Alexandre Desplat

“I have no favorite museum, but it could be the National Gallery in London; it could be the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Every city has a great museum.”

“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 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.”

“The first thing is, you can't write movie music if you don't know how to write quickly.”

“Well I think usually I would do six or even 10 scores a year. Some are big films and some are not.”

“In 'Secret Life of Pets,' it's a huge orchestra - really, really big.”

“To this day, I still travel with scores. Every time I'm on a plane - it could be Stravinsky or Mozart or Ravel.”

“Every director has his own syntax, his own grammar, his own words.”

“I don't think I would deliver the best work if I would do several projects at the same time. So it's one at a time, but I work a lot. I work nonstop actually, but that's what I like.”

“Well, I consider myself as much as a filmmaker as a moviegoer.”

“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.”

“Music is never inherently funny!”

“I wanted to be a film composer because I heard scores that could stand alone, from 'Vertigo' to 'Star Wars' to 'La Dolce Vita,' because this music has so much history. They're weighed with the history of music. They come from somewhere, they have a past.”

“We will always hear the vibrations of Ennio's music and feel it in our hearts.”

“Music for films allow a great deal of diversity and the more you widen your skills, the better you become.”

“I think great scores have to be noticed, but they're wrong when you hear the music come in.”

“When a theme is beautiful, it's a pleasure to rearrange it or to interweave it with your own music.”

“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.”

“I liked 'The Darjeeling Limited' very much. There was a melancholy about that film that I liked.”

“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.”