if you have disney+ i highly recommend the documentary/retrospective on john williams. just a nice, pleasant thing to watch. and you'll remember that williams basically created the soundtrack to modern hollywood
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Lifelong highlight was playing the Indiana jones theme at a piano recital in the Annapolis mall at age 10 or so, life has pretty much been downhill since
Saw this pop up the other day on Disney+ and will be watching tonight. On that note, what's everyone's favorite Williams song? For me there's the usual but if I had to pick a lesser known one it's either the title theme from Always or The Days Between from the movie Stepmom.
My high school concert band once played a spring concert that was entirely John Williams songs from movie soundtracks and it was such a joyful experience!
I took my kids to the symphony for the first time this past weekend. They were doing a special "Spooky Symphony" family performance. Nearly half the works were Williams compositions, and I don't think anyone could've complained. (Sidebar: his original stuff for The Lost World is really good?!??!!!!)
Let's be clear about the allegations. Jane Doe claimed that 20 years ago, she slept in his bed about 40 times. She said that he told her that he touched himself when she was in his bed. She never saw him do it and he never touched her. Elfman won the case.
And the first one? Paris? Read that one? He shouldn’t have won as far as I’m concerned he fucking told her he jacked off while she was asleep every fucking time.
She didn’t consent to that at all. When she found out she immediately ended it. I’m referring more to the Naomi case where he did multiple things to her. Also he has a fucking wall of women with naked he calls his “special girls”. I highly doubt all of them were consensual giving his standing influe
I get why you're angry about it. I was very upset when I first found out, and I was prepared to write him off, but the more that gets revealed, the dodgier it gets. Contemporaneous text messages between Abadi and her friend tell a very different story than what she's saying now.
I’m only going by the court documents idk. Nasty stuff. Haven’t seen anything about text messages. Didn’t stop him from doing the Jane doe thing either. And apparently he might have did something similar to a minor in 1985. That last one is a bit sus—I can’t find the court docs for that one.
In her texts, she talks about trying to engineer an affair with either Elfman or another composer, that she wants him to "drop everything and pursue her," and admits she didn't think he was flirtatious. Her friend signed a legal declaration in support of Elfman because she does not believe Abadi.
I struggle to agree given the composers before him, Maurice Jarre, Miklós Rózsa etc in related style. It's valid continuation of the grand western romantic orchestral trad. Williams was conservatoire educated after all... (Given that, I like Morricone and Zimmer because they take a different path)
I will plan on watching the documentary. This year I have watched couple of them because they were important to my childhood, Won't You Be My Neighbor?-Mr Rogers, Butterfly In The Sky-Reading Rainbow, Jim Henson- Muppets & Sesame Street, and Now John Williams- amazing film composer all time.
If you live in Los Angeles or New York, it's worth seeing the John Williams documentary a theater. I saw it at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood over the weekend and the state of the art Dolby Atmos sound system really made it worthwhile.
Seeing Jurassic Park in theaters when it came out was an absolute seminal moment of my childhood and I literally choke up sometimes when the big orchestral theme comes on ❤️🥲🎵🦕
If it's on YouTube somewhere, you should see if you can find the video of him playing "As Time Goes By" on piano with Audra McDonald. Not only is Williams a world-class composer, he's also an incredibly classy and tasteful jazz pianist
The documentary spends some time on his piano playing and notes a bunch of famous movie and TV scores that he played on. He played the famous piano portion on Mancini's Peter Gunn theme as a major example.
I watched it last night and loved it. Ethan Gruska, Williams’ grandson who’s in the film, was a childhood friend and a talented musician in his own right.
There are plenty of fairly intelligent music professionals who feel that Williams borrowed a bit too much from what came before. The Planets by Holst being the foundation for the original Star Wars soundtrack being the go to example. In many circles that look down on such things...he's a "populist".
Uh, Williams' tendency to take from other, fairly famous compositions isn't just generic "there are only so many note sequences you can do." I think you'd be better off arguing he's like Tarantino in that he creates pastiches, though that's stretching it in some cases.
I have a 1969-1999 greatest hits and they are just about all great, iconic hits. What he mastered was making the themes easy to remember so they could become iconic. It's to hum "Superman" or "Star Wars" or "Jurassic Park" in a way you can't with Zimmer's scores to Gladiator or the Dark Knight.
There’s a video on YouTube of two like high school band kids who just set up out front of his house and start playing the theme to Star Wars … he comes out and is gleefully like “I was worried you weren’t going to make that high note there”.. just chops it up with them for a bit, a lovely moment
Thank you for this recommendation! I was spiralling with anxiety and this was a much needed respite. So many of his scores were to key movies from my childhood and early adulthood. The score for The Accidental Tourist is an underrated gem.
OMG, thank you for pointing this out! I didn't know it existed and now I have a solid plan for tomorrow evening. Outstanding - thank you thank you thank you!
While you still have the chance, can’t recommend going to John Williams night at Tanglewood enough. The Boston Pops play live over the iconic scenes, he comes out and tells stories about the compositions and conducts when his health allows. He had to cancel last year, so go while we still have him
There's no way this can be true. It's just so crazy a fact my brain refuses to believe it and I'm not going to Google it to find out. Instead I'm going to repeat it as absolute fact anytime Toto comes on the radio
He BECAME the lead singer of Toto, it is true. He is not, however, the lead singer of Toto in the studio versions of any of their big hits. HOWEVER, he WAS the singing voice of adult Simba in The Lion King. Which is equally mind-blowing.
True. But I do think the generally accepted 3 “big” Toto hits would be Africa, Rosanna, and Hold the Line and he did not sing on any of those. But arguably more people heard him sing “Hakuna Matata” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” than any of those 3 songs anyways.
Thanks; I'll have to watch that! Was grateful I finally made it to John Williams’ Film Night at Tanglewood a couple years ago to see him conduct some of those iconic pieces live. Legend
It's hard to believe how many movies he wrote the sound tracks for. I think my wife and I just shook our heads to the whole thing as they named movie after movie.
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I thought it wasn't going live until next week!
Do you know how frustrating that is?!
I watched Superman (1978) recently, and that score is absolute perfection.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006157/?ref_=ext_shr
I’m not sure why I thought he was British….
Hmmmm….
he's a nice and humble guy in person
by that metric, all music is stolen because there are only so many note combos that work!
Thanks!
Would not have been the same without those horn lines
https://youtu.be/nKckxONAH4M