Alexandre Desplat is a veteran film composer who started his career in France in the mid-1980s before becoming an international sensation in 2003 with his score for the Scarlett Johansson historical drama, Girl with a Pearl Earring. He’s been one of the most in-demand composers in Hollywood and the UK ever since, a favorite of directors including Wes Anderson, George Clooney, Guillermo del Toro, Stephen Frears, Roman Polanski, and many others. He’s won two Academy Awards, for The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Shape of Water.
It was the Star Wars soundtrack LP that made Alexandre want to be a film composer, and John Williams has been an enormous influence and inspiration to him. He spoke to me from his atelier in Paris about what is so unique (and rare) about the Spielberg/Williams collaboration, the “horizontality” and architecture of Spielberg’s films, the deep historic well of musical knowledge in John’s brain, and what’s regrettably missing in most director/composer collaborations these days.
This is why Alexandre Desplat loves Spielberg/Williams.
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