BEFORE: Of course, I'm going to watch any documentary if it's tied to "Star Wars", I think I've proven that time and time again. The real question is, why did I not put this one next to "A Disturbance from the Force", which used archive footage of all the main actors from the first film? For that matter, why not link this to "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story" or "Tom Hanks: The Nomad", since there's probably archive footage in here from "Saving Private Ryan", too?
Well, it all comes down to the IMDB listings, when I put my chain together there are some films where the list of people interviewed AND/OR appearing in archive footage are rather incomplete. So when I watch them I keep notes of who appears and compare that to the IMDB listings, and I update whenever I can, but the IMDB is a little funny about archive footage, sometimes the lists get updated, other times not so much. So when I construct the chains I have to work with what I have at the time, and I wasn't 100% sure that Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford would be shown here, but, you know, the chances were pretty darn good. But I could only depend on what I could confirm. Thus, Henry Mancini carries over from "Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames".
Well, it all comes down to the IMDB listings, when I put my chain together there are some films where the list of people interviewed AND/OR appearing in archive footage are rather incomplete. So when I watch them I keep notes of who appears and compare that to the IMDB listings, and I update whenever I can, but the IMDB is a little funny about archive footage, sometimes the lists get updated, other times not so much. So when I construct the chains I have to work with what I have at the time, and I wasn't 100% sure that Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford would be shown here, but, you know, the chances were pretty darn good. But I could only depend on what I could confirm. Thus, Henry Mancini carries over from "Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames".
Wouldn't you know it, there's a new doc about the making of "Jaws", because it's been 50 years since that film's release. That would have been a great thing to know a few months ago, but I had no idea then about what I know now. So last year I included "If These Walls Could Sing", which showed John Williams and George Lucas recording the "Star Wars" soundtracks at Abbey Road, then THIS film is part of this year's Doc Block, and I'll have to delay the "Jaws" documentary until next year, it just arrived too late. I already see where it might fit in, though, but I'll also have to take a look at who's in the archive footage they used. So the process continues -
I've got another super-rare Double Birthday SHOUT-out today, this one's completely accidental and only made possible because I updated the IMDB with a list of who's in all of that archive footage. So Happy Birthday to Eric Bana (seen in footage from "Munich") and the late Robert Shaw (seen in footage from "Jaws"). Well, the odds were in favor of SOMEONE having a birthday today.
THE PLOT: Follows the life of legendary composer John Williams.
AFTER: Well, this shouldn't have just been a movie full of clips, but I guess there was just no way to avoid that. Somebody really tried, like in the middle there's an examination of the leifmotifs from the "Star Wars" soundtracks, and before that they really got into some music theory about why THOSE five notes worked in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and what made the "Jaws" music so scary, but by the end, this just devolved into a montage of one clip after another, because we're just running out of time and we have to get "Munich" and "The Witches of Eastwick" and "Empire of the Sun" in here somehow. Plus "Lincoln" and "Amistad" and "JFK", God forbid we leave anything out and get hate mail.
Really, you could just have someone read a list all the names of all the movies that John Williams worked on, and that would probably be movie-length. I'm not sure who has the most credits listed in the IMDB, but John Williams has 1,262 titles in his listing. Maybe some movies are listed twice, but hot damn, that's still a lot of movies. My own listing has just 44 titles, and that took me over 30 years to build up - and again, there's some duplication, like if I produced a film and also was a voice actor for it, it counts twice. I may have wasted a few decades of my life, I'm not sure. Maybe I should have doubled down on the voice acting thing and made that my primary gig, some of those cartoon actors have an astonishing number of credits.
I mean, for me, it begins and kind of ends with "Star Wars", because like J.J. Abrams, I was that kind of kid who, if I couldn't get to the movie theater to see "Star Wars" on any given day, I would sit by the stereo with the headphones on and listen to all four sides of the soundtrack, and picture the movie in my head. (Again, this was before we had VHS tapes.) But I wondered as a kid why they mixed up the tracks on the record, and they weren't in the same order as the music pieces were played in the film. This is kind of where the OCD started, maybe. I figured that maybe it had to do with the timings, like some tracks were longer than others so they had to even out all four sides on the two discs, this I could get behind because it meant that things needed to be balanced out. But still, the track titled "Rescue of the Princess" appeared before the "Cantina Band" track, and sure, that probably bugged the hell out of 10-year old me.
Now, bear in mind that John Williams had a successful music career before he ever scored a movie, he released jazz piano albums in the late 1950's, under the name John Towner or John Towner Williams. Then he kind of got involved with TV themes, he played on that "Peter Gunn" theme that Mancini wrote, then got to compose music for "Lost in Space" and "Gilligan's Island" (again, I don't know why anyone would admit to that, but whatever) and from there I guess it was just a short hop over to movie soundtracks, first comedies like "How to Steal a Million" and "Fitzwilly", then "Valley of the Dolls" and "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", and that led him to blockbusters like "Fiddler on the Roof", "Earthquake" and "The Towering Inferno". So he was already on the third iteration of his career and well-known in Hollywood before a young Spielberg ever came knocking on his door.
So of course, then came "Jaws" and that led Spielberg to recommend him to Lucas for "Star Wars", and then really, forget about it. "Star Wars" was simply THE biggest hit in movie history, and so you'd think that there would be nowhere to go from there but down, but you would be incorrect. Within the next two years John Williams composed and conducted the soundtracks to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Superman", then came "Empire Strikes Back", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and "E.T." and he just kept going and going like there was no stopping.
I remember when he took over as the Boston Pops conductor after Arthur Fiedler died, this was the top news story in Boston, for sure. But there was some scandal and pushback when the job went to a popular movie composer. Apparently according to this doc some of the older symphony orchestra players never warmed up to him, and after just four years, Williams quit the job over creative differences. They had a really hard time replacing him, so he came back fairly soon, I assume this also meant that those older orchestra members were sacked, or at least encouraged to retire.
In addition to all of the albums that were released by the Boston Pops, Williams kept working on movie soundtracks - "Empire of the Sun", "Born on the Fourth of July", "Always", "Presumed Innocent", "Home Alone", "Hook", "JFK", "Far and Away" - this list is starting to sound like that Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire"...
"Munich", "Home Alone", "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,"
"Lincoln", "The BFG", "The Terminal" and "Fitzwilly" -
"The Fabelmans", "JFK", Ron Howard's "Far and Away"...
"Jaws 2", "Superman", then came "Catch Me If You Can"
Sorry about that, I'm done, nothing rhymes with "Fiddler on the Roof" or "Return of the Jedi"
The theme from "Schindler's List" turns out to be Itzhak Perlman's "Free Bird", in that no matter where he goes, around the world, people request that he play it. Jeez, people, there's no need to yell this out during a classical performance - plus you know he needs to save that for the encore, that's just how concerts work.
At some point in his career, he stopped going by "Johnny Williams" or "Johnny Williams Jr." because it seemed a bit childish, almost unprofessional, and he got advice that it would look better in the credits if he was just John Williams. This led some people to believe that it wasn't the same guy who composed music for "Lost in Space" and "Gilligan's Island" who did the much more serious work on "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Nope, same guy. Someone else probably should have given him advice that if he wanted to remain looking professional, he shouldn't have accepted jobs like "Home Alone", which is a very lowbrow slapstick comedy. But apparently this is a man who just can't say "No" to a project, thus leading to his stranglehold on the market.
This is maybe what leads to the suggestion that John Williams is somehow the only person who is keeping the tradition of orchestral music alive for movie soundtracks, which just can't be true. Sure, he might be the first person that a connected director might call, but that doesn't mean he's the ONLY name on the list. What about Hans Zimmer? He did classical-type stuff for "Pirates of the Caribbean" and he seems to have also had a long and storied career. Howard Shore's soundtrack for "The Lord of the Rings" movies, John Barry's work for "Dances with Wolves", Ennio Morricone, etc. Sure, maybe Mr. Williams is the top dog, but that doesn't mean there aren't other dogs in the pound.
Still, it's great to see John Williams getting recognition, and it's great to see that he's still active, he goes to Tanglewood for three weeks every summer, and they just named a music building after him on the Sony lot - he's been nominated for 54 Academy Awards, which is a total second only to Walt Disney, and he's won five. 25 Golden Globe noms and four wins, 71 Grammy Award noms and 26 wins, six Emmy noms and three wins - and yet somehow he never felt the need to compose something for Broadway just so he could get the EGOT. He's also the oldest person to ever be nominated for an Oscar, at age 91. He's now 94, so really, I'm glad I got to this film now because I don't think the guy's buying any green bananas, if you know what I mean.
That's it, the end of the Doc Block for another year - I'm already finding ways to link docs for next summer, so we'll see what I can slam together for that during the off-season. It's kind of fitting that I ended here with a look at the summer blockbuster movies of the past - but come on, I've got THIS year's summer blockbusters to get to, both streaming ones AND the ones in the movie theater, which apparently people are still going to, only I don't really see much of a crowd when I go out on Tuesday afternoons. (Hey, money's tight, I have to go when tickets are discounted.). Which lucky actor from the 100 or so seen here will carry over to tomorrow's fictional film?
Directed by Laurent Bouzereau (director of "Faye" - see, I really did come full circle!)
Also starring John Williams (last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), J.J. Abrams (last seen in "Spielberg"), Lawrence Kasdan (ditto), Kathleen Kennedy (ditto), Frank Marshall (ditto), Emanuel Ax, Kate Capshaw (last seen in "Faye"), Chris Columbus (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt; Disciple"), Gustavo Dudamel, Ethan Gruska, Javier C. Hernandez, Paul Hirsch, Thomas Hooten, Ron Howard (last seen in "The Beatles: In the Life"), Karen Johnson, George Lucas (last seen in "A Disturbance in the Force"), Yo-Yo Ma (last seen in "Glass Onion"), Seth MacFarlane (last seen in "Logan Lucky"), James Mangold (last seen in "The Sweetest Thing"), Branford Marsalis (last seen in "Eve's Bayou"), Chris Martin (last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Elvis Mitchell, Anne-Sophie Mutter. David Newman, Thomas Newman, Itzhak Perlman (last seen in "Here Today"), Ke Huy Quan (last heard in "Kung Fu Panda 4"), Alex Ross, Alan Silvestri, Steven Spielberg (last seen in "Dear Mr. Watterson"), Helen Wargelin, Jenny Williams,
with archive footage of Karen Allen (also last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), Irwin Allen, Robert Altman (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), William Atherton (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire"), Christian Bale (last seen in "The Wolfpack"), Eric Bana (also last seen in "Spielberg"), Daniel Day-Lewis (ditto), Melinda Dillon (ditto), Robert Shaw (ditto), Leonard Bernstein (also last seen in "Beatles '64"), Ray Charles (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Gregory Hines (ditto), Cher (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Tom Cruise (ditto), Goldie Hawn (ditto), Barack Obama (ditto), Christopher Reeve (ditto), John Wayne (ditto), Kevin Costner (last seen in "3 Days to Kill"), Daniel Craig (last seen in "No Time to Die"), Walter Cronkite (last seen in "Rather"), Macaulay Culkin (last seen in "Leaving Neverland"), Geena Davis (last seen in "Ava"), Laura Dern (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Margot Kidder (ditto), Susan Sarandon (ditto), Bob Denver (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Richard Donner (last seen in "Valerie"), Richard Dreyfuss (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Arthur Fiedler, Carrie Fisher (also last seen in "A Disturbance in the Force"), Harrison Ford (ditto), Alec Guinness (ditto), Mark Hamill (ditto), Peter Mayhew (ditto), Ralph Grierson, Rupert Grint (last seen in "Knock at the Cabin"),
Alan Hale Jr. (last seen in "Johnny Dangerously"), Tom Hanks (last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad"), Richard Harris (last seen in "Smilla's Sense of Snow"), Bernard Herrmann, Djimon Hounsou (last seen in "Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver"), Jason Isaacs (last seen in "Sweet November"), Ben Kingsley (last seen in "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More"), Jake Lloyd (last seen in "Jingle All the Way"), Jack Marshall, Zubin Mehta (last seen in "Pavarotti"), Liam Neeson (last seen in "Memory"), Sam Neill (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Alfred Newman, Lionel Newman, Julia Ormond (last seen in "Rememory"), Peter O'Toole (last seen in "Call Me Kate"), Seiji Ozawa, Gregory Peck, Joe Pesci (last seen in "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag"), River Phoenix (last seen in "My Own Private Idaho"), Sydney Pollack (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Andre Previn, Daniel Radcliffe (last seen in "What If"), Kathryn Reed, Dorothy Remsen, John Rhys-Davies (last heard in "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom"), Daisy Ridley (last seen in "Ophelia"), Barbara Ruick, Roy Scheider (last seen in "Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print"), Sissy Spacek (also last seen in "Faye"), Daniel Stern (last seen in "The Next Three Days"), Isaac Stern, Morris Stoloff, Oliver Stone (last seen in "Val"), Shirley Temple, Toots Thielemans, Henry Thomas (last seen in "Dear John"), Topol (last seen in "For Your Eyes Only"), Kenneth Wannberg, Emma Watson (last seen in "The Bling Ring"), Franz Waxman, Esther Williams, Johnny Williams Sr., Robin Williams (last seen in "Martha"), Samantha Winslow.
RATING: 7 out of 10 golf games with his daughter (which apparently each take about four hours, thankfully they don't let him on the course until the real golfers have gone home)
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