DUEL OF THE GREATS STEPHEN WILLIAMS

The story behind Chevalier’s opening bow battle…

Chevalier’s opening set-piece establishes Joseph’s artistic status upfront and ends with one of the funniest cuts to a title card in recent memory. Aside from being an amusing nod to Amadeus (both film and play), the sequence happens to be based on an oft-told tale about legendary musicians living two centuries on from Joseph Bologne’s time.

The opening sequence of the movie involves an imagining of a contest between Mozart and our hero, Joseph Bologne. And the inspiration for it was from what I understand to be a real occurrence between Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, when Eric Clapton was part of Cream. Jimi Hendrix happened to be in the audience one night while Clapton was performing and asked if he could join him on stage. And Clapton, perhaps in hindsight against his better judgment, agreed and allowed Jimi to take the stage, whereupon Jimi shredded Clapton into oblivion. Clapton apparently went backstage and was completely perturbed by the virtuosity of this young guitarist. And so, we thought that would be a great way to open our movie, and in some senses, to speak about the historical erasure of Joseph’s music and his incredible talent. That sequence culminates with Mozart, like Clapton, flummoxed and asking of a compatriot, ‘Who the fuck is that?!’ And then the title card sets about answering that, which is to say, answering the question, ‘Who is Chevalier?’

STEFANI ROBINSON

It was one of the first things that came to me, and it was the North Star to the movie in a way. It’s cheeky, it’s obviously not based on any historical fact. It’s, for lack of a better term, a ‘fuck you’ to the audience in a way, to the expectation that you’re going to get some sort of Mozart-y-type history lesson; that’s not actually what’s going to happen here. That felt right for this movie in the very early stages. That injection of rock and roll and the history of that, and is it true, is it not true? That was really important for the bones and feeling of the movie I wanted to write.

STEPHEN WILLIAMS

In many ways, that sequence is like a haiku, in that it encapsulates everything the rest of the movie attempts to expand on.