LOS ANGELES - Bono had to hold the note - even though it wasn't him
singing.

When the U2 frontman agreed to write a song for director Jim
Sheridan's film In America, the key was crafting lyrics and a melody
that would extend the melancholy wistfulness of the final scene.

But why does the frontman for the biggest band on the planet, a man
who has been nominated for a multitude of Grammys and a Nobel Peace
Prize, busy himself with movie songs?

"Film is part of my education," Bono said, sitting with Sheridan on
a patio at the Chateau Marmont hotel during a recent visit to
Hollywood. "Growing up in the north side of Dublin, our experiences
of art and culture came from music and movies. So that's always been
a part of me."

In America is loosely based on Sheridan's childhood memories about
the death of his brother, mingled with his adult experiences
emigrating with his wife and two daughters from Ireland to New York
City in the 1980s.

Bono watched a rough cut of the movie in 2001 and began crafting
lyrics and melody for the song "Time Enough For Tears," drawing off
elements of film's score by Maurice Seezer and Gavin Friday.

Andrea Corr, who sings with her siblings in the Irish pop group the
Corrs, performs the lullaby over the closing credits.

"It's definitely about death and all those Irish melancholy songs.
We're great at singing songs about death," Bono joked about the tune.

Sheridan wasn't sure at first that he wanted a song, but felt it
might reinforce some of the emotions the film explored.

"It's a kind of poetic coda," Sheridan said. "The audience is not
going to listen to that and reinterpret the film through the song.
But if they listen to it over time, they get an added perspective
that carries a lot of weight - but lightly."

With U2 and sometimes on his own, Bono has worked on a lot of theme
songs for a lot of movies, including Gangs Of New York, City Of
Angels and the James Bond thriller Goldeneye.

Sometimes they are what Bono described as "adjuncts," unrelated pop
tunes tagged onto a movie as a promotional device. "Hold Me, Thrill
Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" from 1995's Batman Forever was one of those,
along with "Elevation," which turned up in 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb
Raider.

The singer seems to have more affection for songs written
specifically for a particular film story, like "The Hands That Built
America" from Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York, a mournful rock
ballad that traveled from the film's Civil War-era riots in the
1860s to the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just prior to the terrorist
attacks.

The band had an Oscar nomination for that one last year, but lost to
Eminem. Bono didn't get a nomination this year, although In America
had three others, including best original screenplay for Sheridan
and his daughters, whose memories he drew on for the script.

In America was a chance for Bono to collaborate again with the
filmmaker, a longtime friend who once owned a theatre in Ireland
where Bono performed rock songs as a teenager.

"He's been a mentor to me," Bono said. "It's like he's always been a
presence in my life ... and Jim's pitched this film not just to me,
but to anybody in Dublin for the past five years at every pub he's
found himself in."

They previously worked together on Sheridan's 1993 film In The Name
Of The Father, about a man wrongly imprisoned for an IRA bombing in
London. Bono, Friday and Seezer co-wrote the theme "You Made Me The
Thief Of Your Heart" for Sinead O'Connor.

"There are songs you have to rob. There are songs you have to put
together slowly, the ones you have to carry on your back for a
while. And then there are songs that are gifts. `Thief Of Your
Heart' was one like that," Bono said.

In America offered a different challenge. The film is narrated by a
little girl, who tries to help her father overcome the death of his
young son - who was named Frankie, after Sheridan's late brother. In
a closing scene, she brings her father to tears by pretending to see
the boy waving goodbye to them from the moon.

Although he didn't want to retell the story in song, Bono said
"there are certain marks to hit" in the lyrics.

"The moon was a symbol of faith at the end so I wrote, `The moon is
milk and the sky where it's spilled is magic ...'"

"Magic" is another reference point from the movie: The 1960s pop
song "Do You Believe In Magic," by the Lovin' Spoonful, is played on
the radio in a scene when the family's car first emerges from a
tunnel into a glittery Manhattan night.

Corr was picked to perform "Time Enough For Tears" because Bono
wanted a voice that paralleled the young actress in the movie.

"We didn't want Andrea to sing like a pop singer," he said. "We
wanted her to sing in that almost childlike voice.'"