One, two, three.
When I first met Johnny...
I thought, "Oh, he's too nice of a guy
to written such genius music."
It is a magical ability that he has.
You hear his music for the first time
and you can't forget it.
More people around the planet love him,
even if they don't realize it.
I mean, how many composers
can you hear just the beginning
and you instantly know what movie that is?
His music for me is so comforting.
I know... I know
immediately that it's John.
This is...
...John's effect on people.
When you hear the music
and say, "Oh, yeah. He's that dude.
Like Michael Jordan was that dude.
And Bach was that dude.
And John Williams is just that dude.
He's inescapable.
He is the solution so many times.
John's music connects
with his audience on such a primal level.
It seems like these themes
have been with us forever.
At one point he sat down
and figured them out
and now they're just part
of our collective psyches.
But he's more than just a composer.
He's just a brilliant guy
who really understands the relationship
between pictures and sound.
He's the perfect marriage
between old classics and modern pop.
He's both to me.
He's an incredible musical scholar
of every style that exists.
How does he do it?
The winner is John Williams
for Fiddler on the Roof.
John Williams for Jaws.
John Williams for Star Wars.
John Williams for E.T.
John Williams for Schindler's List.
He's always
in a process of discovery.
It starts with what he experiences,
watching a film
and then going to the piano and writing.
The music comes from the sky
and envelops him.
It's the purest form of art I've ever
experienced from any human being.
Real good lick.
This is one of my pianos.
And this one was at Fox with me
for 25 years.
The first thing I played for Steven
on this piano was this...
And I played that for him and he said,
"What is that? What are you gonna do..."
What about the five notes
of Close Encounters?
Five... Uh, this one.
This piano... I played everything.
E.T. for him and all of it.
So that is the history
of this little darling.
It sounds like
the wedding march.
But we got married years ago.
I know.
It's true.
Oh, stranger. I'm so happy to see you.
- I'm crashing Johnny's moment here.
- It's my bar mitzvah.
Your bar mitzvah.
- How are you?
- I'm fine.
- Happy New Year. Happy New Year.
- And to you, baby.
What's interesting to me about
John Williams and Steven Spielberg is
when they're together they are a band.
And bands are great.
When they're together they're greater even
than the sum of their incredible parts.
The music and the image
are equally important.
One is elevated by the other
and if you took either away,
it wouldn't be what it is.
By the time I actually got my first job
directing my first feature,
I probably had already collected
500 soundtrack albums.
And I was one of those fanboys
of motion picture scores.
But in the '60s and the early '70s,
motion picture scores were becoming
this magnificent anachronism.
In other words, an orchestral score
was no longer preferred.
They got music of the era.
It was a scary time
because I really thought it was the end
of that great era of orchestral scores.
And I was not going to let that era end
on my watch with my movies.
I had fallen in love with a score
from a movie called The Reivers.
And I made a promise to myself
that if I ever get a first feature,
whoever wrote the score,
a man named John Williams,
who I assumed was English,
was going to be my composer
if he would agree.
After that I heard
The Cowboys, which John also wrote,
and at that point
I was even more determined.
And so I asked John
if he would write the score
for my first movie, The Sugarland Express.
And John liked the script enough
to have lunch with me.
I adored him from the beginning.
He was very young.
And I was already 40, you know.
A grizzled veteran
from years of-of toil in Hollywood.
He was an elegant man.
Always has been.
But very friendly, very warm.
He looked a bit like William Shakespeare.
He had the red hair
and he had a little bit of a red beard.
And beautiful hands.
I remember... I just remember his hands.
Within five minutes I realized
that from a historical point of view,
he knew more about film music than I did.
To prove how much
I loved film music,
I think I probably hummed
the first two minutes
of the Alex North opening main titles
from Spartacus,
one of my favorite scores.
So I think John was either
impressed by that or acted like he was.
And thought I was some kind of a nut.
And then I-I went to see
his film, Sugarland Express.
Friend, you wanna give that back?
You got no idea
what's gonna happen to you.
And I thought, "My, God. I mean, this kid
is really a great filmmaker."
And so he said yes.
And Johnny created an intimacy
with one harmonica
that really brought the film to a place
I never imagined it going.
Johnny deferred the main theme
and a lot of the real evocative feeling
through Toots Thielemans,
the famous harmonica player.
The second John finished
scoring Sugarland,
I simply intended to use him
on every movie I ever would make.
When it comes to this question
of originality in film music
the composers are actually really often
in a bind
because they come on the job
and there's a temp track
which is pre-existing pieces
of music, songs,
bits and pieces of old film scores that
the director and editors have laid down
in order to assemble the rough cut
of the picture.
It's a bane for composers
because the minute we listen
to a temp track
a lot of creative doors close.
Very often the director
will have fallen in love
with the pieces that they've grabbed
and put on the soundtrack.
And so they'll be wanting something
just like that.
And the composer will be expected
to replicate the sort of collage
of other people's music.
For Jaws, I had this kind of esoteric idea
of what the score should be.
And I had temped the picture
with, actually, John's own score
from Bob Altman's Images.
And John called me
after he saw the rough cut of Jaws
and he was laughing about my temp music.
Well, that was the strangest thing
because I...
This score of Images was all effects
and shrieks and frightening sounds.
Jaws seems to me
a kind of nautical adventure.
He said, "Oh, no."
He said "Sweetie...
...this is a pirate movie."
This is like... Gets you right here
in your kishkes.
And he said, "Don't worry,
I'm going to come up with something."
So, a week or two went by
and I went over to his house
and he was at his big Steinway piano.
And I was expecting something
just tremendously complex.
And it's almost like "Chopsticks."
He just used a couple of fingers.
And he went...
I'm looking around.
Think about
being completely alone in a dark place
where you can't really see anything.
It's completely quiet.
And the first thing you hear is...
You feel that something dangerous
is coming your way.
Just from these low notes
in an atmosphere where they don't belong.
At first I thought he was joking.
Everyone asks me, "What does
Steven Spielberg think...
What were his thoughts
when he first heard that?"
What were your really true thoughts?
- Did you think I was an idiot?
- No. No, not an idiot at all.
I thought, "Oh, my God. We're not
gonna have an orchestra.
We're gonna have a piano and...
And Johnny's gonna just do
a couple of things on the lower...
- on the lower register."
- Why didn't you say no?
'Cause you kept saying,
"Listen to it again."
- Okay.
- You said, "Listen to it again."
And I start to... I started to see
the brilliance of what you had done.
- This should be soft, Steven.
- Yeah, I know.
This is already too big, you know?
And I had a shark
that didn't work, remember?
And I didn't have any idea that John
was gonna come along
and give me the shark that didn't work
in music.
So, his musical shark worked a lot better
than my mechanical shark.
Even though its two notes,
this is a theme.
One thing a theme brilliantly can do
is it can keep a character on-screen
when they're not visibly on-screen.
The question
that I've asked repeatedly is,
"How does he do it?"
What is this divine spark?
Where does it come from?
I was called "Johnny"
because it was my father's name
so I was sort of "Johnny Jr." so to speak.
My father was a drummer
and a percussionist.
And my mother was very musical.
She was a girl of the '20s.
That means that
she could play the ukulele.
She had been a dancer
when she was very young.
My father was playing
in a theater in Boston.
She was dancing in the show
and musicians very often would meet
a singer or a dancer that they work with.
They formed some kind of relationship
and married in 1929
when she was 20 years old
and he was about 25.
I was born on February 8th, 1932
in Flushing, Queens, New York
at the Flushing Hospital.
I had a sister and two brothers.
Both of the boys were musicians.
Still with us and working.
And my sister, who has passed,
was a piano teacher her whole life.
And when we were younger,
she played much better than I did.
We were pretty much compelled
to play the piano.
My father thought
we should all play the piano.
And my practicing had to be done
in proportion to playing baseball.
If I played baseball for an hour,
I must have to practice piano
for half an hour.
In those days,
the radio was the source of news
and entertainment.
We had no television.
And my father was working
in radio studio orchestras.
So I knew he would go to work,
and at 8:00 that night,
I would hear him on the radio.
Your Hit Parade.
They played with Benny Goodman
and Tommy Dorsey's orchestra
and I was very proud of his participation
in all of this.
'Cause I was very interested in listening
to see if I could hear the drum.
And so it was an extra kind of way
of listening.
As I began to listen
to the instrumentation
of bands and orchestras,
I became very interested in the trombone.
My father said, "You can have a trombone
if you continue with your piano lessons."
Music was so much a part of the family
and the family's professional life
that I never really had
any other aspirations
that I can confess to.
My parents' friends were all musicians
and that's what I thought you did
when you're an adult.
When you grew up,
you played music somewhere.
Our family moves to California
when I was 15 years old.
And I was a high school student
at that time.
And I went to North Hollywood High School.
I had been playing piano
since I was very young
and distracted by the trombone
for a couple of years.
And my father said, "You have to stop
the trombone.
You gotta concentrate full-time
on the piano."
And I had a lot of catching up to do.
So I worked so hard.
I used to practice five, six hours a day,
and the weekend all day long,
to the point where my mother thought
I was gonna die from doing this.
You can't call it an education.
It's more of a training.
Almost like an athletic training
to be able to do what you have to do
to accomplish a professional job
at some level.
And that was the time that I began
to pay more attention to movies.
And I gradually began
to listen to the scores
because my father was working
in the studios in Hollywood now.
And I would go with him
to witness what they were doing
and seeing these people
making music for movies.
What comes to mind most quickly
is Leonard Bernstein, On the Waterfront.
My father recorded on that score
with Bernstein but there were many.
Also at that time, he used to bring
conductors' scores home for me.
And I began to think
that I could also do that.
By that time, when I was in high school,
I was able to write for instruments
for our student orchestra.
One of the students
had written a musical play with piano
so I orchestrated his musical's songs
and conducted the student orchestra.
So, I think I learned by doing.
By practicing.
And a lot of self-teaching, I have to say.
My nose was in harmony, counterpoint
orchestration books for decades.
I had four years of service
in the Air Force,
and I was stationed for a period
in St. John's, Newfoundland
in the Northeast Air Command Band.
At the end of the Second World w*r,
the Canadian government
invited people in the film business
to come and establish film companies
in Canada.
So Studio Hamburg from Germany
brought their crew and their equipment
to St. John's.
And they wanted to make
a documentary film travelogue
of the Maritime Provinces of Canada.
And they made this film, this little film,
You Are Welcome,
and they had no music for it.
And somehow they called me.
I'd never scored a film.
And they said, "Do you think
you can write music for this film?"
And I said, "Sure I can."
So, I went to the library in St. John's
and got a book of Newfoundland folk songs.
And, well, I could make
this little thing out of.
And so that's the history
of how it happened.
I cannot tell you that as a young man
in my early twenties
I intended to do anything else
professionally but play the piano.
The fact that I ended up
composing music professionally,
and particularly for film,
was a series of fortuitous accidents.
I was infatuated with jazz.
I loved the jazz that I would hear
on the radio and wanted to try to play it,
which I did as a young adult
and even as a young professional.
I could never claim as a player
to be a major league jazz player
like Oscar Peterson
or Teddy Wilson or Art Tatum.
But I was... fair,
I guess you could say.
But I love writing it.
When I was younger,
I went through a phase in high school,
and a few years afterwards,
of being very much into jazz.
So I just knew him as a jazz musician,
you know, as a pianist.
You listen to what he wrote in his 20s,
there's that album, Rhythm in Motion...
...that he put together
when he had his jazz band.
And it's fantastic.
There are composers much, much older today
who couldn't even touch it.
It's easy to forget
that he started out as a jazz guy.
You know, not what you might expect
if you kind of come to him in 1977
as the composer of Star Wars
and Close Encounters.
But it's hard to imagine someone
writing a piece like the Cantina scene
while knowing absolutely nothing
about jazz.
I've heard really bad attempts
at that kind of stuff
and it comes across
as a clichd affectation at best.
But it was always like,
"Yeah, this is... this is hip."
That brings me to Catch Me If You Can.
When I heard that, it was jazz.
I mean, this cat's k*lling it, man.
It was just great.
I sat through the movie
and then I wrote his office an email
and said, "Please implore Maestro Williams
to turn this into a saxophone concerto."
And a few days later, I got a message back
saying, "Thank you for your interest.
It's already in the works
and it'll be available
within the next six weeks."
So, I was very excited about that.
I was never a movie buff,
or a movie fan, then as now.
I don't go to the movies.
Very, very rarely.
But my father played
in all of these studio orchestras
at Columbia and MGM, 20th Century Fox,
and so on.
So, the fact that musicians
would find work in the studios
meant I became interested in film music
for a job.
I went to Columbia Pictures
and played for Morris Stoloff,
who was the music director of the studio.
And he hired me to play piano
in the orchestra.
I played in that orchestra for two years
working nearly every day.
And later I went over to 20th Century Fox
and played for Alfred Newman on a number
of occasions there and at Paramount.
Played for Bernard Herrmann
and Franz Waxman and Henry Mancini
in the more jazz, sort of, kind of vein.
That piano signature he does
in Peter Gunn.
Where he's banging away
and he's playing really hard.
That, to me, is kind of the foundation
of jazz funk.
I got so busy.
I was playing everyday
in a studio somewhere.
But in the process of playing piano
in these orchestras,
some of these older colleagues
would occasionally say to me,
"Can you orchestrate something
for next week?"
The next thing that happened was
I had orchestrated a few cues
and somebody said, "Do you mind
conducting for the next half hour?"
With the temerity of youth, I said,
"Of course I can conduct. I will do that."
Finally said to my wife,
"I think I'll just compose if I can."
And before I realized it, I was so busy
writing in television and film
that I said to my wife,
"I can't keep spending these hours
in the orchestra.
I have to stop playing and write."
And actually make a little bit more money
that way.
I had three children,
had to think about practical aspects.
My earliest memory of my father
was we had a corduroy rug
in small room in our home.
On the rug was a piano
and so he would play there
in this little room with the funny rug.
My mother was Barbara Ruick,
and she was an actress and a singer.
She played Carrie Pipperidge in Carousel.
Then I'll kiss him so he'll know
I have two brothers
who are younger than me, Mark and Joe.
They're both musicians.
Joe is the lead singer for the band Toto
and Mark is a drummer
and has played
with Crosby, Stills, and Nash
and Air Supply and Tina Turner.
My parents were very glamorous
and they went out a lot.
They threw parties.
We also always had a nice Christmas.
Christmas was lovely.
I remember that my father
played a lot of show tunes.
He and my mother would rehearse
and have fun together and play songs.
And we were able to entertain each other
and make each other laugh
and have so much fun together.
So I found myself
writing television shows every week.
I had several wonderful years
where I had one hour anthologies.
Chrysler... Bob Hope Theatre
and Alcoa Theatre.
And one week it's a western,
the next week it's a comedy,
the next week it's some drama.
Every possible thing you can imagine
done by directors who went on
to do feature films.
Syd Pollack and d*ck Donner
and Robert Altman.
He mostly worked at Fox,
but he would work at home a lot
on the weekends.
And he was always scribbling away.
One time he was writing
and I wrote him a note saying,
"You gotta come out and see me
and attend to this."
And I pushed it under the door
and that made him mad.
In the '60s, I worked
at the studios more than I did at home
for a very practical reason.
My children were very young
and there was a lot of noise
and distraction around the house.
And hard to achieve the kind of isolation
and solitude you need to be composing.
So, I'd come in to Universal
or go to Fox Studios,
where I worked for a long time,
not as an employee but just as a sort of
man who came to dinner and stayed.
The fact that the same man
wrote the score for Star Wars
and also wrote music for Gilligan's Island
gives you his vast
and seemingly limitless range.
You get that pole!
Aye, aye, sir.
How about this one, Skipper?
Perfect. Now get it in here!
On the double.
We were in Hawaii
on a family vacation
and he got a ukulele.
And his assignment was he was supposed
to write a new theme for Lost in Space.
So he wrote the theme for the TV show
on the ukulele.
These were opportunities to work for,
in this case, 20th Century Fox,
where I formed a friendship
with Lionel Newman.
And if I hadn't made the step
into television,
I wouldn't have had the opportunity later
to do feature films.
How much did they pay you,
John? What does it say there?
$12,500.
Ooh, for a week?
For ten weeks! Oh, no.
I did a lot of comedies at one point,
and I really felt, ugh,
I don't want to do another comedy.
An older colleague of mine called me
and he said, "John, if you're going to be
composing music for film,
when they're going to put
your name on the film,
and it can't be Johnny.
That's a fine name for a juvenile person
but you have to change your name.
You have to be John Williams."
So I-I actually... I thought he was right.
If I were a rich man
Ya ba dibba dibba
Dibba dibba dibba dibba dum
All day long I'd biddy biddy bum
If I were a wealthy man
I...
The first really
major budget films were musicals,
in which case,
I was arranger, orchestrator,
but also music director and conductor.
We needed to have choral tracks, children
tracks, orchestra tracks of all kinds.
And every word of the vocals had to be
understood, even with a chorus.
Tradition, tradition!
Tradition!
So, in the manufacture of this thing,
the mixing of all these sounds,
the editing and cutting
is an education of its own
and an enormous experience for me.
Not especially as a composer,
but as-as someone...
As-as a craftsman working
in the process of making films.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
Initially, the score
was written by Andr Previn,
but unhappiness emerged
between Andr and the producer.
So Leslie Bricusse was engaged
to do the score, both lyrics and music.
But Andr Previn was something of a mentor
and was very encouraging to me.
He didn't think
I should stay in Hollywood.
He said, "John, you want to write
your own music: Concertos, symphonies.
Don't waste your time
on so-called 'commercial work'."
Frankly, I thought if I had his talent,
perhaps I would leave
the movies and write symphonies.
But I didn't lose myself in Hollywood.
I found myself.
That's the thing about
John Williams.
As good as the material he's getting,
he always makes it better.
He always finds a way
to tap into the essence
of what makes it moving,
or meaningful, or resonant.
Even when it was
a classic '70s disaster film
like Poseidon Adventure or Earthquake.
One of my earliest memories
of John on the podium
was seeing him conduct Poseidon Adventure
and The Towering Inferno,
and you could come in and
you'd be right next to the bass players
and there would be John and I...
and I think his classic black turtleneck.
And he would conduct and I would
kind of sit quietly
with some degree of intimidation
and watch this all go down.
Irwin Allen was a wonderfully
flamboyant character.
He was wonderful with
the mixing of the sound called dubbing,
where the sound effects and dialogue
and music is all put together,
and he always insisted everything
be louder.
Just simply, make it louder.
I've done all this
using a pencil and paper
and I still use them
and I haven't changed.
I've actually been so busy in the years
that I've been working here
that I haven't had time to retool
and learn the electronic systems,
which I think probably go a little faster.
If you wanna write this...
it's nine or ten notes.
I have to write them like this.
And if it's...
That's a lot of notes.
And in the computer, you push a button
and then you can see it.
I have to write all those little things.
So, I'm probably taking a lot more time to
do things than my younger colleagues do.
A lot of times I write music,
I'll fill up the paper with notes
and come back
the next morning and look at it.
And it is as though
someone else had written it.
I look at that and say, "I couldn't
possibly have written all that.
Certainly not yesterday.
There wouldn't have been enough time."
He's somebody who
learned his skills painstakingly,
and now he lives in a time
where you can conjure music
from a prompt with A.I.
And I think people should see somebody
who has worked alone in a room
for 60-plus years.
There's a lot of sacrifices.
There's been some pain in his life.
And so, when you pass
a certain point, he gets quiet.
And I think that he expresses himself
through music.
My mother was away
in Reno, Nevada,
doing a small part in a film called
California Split.
- Old Blue out of chute number two.
- Old Blue?
Old Blue out of chute number two.
- That's the truth.
- No.
We received a phone call
from Kathryn Altman
saying, "You need
to have your father call me."
So I wait in the house
for about an hour or so,
and he comes home and I say,
"I think something's going on with Mom."
It was an unbelievable event.
A perfectly healthy, gorgeous young woman
suddenly gone from an aneurysm
that we couldn't have predicted.
That was a profound event in my life,
obviously, my wife,
but also the mother of my three children.
And she was only 41 years old.
My dad had to get on a plane and
go up there and take care of everything.
And I was left at home with my brothers,
which would kind of turn into a role for
me for the next... Well, forever, really.
But it started around then.
I was suddenly in my early 40s
with three teenage children to deal with.
It was a very tough situation,
sometimes very difficult to talk about.
It was devastating.
He had no experience, really,
being very hands-on.
I had been used to
taking care of my brothers
and I went into that role very easily.
And we have a very special relationship,
the three of us.
And so, I didn't work for a long time.
I just didn't want to deal with films
and stories and characters and so on.
Right after she died, he actually
wrote a violin concerto for her.
Her father was a violinist.
She loved the violin.
She always wanted me
to write something for her.
Of course, I never did until she passed.
Prior to my mom's death,
it may be that my father,
although a brilliant composer,
was more of a journeyman.
But then after she died, there was
some kind of feeling that he had,
that she was by his side.
I felt like she was helping me,
which is a funny kind of feeling
that I had.
And I still have it.
And I think in some way, I grew up
artistically or gained some kind of energy
or penetrated what I was doing
a little more deeply.
The busiest, most successful
period of my life in film
started immediately thereafter
when I was asked
to do a film called Star Wars.
At the same time, I was asked
to do a film called Bridge Too Far.
I said to Lionel Newman,
the music director,
"I think I'd rather do A Bridge Too Far,
because it has all the movie stars in it
and it seems like I don't know anything
about George Lucas or his film Star Wars."
I said, "I'm looking for somebody
that can do classical music."
The old Korngold, Newman,
old fashioned scores for films
during the '30s and '40s.
And Steven said, "I got just the guy
for you, John Williams."
I said, "Well, isn't he a jazz pianist?"
And he said,
"No, no, he does great scores."
So Steven, of course,
who I've just done Jaws with,
said, "You need to meet this guy,
George Lucas,"
who I'd never heard of.
I didn't know American Graffiti.
My fault, not his.
So I met George
and we talked about music a little bit.
He's very young to me.
We hit it off right away.
He's a gentleman
and an easy guy to get along with.
And he was also
extremely knowledgeable about music.
And he was extremely knowledgeable
about symphonic scores.
I talked to Steven
the next day and he said,
"John, you should do Star Wars.
Do Star Wars, that's the thing you
should... really have some fun with it.
Don't worry about A Bridge Too Far.
That's just commercial.
This is going to be something
really good." I said, "Okay."
So he convinced me to do it.
But it didn't take much pushing.
I think the whole project was imbued
with a sense of something very special.
I think everybody knew
that George was doing something
a little kooky, a little off-kilter.
It was like nothing else we really had.
We've had space films before,
but nothing had
quite the imagination
and the spark that this had.
We worked for several days
going through the film
and deciding where to introduce
the music, where to take it out,
or talk about the temp cue that we used,
like The Planets by Gustav Holst,
the final movement of Dvork's
New World Symphony.
Bits of music from The Rite of Spring
and Max Steiner's score to King Kong.
Sometimes John, he endorsed our choices
and sometimes he had an idea
that improved the idea.
You do what you have to do to put
the pieces of a puzzle together
and that's what it was like.
We had talked about
Peter and the Wolf
and some of those older symphonic pieces,
'cause I wanted to have each character
have their own theme.
So that when we go from one character
to another, the theme goes with you.
The sketches in the scores
for Star Wars
are the most disjointed things
you could imagine
because there were so many changes.
This was a minute and a half.
The next day,
it was a minute and 45 seconds.
The next day it was out of the film.
And the late Ken Wannberg,
who was my music editor,
drove me crazy with changes everyday.
Kenny called up in a panic.
He said...
"You can't... There are
a million changes." I said, "Yes, I know."
And he said, "John's written
all this music already." I said, "I know."
I worked for
quite a number of weeks,
never knowing what to do
for the beginning of the film.
I think the very last thing I wrote was
the opening fanfare
and the brass march theme.
First time I heard parts of it was,
Johnny played it for me on the piano.
Which is... pfft.
You know, all it is, is, uh,
a rough piano rendition of the themes.
And so you have to say, "Well, I guess
I don't know, but it sounds good to me."
But it's not... Doesn't have any of
the energy or the emotion
or anything that when you have
a full orchestra playing it.
We decided that we needed
to have a symphony orchestra to do this,
which I never had before in a film.
And Lionel Newman said that we'll hire
the London Symphony Orchestra.
What a turn-on. What a blast.
What an exciting turn of events.
We would go over to London,
hire this world-class orchestra
to realize my score and perform it.
Standby, please.
Gentlemen, here we go.
It's hard to describe
unless you've been through it.
- All right, here it is, gents.
- Settle down.
But it's, uh...
It's sort of like having a baby.
That is the only way I can really describe
hearing the score for the first time.
And for me, I hadn't heard it
with an orchestra or anything.
And I hadn't heard it with the picture.
You know, I trusted John,
I trusted Steven,
but there's always that moment
where they play the first cue...
and you're terrified it's not gonna work.
I was like a lot of people who really got
blasted by him in the first ten seconds.
And then you're wondering,
"Well, who is this?"
That's part of the audaciousness
of the original Star Wars score.
That loud anthem opening.
The most famous opening
probably in movie history and music
is a tribute to the power of orchestra.
Nobody had any idea
that it would be the kind of,
beyond a hit, it was a phenomenon.
It's become... It's still with us.
When the time came
to make the soundtrack album,
the record company said, "We have
so much music, let's have a double disc."
That recording was
enormously popular with people,
many of whom probably never bought
a soundtrack album before
or gone to a concert and heard music
from a symphony orchestra before.
Back in the day, you couldn't
rewatch a movie whenever you wanted.
So, I remember as a kid,
I would put on the soundtracks
and stare at the album cover
and just listen to the scores
and play the movie in my head.
Star Wars was the double album.
I would listen to the album and just stare
at the logo of the Star Wars album cover.
The feeling was that it was so important,
so epic in scope and scale
that it transports you
to a different place.
I can't really think of anything
in film music that's been like Star Wars.
Talk about leitmotifs
and the way he uses them.
Leitmotifs just means, basically, themes.
In Star Wars universe, just John composed,
like, 80 or 90 themes or something.
I like the one
that we call "The Force".
When the motifs come back, they remind you
of who you were 40 years before,
not just who the characters were
in the previous movies.
So it really gets under the skin
in the most amazing way.
And it all works because he found such
a memorable group of themes to work with.
Every once in a while
there'd be a cue and I'd say,
"Well, that's not
what I had in mind here."
I said,
"I really want it to be more like this."
And he would say, "Okay.
I'm gonna write this tonight
and I'll come back tomorrow with it."
I've been with a few composers
who just simply said,
"Well, that's not what I want."
They sort of insist it be their way.
And then you would bump heads.
I never bumped heads with Johnny.
He was a prince the whole time.
I truly believe that the soundtrack
is half of the movie.
Star Wars basically would not be
Star Wars without Johnny Williams' music.
People would
come into my office and say,
"Did you know that there are crowds
around the block seeing Star Wars?"
I said, "That's wonderful.
I'm glad to hear it."
I didn't experience that at all.
I was so completely occupied with
what was in front of me.
The minute we finished Star Wars,
I started working on
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Okay. That's just fine.
Orchestra downbeat of seven tenuto.
Six will be...
You got two notes for Jaws.
But then you got five notes
for Close Encounters.
Well, we were making progress. We were...
So by the time we did Raiders,
there were like a hundred notes.
Yes, that's right.
Actually, Close Encounters was an opera.
It was a beautiful opera.
What I was thinking when I played,
first played it for you, I thought,
"This is the end of our relationship."
Oh, no!
Close Encounters.
Everything is in that score.
The whole spectrum of 20th century music
from very avant-garde, very dissonant...
and very extreme sounds.
One, two, three...
To the most basic,
memorable five note theme,
uh, that is heard over and over again.
Oh, this is...
This could be interesting to you.
Each one of these is five notes,
I believe.
Here's a whole group of them.
Some marked.
This is the one we use.
Right here.
And Steven and I just circled it,
having gone through all these trial runs.
I mean, five notes could be...
very nice.
Anything. But why this?
There is, I think,
something spiritual about that.
If this were...
it's finished, okay?
It's a sentence, a period.
If I do this...
That is like a conjunctive sentence
or a phrase
that ends with and, if, or but.
So it's, "This is a nice movie and..."
That's the "and".
Because... Because the note in music,
there are two of them.
This is the fifth of that always goes
"sol, do", as every child knows.
And the other one is this one, "ti, do".
So those are the two things that make...
If I stop a phrase there.
You have to wait for that, don't you?
It's creating an expectation
with the fifth degree of the scale.
Which in that context is like "but".
"I love Laurent, but..."
You know?
But he's asked me
too many questions.
He asked me endless questions.
Are you happy it fixed, John?
I hope so, but there's still
something wrong with bar 35.
There's that.
What was the hardest thing
you've ever had to write, you think?
Oh, I think the last section of
Close Encounters.
All of the lights, and, you know,
how to do that exactly.
Wow.
So this is the original Close Encounters
material out of the deep Sony archive.
Look at some of this here.
- Oh, my God. Look at all...
- Yeah.
Geez.
Oh, my goodness.
I remember calling my father one day
when I started to work on that,
and I said to him, "Dad, I don't...
I haven't got a note in me.
I don't know what to do with
this picture." I just had done Star Wars.
It was... million notes.
And he just said as
any good father would say,
"Well, just keep working on it,
you'll be fine.
- What are you doing for dinner?"
- Right.
And it was certainly a great challenge.
It was a leap up orchestrally
and conducting
and every other way for me.
So, that is Close Encounters.
John, in one year,
turned out the scores to Star Wars,
Close Encounters,
and a picture called Black Sunday.
Each of those scores
is tremendously complicated
and brilliant in their own way.
And very different one from the other.
It's really an extraordinary thing
to think that one composer
would deliver all that
in the space of one year.
It's a little bit like
when you're talking about The Beatles.
Like, any one song from The Beatles
would be any other band's greatest thing
and they would live off that forever.
John is like that.
Any one of his scores arguably
would be any other composer's
accomplishment of a lifetime.
People ask me how my life was changed
by the sudden success of Star Wars,
and I have to say
that I received a call saying,
"You have to come to the Anaheim Stadium
which has 60,000 people or more there.
And Zubin Mehta is going to do a concert
of your music, Star Wars music,
with the Los Angeles Philharmonic
at the stadium."
A short time after that,
the management
of the Los Angeles Philharmonic says,
"We want you to come and conduct
at the Hollywood Bowl Star Wars music."
So the biggest change in my life
that was the result of Star Wars
was I was suddenly asked
to be a guest conductor,
here and there with famous orchestras.
And it gave birth to a whole
other dimension in my musical life.
Ladies and gentlemen.
Good afternoon, everyone.
This is our new Pops.
Seiji Ozawa was the music director
of the Boston Symphony for 29 years.
And he was the one that appointed me
conductor of the Pops in 1980.
The Boston Pops is moving from The
Stars and Stripes Forever to Star Wars.
The orchestra announced today
that 47-year-old composer-conductor
John Williams,
who wrote the theme for Star Wars,
will replace the late Arthur Fiedler
as conductor of the Pops.
It was Lionel who really
encouraged him to conduct with the Pops.
And maybe it was because
John always wanted to conduct
and being somewhat shy,
probably needed a push.
I'm sure a lot of people ask
who could possibly follow Arthur Fiedler,
who was such an incredible presence in
everybody's mind with... with this music.
But I don't think
it was always an easy go.
I think Boston musicians were critical
of entertainment music or wary of it.
The orchestras
hated playing film music.
They just thought it was crap.
In my experience,
when I went to Boston in 1980,
there was an overlap of older memberships
in the orchestra
that still had that lack of appreciation
and resistance
to that kind of repertoire
where they were very disapproving.
To the extent that I thought that
that was unprofessional.
A long simmering dispute over
the behavior of the Boston Pops Orchestra
broke into public view today
with the announcement
of conductor John Williams' resignation.
The final straw, according to observers,
was the orchestra's unruly behavior
during a rehearsal yesterday.
Players reportedly hissed
at Williams' musical selections
and didn't pay attention
during the run-through.
BSO general manager Thomas Morris
said today
he accepted Williams' resignation
with deep regret.
The episode, where I had
a resignation at one point,
was the result of conversations with them
about their attitudes
and about their manner of expressing it.
I think film music was looked at by...
certainly by concert musicians
as a b*stard art.
As a low art.
Growing up I was always troubled
with why there are so many walls
between the different parts of music.
Whether it's film music, concert music,
or baroque music or contemporary music.
But John has made it his business
to actually encompass all of that.
He has,
if not erased that dividing line,
he has made it so blurry,
I don't think anyone knows
where it is anymore.
It goes back to Duke Ellington,
who said, "There's only two types
of music, good music and bad music."
And I think John has been a...
a leading light in that happening.
I think certainly a seated
orchestra that are tenured correctly
have a voice in the repertoire
that they play.
But also should not resist,
to a certain extent,
the creative ideas that a new or different
conductor might want to bring to them.
An orchestra is a human family.
It's a community effort.
The search for a new
Boston Pops conductor is over
now that John Williams agrees
to come back to the job.
Williams resigned,
citing artistic and creative differences.
But apparently, they have been resolved.
Williams said, "I've only the greatest
admiration and genuine affection
for the orchestra and its members."
Going from Hollywood studios
to Boston was very, very satisfying
in the sense that in Hollywood
there's no audiences of film
when we're working in a clinical
studio setup, if you'd like.
Whereas going to Boston Pops
there's an orchestra, there's an audience.
The music is brought to life.
People applaud.
And for the wounded ego
of a Hollywood composer
who never sees an audience
to get some applause,
it's lovely to go to Boston
and have a marvelous audience there.
Most of the rest of the classical world
has come around to the idea that,
yes, this is a brilliant
and original composer.
Someone who has also done
an incredible service
in terms of supporting orchestras.
And anyone who looks down on film music
now at this stage of history
I think is just not thinking seriously.
When I was a little boy, Superman cartoon
was very popular in the newspapers
and I used to read it all the time.
So, the idea of writing that theme
with the cape and all the things,
I loved doing that.
What the hell is that?
Easy, miss. I've got you.
You've got me?
Who's got you?
I love Chris and Margot.
They flew together. That love scene.
I mean, I couldn't wait
to get my hands on that
and make a...
...an ascending thematic piece.
I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude
to John Williams.
Without his music, Superman's powers
are greatly diminished.
Believe me, if you try to fly
without that theme...
...you go nowhere.
One step, two steps,
and... down.
There's a lyricism to Johnny's music.
For example, he has so much fun
writing themes for Harrison.
Harrison Ford has this ability
to do the most dramatic scenes
with this slight tongue in his cheek
or twinkle in his eye.
I'm going after that truck.
- How?
- I don't know. I'm making this up as I go.
That gives John a lot to write for.
Hyah, hyah!
John Williams and I go way back, 'cause
my dad and he were in the army together.
In the army band together.
My dad played guitar
and Johnny played piano.
And Johnny was always over at our house.
So, I'd known John Williams
since I was a kid.
But to get to work with him on a movie,
that was just one of the most
wonderful moments of my life.
On Raiders of the Lost Ark,
Johnny did the score in London
with the London Symphony Orchestra.
The music was pulse pounding.
The nuance of the score.
The music details the smallest things.
Johnny was scoring individual snakes
during the Well of the Souls sequence.
He was putting little decorations
on different snakes that were
making quick moves or hooding
or rearing back or striking.
He wanted something very Hollywood,
very romantic for "Marion's Theme"
because he said, "I think the music
could really make them even closer."
She wasn't there that much,
except she was a central character.
So we had to give her a cue
that would remind you
of all the things that she embodied.
His theme for Marion
was so beautiful
and it's so evocative
of those old Hollywood scores,
like from Franz Waxman,
and Mikls Rsza, and David Raksin.
And even on the sequels,
he keeps the standard themes in there
to remind people
that it's still about Indiana Jones.
But he finds a whole new way
of telling the story musically each time.
Duck!
So, we're at the Oscars,
and John Williams
was sitting right behind Steven.
And I saw John and I freaked out
'cause I haven't seen him, you know,
since Temple of Doom.
So I gave him a hug
and Steven was so excited.
He says, "Ke, do you remember
that you have a Short Round theme?"
And I said, "Of course I do."
I mean, how many actors can say that
they have a theme composed
by the legendary John Williams?
And then we both started
humming, simultaneously, that theme.
It's great. It's such a great theme.
The greatest way to
demonstrate how much energy and emotion
John's scores can give a sequence,
play it absolutely with no music at all.
Just sound effects and dialogue.
And then go back and do
the whole scene again with all the cues.
And you'll recognize
the absolute value of film music.
Marker.
This movie is a tiny epic.
And, uh... And I think John's score will be
very suitable to that, uh, description.
Okay, it would be nice
if we didn't hear anything until...
We have to go now...
"We have to go now, E.T."
Okay.
And that's right after,
"We have to go now, E.T."
Is where it comes back in again.
- Give me a timing for the end of the line.
- Yeah.
The deer looks up and turns.
- And if something could...
- Mm-hmm.
...just catch the deer.
- Maybe that harp again.
- That harp again.
- I love that harp.
- Yeah. Yeah, the harp again.
I look forward
to every time John says,
"I have sketches to play for you."
I cannot wait for that day.
I'm never nervous. I'm never thinking
it's not going to measure up to my hopes.
This is Michael on his bike.
- Racing to find E.T. in the forest.
- Racing to find E.T. in the forest.
- Elliot's come home alone.
- It's-It's played off of this figure.
And we eventually get into
this key with this one.
There is a consistency
in our collaboration
where he always sees the film
in the same way,
but in a way,
after he does music for my movie,
I start to see my movie in his way.
I see my movie the way he sees my film.
Home. Home. Home.
Home. Home. Home.
"Yoda's Theme" is a...
is a sweet surprise. It is.
Is anybody gonna get it?
About 200 million people.
Really?
One twenty-five.
Oboes and instruments that play...
Accent two and three please.
So we have more rhythm.
Try to concentrate.
Don't be... Try not to be
disturbed by Steven's...
...filming.
No, it's just weird.
It's like having a camera
in your bathroom.
You know, when you're
taking a shower, you know?
I'm glad I'm dressed.
Beginning please with mutes.
I played violin on E.T., and I'm just
hiding out in the back of the violins.
So I'm sitting in the back playing,
but I'm listening and watching,
which was, I cannot tell you
how thrilling that was.
There is an extended harp melody in E.T.
that is indicative
of E.T.'s connection with Elliot.
The harpist's name was Dorothy Remsen,
and I remember John working with her.
Dorothy, in the trill beat...
Can you...
Can you finish the trill that way?
You know what I mean?
If I can leave out
the trill in the left hand.
- Sure.
- All right.
And there was a great session
pianist player named Ralph Grierson,
- who John used all the time.
- ...to the left, Ralph.
Second to last measure, two quarter notes.
And the end title for E.T.
is this big flowing thing.
And he gave Ralph this
and he let him practice it for four days
before he played it.
E.T., I think, was the first movie I ever
saw in the cinema, in the movie theater.
I'm from a band called Coldplay.
And on our tour at the moment,
we are coming on stage
or in fact, through the audience
to the stage, to the sound of E.T.
For me, going on stage for a concert,
I wanted something that
had the feeling of flight.
And so I was thinking about
Elliot riding his BMX.
So I wrote to John and Steven
to ask if we could use E.T.
And they said yes.
It just makes me feel, uh, excited.
That's also 'cause I've come on stage
to it many times now.
Every piece that he does, to me,
has a sort of whole family of melodies.
Okay, here we come.
Back to the main theme. Here we go.
Perfect.
This is Tanglewood.
Tanglewood is many things.
It's an educational institution.
It offers a unique opportunity
to the best students to come.
It's a concert venue
for the Boston Symphony.
And it's an inspiring landscape.
In the whole history
of American musical life, this is Mecca.
This is where the best students
come to study.
They are able to perform with the greatest
conductors who come and visit.
The schedules of film had been good.
Because we usually just work in a very
busy part of the year in the spring.
And you may have a summer off,
because of release schedules of the film.
And suddenly there's three weeks
where you're not working
and you have time to do something.
So that's worked out very well.
Every year I've been here since 1980,
which is 43 years.
It's part of my life.
I come now, I do maybe
two concerts a year at the most.
I used to do more
when I was conducting the Boston Pops.
It's energizing.
John is an amazing conductor.
He really connects
with the soul of the orchestra
because...
...that knowledge that he has.
The main theme of, uh, Jurassic Park
was one of the pieces
that make me a musician.
You know, I remember I went to the theater
with a friend of mine.
I saw, I don't remember, ten times
I went to listen to them, to see the film.
Beautiful. It was amazing.
But to listen to that music.
I've heard so many people say this.
I remember the theater, the time of day
when I saw Jurassic Park.
And I heard those trumpets play.
I just remember
coming out of that theater juiced.
Just excited to play my instrument.
John really wanted to put the dinosaurs
where they belonged,
with that same kind of, sort of,
admiration and respect
that little kids have
when they go through
a natural history museum
and they see the relics of this era,
of this Jurassic or later Cretaceous era.
And they... they're in awe
of just the bones.
I think that John scored this movie
with the heart of a child
that knew how to create a sense of wonder
about these amazing, magnificent animals.
So many times we'd...
We talk about John Williams
we talk about scores
that are 180s of each other.
And films that are 180s.
So they have the year of Jurassic Park
and Schindler's List
by the same filmmaker.
That is the best example of that.
There is a sense of wonder in that
Schindler's List score,
but a kind of a baleful wonder,
how can humanity be this?
I was... had been working on
Schindler's List at Tanglewood,
I think in the summer of that year...
and Steven was sh**ting
in Poland somewhere.
I had to have the winter
to sh**t in Krakw, Poland.
So for the first time, I missed
Johnny's scoring session to Jurassic Park.
That's how... that's how the films
overlapped so completely.
The contrast in styles
couldn't have been more welcome to me.
I loved it.
I wasn't thinking musically
when I made the film.
I didn't put temporary music in
to make suggestions to Johnny
about how I felt about certain scenes.
I just focused on telling the story.
And then I showed the film to John.
The list is an absolute good.
The list is life.
My immediate reaction to the film was
so staggering. I mean, I couldn't speak.
I was just too overwhelmed.
I was almost, well, weeping.
And I went outside and
walked around the building a little bit
and came back, and five minutes later
and said to Steven,
attempting to start the meeting
to discuss the music,
I said, "Steven, this a great, great film.
And you need a better composer
than I am to do this score."
And he said,
"I know, but they're all dead."
Fortunately for me and Steven's tenacity,
I had to stay with it
and do the best I could.
But I truly felt that way.
I thought this film is beyond
almost anything anyone could create
that would be worthy
of what the film is telling us
and the history of
what the film was revealing to us.
One of the greatest
experiences I ever had with John,
and certainly the most emotional
experience I've ever had with him,
is when he was up in the Berkshires
composing Schindler's List,
and he asked me and Kate to come up
and hear the sketches
on the piano for the first time.
Johnny always sits down at the piano
and says,
"Now I don't play piano very well,
so don't expect much,
but I'm going to try to pick this out."
And of course,
he's a beautiful piano player.
And he had the music.
It was handwritten up on the piano,
and we're standing at the piano.
And he starts.
Yeah.
I'll never forget it.
I cannot remember a time
where I was so emotionally devastated
by these very simple, melodic,
soulful, anguished sketches
he was performing for Kate and I
on the piano.
Johnny hadn't gotten five notes out
where Kate began crying.
Nine notes later, I was crying,
and then... Johnny was crying
and playing at the same time.
It was a mitzvah.
He had honored that story
of the Shoah through music.
I knew Itzhak Perlman,
the violinist,
for a couple of decades, I guess.
And the minute Steven and I realized
we needed a violinist, I just said,
"We should get the best one right now
that's playing is Itzhak Perlman."
The ironic thing was
that Itzhak, for many years,
I would see him at concerts here and there
and he would always say to me,
"John, when are you going to give me
a film with a violin solo?"
I said, "I will, it'll come, Itzhak.
One day we'll have it."
And finally, I called him up
about Schindler's List.
I said, "Itzhak, I have a movie for you.
Finally found one."
And I said, "Let me think about it."
So, then... then I told my wife,
Toby, and I said to her,
"Toby, this was John Williams, and
he was..." And I told her about this story.
And I told him
that I was gonna think about it.
Then she said, "You told him
that you were gonna think about it?
A film score by John Williams,
a movie by Steven Spielberg,
and you're gonna be involved and you
told them you were gonna think about it?"
So the next day, I think I called him up
and I said, "Okay, I'll do it."
And boy, was I happy
that-that I said "Yes."
All I can tell you is that
I can go all over the world,
and the only thing that people
ask specifically from me,
is "Can you play the theme
from Schindler's List?"
Everybody just gets so moved
by that theme.
The first time that I worked
with John on Far and Away,
I said, "Why does music work
the way it works?"
He said, "I don't really know."
He said, "There are a lot of theories
and one I kinda subscribe to
that it gets back to primal sounds."
That in our origin story as human beings,
sounds meant a great deal to us.
They could bring us peace
and a sense of serenity
or they could alert us to danger
and the need to run.
Percussion could be an earthquake.
It could be rocks tumbling down.
Birds could signal
a sense of romance in the air.
And here's an artist who understands,
in the most nuanced terms,
how to support a story through music.
He is the greatest champion
of orchestral music in the world
because his scores reawaken in us
the beauty of the orchestra.
This is, of course,
also a great gift to us musicians.
That he is one of the few,
one of the last composers who uses
a big symphonic orchestra.
And there is a huge difference,
if you have humans play,
and not the synthesizer, which can
make up for a group of string players.
But just also acknowledging
the craft of the musicians,
and the need of that craft
to be preserved for generations to come.
The thing that I'm really proud of is
we have not, in our career,
gone to electronic music.
We value the orchestra,
we value the individual players
and what Johnny's written for them.
He hasn't brought in the synthesizer.
There's been a couple of occasions
where a synth has been an adjunct
to a full orchestral score,
like in Munich, for instance.
So many filmmakers
and so many contemporaries of mine
have gone all electronics.
But I love that,
that we're staying true to orchestras.
The electronic compilation
of things doesn't have a moment,
a performance moment of creativity.
But in an orchestra,
we make four takes of every scene.
Each one is different.
Every performance is different.
And that particular take has some life
or some blood in its veins.
He is forcing the modern audience
to contend with the orchestra.
Because he is making
those instrumentalists play faster,
harder, quicker, more dynamically
than you've ever heard before
in some of his scores.
- Okay, good.
- Good, yep.
Next one.
And he has a true love of the orchestra,
and a true love of-of that kind of
nonverbal communication it is
to raise your arms and to say,
"Oh, everyone downbeat."
And then to get something back.
I mean, that is a thrilling thing.
You can really see the...
You know, the smile creep over John's face
when-when he conducts an orchestra.
- This piece, ladies and gentlemen...
- ...it can't be too polite.
It is vulgar.
So, trombones will be ready for that.
I'll give you the biggest
one-two ever in the world.
It's unique how happy people are...
...around him.
How happy orchestras are,
you know?
You see John is coming onstage.
There's immediate awe because
we have such great memories of his music
that we are like children
in a candy store, you know?
When The Force Awakens came out,
it's not like John changed his style.
He didn't. He-He wrote the same way
he would have written in the '70s.
And then you have...
He's never lost
the honest curiosity.
He somehow is able to tap into this
unbelievably resonant emotional truth,
but then he's confident enough
to be vulnerable
and then to ask,
"Is that all right? What do you think?"
He's literally asking you,
do you think this is okay?
And it makes me laugh, because when
John Williams plays you a piece of music
that he's written, and he asks you
if it's okay, there is one answer.
Audiences are still there for it.
That's the incredible thing.
So it makes you wonder, like, why
aren't we hearing more thematic scores?
Why aren't we hearing scores that
burst off the screen the way John's do?
The audiences are clearly hungry for it.
So why isn't there more of it?
It's a difficult time right now in music
because, in my sensibility, the orchestra
is an instrument to deliver music.
And so, music as I understand it,
in terms of the great literature
that we've had in the last
three or 400 years of music,
you could almost say it's dying.
Young composers, they want to work in
electronics and spatial effects and so on.
Bless them, they do fantastic work
and I would love to be around another
50 years to see what they're doing.
But are we going to have another
Brahms or another Wagner in the theater?
Right now, the way things are going,
as we see the art of music developing,
it's a time for questions,
a time for wondering.
There's another side of John,
which is his great concert music.
This is not the kind
of blockbuster Hollywood themes
that you would hear in the movie theaters.
These are more abstract,
more refined, more searching music.
His movie scores
are so cohesive, so concise,
and his concert music is...
To me, is actually more fragmented
and separate from time,
and a linear quality.
His concert music,
that's probably a huge outlet for him.
He can explore the atonal
and the textural.
It's really revealing another side of him.
Writing for films, I'm limited. I can only
do what the subject will allow me to do.
I can't go crazy for eight minutes
with brass... I'd like to, but I can't.
For our student orchestra at
North Hollywood High School
here in California,
I played the bassoon.
Friend of mine, Harold...
Late Harold Hansen tried to teach me,
and I got good enough where I could play
in a band rehearsal or two,
second bassoon, a little bit.
But who would imagine, like, 40 years
later, I would write a bassoon concerto
for the New York Philharmonic?
But that was the connection, you know,
my trying to play it
and loving the instrument,
and then having an opportunity to write it
for one of the world's greatest players,
Judith Leclair.
Anne-Sophie Mutter
has gotten music from him.
Yo-Yo has played his music.
These pieces, they're challenging.
His command of their instrument
is overwhelming.
"The Elegy
for Cello and Orchestra,"
we recorded together many years ago.
Every time I present it
to another cellist,
I say, "Have you heard Yo-Yo's recording?"
And they all say, "Yes. Oh, my God."
Like they couldn't possibly equal
what the master has done with it.
So don't blame me.
That's wonderful.
I get worried
when he's not working.
He must work.
He's somebody that just loves it,
and does it and has such a good time.
The most important thing
about my relationship
with my father right now is golf.
So what's your favorite thing about golf?
- The golf?
- Yeah.
- My favorite thing about golf is walking.
- Ah.
Play golf is really the wrong verb.
I don't play it, I destroy it.
I never really played very well,
and I usually go late in the afternoon
when the real players have finished,
and it's quiet, and I could contemplate
the real, true beauty of the place.
It's a beautiful way to spend
a few hours together with your dad.
If I can do that a couple times every week
for as long as he wants to be around,
I'm a very, very happy camper.
Oh! It's a mean game.
There are so many great moments,
moments that he's composed,
that remind us about how movies thrill us.
And how movies reach to the child in us.
He's done more of those moments
than any other living composer.
But he's also done so many other kinds
of moments that are more than that,
that are more nuanced than that,
that are more powerful than that,
that are more dynamic than that,
that are more gripping than that.
John Williams is extraordinarily flexible
and is just sort of master
of so many different musical languages,
especially the weightier
historical movies.
As a fan of history,
my mind runs quickly to Steven's films,
and to Oliver Stone,
and films that I've done with him...
like Born on the Fourth of July.
The subject of the Vietnam w*r
was so personal to him,
but I think one felt a-a profound,
uh, message in his work.
And certainly in JFK.
JFK is a fantastic example of doing,
to a certain extent,
the music before the film was done.
Oliver said to me,
"Write three pieces of music.
I won't show you any film. I'll just
show you the film of this reaction,
that reaction, and that reaction.
And then you do freely your pieces."
And in the end, I think what he did
was cut together
these various things and use the music
from each one of them to a certain degree.
Uh, that was a unique opportunity for me
to approach something historical...
...in an attempt to dramatize it
in a way that Oliver is-is famous for.
I love the kind of
noble sobriety of
Saving Private Ryan and Lincoln.
You know, those beautiful American themes,
those really, really, beautiful
feelings that you... That instill all of us
with a great sense of
belonging to a great country
and patriotism.
Saving Private Ryan is one of
the greatest World w*r II films,
if not the greatest of all.
The first 15 minutes of that film are so...
beyond description, so extraordinary,
it certainly didn't need any music.
John feels that the absence
is as important as the inclusion of music.
So we have these spotting sessions
where we try something
and we say, "Maybe music here,
maybe not music here."
We decided, of course,
early on to have no music
for the invasion of Normandy.
The music would only come in when we see
the body of Sean Ryan on the beach.
And we end the film with
"Hymn to the Fallen"
which was done with the
Boston Symphony Tanglewood Chorus.
Tom Hanks was there.
Very exciting for the orchestra
because he sat up in the balcony.
You know, we were on stage...
...and they were all looking up there
and I said, "You can't be...
You have to look at the music."
Musically,
it honors all of the veterans,
both today and yesterday.
And-and I think what you did musically
is such a great honor
and that's why the military is always
asking if they could play...
Perform this score.
This is one of the most requested scores
throughout our entire
United States Military,
because it has the deepest reverence
and respect for those
who have laid their lives upon
the altar of freedom.
John's capable of scoring
any genre of film
whether it's Saving Private Ryan
or Home Alone.
I made my family disappear.
We were sh**ting Home Alone,
and we had already hired another composer,
and we got into post-production, found out
the composer was no longer available.
We got a call from John's agent,
who said, "I'd like to show it
to my client, John Williams."
And I almost literally dropped the phone.
I was stunned.
I loved it.
I thought the film was wonderful.
The little boy was fabulous,
I thought, wonderful opportunity for
Christmas textures, and flutes and bells.
We decided to preview the film
utilizing John's score.
That preview was the best preview
we had had up until that point.
The film tested 500% better
than it did the first time.
He's reaching out from the screen
and pulling the audience into the film.
When Chris asked me to do
Harry Potter,
I was very, very happy to do it.
Wonderful opportunity for music.
It was about children, magic and so on.
Children and magic equals music.
When I agreed to do Harry Potter,
I was called first
to do some music for a trailer.
And they asked me to do something magical.
I understood what it was
but I hadn't seen a single frame of film.
And so, I wrote the theme,
which is "Hedwig's Theme."
I have to confess to you,
the easiest thing in the world to write.
I went into where he
was composing, into his office,
and he said, "Would you like to hear
the main theme?"
And I said, "Of course, yeah."
So he played...
So he's-he's adding that darkness, right?
He gets you with that lovely,
beautiful theme and then it gets dark,
within seconds.
How brilliant is that?
We knew when we got into
the world of Potter
that each film was going to get
subsequently darker and darker and darker.
Your scar is legend,
as of course was the wizard
who gave it to you.
John and I discussed that for a long time,
and his score for the second
Harry Potter film, Chamber of Secrets,
is the beginning of what will happen
for the next seven films.
Expecto Patronum!
I have to say that I-I've never been
entirely comfortable with doing sequels.
I would rather have done a fresh story
with a fresh opportunity
for a fresh score.
But Star Wars, for example,
and Indiana Jones particularly,
I just felt that I didn't want
some other composer,
very frankly, to come in and change that.
That it was something that I would...
If I could do it,
t-to preserve the integrity of that piece,
if I could have the time and energy
to do all that,
particularly in the case of Star Wars
where I did the first nine.
We finally got to Harry Potter, and those
films were so wonderful and so difficult,
I think I did three of them.
I couldn't possibly have done...
How many did they make, eight?
Something like that.
I would love to have been able to do it
for just all those reasons.
Other people came along,
did them very well.
So, when I could do the sequels,
I tried to do them.
But I was... I use the word jealous,
of keeping the integrity
of what I've already done.
Not that I thought that it was
so precious or so timeless
that it couldn't be touched
by another composer.
But I felt that if I could keep it
consistent with my own work,
that would be the best thing to do.
I'm not sure I would have done
Episodes I, II and III
if I couldn't have gotten Johnny
to do the music for it.
You know, 'cause he was such
an integral part of the creative process.
By the '90s, he'd become
kind of a brand name.
It's in most people's DNA,
a lot of his stuff.
Just when you think you've
exhausted it all, there he is.
Oh, it's the theme for NBC News.
For John, it wasn't enough
just to write the great blockbusters.
He wanted to have a variety of work.
And you think of the Olympics.
I remember watching the Olympics
as a young child...
and noticing the music
and how amazing it was.
They called me and said,
"John, will you write a piece
for the opening of the Olympics?"
I loved all the pageantry of it
and the heraldic aspect
of what the athletes do
and how inspiring they are.
And then I've done
three or four of them since.
I think that, in a strange way,
he's kind of the biggest pop star ever.
Today is actually my 45th year
at the Hollywood Bowl.
Forty-five years.
I started there in 1978.
And I'm... still here with it!
At first, I was very shy about it,
I guess I can say.
I said to the management of
the Los Angeles Philharmonic,
"You don't need me, you have Zubin Mehta,
he's the greatest conductor in the world.
Why do you want..."
"But no, the audience wants you to do it."
Hey! Gustavo. Simpatico.
I don't think that would have happened
without Star Wars,
which established this practice,
now worldwide,
of people doing concerts of film music.
Not just my music,
but current film composers and past ones.
Lightsaber.
Wonderful. Oh, they're not too heavy.
- No, it's good.
- It's good.
- Oh, that's cool!
- Like so.
This is Bing Wang.
She'll be soloist tonight.
Most fantastic violinist.
I am so excited...
...to perform with Maestro John Williams.
These are the victims.
This is the magic stick.
That's it!
So.
He's the only one
who can do what he can do.
I mean, how many composers do you know
who write so classically
and yet are so popular?
None of this
would have been possible without John.
It's amazing. I mean, it's 17,000 people.
So this is the white jacket.
And I put it on.
These are my work clothes.
This is... This is
what I do my hammering with.
That's the way.
Anyone who's been to see
John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl
performing his scores
recognizes that
what you're effectively seeing
is a classical orchestra.
And yet the audience cheers
like it's The Beatles.
You know, these aren't musical elitists
who go to these shows,
these are everyday folks
who just want to hear great music.
The music of John connects
many generations, you know...
...and that is something
that is beautiful.
I mean, there's ages
from young to old.
You know, you look back and you just
see nothing but lightsabers.
And everyone loves the music.
To be surrounded by thousands of people
who are waving lightsabers and
celebrating this man and what he has done.
It's such a beautiful and obviously
well-deserved thing to see every time.
The atmosphere, it goes beyond
what we think about a regular concert.
The people, they went crazy,
was like a rock concert.
The thing about
"The Imperial March" and the lightsabers,
it's something that has evolved
over the years, you know.
Used to have two or three in the audience,
you know, many years ago,
and then a few hundred.
Now we have, I don't know,
how many thousand out there.
It's fantastic.
They know John.
They know John's music.
And it was an expl*si*n.
An expl*si*n of happiness.
- That was fun, hey?
- That was fantastic.
It works. It works!
I've been
impossibly lucky in life.
I have remarried, yes.
To Samantha Williams.
She's wonderful.
I met her 50 years ago.
And we've been together
through a lot of wonderful things.
And I'm deeply grateful.
There are so many things
that have given me great honor.
The Oscars are a mark of achievement
in most people's minds,
and I have enjoyed and very proud
of the ones that I have received.
I've had 54 nominations.
And I have to express
a great bit of gratitude
to the music branch of the Academy,
which is really recognition
from your peers.
Thank you.
The main reason I think it's
important to celebrate him
is just to say thank you
for that amount of joy.
To make something that brings joy
everywhere it goes
is rare and precious.
And nobody has a worse day
from hearing some of his music.
John Williams has
that great ear for music.
And he writes what he hears,
more so than writing what he knows.
And I think that's why it's so powerful
and it will always endure.
The minute
John raises his baton,
and plays the first theme,
you just go oh, my God,
here's another one.
Every single time.
He has this unbelievable superpower
of being able to create melodies that
you will hear for the first time,
and feel like it was inevitable.
And you can't forget it.
As long as
there is orchestral music,
you're gonna see orchestras that devote
entire evenings to his music.
Just as they would with
Beethoven or Gershwin or Mozart.
When I'm making a movie, especially
when I'm making a really tough film,
it's a tough production, I think about,
well, someday this will end,
and I'll be able to sit down,
just in front of the orchestra
and behind the podium.
And for six or eight days,
listen to fabulous new compositions
by John Williams.
It's what I look forward to
on every single movie.
I've never asked Johnny, "Could I conduct
his orchestra?" Never once.
But I would like to take
the baton today in your honor,
and if everybody would direct
their attention to the marquee.
Mazel tov.
First time I came to this studio
was in 1940,
when my father brought me here
to show me the stage.
And I went on to... Say, I was about
nine or ten years old,
and I looked around at the room
and I thought to myself,
"Someday this will all be mine."
It's finally come to be!
My life and career has been so diverse,
going from comedies, to space,
to more or less so-called serious work.
In the end, what I'm completely happy with
is the finale of the Cello Concerto.
Or completely happy with second movement
of the First Violin Concerto.
But not the whole piece!
Some of the themes in
Star Wars, like "Yoda's Theme"
for example, I think is especially good.
The way the intervals go,
it's original, it's very simple.
There are parts of E.T., I think the
"Over The Moon" theme is especially good.
So that's the closest thing I can come
to saying, "This thing describes me."
I think all the things I mentioned
do describe me,
but not completely.
The various stages of my career
of piano playing and arranging
and orchestrating and television and film,
I have to say it was a progression
that was unplanned.
I had a few setbacks,
but I was very, very lucky,
especially after meeting Steven Spielberg,
probably the luckiest day of my life.
People say, "How do you do so much work?"
I was busy all the time,
but I was filled with the love of music,
and the pleasure of doing it
with great musicians, great orchestras.
I couldn't write fast enough
to bring them something to play.
Music for a musician is like breathing.
It supports us,
sustains us, gives us energy.
I write every morning, something.
You can imagine writing all these notes,
and then having the opportunity to get up
in front of an orchestra and conduct it,
and hear it all brought to life,
what you've put on the page.
That's a thrilling thing.
Music is enough for a lifetime,
but a lifetime is not enough for music.
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Music by John Williams (2024)
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