All language subtitles for Music.By.John.Williams.2024.1080p.WEB.H264-SCENE

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-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... 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 War,

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
clichéd 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 killing
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 Dick
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 André Previn,

but unhappiness emerged
between André and the producer.

So Leslie Bricusse was engaged to
do the score, both lyrics and music.

But André 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
Dvorák'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.

157.

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 bastard 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
Miklós Rósza, 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 shooting
in Poland somewhere.

I had to have the
winter to shoot in Kraków, 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
War 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 War 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 shooting 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 explosion.

An explosion 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.