On his new CD At the Movies, openly gay jazz musician Dave Koz applies his saxophone skills to a set of songs linked to classic films from the 20th century. Beloved themes from movies such as The Wizard of Oz, West Side Story and Cinema Paradiso are presented in affectionate and respectful renditions. Koz is also joined by numerous guest artists including Anita Baker, Chris Botti, India.Arie and Vanessa Williams. Koz, who is scheduled to perform at the Governor's Ball following Sunday's Oscar show, took time out of his full schedule to answer a few questions about his new album.

AfterElton.com: I just finished reading gay actor Rupert Everett's memoir, and he talked about the impact that Mary Poppins, one of the first movies he saw in a theater as a child, had on him. Is there a movie from your childhood that had an impact on you?
Dave Koz: There were tons. [Laughs.] As strange as it may seem, Blazing Saddles was probably my favorite movie growing up because it was my dad's. My brother and I used to try and memorize … we actually did memorize all the dialogue and [at a] moment's notice, we would drop dialogue on my dad and try to get him to crack up at most inopportune times. [Laughs.] It wouldn't necessarily be on many people's top 10 list of the greatest movies of all time, but you have to admit it was funny.

AE: Maybe on your next movie music CD, you can do Lili Von Shtupp's song "I'm Tired."
DK: Yes — [sings in Von Shtupp's accent] "I'm so tired." But on the flip side of that, certainly The Wizard of Oz was one of those [movies] for every kid, up until today. And the innocence of that, being able to realize that different is OK, being different is OK, growing up different is OK.

AE: Do you think that gay men have a different relationship to the movies than their straight counterparts?
DK: Everybody likes to have the fantasy. It's amazing with all the things that are competing for people's attention — and there's a lot there — that still movies are so popular. They've never been more popular. Why is that? It's not so much just for gay people to disappear into a fantasy life for a couple hours, but I think everybody likes that time travel.

You can walk into a theater and for 10 dollars go anywhere in the world at any time period in the world — go back in time, go a thousand years forward in time, and all for the price of admission. It's an amazing escape — but not so much escape in a bad way, but an escape in a good way because when you re-enter your life after seeing a great movie — you know that feeling. "I'm ready, and I'm re-energized and inspired and ready to tackle whatever is next in my life."

That's the kind of feeling we were going for by creating the CD. Hopefully, when you get to the end of it, you've seen these 12 scenes, you've seen a movie, you feel good, and you get that inspiration.

AE: Have you seen all of the movies from which the music on your At the Movies CD is based?
DK: Yes. That was actually one of the main reasons why the particular songs were chosen. How do you choose 12 songs out of the 12,000 or whatever that you could choose? It was an impossible task and believe me, it made for some good-natured arguments [laughs] between me and [producer] Phil Ramone. But we ended up with 12 pieces of music that you couldn't have the movie without the music. That's how we chose the songs. That was the barometer.

For example, Casablanca without "As Time Goes By" — you don't have the movie anymore. The movie doesn't stand up without that song. And it's the same with "The Way We Were," the same with "The Summer Knows" from Summer of '42. Some of the songs, like "The Shadow of Your Smile" from The Sandpiper, were way more popular than the movie themselves. So these were songs that were absolutely essential to the success of the movie.

AE: On his recent CDs, Barry Manilow has been revisiting the music of the 1950s and 1960s. Is that why you selected him to perform "Moon River," which is so linked to Breakfast at Tiffany's, as opposed to a song from a more current film?
DK: Believe it or not — and I knew he was working on that series of albums — he sang that before those albums came out. So it was our very good fortune that he came back on top with those projects. In all of his years, he had never sung " Moon River," which I found shocking. I would have thought that at some point he would have recorded that song, but he never did.

And he was actually quite concerned about singing it. He said, "What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do that somebody hasn't done?" But we sent him our little demo, and he heard the direction that we were going to go in, and he said, "You know, I like this; I'd like to try this." And he did, and when he opens up his mouth to sing that … you can't just have somebody sing these songs … the songs are so iconic that you have to have a voice that matches. To take the melody and give it some weight, you can't have lightweight singers singing these songs; otherwise, it just becomes karaoke.

AE: It's true, because when his voice does appear in the song after the intro, when it does come in, it's right; it's the right time.
DK: You're ready for it, and [when] he opens his mouth, it's like [gasps] and all is well in the world. [Laughs.] That voice is so familiar and so appealing. Even if you're not a Barry Manilow fan you can't not like it; it's just very appealing.

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