking through a casino or walking outside Vegas at night and seeing how people process the town.

Buzz Knight

But you spent some formative years in Vegas, didn’t you?

Robert ToTeras

Well, formative might be strong, but part of my story is that I was a blackjack card counter. I was a member of a card counting team and basically it was a lot of people, they had formed this team. It was lawyers and Wall Street people and so on and so forth, but who were all gamblers, poker players, professional poker players. And it was much like people see in the movies, like that 21 movie or much like people have read about with the MIT team. As a matter of fact, we had one or two people that had been around that team or I think one person that had actually been on it. And it was a random job that I got from a college friend. I was at a wedding and we saw each other and we were like, Oh, what are you doing? I haven’t moved to La. Yeah, I was trying to figure that out because I knew I wanted to be a composer and I was working in a law firm trying to earn some extra money to move. And he said, Well, I got a job for you if you want to do this and we train you. So I ended up doing that for a few years before I moved to La. And a little bit after. And it was definitely an adventure. He ended up writing a book about it actually called Repeat until Rich My Friend. But it was a real adventure. I wouldn’t change a thing. I have to say, for gambling fans, when I talk to people about it, the disappointment I give them is how boring it was actually because you were sitting and you don’t think of Vegas is boring, but sitting in a high limit room in the MGM for 8 hours straight at a table, it’s just a little mind numbing. And there is even music I can’t hear anymore because all the music in the casinos is on the loop. So there’s a song by Avril Lavigne, and I have nothing against Avril , she’s great, but there’s a song by her that I cannot listen to to this day because every like two or 3 hours I hear it and I’d be like, it would be a measuring stick for how long I’ve been sitting on my butt at the table.

Buzz Knight

Absolutely.

Robert ToTeras

So to this day, I hear that song and I feel like, do I have to go to the bathroom? Am I hungry? It feels like when I hear that song, the time is passing and I’m just sitting there so hysterical.

Buzz Knight

So are you working on anything new these days?

Robert ToTeras

Yeah, so I do a TV show called Cold Justice, which is produced by Dick Wolf of Law and Order fame. And what Dick hasn’t Dick Wolf done in his 40 years as a TV producer, but I’m lucky enough to be a small part of the Dick Wolf family. And Cold Justice is a great show. It’s an unscripted show where these former law enforcement people go around and solve coal case murders. And we actually have solved quite a few and gotten some confessions and gotten some arrests and convictions. I’m really proud to be a part of that project, and I write the music for that project. And we’re about to do our 100th episode, actually. Oh, wow. Yeah, I’m working on the show right now. The score right now, it’ll air in August and September. October, I think.

Buzz Knight

Wow. Congratulations on all your great credits. Netflix, HBO, TNT, Bravo, Showtime, Nickelodeon. Did I leave anything out?

Robert ToTeras

I don’t know. When I hear that. When I hear that sometimes and you say that, I have to think for a second. Oh, yeah, wait. I feel very lucky to be able to make a living in this business. It’s something I think about a lot.

Buzz Knight

Well, you have an amazing journey. Congratulations on it. Congratulations on your work. With The Walk, starring Terrence Howard and Justin Chatwin. The story of racial divide boston, the mid 70s. Robert Toteris, I hope we can take a walk maybe in person at some point.

Robert ToTeras

But hey, whenever I’m in New York, I’d love to do it. I’ve been trying to get back there and I just haven’t had a chance. Whenever I’m there, I’ll let you know.

Buzz Knight

Come to New York, you come to Boston. Or we’ll do the in person. But thanks for taking part in the Taking a Walk podcast series and check out The Walk. It’s playing in theaters, but then, of course, it’ll be available on streaming services, of course, after that, right, Robert?

Robert ToTeras

That’s right. And I think you can even get it on demand right now. But if you can go to a theater, it’s a great experience. And so it was wonderful to see it in the theater. And I love the theater.

Buzz Knight

Yes. Before the theaters. That’s a really important point. It’s been tough on the theaters for sure these last few years. So, Robert, it’s an honor to talk with you and meet you, and thanks for taking a Walk.

Robert ToTeras

Thank you so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. Taking a Walk with Buzz Knight is available on Spotify, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.