For more than two decades, Shapiro has been solving cinematic puzzles both light and dark. He scored some of Hollywood’s classic comedies—including Idiocracy, Old School, Tropic Thunder, and Dodgeball—with regular collaborators such as Paul Feig, Todd Phillips, and Jay Roach. He’s also cracked the code of political dramas (the Emmy-nominated Game Change, Trumbo), adventures both animated (Spies in Disguise), and unconventional (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty), as well as sexy, stylish mysteries (A Simple Favor).
Shapiro is like a character actor, putting on different musical costumes and adopting accents to disappear into roles much like Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which he scored with rays of churchy sunshine that belied hidden sadness—or like the women of Fox News in Bombshell, a score that weaponized female vocals to tell the story of their revolt.
His latest Emmy-winning score is the hypnotic mystery inside Severance, the Apple TV+ series helmed by Ben Stiller. The score travels an infinitely looping staircase of chords as Adam Scott’s hapless office worker, whose work-life brain has been “severed” from his home-life self, looks for answers.
This was a pure joy getting to talk with Shapiro about the above, especially one of our very favorites, The Pirates! Band of Misfits. The bulk of today’s show is about Paul Feig’s latest, The School for Good and Evil on Netflix.
That fantastical score is pure magic as it weaves between the protagonists/antagonists, the good, the bad, the ugly, and a whole lot of source music. It’s so good in fact that listening to just the first 30 seconds of the first cue you’d think you were hearing a demo reel for someone’s entire career. Well, that’s Teddy for ya!
For now, sit back and take a deep dive into the accomplished, highly versatile and prolific career of Theodore Shapiro!
Oh, heads up to you Shapiro fans and vinyl aficionados. This month, he’s continuing his release collection with Mondo. In past years, they issued the scores to The Invitation and Destroyer, and now the Austin-based label will debut the music to Severance on wax on 11.23.2022.
