Did Jerry Goldsmith really call John Williams “such a snob”?

[JTN 2,033]

Someone on the FSM board mentioned that Goldsmith called Williams that. The FSM comment was regarding the Variety article where Williams says that Goldsmith was an unhappy person.

 

Here is Williams’ quote: 

“Alex North, David Raksin, Jerry Goldsmith and others — brilliant, beautiful talents. All unhappy.” Most had barely suppressed ambitions to write concert music or symphonies instead of scoring movies. They believed that they were, in a sense, slumming it and laboring for directors who they described as “imperious and obstructive.” 

[Gurkensalat 340]

Somehow I fail to connect the thread title with the first post. Perhaps somebody can spell it out for me?

[JTN 2,033]

13 minutes ago, Gurkensalat said:

Somehow I fail to connect the thread title with the first post. Perhaps somebody can spell it out for me?

“Someone on the FSM board mentioned this regarding the Variety article where Williams says that Goldsmith was an unhappy person.”

 

Is this enough or shall I spell it out for you?

[Jurassic Shark 12,080]

Please quote the whole FSM post or exchange.

[JTN 2,033]

2 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Please quote the whole FSM post or exchange.

It was by Hurdy Gurdy:

“He's probably just getting Goldsmith back for always calling him 'such a snob' “
 

[Jurassic Shark 12,080]

When did JG  say this? In a private conversation?

[JTN 2,033]

I don’t know, that’s why I created this thread, to find out if it’s indeed true. 
 

However, this is an excerpt from the unpublished book of Carrie Goldsmith, daughter of Jerry. She was reminiscing about his Dad with composer, conductor, arranger, orchestrator Alexander “Sandy” Courage and here’s what he said about John Williams.

“Here’s a great picture of Dad and John Williams,” I said, still looking through the photo album.  “They look like they’re deep in some kind of conversation. I remember when John and his family used to come to our house.  Mom told me that John was there when Dad turned thirty, and everybody ate pizza out of boxes on our front driveway where we lived in the Valley.”

“Sometimes people drift apart,” Sandy said thoughtfully.  “John has become the American Composer.  That’s the only way I can put it.  He has gone farther than anyone else in the business has ever gone.  I can’t imagine anyone else going as far.”

“But, why John?” I asked.

“First of all,” Sandy answered, “John was born at the right time, with the right kind of name.  That’s important in this situation.  When Arthur Fiedler retired, they started looking around for a new conductor for the Pops.  Honest to God, a lot of people were auditioning for it.  But when John Williams did his audition, he used music from The Rievers, total Americana, and his name was, ‘John, Williams.’  Very New England.   John looked right, he still had some hair, and he is a very clever man.  That whole thing from Jaws, that’s from Prokofiev.

 

We left the dimness of the restaurant into the brightness of an afternoon perfumed by the scent of the nearby sea.  Sandy told me to give his regards to Lois, who he knew from a time they were all together in London.  

“She was married to Richard Carruth, a wonderful music editor.  Herbie Spencer and I were there working for John Williams on Fiddler.”

“I think we were in London at the same time,” I said.

Sandy laughed.  “I wrote a lot of music for Fiddler… John was enjoying London a little too much, like we all were; London is a marvelous city.”

 

Here’s another excerpt where Jerry Goldsmith mentions John Williams:

“At 16, Dad started studying composition with another European refugee, well-known Italian composer, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.  Tedesco was best known for his lyrical compositions for guitar; he wrote for Segovia.  Dad said Tedesco became, “the teacher du jour in Hollywood.”

Andre Previn and John Williams studied with Tedesco, and at the time, many successful, popular arrangers were moving from big bands to writing music for film and needed help.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Dad said, “arranging is quite the skill, something I could never do, but these guys had no clue about composition; they went to Tedesco for help.“

 

You can read the entire section on this link: http://www.jerrygoldsmithonline.com/spotlight_biography_preview.htm

[Richard Penna 3,694]

Reminds me of the reports of Goldsmith remarking about his negative experience on The Mummy during a London concert, for which there aren't any solid contemporary reports of exactly what he may have said. A very stark contrast with something like the Schweiger/Horner interview which has some very candid material and obviously no issues with attributing the remarks. In general we probably need more verifiable sources than some random FSMer.

[JTN 2,033]

I was wondering if anyone here might know if this is indeed true. I know someone who probably knows but still thinking about asking him.

[pete 907]

I have no idea, except that it sounds like BS 

[Thor 7,515]

I vaguely remember this from the early messageboard days. As far as I recall, it was just a friendly ribbing-type comment. I think Goldsmith bore some jealousy to the more successful Williams (I remember he talked in an interview once about his assignments not being up to task compared to Williams, or something to that effect), but they were lifelong friends - from youngsters (when they were both being tutored by Mario Tedelnuovo-Tedesco) to old age. So no animosity or anything, as much as fans often like to pit the two against each other.

 

[Jurassic Shark 12,080]

Well, JW is superior.

[Thor 7,515]

That goes without saying.

[Richard Penna 3,694]

1 hour ago, Thor said:

So no animosity or anything, as much as fans often like to pit the two against each other.

 

I reckon fans do this far more than the composers consider themselves competing. Sure, there will be projects or positions where a composer is frustrated that they didn't land the job, or the opposite, where they decide they don't like the look of a film and decide not to do it, but no fan community will never know the entire story of these circumstances. After all, the good old 'schedule conflict' is code for pretty much any other, more private reason.

[JTN 2,033]

[karelm 2,914]

It's common knowledge that Goldsmith was a chromogen not unlike Bernard Herrmann.  Marco Beltrami said that Goldsmith had a chip on his shoulder that he never found his Spielberg or Lucas which I thought was a dig at JW.  This sort of stuff isn't really that big a deal because it's so common.  We tend to compare ourselves to our peers rather than to ourselves and at the top levels like these two were, it can be fiercely competitive but doesn't mean that much.  It's sort of just an emotional response but if given a moment to think more clearly on it, I think Goldsmith would refine his criticism to more of a backhanded compliment.  When JG died, his daughter published online about 50 pages of a bio she was writing about her dad.  I think the book was either never completed or the project fell through, but I read it and she quoted JG commenting on many of his contemporaries.  Again, it wasn't personal, just chromogeny comments when comparing himself to others feeling he didn't get an award someone else did for something he felt was inferior, type of thing.  So what.  Saying it doesn't make it true and isn't insightful to what he even really means.

[Edmilson 7,466]

5 hours ago, JTN said:

“First of all,” Sandy answered, “John was born at the right time, with the right kind of name.  That’s important in this situation.  When Arthur Fiedler retired, they started looking around for a new conductor for the Pops.  Honest to God, a lot of people were auditioning for it.  But when John Williams did his audition, he used music from The Rievers, total Americana, and his name was, ‘John, Williams.’  Very New England.   John looked right, he still had some hair, and he is a very clever man. 

So what he's saying is if John Williams was in fact named Kevin Nagle, he wouldn't have had as much success? 

 

Anyway, it's a nice story about JW and his family going to Goldsmith's house to hang up. Were their children about the same age? Did they play together while the adults discussed music and movies over the diner?

[Tom 4,665]

5 hours ago, JTN said:

First of all,” Sandy answered, “John was born at the right time, with the right kind of name.  That’s important in this situation.  When Arthur Fiedler retired, they started looking around for a new conductor for the Pops.  Honest to God, a lot of people were auditioning for it.  But when John Williams did his audition, he used music from The Rievers, total Americana, and his name was, ‘John, Williams.’  Very New England.   John looked right, he still had some hair, and he is a very clever man.  That whole thing from Jaws, that’s from Prokofiev.

I think the fact that he was already a household name played a huge role.  These comments make BPO seem borderline racist.  Seiji had been the conductor of the BSO for 7 years at this point for heaven's sake.  I don't think his literal name had anything to do with it.  

[Richard Penna 3,694]

18 minutes ago, karelm said:

It's common knowledge that Goldsmith was a chromogen not unlike Bernard Herrmann.  Marco Beltrami said that Goldsmith had a chip on his shoulder that he never found his Spielberg or Lucas which I thought was a dig at JW.

 

Yes, this feels extremely relevant not only from a collaboration perspetive (i.e. with SS's workflow JW had no shortage of scoring work) but specifically in this collaboration both SS and Lucas wanted exactly what Williams offered - traditional, slightly old fashioned, well-treated in the film (... mostly) so not only is Williams thriving creatively, but enjoys working with them.

 

Most composers don't get that sort of consistency. Elfman comes closest I guess.

[Mr. Hooper 1,793]

14 minutes ago, Tom said:

I think the fact that he was already a household name played a huge role.  These comments make BPO seem borderline racist.  Seiji had been the conductor of the BSO for 7 years at this point for heaven's sake.  I don't think his literal name had anything to do with it.  

I just take it as one man's (Courage's) opinion. And yeah, it was Williams' rock star status that got him the job more than anything.

 

As for Williams vs. Goldsmith, for sure there was some professional envy, or jealousy, but I doubt Jerry harboured any actual resentment towards John.

[Muad'Dib 1,802]

27 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

 

Yes, this feels extremely relevant not only from a collaboration perspetive (i.e. with SS's workflow JW had no shortage of scoring work) but specifically in this collaboration both SS and Lucas wanted exactly what Williams offered - traditional, slightly old fashioned, well-treated in the film (... mostly) so not only is Williams thriving creatively, but enjoys working with them.

 

Most composers don't get that sort of consistency. Elfman comes closest I guess.

 

To be fair, Spielberg liked to put composers he liked in projects he produced, so it maybe wasn't a director-composer collaboration, but Spielberg championed Goldsmith for many projects, as well as Horner. Michael Kamen also comes to mind.

[Tom Guernsey 2,286]

5 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

Reminds me of the reports of Goldsmith remarking about his negative experience on The Mummy during a London concert, for which there aren't any solid contemporary reports of exactly what he may have said. A very stark contrast with something like the Schweiger/Horner interview which has some very candid material and obviously no issues with attributing the remarks. In general we probably need more verifiable sources than some random FSMer.

He definitely did say some negative things in the context of The Mummy at that concert - I was there. While I couldn't relate exactly what he said, I think it was more a comment at a general dislike of working on big, cheesy/popcorn movies. It wasn't that his experience on The Mummy was bad per se, but just a more general frustration and that film happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Appropriately enough...

[Richard Penna 3,694]

My recollection (from reports here) is along those lines; that he thought it was a silly movie. However, as you say it may not be directly the movie itself, but also what he went through - the suggestions that his schedule only really allowed him to score part of the movie and Sommers ended up forcing him to write the whole score anyway. That's generally going put him in a bad mood, particularly if he thought the movie was stupid.

 

I usually come to this score first as an example of movies where a composer wrote a properly good score for a movie they thought of negatively some degree.

[JTN 2,033]

Another excerpt from Carrie Goldsmith‘s biography of his father “Deconstructing Dad: The Unfinished Life and Times of Jerry Goldsmith”:

“Did your parents always call you ‘Jerrald’?” I asked.

“Always.  But my father did call me ‘Jerry’ a couple times towards the end of his life; it sounded too weird.”

To his friends in school and later at work, he was always “Jerry.”  However, when he and my mother took his parents with them to the premiere of his first movie, 1956’s Black Patch, his mother was livid about the “Jerry” Goldsmith credit she saw on the screen.     

She complained so much about him using a shortened version of his name, that Dad tried to appease her by using “Jerrald” for his Dr. Kildarecredit.

“But people would come up to me and ask, ‘Are you really Jerrald?’” Dad said.  “And that was it.  That put an end to it.”

Dad paused and grinned caustically:  “Maybe I should have done the John Williams thing and stuck to changing my name from ‘Jerry’ to ‘Jerrald.’  He changed his name from ‘Johnny’ to ‘John’.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“And don’t forget your old boyfriend; he went from ‘Jamie’ to ‘James’, and look what that did for his career.”

  Dad was talking about composer James Horner, who I’d known in high school through a friend of mine he was dating…Dad loved to exaggerate my one outing with Jamie Horner into boyfriend proportions…“

[Jurassic Shark 12,080]

6 hours ago, JTN said:

wrote a lot of music for Fiddler… John was enjoying London a little too much, like we all were; London is a marvelous city.

 

Oh Johnny...

[Tom Guernsey 2,286]

18 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

My recollection (from reports here) is along those lines; that he thought it was a silly movie. However, as you say it may not be directly the movie itself, but also what he went through - the suggestions that his schedule only really allowed him to score part of the movie and Sommers ended up forcing him to write the whole score anyway. That's generally going put him in a bad mood, particularly if he thought the movie was stupid.

 

I usually come to this score first as an example of movies where a composer wrote a properly good score for a movie they thought of negatively some degree.

Yeah, that's about it, it was the point when he realised he was working his arse off on films demanding lots of music that he thought were a bit silly and he should have been getting better gigs (which he did earlier in his career). To be fair, he was right, he really did deserve his own Spielberg or Lucas... Dante and Schaffner were probably his longest associations and gave him quite different challenges; working with Dante was almost certainly a lot of fun but was never going to go high brow and Schaffner provided kudos but not enough mainstream appeal. Plus he died in the late 1980s and his peak was the 1970s anyway. You could argue that Dante's peak was the 1980s too.

 

But you're right, he wrote a terrific score for the Mummy and it's not like it's much less silly than Indiana Jones and it's certainly a hundred times better than King Solomon's Mines (and the Mummy is a better score too).

[Jurassic Shark 12,080]

24 minutes ago, Tom Guernsey said:

it's not like it's much less silly than Indiana Jones

 

It's much more silly!

[Yavar Moradi 2,599]

10 hours ago, JTN said:

Someone on the FSM board mentioned that Goldsmith called Williams that. The FSM comment was regarding the Variety article where Williams says that Goldsmith was an unhappy person.

 

Here is Williams’ quote: 

“Alex North, David Raksin, Jerry Goldsmith and others — brilliant, beautiful talents. All unhappy.” Most had barely suppressed ambitions to write concert music or symphonies instead of scoring movies. They believed that they were, in a sense, slumming it and laboring for directors who they described as “imperious and obstructive.” 

 

That's not Williams's quote. His quote went through "All unhappy". The rest of the stuff you added was the article's author putting his own spin on it which I think is REALLY a stretch (there is ZERO evidence to suggest Goldsmith was anything other than happy composing film music; his unhappiness came from elsewhere), a disappointing part of an otherwise good piece.

 

Yavar

[Tom Guernsey 2,286]

3 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

It's much more silly!

Haha, yeah that's what I meant... d'oh. Well actually I meant it wasn't a lot more silly... but silly is in the eye of the beholder I guess.

[Thor 7,515]

48 minutes ago, Tom Guernsey said:

 Plus he died in the late 1980s and his peak was the 1970s anyway. You could argue that Dante's peak was the 1980s too.

 

"Dante's peak".....was that an unintential pun?

 

2 hours ago, Edmilson said:

So what he's saying is if John Williams was in fact named Kevin Nagle, he wouldn't have had as much success? 

 

Anyway, it's a nice story about JW and his family going to Goldsmith's house to hang up. Were their children about the same age? Did they play together while the adults discussed music and movies over the diner?

 

No idea. Joel was born on the same day as me, actually, only 20 years earlier to the day (1957). Carrie was born in 1955. So about the same age as Williams' kids (1956, 58 and 60). No idea if they ever hung out together via their parents meeting.

 

Williams' kids DID hang out with Marty Paich's kids, though, which was no doubt instrumental in Joseph getting the Toto gig many years later.

 

Off-topic, sorry.

[JTN 2,033]

23 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

Yavar

Williams did say that Goldsmith and others were “unhappy”. The author should’ve been more specific to avoid confusion. 

[Edmilson 7,466]

15 minutes ago, Thor said:

No idea. Joel was born on the same day as me, actually, only 20 years earlier to the day (1957). Carrie was born in 1955. So about the same age as Williams' kids (1956, 58 and 60). No idea if they ever hung out together via their parents meeting.

 

I think it's a reasonable conclusion. All their children were about the same age and if Williams and his wife went to the Goldsmith household, it's not far fetched to think that they brought their kids with them and they played with JG's children.

 

That said, Carrie said the Williams couple were there when Jerry turned 30, which happened on February 10, 1959 (2 days after JW's 27th birthday). At that time, Joel was a one-year old baby and Carrie was three or four. Williams' oldest kid was two or three and the other was still a baby less than a year old. So maybe they were too young to remember playing with each other?

 

Of course, if the visits of the Williams family to the Goldsmith house continued through the sixties, then I think it's fair to assume the kids played together since they were mostly the same age. But we don't know when they started drifting apart... I guess it was in the mid to late 60s, when Williams' career really took off?

[Yavar Moradi 2,599]

Yeah but instead they felt free to speculate that all of those composers were unhappy BECAUSE they weren’t composing concert music, which is frankly ridiculous. In general (setting aside cases like The Mummy or Alien, lol) Jerry Goldsmith was very happy scoring films. In fact, I’ll offer my own speculation: part of the reason he scored so much stuff was because he enjoyed the process and it distracted him from other stuff he was more unhappy about. I 100% dispute that Jerry Goldsmith would have been happier if he’d primarily written for the concert hall rather than film. That’s absolutely absurd and unfounded.

 

If you read Linda Danly’s book on Jerry’s talented predecessor Hugo Friedhofer (mostly a transcribed lengthy interview with him), he makes it clear that he tried his hand at writing some concert pieces and never really got into it because he far preferred writing music to picture. I’ll bet this isn’t uncommon amongst film composers.

 

Yavar

[Edmilson 7,466]

4 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

In fact, I’ll offer my own speculation: part of the reason he scored so much stuff was because he enjoyed the process and it distracted him from other stuff he was more unhappy about.

 

37 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

there is ZERO evidence to suggest Goldsmith was anything other than happy composing film music; his unhappiness came from elsewhere

So what was the source of his unhappiness? Something on his personal life, perhaps? 

[Yavar Moradi 2,599]

2 hours ago, Mr. Hooper said:

As for Williams vs. Goldsmith, for sure there was some professional envy, or jealousy, but I doubt Jerry harboured any actual resentment towards John.

 

I think the only bit of professional envy Goldsmith ever expressed regarding Williams was that he wished he could have been the one to score Schindler's List.

 

17 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

Of course, if the visits of the Williams family to the Goldsmith house continued through the sixties, then I think it's fair to assume the kids played together since they were mostly the same age. But we don't know when they started drifting apart... I guess it was in the mid to late 60s, when Williams' career really took off?

 

In this video panel that @TownerFan and I co-produced, IIRC Bruce Botnick makes it clear that Goldsmith and Williams were still active friends in the 80s (maybe even the 90s)? Certainly that photo above of the two of them, which was selected for the image to promote our video, was taken in the 90s:

 

I've never heard of their relationship souring, though people certainly do drift apart when they get super busy, and it's harder to prioritize staying in touch. Williams and Goldsmith were both in super high demand from the 80s forward (and they also both started conducting lots of live concerts of their music during that decade, besides).

 

3 hours ago, JTN said:

 

This picture with two (three) great film music titans is wonderful... but I'll do you one better, courtesy the Film Music Society (this is pre-ponytail so a bit older… back in June 1986):

 

11 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

So what was the source of his unhappiness? Something on his personal life, perhaps? 

 

I assume so, but I don't really like to speculate on that too much as he seems to have been a pretty private person who didn't speak about his personal life much. We know that he wrote his somewhat spiky and angry-sounding Music for Orchestra concert piece around the time he got divorced from his first wife (I think that was either in the late 60s or early 70s; I forget exactly when it was written). And it seems pretty public knowledge now that Goldsmith was something of an alcoholic at least into the 80s. By the time the 90s rolled around it seems he had largely broken that vice... I've even seen some people make comments that it hurt his music and it lost its edge as a result of him getting off the bottle. Alcoholism is an actual disease and it usually has a significant negative impact on people's lives. I realize some people turn to alcohol *because* they are unhappy, but then becoming addicted to alcohol can *keep* them unhappy for a long time when they otherwise would have managed to be happy.

 

Anyways, that's all I'm going to say on this because I honestly don't know more and I would just be making it up. Even if I did know more, I wouldn't really think I have a right to share stuff about Goldsmith's personal life that wasn't public knowledge already.

 

Yavar

[Tallguy 3,401]

1 hour ago, Yavar Moradi said:

 

 

 

 

Goldsmith and Williams (obvs.), Mancini in the upper left, is that Rosenman lower left? Who is in the lower right?

[Edmilson 7,466]

2 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

Who is in the lower right?

Looks like an older Alexandre Desplat 

 

Perhaps he's a time traveler?

[Thor 7,515]

Alex North.

[Jurassic Shark 12,080]

And the other one's his cousin, Alex South.

[Tallguy 3,401]

Johnny is the baby.

[Yavar Moradi 2,599]

39 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

Goldsmith and Williams (obvs.), Mancini in the upper left, is that Rosenman lower left? Who is in the lower right?

Here’s the accompanying text from Facebook when The Film Music Society shared the image this past December:

“🎥🎶  Today would have been beloved composer ALEX NORTH’s 113th birthday. North was a pioneer of incorporating jazz into film music with some of the finest scores ever written. Among his many distinquished credits are A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, SPARTACUS, VIVA ZAPATA! THE RAINMAKER, CLEOPATRA, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, and UNCHAINED – the theme (“Unchained Melody”) for which is recognized as one of the most romantic ballads of all time. He was nominated for 15 Oscars and was the first composer to receive an Honorary Academy Award in 1986.

🎥🎶  A moment in film music history... On June 10, 1986, Alex North was celebrated by The Film Music Society with its distinguished Career Achievement Award. Presenters included John Green and David Raksin. Pictured here from that evening are (standing, L to R) Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams; (seated, L to R) Leonard Rosenman and Alex North.”

Yavar

[Bellosh 3,419]

"i know, but they're all snobs."

[Bespin 8,484]

I'm snob.

 

I'm even snobbier than I was earlier.

 

[Chewy 2,391]

12 hours ago, JTN said:

Is this enough or shall I spell it out for you?

 

Always a pleasure to read your posts...

[Bespin 8,484]

A fight, a fight!

[Bellosh 3,419]

Goldsmith called Williams a snob.

 

But he meant John Nagle.

 

So John Nagle got called a snob by Goldsmith.

 

When Nagle was asked for his comment on the matter, he simply said "what?"

[Naïve Old Fart 9,549]

@Richard Penna, and @Tom Guernsey, which Jerry concert was that? Was it the 70th birthday, at Barbican?

 

 

As for Jerry not having a Spielberg, or a Lucas, Jerry had Joe Dante, Franklin J. Schaffner, and Robert Wise. That's not too shabby, is it?

Frankly (and not to get blasphemous, here), I'd rather have one STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, or one PLANET OF THE APES, than a lot to Spielberg or Lucas collaborations.

[Marian Schedenig 8,206]

20 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Frankly (and not to get blasphemous, here), I'd rather have one STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, or one PLANET OF THE APES, than a lot to Spielberg or Lucas collaborations.

 

I think it's not so much about having one or two critically acclaimed scores for critically acclaimed films (or popular scores or popular films). Goldsmith was a workaholic, and I'm sure Williams's privilege of having ongoing collaborations that provided him with the opportunity to consistently write artistically meaningful music for films that were mostly good enough to allow the viewers to (consciously or unconsciously) be influenced by the score without being embarrassed by the films itself, and that for decades, was something that he would have liked for himself as well. And maybe the critical acclaim that came with it, too (even if at that time it still came mostly from their own industry).

[Tom Guernsey 2,286]

51 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

@Richard Penna, and @Tom Guernsey, which Jerry concert was that? Was it the 70th birthday, at Barbican?

 

Honestly I don't know, although in my head it was at the Royal Albert Hall but that could just be because I've seen lots of film music concerts there.

 

52 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

As for Jerry not having a Spielberg, or a Lucas, Jerry had Joe Dante, Franklin J. Schaffner, and Robert Wise. That's not too shabby, is it?

Frankly (and not to get blasphemous, here), I'd rather have one STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, or one PLANET OF THE APES, than a lot to Spielberg or Lucas collaborations.

 

26 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

I think it's not so much about having one or two critically acclaimed scores for critically acclaimed films (or popular scores or popular films). Goldsmith was a workaholic, and I'm sure Williams's privilege of having ongoing collaborations that provided him with the opportunity to consistently write artistically meaningful music for films that were mostly good enough to allow the viewers to (consciously or unconsciously) be influenced by the score without being embarrassed by the films itself, and that for decades, was something that he would have liked for himself as well. And maybe the critical acclaim that came with it, too (even if at that time it still came mostly from their own industry).

I agree that those three directors provided him with some fine ongoing collaborations, but none that quite hit the sweet spot of critical and commercial acclaim which JW has enjoyed. Also, JW's success probably got him offered better quality non-Spielberg/Lucas projects than Jerry, at least once you get to the 80s and 90s. I would concede that Jerry probably could have been a bit more discerning as to which projects he agreed to or could have done with a better agent!

 

Of any other composers, I expect he was more pissed off at James Horner's success than JW given that the average quality of Horner's assignments were probably higher than Jerry's once he hit his post-Star Trek 2 stride. Jerry would almost certainly have felt that JW earned his success with a couple of decades of TV and the various comedies, disaster movies etc. that he did before hitting the big time, even if I'm sure Jerry would have liked some of that for himself!

[Marian Schedenig 8,206]

55 minutes ago, Tom Guernsey said:

Honestly I don't know, although in my head it was at the Royal Albert Hall but that could just be because I've seen lots of film music concerts there.

 

Must have been before 2001 in any case, because I remember reading about it before having seen him live myself.