By Moss Cohen
Fans of Disney Legend and five-time Academy Award® winner John Williams will soon be able to learn the backstory of how the composer created the iconic scores for such beloved franchises as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and many other classic films in the new documentary Music by John Williams streaming on Disney+ and in select theaters.
In the documentary, director/executive producer Laurent Bouzereau sits down with the 92-year-old Williams — often in front of his piano — to discuss his evolution from being the son of a musician to growing into a jazz pianist in his own right, before ultimately becoming possibly the most highly-regarded film score composer of all time.
To properly capture William’s impact as an artist, Bouzereau features interviews with luminaries from the world of film and music such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, and Ron Howard — among many more.
We spoke with Bouzereau about how he was finally able to make the film after 30 years of knowing Williams, the help he received from Spielberg in getting the film made (including Spielberg providing home movies of Williams scoring his films), and what he hopes viewers learn Williams sharing his techniques for making music.
Why did you feel compelled to explore the life and career of John Williams?
Well, I have been obsessed with John Williams, his work and movies really, that he scored for as long as I can remember. So, he’s been part of my film education, and I’ve always felt that there was a story there to be told and to be inspired by. I’ve known John for 30 years and I’ve been trying to do this film for a long time. It’s something that I brought up on several occasions and was always told “No.” But, given my relationship with Steven [Spielberg], it eventually got made.
The film doesn’t just celebrate John Williams’ music, but also it explores his techniques for creating music tailored to each project. What do you hope viewers take away from these insights into how Williams works?
I really feel that John is an eternal student. Actually, the resistance he had about doing this was, “I don’t like to look behind or in the past, I like to look forward,” because he’s constantly challenging himself.
I think that for young people sometimes because of technology today, [they] think that you can be an overnight [success]. It’s kind of a real interesting lesson to realize that it takes work and it takes curiosity and it takes a really big amount of courage to keep on challenging yourself.
When you look at people that were making films 50 years ago when John was emerging as the force that he is today, a lot of people are forgotten, but John is not. He has reinvented himself not only through the opportunities that he got with Steven — who’s never made the same movie twice and the sort of tapestry that allowed John to thrive in — but you just realize that new generations of filmmakers want to work with John. Now, that’s not true for a lot of people, you know?
So, that’s a tribute to not only stamina, but also the timeless nature of what he does. And I think that needed to be documented and told. I really look at him in the same way I look at Beethoven or Mozart or Gershwin. He is that guy and is that talented. So hopefully the message here is clear.
One of the things that keeps coming up throughout the film is the way that he uses character themes like Raider’s March for Indiana Jones, among many others. Why was his understanding of how to create a memorable theme for a character so important to explore throughout the movie?
Here’s the thing: a lot of the movies that John was working on were benchmark films that had a world that was very new to the audience. Think about Star Wars, we had never seen anything like Star Wars. To have the ability to create a score that hits you at the same time as the title and the crawl was a way to pull the audience into a world that we had no idea what to expect. And that alone, I think, gives you permission to enter something otherworldly. But the music is identifiable as very much classical music, something you actually know. So the music plays a role that not only gives you the pathos of the characters and the world you’re your meeting, but by being relatable as a viewer, as a listener, allows you to enter those worlds and feeling usually comfortable in them.
So, that’s a big, big part of what John’s music does. And then in terms of Jaws, for example, the fact that the shark was not working and you didn’t see the shark for the longest time, the music was there to play that character. And then you hear that and you’re like, “Who needs the shark? We have the music, right?” And today if you hum that score people know what it is and what you mean.
There’s an image of John Williams that gets mentioned in the documentary as a sort of a man alone tapping away at his piano writing scores. But what also really came through was how important collaboration was to his process — Steven Spielberg looms large throughout the movie. How did collaboration make him the composer that he became?
I think that Steven and John, and John and George [Lucas], and John and many filmmakers, the reason why the collaboration works is that it’s a brotherhood. Steven describes it as a brotherhood. So, it’s not a fatherhood, which would be like a figure of authority looking down on the filmmakers. It’s not that, it’s a brotherhood. They’re in it together and they speak the same language. And so, I think that’s the secret to John, whereas a lot of composers — and George Lucas actually mentions this in passing — can be very confrontational and do not have the ability to really dialog with filmmakers. And you’ve seen many big, big composers getting fired from movies. But John has this humanity in him that makes him extremely easy to talk to and to collaborate with. And he is very determined and very rigid in his approach to his work in many ways, but not in in any way that you would say that he is the only one running the ship. He is very much at the service of the musicians and of the filmmakers. As I said, brotherhood.
Steven Spielberg provided many home movies of Williams conducting his scores to be used throughout the documentary. And he’s also a producer on the film. How did his involvement enhance the story that you were telling about Williams?
Steven, I owe everything to him. Steven is the one who really, when I went up to him and I said, ‘We’ve got to do this film,’ he’s the one who approached John. But not only was he the bearer of great news to me when John said yes, finally, but he literally said, ‘This is an important film and I want to be there with you the whole time.’
So, we communicated about every single aspect of the film, from who is going to be interviewed to the structure to the design of the title, to everything, the final mix, which we did at Skywalker [Ranch]. So, his contribution to the film is gigantic. And it was also very reassuring to me, as was having Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall and, of course, Ron and his company [Imagine Entertainment].
That sort of triangle of [Spielberg’s production company] Amblin and Lucasfilm and Imagine was very comforting to me because I just knew that I could really trust when they watched a cut and identified “Is it working? Is it not working? What do we need?”
Why did this movie need to be made with Disney and Lucasfilm for Disney+?
Well, that’s where it belongs. That’s where it belongs. The combination of Steven, Kathy, and Frank is just essential to me and that part of your family. I couldn’t have done it without the support of Disney and Lucasfilm.
