TownerFan

Mike used the goose-honking analogy in broad terms, referring to the need from the fan community to keep showing they care about how the product is made and make their voices heard. That doesn't mean that setting up petitions or e-mail bombing studio people is the best approach. I think everyone should really stop making conspiracy theories about why a definitive Star Wars soundtrack collection hasn't been done yet, be it the composer sitting on the masters or the studio being an ugly behemoth who doesn't want to give fans what they want. Key people know how to make the best case, but sometimes things are complicated to get done and you have to wait for stars to align, especially if you want to do them properly. It's Star Wars, so the numbers of stakeholders is high.

Studio people and overall environments much easier to deal with, I suppose.

I understand the frustration and if making up a narrative that it's the artist preventing to release the music you want to hear is more comfortable to you, so be it. But that's not the case here. Star Wars is a big property, yes, and it's now controlled by one of the biggest studios in the world, so you have to navigate all through the waters of such a large, hyper-structured, always-evolving company to make yourself heard. It just may not be the studio's priority at any given moment to put a lot of money and efforts in something like a full restoration of the whole John Williams works for the franchise. So, as I said, you have to bring several people on your side to make things happen. Key people know what the fans want. Anyone just wish it would be simpler, cheaper and smoother to release soundtrack music out there.

It's not because of that. As it has been evidenced by dozens of expanded releases now, Mr. Williams and his camp are more than happy with having his scores restored, released and preserved at their fullest. What a lot of people don't know (or just don't seem to understand) is the level of admin and bureaucracy there is behind the scenes to get those lavish expanded releases out there. You have to deal with movie studios, record labels, publishing rights companies, musicians unions and other stakeholders. It takes a lot of work and patience to get them all on your side and collaborate to produce something of value. But as Mike M. said not too long ago, we need the fans keep honking at the goose to make the powers that be aware that there is interest for these kind of things.

Bouzereau produced and directed that Fabelmans featurette, but it's safe to assume that he was already working at the documentary when that interview was filmed, so it was likely purported for both reasons. It's very hard to make something that can fully satisfy both the hard-core fan and a general audience who might know John Williams just for the most famous themes and scores. But I think there is a middle ground where something pleasing for both fans and "casual" viewers can be done and hopefully this is where the documentary will land. The hagiography-styled portrait is inevitable, but these types of shows are never intended to be an exposé in any way or form, but more as a form of tribute or celebrations. Williams certainly lived a rich, charmed life, but it's always been mostly within the borders of a relatively obscure profession and as far away as possible from Hollywood gossip. However, the trailer seems to point that at least part of his personal side (which he always carefully kept away from the spotlight) will be explored. As I was texting to a friend yesterday, I think all John Williams fans dreamed of a documentary film and each one of us already have in our minds what the perfect version of it should be so it's inevitable that there will be something that won't live up to our (understandably high) expectations. But I guess this project is also done to preserve a memory for posterity so that if anyone living a hundred years from now will want to explore who John Williams was, they will have this handy piece available as an overall look at his career. That's why I think we should have a half-glass-full attitude towards the operation, because it's never been a given that this would've happened. At least let's wait until the thing is out, watch it and only then discuss about its merits or lack thereof.

Ah, the infamous Reel 6 of The Phantom Menace. Many stories have been told over the years about the fuss that happened in between the scoring sessions and the final dub. It seems Conrad's recapitulations are quite accurate and very close to what actually happened. Some of the issues were already revealed in the big article by the late Richard Dyer for The Boston Globe: I think this has always been a bigger issue for us score fans than for the filmmakers and the speculations ran rampant for a long time fueled by that infamous interview with JW by French magazine Starfix which later appeared to have been a mostly fabricated piece. We can still only speculate 25 years later, but it's safe to assume that JW never held a grudge for it. He's the consummate professional and he knows that sometimes you have to let it go and move to the next project. Anyhow, what CP says about the relationship between JW and Kenny Wannberg is the gold nugget there. "Every Don needs a Sancho" is a great way to put it.

FYI, Tim Greiving aka @Maestro has written a great piece on Richard Dyer for The Legacy of John Williams, elaborating further on his post above: https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2024/09/23/richard-dyer-obituary/

It's easy for hard-core fans to get jaded when it comes to these things, and in this particular case I believe all fans had their own wishes and very specific ideas on what would be the ideal scenario, but let's be realistic and look at the positive side--a feature-length documentary about John Williams has been made, in full cooperation with him and his closest collaborators and friends, telling the life story of our beloved Maestro. This is something to really look forward to.

I tried to chronicle the evolution of JW's First Symphony in this article on his early concert works which I wrote in 2019: https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2019/10/08/john-williams-early-concert-works/ As for the possible existance of a Second Symphony, nothing was really ever mentioned throughout the years about Williams penning a second one, so it's likely as others have already pointed out that the Sinfonietta he composed for the Eastman Wind Ensemble might have been considered a second symphony of sorts at some point by whoever penned some of the bio notes that were given to press, record companies, etc.

You're correct in pointing out that the Live In Concert material has strict rules in terms of licensing, but also synchronization, as everything is timed so strictly that it would take some work to prepare a new piece and sync it up properly. It seems that the general rule with these presentations is to replicate all the cuts and the changes made editorially for the final dub of the film as heard in the theaters. In some cases (Jaws, CE3K, Superman) some music that was cut from the final dub has been reinstated, but alas it does not happen as frequently as we'd love to see it. It would be really cool if these concerts would be a kind of "Composer's Cut" version of the film and reinstate the original version of the cues etc., but most of these are done with a different mindset than the one of the film score aficionado, plus you have to remember that the director and/or the producer has to sign off on any significant change to the final cut as originally approved. Talking about the cue you mention, I too love the original version, which is more rarified and dreamy, with a huge harp solo that is so touching (and that it became the basis for the "E.T. and Me" aka "Stargazers" concert piece). I guess Spielberg wanted to stress the more emotional side of the scene and went with the more sentimental presentation of the same theme, which ended up synching also stunningly well, esp. the moment where E.T. munches the toy car.

Very sad to hear about this. I tried to get in touch with Mr. Dyer for the Legacy project several times and @Maestro tried very kindly to liase me with him, but alas nothing could be arranged. I really wish I could have him on record on the podcast because, as Tim pointed out, he has been the crucial reporter in mainstream news media to give JW the credit and the acknowledgement he really deserved. Plus, he was very savvy musically and was able to go beyond the surface of what makes JW music great. His interviews and reports are some of the really best material ever written on JW and a constant source of information and knowledge for any serious student of his artistic life. Here is my own favourite Richard Dyer quote on JW, this gotten by Jon Burlingame for his LA Times profile for JW's 70th birthday: Thank you, Tim, for paying a great toll of respect to this man to whom a lot of us are greatly indebted.

Hi everyone, Maurizio here. My bad for using that wording at the end of the episode. I am sorry that it ended up being misleading, if not totally inaccurate. When we recorded the Sugarland podcast in early June this year, everything at that moment was pointing to the fact that the next JW release was (kind of) right around the corner. But as some of you already guessed, there has been some studio approvals entanglement that hopefully will be resolved soon. It's always very hard to have exact timelines with these things. Sometimes things gets signed off unexpectedly and it's a rush to get them manufactured in time for a specific targeted moment (like the LLL Black Friday batch), while most of the times it's just a drag waiting for studio people to answer emails and phone calls and give final greenlight. Keep also in mind that a lot of the studios working with the soundtrack labels have been impacted by major employee layoffs this year and it's another hurdle to overcome when you have to rebuild your relationships with new people for licensing studio-owned materials and get them on your side. Hope this clarifies!

Here I am. Hello everyone, Maurizio aka TownerFan here, I got a notice about this drama related to me by one of the admins, who reached out to me a few days ago privately. As all of you might have noticed, I didn’t log in on JWFan for more than a year now and I didn’t even visit the place for a long time. I only lurked for a while when Indiana Jones was released because I was curious to read some of the commentary, but after that I didn’t come back, so I was completely unaware of what happened. First of all, I didn’t ask any of the moderators to speak on my behalf. I didn't ask them to ban you @JTN because of your vicious private message you sent me on December 2022. It was a message full of useless vitriol and insults. For reasons I still cannot understand, I rub your feelings very badly. I cannot help if you don’t like me or what I do (and honestly I don’t care, I cannot please everyone), but I don’t accept being called “pathetic little wheedler” (or other unpleasant adjectives you used) by someone who I don’t know nor I never interacted with before. I could’ve simply ignored you and move on, but the level of hate in your message was frankly too much so it was my duty to report what happened. I was told that you were then banned for a month because of that, but as I said I didn’t ask Jay or Ricard to do so on my behalf or to “protect me”. This is their place and it was completely their own decision. I decided to step away from JWFan nonetheless after that because I felt uncomfortable being around here, so for me it was case closed. I was befuddled to discover this was still going on and after reading all the trash you kept posting about me in this and other threads, I think a response is due. I hope this clarifies everything for you—and also for anyone else who think I am shit. Enough is enough. All the stuff I did so far with my project (The Legacy of John Williams) always had one single aim: celebrating the music of John Williams. It’s certainly a project where flattery is very strong (and perhaps even a tad too much), but believe it or not, I do not worship Mr. Williams. I admire his music profoundly and sincerely, and I always felt deeply grateful for the joy he brought to my life, but he is not my hero or my idol. The project is my own very little and very modest way to pay the debt of gratitude I feel toward Mr. Williams and his art. I did it the only way I knew I could do: creating something where I could invite people to talk about Mr. Williams’ musicianship and celebrate his art. It was never about myself or my own story. I always tried to do my best to avoid putting the spotlight on me and I also felt uncomfortable whenever I had to show up on camera for podcasts or in person; during the event in London last year, I blabbered something at the beginning, but I felt so awkward because I am bad at public speaking so I immediately left the word to Tim Burden, Mike Matessino and the other guests, who were the eloquent guys there, I was just the useful idiot. I also never used the project to obtain a privileged access to Mr. Williams, or any other people in his inner circle, just to make myself look cooler than anyone else. I felt honoured and privileged of being given the chance to meet him backstage a couple of times for a few minutes, first in Vienna in 2020 and then in Milan in 2022, but in both cases it was an invite I received from his personal assistant after I asked for a reception to present formally the project, which he was happy to be informed about. In both cases, I simply said thank you and tried to express him my gratitude. I am well aware that it was truly a rare privilege, as access to the Maestro backstage is usually restricted to a very few people he knows and who he’s glad to greet, so I was really the exception to the rule and I am very thankful to his manager that they granted me the access. I know this is something that fuels a lot (and I mean a lot) of envy from many fans. Sadly, this is hardly the first time another fan manifested resentful feelings to me directly. I don't know what to do with it. Ask yourself why such a thing generates so much hate in you. That being said, I never considered Mr. Williams a friend or a personal acquaintance. I don’t call him “John” like other people do. I always refer to him as “Mr. Williams” or “Maestro”, because he’s not my buddy and I don't know him personally. Again, I am sorry if this rubbed JTN the wrong way and made him think that I bribed someone to meet him or snook my way in using some shady subterfuge. What happened is exactly what I wrote above. Everything I did for this project was always done without expecting something back and whatever came was just an act of generosity from truly nice people. Back to your point here, I do not consider myself an obsessed fan. I never wanted to look, speak, or behave like Mr. Williams. I think I have a healthy relationship with my love for his music. I certainly spend an awful lot of time listening to it, but also thinking, writing, pondering, doing something about it because it’s something that just gives me joy. I take my love for the music seriously, but I'm not a priest with the mission of evangelizing people to the gospel of John Williams. I just like his music. That's it. Since my personal life was also put in question, let me just say that I am a happily married man, I have a good job and I am blessed with other great fortunes in life such as a wonderful family and many friends, including several with whom I share the same love for John Williams’ music. Perhaps I wear turtlenecks too much, but my wife says I look good in it, so that’s what she said Anyway, work and family obligations always have precedence and I never put anything about John Williams or any other of my hobbies before those. However, I concede one argument to you @JTN: you’re correct when you say that perhaps too much time is spent in talking, thinking and analyzing music, when the principal activity should be just listening to it and enjoying it. By talking with musicians who played for him, I learned a lot about Mr. Williams’ music, and also a little about his personality, and nowadays I have possibly an even greater and fuller appreciation for it. That was perhaps the most wonderful outcome of this project, in addition to make the acquaintance of some truly lovely and generous people. That’s why I think what I did so far is more than enough. I will keep running the website, but it will be mostly written articles and the (slow) ongoing building of a well-researched database of information about filmography, discography and other pieces of material that I hope will be useful for scholars, historians and researchers. The podcast has been a great fun, but also time-consuming and a lot of work completely on my shoulders. I will do the occasional episode once in a while (I have a couple almost ready to go which I hope to post soon), but it won’t be the main activity anymore. What I contributed to the studies of Mr. Williams’ music is already enough, I think. I have other obligations going on at the moment that have precedence so I won’t be able to give much time to this side project of mine. On top of that, there are much better people out there equipped with incredible scholar knowledge about John Williams, and some of them (Mike Matessino, Tim Greiving, Frank Lehman, Emilio Audissino) are also writing books and working on great projects devoted to his oeuvre. I cannot achieve that level of scholarship in my whole life and, like Mike once said, I feel happy enough to be just a student of his work. I hope this clarifies everything once and for all. I don’t want to be the subject of any discussion anymore and I hope people will respect that. I will go back in the shadows and won’t return again. I’m not interested in arguing anymore and justify about who I am or what I do. I won’t come back to defend myself nor I will ask moderators to act on my behalf. We’re all grown men here and I hope we know what a good behaviour is. Just be respectful of the people around you. This is certainly a long goodbye. Thanks goodness it doesn't happen every day Peace out. Maurizio

YouTube Link>

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Should also be noted that the reviewer is the esteemed Christopher Palmer, i.e. a distinguished film music historian and also a fabulous composer, arranger and orchestrator--he collaborated with Miklos Rozsa, Bernard Herrmann and Elmer Bernstein among others. His book The Composer in Hollywood is an essential reading for any true film music aficionado. I also love the notes he wrote for the TESB re-recording by Charles Gerhardt as printed on the Varèse Sarabande release, it's a sort of mini-essay on JW:

I saw the film last Saturday and I liked it a lot. Is it a masterpiece? No. But it's perhaps Spielberg's most sincere and heartfelt film so far, possibly unlike anything he ever did before. The closest in tone and style is perhaps Catch Me If You Can, but the level of poignancy in The Fabelmans is imho on a different league. Imho, it's a profound film that touches deeply anyone who decided to follow the muse and tried to create something with it, and how all of this inevitably ties with your own story and your own roots. It's a film that speaks truthfully about many things. I was touched about the feeling of nostalgia for things that now belong to the past and that we miss dearly. Plus, I loved how the references to virtually each of his own films throughout all of it (some of them very clear, others very subtle). In this way, it almost felt like his own swan song, even though Spielberg stated clearly that it's not. John Williams scores the film in the only way he could have possibly done, i.e. with the utmost respect toward the personal story of Spielberg, who is first a friend for him and then a colleague. It's his most restrained score in decades and yet it's touching and very poignant. He let source music, classical pieces and also classic film music bits have the more prominent role, and reserved for the original score a minimum role mostly to offer a comment on the emotions of the characters. I found this choice very moving and also very humble in how Williams decided to stay out of the way most of the time. I only detected one cue that isn't on the album, but I'm trying to figure out if it's actually JW because it didn't sound like him at first glance. I'm referring to the cue that accompanies the moment where Sammy is filming the "long walk" of the final scene of Escape to Nowhere. It features a Morricone-esque solo electric guitar, and later strings and horns join in. It's almost a source music-like moment and initially I thought it was a selection from a classic score, but the recording was too clean and crisp as all the classic film score selections that appear in the film are used when Sammy is actually showing the films to the audience and they're clearly sourced from the original recordings.

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When I spoke with people of La Scala last week, they told me no audio or video recording was planned. The theatre always has an audio/video feed grabbing the performances for internal archival documentation (usually a single-camera wide shot of the orchestra and a stereo mic over the podium), but that doesn't account as a proper recording. Now, a crew with multiple cameras was actually in the theatre on December 12 as evidenced from footage now available, but from what I gather it was not meant for an actual filming of the concert like Vienna 2020 or Berlin 2021, but just to have material to be given out to press for articles and specials etc., and also for the Filarmonica's social media channels and internal documentation for future usage. Of course they grabbed the whole thing, but it doesn't look like it was actually live-directed, as you need a larger crew and many more cameras to edit everything properly. From what I was told, the RAI OB-van outside the theatre wasn't used for the Williams concert. That's all I know.

Official Video of Theme from Schindler's List

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First of all, I just want to say that I am deeply sorry for not being able to set up a proper fan gathering in my hometown. I had a very intense and busy 6 weeks leading to the concert on many fronts (busy work schedule, house renovations, extra activities tied to Legacy of JW, family issues, even Covid got in the way) and it really didn't come to me until Jay started poking me here that something should be done. I am sorry the original plan to go that pub-restaurant screwed up at the last minute and that the Park Hyatt replacement didn't work for everyone. So please accept my sincerest apologies! I just hope Milano treated well all of you who came to visit, that you weren't overcharged for any service and that you got to do some nice sightseeing around while waiting for the Maestro to lead the Filarmonica and that maybe one day you will come back for more concerts or perhaps just to visit more of the city. I wish I was be able to say hello to each one of you who was there and I am sorry I didn't catch so many of you. Since my face now is pretty well known I guess (lol), next time you'll see me just don't be afraid to stop me to say hello Everyone who did said some very nice things about Legacy of JW and it really warms my heart that people appreciate the work we're doing and want to say it in person. Having John here was really the realization of a dream. I wished to see him performing at La Scala since I was a kid and to see this happening was really magical. Dreams can really come true, especially when there is someone so special like John Williams involved.

Grazie!

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My two cents: https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2022/12/14/john-williams-in-milan-2022/ I needed a couple of days to collect thoughts, I hope it's worth your reading time.