I recently watched the John Williams documentary, Music by John Williams, on Disney Plus, and loved it so much that I knew I had to talk about it here!

This documentary was really interesting.  John Williams is, and I don’t say this lightly, an iconic composer.  Even if you don’t know his name, you know his music.  I’ve included a playlist with some of my favorite songs.

I learned so much from watching this documentary, and there were a lot of great stories.  The documentary doesn’t go into a lot of detail, but it is a pretty good overview of his life and his career.  Not only that, but condensing a decades long career into roughly 90 minutes is an incredible task, especially with all of the movies he’s worked on.  It mostly focuses on his childhood, and the early years of his career- Stars Wars gets a lot of screen time, as does his working relationship with Steven Spielberg, particularly Jaws and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

Here are some cool things we learn in the movie:

• Steven Spielberg loves film scores, and he was knew that he wanted to work with Williams on everything.  It seems like they have a great relationship, both personally and professionally
• Williams met George Lucas at Spielberg’s request, and was considering working on a movie called A Bridge Too Far but ultimately went with Star Wars.
• Lucas believes that Williams was so important to the creative process for Star Wars that Episodes 1-3 might not have happened if Williams hadn’t agreed to come back to work on them.
• I got chills when they played the Opening Theme for Star Wars, along with video footage of him working with the orchestra
• Joseph Williams, the lead singer of Toto, is one of his kids
• Spielberg initially thought the theme for Jaws was a joke because of how simple it was
• He’s not a big movie person. That was one of the most interesting bits of the documentary because of his career and the fact that he’s composed some iconic movie themes
• He doesn’t do anything electronically: he still composes with pencil and paper, works with an orchestra, and doesn’t use any electronic equipment, which means his younger colleagues work a lot faster than he does
• Itzhak Perlman has a great story of being asking to work on the score for Schindler’s List.  He told Williams he’d think about it, and when he told his wife, she seemed pretty stunned that he’d think about working with Williams and Spielberg.  Perlman would go on to work as a soloist on the Schindler’s List theme

There’s a lot more I could talk about but those were some of the highlights for me.  I will end with one last thing, though.  I can’t remember who said it, but it is in reference to doing Jaws, Star Wars and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind in close succession.  Doing any one of those would be the accomplishment of a lifetime, and he did them pretty close together.  It’s especially amazing when you consider his career as a whole.  There’s also Indiana Jones, Home Alone, E.T., and Jurassic Park, plus many more.  He’s worked as a composer, a conductor (he worked with the Boston Pops for quite a few years, and has worked as a guest conductor with other orchestras), and even did songs for the Olympics and Sunday Night Football!  There are so many songs of his that are instantly recognizable, and on their own, they’re amazing, but together, they make up an amazing career of songs that people know and love.  I can’t say this enough but if you like movies, music, and movie music, this is the documentary for you!