How has there never been a feature length documentary on John Williams?

[Richard Penna 3,694]

20 hours ago, JTW said:

But as much as we, his admirers and fans love his work, most people don’t care about a humble and hardworking film composer’s life. They like his music but that’s it.

 

Most people don't care about a film composer's life and Williams likely doesn't want the attention. The ESB documentary is the closest I've seen, and that's from a bygone era when his music was the newest thing.

 

As for the walk of fame, I believe it takes sponsors, a lot of money and other stuff to get one. I can't imagine Williams cares about that either.

 

It may be hard for more dedicated fans to accept, but you care far more about him and his work than he or most of the world does. You'd probably serve yourself better to focus on enjoying his music rather than lamenting over the lack of the public recognition.

[karelm 2,914]

I once asked Burlingame about why not write a book or documentary about JW.  It was clear there was interest, but his sobering response was he doubted it would be done during JW's life.  The impression I got was, it was just very low on Johnny's interest based on all the stuff he was working on and in his advanced age, that has become even more true - it would be hard to convince him to participate in something extensive where at 90 years old, his schedule is fully booked for years out.  His reluctance is hard to explain but became pretty evident when you see him at work or in rehearsals in work mode.  It's just all about the work and he's pretty unsentimental otherwise.  This usually leads to a follow up question, is he aware of the impact he's had on his legions of fans and again the general response is he's aware, humbled but then unsentimentally gets back to focused work.  Our hero is a bit of a bore.

 

I think this attitude starts making sense especially in that generation.  For example, Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 astronaut who was the pilot (he flew around the moon while Neil and Buzz landed but none of them would return to earth without a successful rendezvous and piloting of Collins).  Collins died only recently but for decades would talk to engineering students and universities with one stipulation.  No questions about the moon trip.  That would make absolutely no sense to most people who are in awe of what those men did and how it was done.  But in his core, Collins was (and most of the other astronauts with the possible exception of John Glenn) were poor spokesmen but exceptional pilots.   For some strange reason, they felt everything about the moon had been said already and there was nothing new or interesting to say about it or it was up to philosophers and historians to explain its impact, not these men.  The kind of question Collins would enjoy were engineering problems that engineers would find interesting, but most others would find mundane for someone who had accomplished something of such significance.  I think JW is a bit like this.  Talking about himself or the abstract questions like "where do your ideas come from" are quite uninteresting and he probably feels he's answered that thousands of times and really doesn't have a satisfying answer.  He just works hard is a very unsatisfying response.  Eventually the topic becomes uninteresting because he'd rather just get the work done and let someone else ponder the significance and cultural impact, how someone like him became the great composer of his time, etc.

[GerateWohl 4,370]

Watched recently the first half episode of Light and Magic and thought, such a format documentary about Williams career and work would be great. The licensing of the footage of all his music and footage might be a nightmare. 

But I guess, you could easily fill ten interesting one hour episodes with that stuff.

And as special for each episode the full length recording session excerpts (If existing).

 

[Tom 4,660]

27 minutes ago, karelm said:

I once asked Burlingame about why not write a book or documentary about JW.  It was clear there was interest, but his sobering response was he doubted it would be done during JW's life.  The impression I got was, it was just very low on Johnny's interest based on all the stuff he was working on and in his advanced age, that has become even more true - 

 

It is not that usual.  I would surmise that most people would not want a documentary about them.  Just like the vast majority of people never write autobiographies, even though anyone can and easily publish it on Amazon or such.  Most of us are self-centered and self-important instinctually (not a moral eval, just a psych one), but when self-reflection and such are involved (essential for a autobiography or such), we tend to not want that part of us to be front and center.  

[DangerMotif 1,038]

2 hours ago, karelm said:

He doesn't have a star on hollywood drive either.  But these guys do:

You have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for them

[GerateWohl 4,370]

But why would Williams need to be involved in the production at all?

[Richard Penna 3,694]

Either he needs to be interviewed extensively, or someone's got to research, find and licence a lot of archival footage.

 

I mean, aside from him not being very bothered, I'm guessing that it would be exceptionally expensive.

 

Also, to put this in a similar musical context, I'd instantly buy a BD of a concert of one of my favourite non-soundtrack artists but I wouldn't buy some fluff 'character portrait' of the band/artist as people. They probably care far more about their work as musicians than they do about telling people about themselves in yet another interview.

[GerateWohl 4,370]

If that happens, I would anyway rather expect a documentary about his work and not so much about his private life.

I would be more interested in how he got along with the one or the other director than how it was for him to raise his three children. His professional life is interesting enough, I would say. 

[MaxMovieMan 271]

I don’t know how there isn’t considering the level he’s engrained in our pop culture. So many famous scores and projects.

Perhaps I’ll make one.

[Steve 593]

My hope is that someone will make one when the maestro is still alive. We need more in-depth interviews with the man himself, not the usual journalistic mainstream we heard thousand times. Especially the early years 1955-1965 need a bit more coverage, since there is very little information about this era. 

As discussed before, maybe Spielberg could make an interesting documentary with all the videos he shot during recording sessions. I'm sure there are tons of interesting videos in his archives.

[herunen 8]

So agree with all that was said here. One more question for me is why JW didn't receive an honorary oscar for all his work?

[Tallguy 3,395]

43 minutes ago, herunen said:

So agree with all that was said here. One more question for me is why JW didn't receive an honorary oscar for all his work?

 

Because he has four real ones?

 

OTOH I just looked up Laurence Olivier and won a slew of them AND picked up a couple of honoraries.

[GerateWohl 4,370]

5 hours ago, Steve said:

My hope is that someone will make one when the maestro is still alive.

I don't worry about him. I am sure He is immortal. I hope someone will make one while I am still alive.