While he faithfully reiterates that it’s an honour just to be nominated, Toronto composer Mychael Danna acknowledges that it’s still more fun to win.

“I’m not going to lie to you. When they call your name and your friends scream from Toronto it’s a great moment in your life,” Danna told CP24’s Poojah Handa in an interview from Los Angeles the day after he won a Golden Globe for the score he created for Life of Pi.

He also said “it’s pretty incredible when you have a night where Jennifer Lopez hands you an award and Bill Clinton is in the house.”

While he acknowledged the win is exhilarating, Danna said he faced a challenging task trying to come up with music for the Ang Lee-directed film, based on a novel by Canadian author Yann Martel.

“We talked first and foremost about being true to Yann Martel’s vision and the message of his book and not messing it up, delivering what people loved about the book into a motion picture,” Danna said. “It was very difficult to do. Everyone said it was impossible and that we’d fail. We really felt that pressure on our shoulders so we worked long and hard to come up with a solution to this puzzle.”

In the end, he and Lee worked for nearly a year to create the award-winning score for the story that some thought was impossible to turn into a film.

“I read the book when it came out like every good Canadian 12 or 13 years ago. It really moved me and touched me,” Danna said. “I finished reading the book and I thought ‘well there’s one they’ll never ever make into a movie.’ Fast forward five years later and I’m getting a call from Ang who was laughing and saying ‘here’s what we’re going to do together.”

Lee said that as a Canadian married to an Indian woman, Danna was ‘born to do it.’

Being good friends already, it didn’t take too much convincing on Lee’s part to bring Danna on board.

“We worked together on every note of the score and he’s been a friend of mine,” said Danna, who shared the award with Lee in his acceptance speech. “I knew that he would be the happiest guy in the room. He’s a very warm guy and a really close friend of mine.”

Danna beat out a star-studded cast of fellow composers to win the award. Fellow nominees included composing legend John Williams, who wrote the score for Lincoln and Oscar-winning composer Dario Marianelli, who wrote the score for Anna Karenina.

Danna’s score for Life of Pi has also been nominated for an Academy Award.