Even if it hadn’t delved too much into composition, “Music by John Williams” would have likely captured an audience’s interest just as a ‘highly enhanced add-on,’ easily because of its position on the timescale. However, what sets it apart is the fact that it has a clear vision in relation to its concern and helps people with no musical experience with the polishing intricacies of it. Apart from the wide visual skill, the acoustic tracks were crafted carefully by the directors which makes for a good piece. This rawness of sorts helps capture the essence of the work they created, along with the three minutes of exclusivity to the never-seen-before footage.
The documentary is available on Disney Plus, directed by Bouzereau, who was for a long period, worked solely as an official biographer for George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg along with few other filmmakers from their vicinity.
There’s a hint of ease in the over-the-shoulder conversations with an aged Williams (now 92) as he motions us from the theory and hands-on day-to-day elements of his creations, starting from TV scores of the 1960s (including ‘Lost In Space’, ‘Occasional music for Gilligan’s Island and other shows, and even the piano in the opening Peter Gunn theme) and to the actual box office hits of the 70s (including Star Wars, Jaws, Superman, etc) all the way to the centuries turning marks: his theme music for Harry Potter, the innovations of the start, middle and end of the “Star Wars” and even more of those wonderful “Spielberg” flicks. At the same time, Williams still can be considered retired, as one of his last ever hits (for the time being) would be his bothering score for “The Fablemans”, or a film memoir of a bunch of life events Spielberg reviewed.
Disney, which acquired Lucasfilm famed for Indiana Jones and Star Wars, created a music catalog fully owned by a media conglomerate or hedge fund and this widely explains to an extent the music in a simple way. The company has now also become the owner of movies scored by Williams which were released by Fox, including the Home Alone series, Robert Altman, and Oliver Stone’s movies. While, Elvis Mitchell, Thomas Newman, Branford Marsalis, J. J. Abrams, Alan Silvestri, and many other movie composers and film composers often criticize William, many interview subjects are never contented with Williams. Williams has always attracted attention, but more and more people prefer to ignore him. Wipe away the softening aspects and the longing in the audience’s gaze wanting more and more details are not required this is just the way life works for them. When Williams does, a form of breathing over-excitement seems to be embedded in the beginnings of the streaming age and Williams appears overdue. Nonetheless, it strives to portray itself in a communicative and believable manner.
Bouzereau always emphasizes the practical side of the movie industry, and this also includes Williams’ work. He adds biographical details only if they are necessary in order to locate Williams in time: the details encompass a great deal about his parents, his wife, and his children who were all musicians, and about the loss of his first wife, actress-singer Barbara Ruick, who died of an aneurism at the age of 43. Still, much of these events are related to Williams at the Piano, who explains the fundamental concepts of the most successful and significant movies of the 20th century with respect to their theatre, art, and market aspects. Williams illustrates how something as famously described as a movie might have come across if just one or two elements had been altered by transforming the rhythm, emphasis, and sometimes, the arrangement of its well-known leitmotifs.
Williams is frequently seen with Spielberg, his best co-worker and one of the best teachers who uses imagery in the same way Williams uses words, in order to demonstrate the idea of synergy in filmmaking. Usually, John Williams’s scores are incorporated as a background music in parts of the movie that are biographic of the subjects for which he composed the scores (for instance, there is a song “The Fablemans” that fits well underneath the text about Williams’ teenage life).
Anyway, if Spielberg is able to transform and alter other of his films to reflect the purpose of Picture in Picture, John Williams’ Music, is able to readily explain Williams’ music in conjunction with the image or independently and allow you to listen once more alongside the knowledge you gained from other parts of the film.
Case in point, Williams’s score for ‘Catch Me If You Can’ is not only a homage to the big band jazz orchestral soundtracks of the 50 and 60s by composers such as Elmer Bernstein. Bernstein, who is credited for composing the score of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, was once a teacher to a young Williams who worked under him for the films Bernstein’s ‘A Walk On The Wild Side’ and ‘The Sweet Smell Of Success’. Let us not forget that the TV shows starring Williams in the 1960s also had some pop and jazz elements to them, ‘Johnny Williams’ is indeed a great example for what the multitalented artist was aiming for. Furthermore traveling back to Williams’ history, being a child exposed to jazz music, as his father was a jazz drummer, heavily influenced Williams’ work. ‘My parent’s friends were all musicians, I grew up thinking that’s what adults did’ Williams states how he was shaped in this musically charged environment.
Marsalis also mentions Williams improvising over the Peter Gunn theme and describes it as the seat of jazz funk- while trying too relate the original 1977 Star Wars by using the cantina and its jazz elements. “‘In today’s world, I don’t think anyone would be able to compose that scene without jazz knowledge.”
I’ve heard bad parts of that speech that sounds forced at best, quite a few of them.”
And of course, the documentary project sets Chief Williams in focus as the only member of a specific group of film scorers that were once film composers’ norm. Williams was born in Los Angeles in the early 1960s as a child in the waning era of the studio system, after serving in Air Force bands. His first project as a score composer revolved around a documentary on the Canadian maritime provinces. He accompanied the studio orchestras of Columbia And 20 Century Fox under the likes of masters Bernard Herrmann, Henry Mancini and Franz Waxman. He still works in the old-school way of composing music without a computer, selecting tunes and themes on the piano and writing them down with a pencil. As his grandson Ethan Gruska says, “He’s Somebody who has painfully learned how to do most of his work and now lives in an era where you can make music with a prompt using AI.”
I must admit, I was able to get more out of the movie, despite the fact that I have spent most of my life collecting vinyl film scores and have been a constant fan of and student of Williams since childhood.
It’s replete with insights like Silvestri’s remark on Williams’ academic piano performance theme for Jaws which states that “A brilliant theme can serve its purpose even when the character is not on-screen” and Williams’ assessment of alien’s five-note theme in Close Encounters which says “more like a gerundive in that it is an incomplete phrase ending with the word and, if or but”.
Williams’ and Spielberg’s relationship defines the film and its emotion and quite a bit of its comedy as well especially when Williams says he was so impressed by the rough version of Schindler’s List which had no music in it that he claimed to Spielberg he should get a much better composer and the reply “I know, but they are all dead” explains it all. “Any one of his scores will be enough. For any other composer, it would be the pinnacle of their career.” Abrams maintains too, when it is clear. In this case, the monumental “Music by John Williams” rather closer to one hour and 40 minutes out is too short to spend more than a few seconds on one piece of music (It could have been easily a 10-part series). So this means that a lot of important things get cut, which of course is very logical to expect. But that is the reality of the beast as it is: there is not enough time to say everything, neither in speech nor in composition, and decisions actually do have to be made.
However, this remains a critical piece of research not only on Williams but on several of his fellow composers, role models, and directors along with the whole filmmaking process. People will enjoy watching it as well as it would be used to teach in schools. Williams’ astonishing pieces are also analogous to it, for it is something that stays in one’s head after the credits are over.
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