The Legacy of John Williams

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Table Of Contents

• Film Details
• Music Credits
• Essential Discography
• Awards and Nominations
• In Williams’ Words
• Quotes and Commentary
• Videos
• Bibliography and References

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Film Details

Year: 1988
Studio: Warner Bros.
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Producer: Lawrence Kasdan, Charles Okun, Michael Grillo
Writer: Frank Galati and Lawrence Kasdan, based upon the novel by Anne Tyler
Main Cast: William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Geena Davis, Amy Wright, Bill Pullman, David Ogden Stiers, Ed Begley jr.
Genre: Comedy – Drama – Romance

For synopsis and full cast and crew credits, visit the IMDb page

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Music Credits

Music Composed and Conducted by John Williams

Music Editor: Ken Wannberg
Scoring Mixer: Dan Wallin
Assistant Engineer: Sue McLean
Technical Engineer: John Rotondi
Stage Manager: Tom Steel
Orchestrators: Herbert W. Spencer, John Neufeld
Orchestra Contractor: Meyer Rubin
Recorded at Warner Bros. Scoring Stage, Burbank, California
Recording Dates: October 10, 11, 12, 24 and November 2, 1988

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Essential Discography

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Selected Re-recordings

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Awards and Nominations

Academy Awards
Nomination: Best Original Score

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In Williams’ Words

“I loved writing the music for [The Accidental Tourist]. I wanted to write a romantic theme because it was a love story in a way. Then when I began to think about it, I realised that it was not so much a love story but more of one about healing and grief, and working through that grief to find a happy loving experience at the other end. The loss that the William Hurt character suffered was something that I tried to depict in my music as he comes together in his new life with this young woman. I saw the film before I commenced work and I was very moved by the performance of William Hurt and also the gifted young Geena Davis. William Hurt, as a man who had been wounded, had a kind of quietude, a sort of ruminative mood, to which I could respond very positively. And Geena Davis had a natural bubble and a fabulous energy about her. So I was certainly effected by these characters and the way the actors played them when approaching the composition of the music.”¹

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Quotes and Commentary

Filmgoers in 1988 may have been somewhat puzzled by the choice of John Williams for The Accidental Tourist. Williams was then – and still is – the most familiar and successful film composer of all time, but his fame came from a string of big-budget films with larger-than-life scores, including the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series, E.T., Superman and Jaws. By contrast, Tourist was a small-scale, emotionally muted, character-driven film. Yet before he was a household name, Williams had scored a number of “smaller” films, perhaps most notably Martin Ritt’s Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972), which was also the story of a marriage threatened by the loss of a child.
Williams’s score for Pete ‘n’ Tillie had been sparsely spotted (less than 10 minutes of under-score, plus various source cues) and featured simple variations on a single theme, often cast for piano and strings. Likewise, Williams mostly relies on a single theme for his Accidental Tourist score, albeit one that consists of three distinct parts: an A theme predominantly associated with Macon Leary himself, a syncopated B theme, and a four-note motive derived from the opening phrase of the A theme. Just under a third of the film’s 121-minute running time features Williams’s underscore, most of which supports the onscreen action and inner emotions of the characters in an understated – rather than overtly dramatic – fashion. Those cues that do not make use of the main theme largely rely upon atmosphere and color rather than melody.
Employing a relatively small orchestra (compared to a typical Williams film), the Accidental Tourist score subtly utilizes electronics to add a sheen of emotional detachment over the traditional instruments: synthesizer and electric piano are employed throughout, along with MIDI keyboards and EWI (“electronic wind instrument”). Synthesized instruments are often doubled with their acoustic counterparts in the orchestra.²
– Jeff Eldridge

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Videos

“The Sound of Music” segment (features John Williams playing the theme from The Accidental Tourist on piano) | NBC The Today Show | March 27th, 1989

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John Williams conducts the Boston Pops in Love Theme from The Accidental Tourist | PBS “Evening At Pops” | 1989

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“A New Beginning” scene from The Accidental Tourist | Warner Bros. Pictures | 1988

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Bibliography and References

. Dyer, Richard – “John Williams Begins 10th Year In Tune With Pops,” The Boston Globe, May 7th, 1988
. Eldridge, Jeff – Liner notes for The Accidental Tourist Original Soundtrack Album CD Reissue, Film Score Monthly, Vol.11 No.6 , 2008
. Lace, Ian – “The Film Music of John Williams: Interview with the composer.” Film Music On The Web UK, 1998

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Footnotes

1. Lace, Film Music On The Web UK, 1998 ↩︎
2. Eldridge, excerpt from liner notes for The Accidental Tourist Original Soundtrack Album CD Reissue, Film Score Monthly, Vol.11 No.6 , 2008 ↩︎

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