CraveOnline: Did you work with Kristen Wiig on her singing and guitar playing?
Theodore Shapiro: Not very much. I worked with her very, very briefly. We messed around with rerecording her “Space Oddity” but I’m not sure whether they used the tracks that we did or the original tracks.
Is composing to an actor running in slow motion sort of every composer’s task these days?
[Laughs] Well, it’s not always my task. That’s, I guess, kind of a trope at this point, but for me it feels relatively new so I welcome the era of the slow motion running.
What other upcoming scores should we listen for?
Well, I did this movie called Infinitely Polar Bear which stars Mark Ruffalo and Zoe Saldana which is going to be in competition at Sundance this year. It’s really wonderful, and I’m just starting a movie called St. Vincent [De Van Nuys] with Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy and Naomi Watts. That’s looking really great so I feel lucky to have a bunch of interesting projects.
Would St. Vincent be a comedy score?
It’s another one that’s kind of a mix. It’s definitely got some comedic parts, it’s definitely got some dramatic parts. It’s a beautiful script and luckily it’s got an interesting tone so it can’t be neatly fit into any one category.
When do you usually start on a film, when there’s a rough cut of the picture?
I really like to start as early as possible. It’s very common to start when there’s a rough cut, but on Walter Mitty, Ben and I started talking about it before we started shooting. The first footage that I watched was when he was taking a break in between shooting the New York portion and the Iceland portion of the film. So I really like to be engaged as early as possible. Sometimes when you start early, before you’ve really seen a full cut, you can make some decisions that you might not make if you saw the whole film, and sometimes those are bad decisions but sometimes those lead to the best decisions. I always love to get involved and start working on it when it’s really a blank canvas. I think that provides the best opportunity for doing the best work.
Who are some directors who ask you to wait until they have a picture cut?
I don’t think that any of the people that I work with ask me to wait. I think it’s more a function of sometimes you get hired on a project when it’s already far enough along that they just haven’t thought about incorporating the composer yet. Generally speaking, with all the directors that I work with more than once, the second time around we always get involved at an early stage and really start thinking about what the concept is going to be from the beginning.
Besides Walter Mitty, what are some of your scores of which you’re proudest?
Oh, man. That’s a tough question. I’m very hard on myself so I have a tendency to appreciate the thing that I’ve just worked on, which I do with Walter Mitty. I’m very proud of it. Other than that, I always am thinking about what the next score is going to be.
Then what are some scores we might like but you’re maybe more critical of?
[Laughs] I’ve always liked the score that I wrote for the movie Girlfight. I thought that turned out pretty well. I like the score for the Gene Hackman film Heist. I’m pleased with that. I don’t know, if you press me I might be able to identify a couple of other things that I like.
What are your favorite film scores of other composers?
Probably my favorite would be Nino Rota’s score for Nights of Cabiria, Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Chinatown, almost everything by Bernard Hermann and John Williams’ score for Raiders of the Lost Ark had a very special place in my heart.
Why, because of when you saw the movie, or as a musician yourself?
Yeah, I was nine when I saw that movie. That was the seminal moviegoing experience of my childhood. That was the one where I just remember literally having the thought, “I hope this movie never ends.” The score was a huge part of that. It’s one of those scores where I loved it as a nine-year-old and subsequent listening and subsequent experiences of hearing it has only reaffirmed my nine-year-old’s impressions of the score. It’s just such a wonderful piece of writing and the way that Williams can just manage tempo over long stretches of time. It’s just so masterful. It’s just a lesson every time you hear it.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
