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 From the
upbeat, jazzy sounds of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA to the
jungle-adventure send-up of TROPIC THUNDER and the
sentiment of last year’s hit MARLEY & ME, composer
Theodore Shapiro has consistently delivered memorable music
for some of the funniest movies of the past five years. But in
a corollary to the old acting bromide “dying is easy, comedy
is hard,” Shapiro steps gingerly when adding music to the
antics of a Jack Black, Ben Stiller or Owen Wilson: “If
you’re ever making a gesture that gives the audience
permission to laugh, you have to be very judicious with it,”
he explains, “because the worst possible thing you can do is
to push the comedy too hard.”
His careful touch has made him a
sought-after collaborator for some of Hollywood’s leading
comedy directors: David Frankel (THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, MARLEY
& ME), Stiller (TROPIC THUNDER, ZOOLANDER No. 2), John
Hamburg (I LOVE YOU, MAN, ALONG CAME POLLY), Mike Judge
(IDIOCRACY) and, most recently, Harold Ramis (YEAR ONE).
Shapiro, 37, is a rarity in modern film music: a classically
trained composer (bachelor’s degree from Brown, master’s from
Juilliard) who, despite commissions for classical works
(including a well-received piano concerto in 1999), decided
he’d rather be working in film. “A lot of the seminal
cultural experiences of my life were in the movie
theater,” he says during a writing break at his
comfortable Glendale, Calif., studio. “As a 9-year-old
boy, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK had a major impact on my life.
I’ve always been very connected to the medium.”
Shapiro followed the usual route for a
fledgling film composer: low-budget, independent films, often
made by friends, one of which, Karyn Kusama’s GIRLFIGHT, won
major awards at the Sundance Film Festival and led to a
two-film collaboration with celebrated playwright (and
sometime film director) David Mamet, on STATE AND
MAIN and HEIST. Director Todd Phillips liked Shapiro’s
thriller score for HEIST and hired him for his 2003 comedy OLD
SCHOOL. Its success, in turn, led to Shapiro’s current status
as Hollywood’s go-to composer for edgy comedic fare: STARSKY
AND HUTCH, DODGEBALL, FUN WITH DICK AND JANE and others.
But it’s never simple, Shapiro says.
“If the movie works, it’s because there is something
emotionally satisfying — and if you don’t get that part right
(as a composer), then you’re going to hurt the movie.”
For the hit Meryl Streep-Anne Hathaway movie THE DEVIL WEARS
PRADA, for example, “a portion of the score had to do with
the energy and excitement and glamour of the fashion world.
But an equally large and important aspect of the score was
about the main character’s self-actualization and growth.”
The Will Ferrell ice-skating comedy BLADES OF
GLORY demanded “an epic sports score,” Shapiro
noted, while TROPIC THUNDER — set in Southeast Asia,
where actors making a movie are caught up in real wartime
action — required “the orchestra, a rock band, ethnic
specialists, vocal soloists and taiko drum ensemble. We played
it completely straight,” he points out, which only added
to the fun.
And when it came to one of last year’s
biggest hits, the dog-centric Jennifer Aniston-Owen Wilson
comedy MARLEY & ME, the balance was even more delicate
because of its much-talked-about finale. “The emotional
wallop of the movie’s last third simply didn’t exist before
Teddy composed the gorgeous, elegiac theme that carries the
film to its bittersweet ending,” says director Frankel.
“Teddy’s range as a composer is astonishing, but even more
valuable is his ability to capture perfectly the emotional
rhythms of a film.”
This summer’s Shapiro scores include I
LOVE YOU, MAN, which needed just five minutes of original
music, and Year One, the Jack Black caveman movie that needed
much more, but also a more primitive soundscape featuring
brass, percussion and harp. Upcoming is a reunion with
director Kusama on JENNIFER'S BODY, a horror-comedy written by
Diablo Cody (Juno).Says Shapiro: “I’m excited to come to
work every day. I enjoy the craft of film composition. I just
want to keep challenging myself and having the opportunity to
work on movies that I really love.”
Biography written by Jon
Burlingame
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