John Williams Saved By His Most Famous Music
If you were to close your eyes and try to envision the face of Hollywood music, chances are that you’d see the face of John Williams. Thanks to composing the killer soundtracks for movies like Jaws and Star Wars, this prodigy is widely considered the greatest screen composer of our time. Many have joked over the years that a Williams score can save even the worst film, but in a bit of cosmic irony, the composer has admitted that working for talented directors like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas saved him, giving him new purpose during one of the darkest periods in his life.
When he was creating music for Spielberg, Williams had to deal with some sobering realities: he was middle-aged, he had just lost his wife, and his 1972 Oscar was gathering dust on a shelf.
This information comes to us courtesy of Music by John Williams, the new Laurent Bouzereau documentary that explores not only the meteoric career of the titular talent but also the painful behind-the-scenes details that shaped him into who he is today.
When he was creating music for Spielberg, Williams had to deal with some sobering realities: he was middle-aged, he had just lost his wife, and his 1972 Oscar was gathering dust on a shelf. He had voluntarily slowed down his Hollywood career to spend more time with his children, but meeting Spielberg and Lucas helped him rediscover his passion for creating hit Hollywood songs.
John Williams trusted Steven Spielberg so much that he took what ended up being a life-changing gamble on the other man’s advice.
According to Bouzereau, one of the reasons that John Willims hit it off so well with these visionary filmmakers is that they wanted to change the face of Hollywood while retaining part of what made the Golden Age of cinema so great. The documentarian says that Williams responded to the fact that “Those guys are changing cinema [but] they were like, ‘Let’s make changes, but stay the lovers of the cinema that we grew up on.” That meant blockbuster films headlined by epic music, and the composer had spent his whole life training for this moment.
Regarding Spielberg in particular, Bouzereau pointed out that there was a familial relationship with Williams, but not the one you might expect. “I’ve never heard Steven refer to John as a father figure,” he said, noting that the computer is “more an older brother.” Sure, Williams might be 15 years older, “but fatherhood means an air of superiority, and that has never been what that collaboration is all about.”
Working on blockbuster films with these two directors helped Williams feel passionate about his work again, and he eventually channeled that passion into a second marriage.
John Williams trusted Steven Spielberg so much that he took what ended up being a life-changing gamble on the other man’s advice. After they made Jaws in 1975, Spielberg convinced Williams to compose for George Lucas’ Star Wars instead of making music for the ambitious World War II tale A Bridge Too Far. Williams was taking a major change on the young Lucas, but it quite literally paid off, and that space opera’s score helped make Williams a household name.
Sadly, John Williams was in a dark emotional place before he began collaborating with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas…he was a man reeling from divorce and worrying that Hollywood was moving away from his craft. But working on blockbuster films with these two directors helped Williams feel passionate about his work again, and he eventually channeled that passion into a second marriage. To this day, he is married to Samantha Winslow, and it’s beautiful to imagine that his reinvigorated career helped him rediscover the romantic happiness he was looking for.
He might have become famous by working with some of the greatest directors in cinematic history, but that wasn’t the end of John Williams’ story. After making music for them saved his career, he found the most important collaborator of all. And we’re happy to see that he and Winslow have been making beautiful music together for 44 years, giving inspiration to romantics from here all the way to a galaxy far, far away.
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