On October 23, 2024, the long-awaited documentary film Music By John Williams received a warm welcome during its world premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles as the opening gala night of the 38th American Film Institute Festival. A star-studded audience that included directors Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and J.J. Abrams, producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, LA Phil conductor Gustavo Dudamel, composers Alan Silvestri and Thomas Newman, songwritr Diane Warren, and many other Hollywood celebrities greeted the film directed by Laurent Bouzereau with thunderous applause, paying an enormous tribute to the beloved Maestro, who couldn’t attend the event (Williams is still recovering from a recent undisclosed health issue)
Introducing the audience before the screening, Ron Howard said that “what Laurent captured is this understanding of the way John is capable of communicating and reaching audiences and collaborating with filmmakers,” adding that Williams is “very humble, and yet he’s brilliant. He’s a genius. He’s very, very kind, and yet he’s driven as an artist; he’s a task master.” Howard also reminisced Williams’ very long history as a prime Hollywood crafstman, mentioning his television work and even singing a bit of “The Wells Fargo Wagon” from the 1962 film The Music Man, on which Howard played a little part when he was still a child (Williams had pianist and arranger duties on that film).
Spielberg then took the mic to offer his own congratulations to Bouzereau for the achievement and referred to John Williams as “much more than a family friend, a family member. He’s the greatest creative partner I have ever had. In the 52 years John and I have been working together with him scoring my films… this is the greatest partner I have ever had in the creative arts.” Spielberg also recognized the everlasting power of John Williams’ scores, which often go beyond even the films themselves.
“John and I, up to the time we got very busy about two years ago, twice a year for seven years running, would hold concerts for orchestras as a fundraiser… We would go all around the country and we would do an evening of film music… In each one of these concerts, I would take a scene that they know, perhaps the opening sequence from ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,’ and I would play it for the audience of a thousand people with no music, only sound effects and foley and some dialogue and that’s it. The opening of that movie is about four minutes long. And when you see the opening of ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ without music, that four minutes feels like 14 minutes. It takes forever. It is full of action, and you should be entertained, but it just drags. Then John’s at the podium with the Philadelphia orchestra, the LA Phil, the New York Phil… and we run that four minutes again, and John picks up the baton, and that four minutes suddenly feels like a minute and a half. And that is the miracle of film scoring. And that is the consistent miracle of John Williams and what he has brought to all of our movies and how he’s elevated them and brought them out to all of you — where often you might even leave the film that John Williams scored and a week later forget the film, but you’ll never forget the music.”
The film received very positive reviews from the major industry trade journals and magazine. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Daniel Fienberg summarized the film as “richly satisfying, if not exactly revelatory,” explaining that it “honors the breadth of Williams’ impact and legacy, pushing every emotional button for an experience that will produce tears, edification and a compulsive desire to immediately seek out 25 different Williams-scored features,” capping off his review saying that “you’ll come away from Music by John Williams feeling that Williams had been properly celebrated.”
Peter Debruge called the documentary a “rapturous tribute” in his review for Variety, lauding especially the chance to take a peek behind the curtain of the creation of many legendary film scores such as Jaws and Close Encounters. “Such behind-the-scenes stories feel like raw gold for cinephiles,” writes Debruge.
The glowing review by Deadline.com Chief Film Critic Pete Hammond summarized the film as “an exceptionally well-conceived and executed documentary on his remarkable career.” Hammond also lauds Laurent Bouzereau’s approach to the subject. “Bouzereau has benefitted from his access as a filmmaker of so many making-of featurettes over the past 30 years that he has a comfort and up-close knowledge of his subject here and makes great use of some terrific archival material, scoring sessions, and film clips. But best of all is the way he has been able to bring Williams out of his reluctant shell to talk about his life in music.”
Music By John Williams will start streaming exclusively on Disney+. Stay tuned for more related content coming soon on The Legacy of John Williams.
The Legacy of John Williams 