Alexandre Desplat
I've loved Japanese culture for a long, long time, from doing martial arts, to the block prints, to the music. It's a country that I love, and a culture that I love.
If you're a director and you pay homage to Japan, you're definitely going to remember what you've learned from watching the Japanese masters' films.
It was quite frightening to be asked to write the music of a Western because there are so many things that you can refer to that can be cliche, and that could really poison your mind, from Morricone, to Bernstein, to Neil Young. So much music has been written for Westerns, that you wonder how you're going to find a new or different idea.
I knew how incredibly rich 'Valerian' was visually and the adventures the heroes go through. They are one of a kind. They have nothing that you can compare with DC or Marvel. They're not superheroes they're just heroes but they're also human beings. And there was also something there that I always liked. In these novels, there was a lot of humor.
I know 'Valerian' didn't do very well in America, but I think it's because of the lack of knowledge of these graphic novels which came out in the mid-60s.
Well, I consider myself as much as a filmmaker as a moviegoer.
It could be sci-fi, love story, historical drama what counts for me is the fact that they're made by great directors with a great point of view who bring the audience to be elevated and at the same time entertained. That's what cinema is.
I always try to do movies that are different from the ones I've done before.
I started piano like my sisters. After one year or two, I didn't like it anymore. Then, because I like trumpet, I played the cornet. When you are 7, you can't play trumpet - you play cornet. And something didn't go well. The teacher was too hard. Too rough. Suddenly, there was this instrument, the flute, that I could immediately play.
I can't watch a movie where the actors are great and the photography sucks.
I've been pretty lucky to work with directors who were quite influenced by European cinema.
I just work 18 hours a day, every day. And I don't go on holidays. And so, I guess I will die young.
My education as a film composer, you can't not - if you like the orchestra like I do, if you are a symphonist like I am - you can't not listen to John Williams' work.
Berlin was the first, the very first to give me an award. I am eternally grateful to them. It sits on my desk - the Silver Bear. All the others are stored away. It's the only one I look at. It watches me while I work.
It's not about what's a good or bad score at the Oscars, rather what's exposed to the ears more.
It's not easy to write an understated score over a loud one.
I think great scores have to be noticed, but they're wrong when you hear the music come in.
I never dreamed of writing for concert or opera. I always dreamed, if I was a composer, to write music for films.
My art is applied to another art which is cinema, that makes my life much easier.
I always try to approach a film from the point of view of the director.
Every director has his own syntax, his own grammar, his own words.
Music can make you go from sadness to an immense sadness. There is a limit; if you go too far, it becomes schmaltzy.
French horn can be very epic, and at the same time, very dark and moving.
I remember my sisters, they loved a movie called 'The Naked Island.' And the flute was actually playing the main theme. A Japanese movie. A beautiful movie from 1961. I remember hearing this music with a flute many, many times a day at home.
Francois Truffaut's 'The Soft Skin' starts with a very mundane scene of a family and a man driving to the airport. Yet the music is like a thriller, and you don't understand why. It's not until later that you learn it's because the movie is a thriller.
To this day, I still travel with scores. Every time I'm on a plane - it could be Stravinsky or Mozart or Ravel.
My parents had a lot of movie soundtracks that they brought back from the States. So very early on I heard film music at home.
There are some moments in your life and in your career when you meet a movie and the director that suddenly just turns you to another dimension.
I remember when I saw 'King's Speech' or 'Girl With the Pearl Earring;' there are moments in my life where I was blown away and thought, 'Wow, that's why I chose to be a film composer.' These films are so beautiful and so strong, and the music can be very much part of the emotion.
I'm a flutist so I know what they can deliver in terms of texture and sound and blurriness and softness. It's a very soft instrument.
There's a jazz influence in my music in general.
I was raised by women. I have my parents, but I have two older sisters and I would learn from them about what is a female and what is a girl and what is an adolescent and what is a young woman and I was very close to them.
When I was 15, I was not living with my parents anymore. They were on an island in the Caribbean and I was back in Paris, where I lived with my sisters between 15 and 19.
I usually like to introduce the film and the music with the opening titles. It's a great help for a composer to bring the audience into the work that we're going into.
When you have the chance to work with Wes Anderson, with Stephen Frears and Chris Weitz and Roman Polanski and Terrance Malick you don't say no.
I always try to develop a good relationship with the director on any film and make sure that we want the same things and we're talking about the same ideas, and that gives me great protection.
Mozart for me is the No. 1 composer. His music is not just joy or sadness. It's deep emotion with a touch of lightness, which is the most difficult thing to do.
You do movies because you love movies and you write music because you love writing music, and sometimes there's this magic combination.
I'm not a script composer. I'm a film composer and my brain is excited by images and moving elements.
I guess the passion I have for cinema is as strong as the one that I have for music. And I've always tried to be a character in the film, not just a composer that throws his music to the film. That's the main element that connects me with directors.
Argo' was a very exciting project for me because I knew that I could mix together influences from my youth as a young musician and a young composer.
I've always loved mixing Middle Eastern instruments into a classical orchestra.
I've scored all the movies that Jacques Audiard has directed. It's a long love story between us, trying to find a voice that would belong to his films only.
Music for films allow a great deal of diversity and the more you widen your skills, the better you become.
When a theme is beautiful, it's a pleasure to rearrange it or to interweave it with your own music.
I'm scared each time I start a movie, believe me. There's always a moment of panic when you're not sure if you're going to be able to meet the deadline.
Without fear you can't explore or push yourself beyond what you've done.
I always say that to compose is to think. Playing is good, it's useful, but it's how your intellect puts the ideas together that will bring hands to write or to play. So, it's really a combination of many things; hearing sounds, hearing layers of counterpoints, of chords.
Musicals are made of several climaxes that keep growing and growing; when you think it's over, it still continues growing up in plateaus.