Full bias disclosure:
I’ve been a soundtrack nerd since junior high school, when I fell in love with John Barry’s jazz-oriented scores to the early James Bond films.
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| Since meeting in 1972, John Williams, left, and Steven Spielberg have collaborated on 29 feature films ... so far. |
No surprise, then, that this new documentary was greeted with considerable anticipation.
It definitely delivers.
My soundtrack library expanded to include John Williams in the wake of 1975’s Jaws. Two years later, his score for Star Wars was a game-changer; it revived enthusiasm for classically hued orchestral soundtracks at a time when many films relied on “jukebox scores” of then-current pop tunes (a transitional detail covered in this documentary).
I mean, let’s get serious; who wasn’t blown away by that dynamic opening anthem, as the text crawl slid into the depths of space?
That film debuted May 25, 1977, but — unlike these days, when ancillary merchandise is coordinated for simultaneous release — the soundtrack didn’t show up for weeks. I haunted record stores almost daily, to the point that one shop owner simply shook his head when I peered inside the door.
But when it finally, finally, finally arrived — oh, my stars and garters — it was a double-album gatefold. Darn near unprecedented, for an orchestral film score. Like, wow.
Okay, enough of all that.
Director Laurent Bouzereau’s detailed profile of Williams covers an impressive degree of territory in 105 minutes, given that a multi-part miniseries would be necessary to do full justice to the composer’s career. The 92-year-old Williams was an enthusiastic participant, and his anecdotes, close encounters and sage observations are deftly blended with vintage photographs and home movies (both his own and, later, some shot by Steven Spielberg).
Bouzereau also employs the talking heads that have become obligatory in such films, but unlike far too many lesser documentaries, these aren’t obscure academics or fawning pop stars of the moment. The list here is meaty and meaningful: filmmakers Spielberg, Ron Howard, George Lucas, J.J. Abrams, Chris Columbus and James Mangold; fellow soundtrack composers Alan Silvestri, Thomas Newman and David Newman; and celebrated musicians Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gustavo Dudamel, Branford Marsalis and Anne-Sophie Mutter.
Coldplay’s Chris Martin initially seems an outlier, until he reveals that E.T. was the first film he ever saw in a movie theater ... and that he received permission to use the film’s “flying theme” as his band’s walk-on music during a recent concert tour.
“Nobody has a worse day, from hearing some of his music,” the obviously enraptured Martin insists.
“The music comes from the sky and envelops him,” Spielberg says, with obvious wonder. “It’s the purest form of art I’ve experienced from any human being.”
The nuggets of detail often are charming. During his entire career, and to this day, Williams composes with pencil and paper, working alone in a room. (He admits that the process would be easier with today’s computer software, but, well, that’s not for him.) He almost chose to score 1977’s A Bridge Too Far instead of Star Wars, until he was persuaded to take the latter assignment. (Goodness, how that would have changed the world!)
Williams had a strong early association with producer/director Irwin Allen, and worked on three of his 1960s TV series — Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants — and, later, the big-screen disaster epics The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Williams composed the title theme for Lost in Space on a ukelele, while vacationing with his family in Hawaii.
This was a revelation: Elmer Bernstein’s delicate, piano-driven score for 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my all-time favorites ... but I never knew that Williams was the man handling those keyboard melodies.
It’s better known that he was part of Henry Mancini’s sassy jazz soundtrack band that made TV’s Peter Gunn so memorable; less well known that Williams probably handled the piano chops on the Gunn copycat show Staccato, and definitely appeared on camera in two episodes, as part of the eponymous club owner’s combo. (The Bernstein soundtrack album’s personnel remain unknown, but it’s logical to assume that the jazz cats on camera also handled the studio session.)
Williams grew up in a musical family; his father — Johnny “Drummer Man” Williams — was a longtime studio session performer who also worked with 1940s and ’50s big bands. Dad insisted that his son practice the piano ... a lot.
It took.
And then, of course, there’s Williams fils’ half century-long partnership with Spielberg.
After a series of one-shot episodes of Night Gallery, Columbo, The Name of the Game and others, and three TV movies that included 1971’s career-making Duel, Spielberg relates how — when he got his big-screen debut with 1974’s The Sugarland Express — he’d been mesmerized by Williams’ “Americana” scores for 1969’s The Reivers and 1972’s The Cowboys.
Spielberg wanted that guy ... and they never looked back.
The relationship proved beneficial to both, and cool little details emerge. Williams shares a folio page laden with combinations of five notes, intended as possibilities for 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The final choice, he ultimately decided, had to sound like it was posing a question ... and awaiting an answer.
Branford Marsalis enthuses about Williams’ score for 2002’s Catch Me if You Can, which allowed the composer to return to his jazz roots.
When Arthur Fiedler died in July 1979, Williams became the 19th music director of the Boston Pops Orchestra, a position he held until December 1993. But I didn’t realize his arrival — and focus on pop-driven programs — initially was met with considerable hostility by some of the “old guard” musicians.
But that’s the thing: Star Wars made film music acceptable. Can you imagine a pops orchestra, today, not inserting film themes into at least some of its programs?
My primary complaint about Bouzereau’s film is that it’s too Spielbergized, at the expense of other aspects of Williams’ career. His extensive early TV work zips by in an eyeblink; the same is true of his many classical and concert works that aren’t film-related.
Given that this film is laden with Williams’ music, I suspect average viewers would have appreciated lesser-known themes being identified with a brief text block.
But these are minor quibbles.
Let’s leave the stage with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s famous quote, which closes this film:
“Music is enough for a lifetime ... but a lifetime is not enough for music.”
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