Hey guys, welcome to the Cold Open. Anything you'd like to say? No, Will, you can't start a Cold Open with a Yon. Sorry dude. Sean, anything to fire up the Cold Open with? You want a dad joke? Yeah, open up the book. Okay, sorry listener, just give us one second, welcome to our Cold Open and... Did you hear about the cheese that's been working out? I didn't. What happened? The dude is shredded. Welcome to SmartLess. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart.
Hello my name is Jason. Hi Jason. Hi Sean. I will. I'd love to pod with you guys. You guys up for potting. Sure. Let's get this potting starting. Let's get this potting starting. That's a good one. I never heard that. Thank you guys. Let's get this potting started. Anything worth talking about? I looked up right before this. I was looking up on how to survive a nuclear war. All right, seven Jason. How'd a good one? Uh huh. We got to mark it down.
It's a good one. I know. Will anything exciting in your life today? No. This morning? Still just a recovery. You want to know how to survive a nuclear war? You still trying to kick your virus. Yeah. Sean, what were you saying? You want to know how to survive a nuclear war? Our nuclear bomb. Okay. Run? So you've got to cover your eyes and get down and then you got to find
a basement or something. Okay, man. And we'll be right back. Because I read because I read a headline this morning when I got up like in North Korea has like is ready to, you know, they're always saying whatever. You know, we're doing a happy feel good. Yeah. Sorry. Cast here. I like this to say really quick. Jason. I miss you. Okay. You're sorry. Do you want to make a statement? I do. I would just like to say if I can get in here. Wait. Will he's got a really we got a really fast
good joke for Jason today? Well, about the fact that that dogs can't do MRIs, but cats can. Okay. So here we go. Right. Did you guys get on early? We both watched the same Tick-Tack video. I don't have the tick-tock. Anyway, Sean's got a few. Go ahead, Sean. He rolled out. No, I got. He by the way, he went back and he wrote them down. Go ahead, Sean. I know. You want to hear another one? Milk is the fastest liquid on earth. It's past your eyes before we can even see it.
Not bad. Okay. That's nothing else. You want to help the people driving to finish off their car accident? No, because they're going to get super excited about our guests today. And now listen, I love when we get a true living legend on this podcast. My guests today served our country in the Air Force, became a renowned jazz musician, and then eventually moved to Hollywood to work on some of the biggest films in motion picture history. I'm sure you're going to guess who it is right away.
He is the single most Academy Award-nominated living person. And after Walt Disney, he's the second most nominated person of all time. Anyone in the world from All Walks of Life could hum his work, guides us the illustrious and comparable. One of my heroes, James Williams. Got it. Oh, yes. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Day, sir. This is so cool. Unbelievable. Hi, John. Hello, Gentlemen. How are you today? Pictures of all three of you. Yeah. And you look healthy to me like
three NFL players on their day off. Yeah. That's stretching it. So Sean, how was it possible you could play Oscar Levant? Well, yeah, I don't know. It shocked us too. Because I don't look anything like him, I know. No, I know. But I worked on all the things an actor should work on. Did you voice the walk this time? Research a lot of things. I did. I read all his books. I went to the archives at the Paley Center, where they have all the old footage.
And I just spent a couple days there looking at stuff. And then I downloaded some stuff. I'm YouTube. You know, you just go nuts when you try to do something like that. Did you have to go to the piano and sort of... This is supposed to be about you, John Williams. What is it? John, did you get a chance to see Sean do his play on Broadway? No. No, no. Oh, he was just incredible. I mean, you would have been very impressed with his piano playing ability.
You have somebody who would know what to look for at this guy's classically trained. And he did the entire Rhapsody and Blue solo on stage on a grand piano. No, no. Sean, who did the first performance of the piano concerto of Gershwin? Was it Oscar? No, it was Gershwin, but Oscar recorded the most famous recording. Did he? Okay. Yeah. So, and that's what Oscar was known for. And he tried to... It's a very salary Mozart kind of relationship where they... I love hate where Oscar tried...
You know, revered Gershwin, and but could never be quite like that. The books are wonderful. Yeah. His wit and hope. I met him once. And then the office... Oh, you did? Yes. And the office of Louis B. Mayer. Oh, wow. A company Howard Keel and a woman's name, I can't remember. And they were auditioning Howard and the girl for Louis B. Mayer. And he had people from the music department, including Oscar. That's crazy. At this audition. And it was in Mayer's office where there was a piano.
And I just came in, you know, sheepersleeth in the back door to companies, people who didn't leave before the discussion started. Really? I've always adored Oscar O'Van. Yeah, he's fantastic. He's great. He's great. He's a student of Schoenberg, because you know that? Wow. You were on Oscar. Oh, yeah, it was a very sweet. Well, Oscar was. You said you were? No, no, no, no. Well, Oscar was. Yes, I knew that. But how can I help you guys? What on earth can I possibly give?
I've already done plenty by doing this. We have to do this. Yeah, John, you just, you just tipped the fact that you said that you were in Louis B. Mayer's office, which is such a mind-blowing. Yeah. This is, by the way, I'm Will, it's such a pleasure to meet you. For Tracy, he was a big studio head, like Mogul. Filming executive. Yeah. What were those days? What were the people, these old sort of iconic studio heads, like guys like Louis B. Mayer?
What was your experience with gentlemen like that back in the day? Well, of course, I really didn't have contact or access to them. I did have a relationship with Lou Wasserman, actually, but he was a younger generation than the Warner Brothers. Jack Warner, I used to go to the previews of the Warner Brothers films that I did. And Jack Warner always went to those. And I met him three or four times at those previews. And he knew I had something to do with music. I never knew my name.
So, referred to me as Beethoven. He had to end up the preview. He would say Beethoven, we need a little more music in real five. And I'd just say, yes, sir, we'll do that. And, but the other mocus of a favor were a generation beyond me. But what I would say about them, I think, is they were all ideologues in a way. Early motion picture entrepreneurs, probably a little, I say ideologues are probably a little bit naive in their approach to the world.
Yeah. Were they as showmeny and as gregarious as their portrayed in the movies? Is these guys smoking big cigars and screaming out orders and stuff like that? I think businessmen, more than anything. From Eastern Europe, from Brooklyn, across the country to Hollywood. And really creating from the ground up, the business that has been so wonderful all through the last century. Now, of course, threatened by all kinds of forces, technology of all kinds.
And worldwide production of film that not eclipses Hollywood, but it puts it in a different kind of a frame of lighting and creativity. What would John, what would you say? That's an interesting point you made. What would you say in your opinion, is the greatest threat to this wonderful film industry that has been around for so long now? What in your view right now is its most imminent threat to what we've got?
Well, probably the access and the easy availability to all manner of things on film and whatever, that is available at home. So the great, just to be flip about it, the great impediments might be said to be traffic jams and parking lots. I think going to movies has become more difficult, I think, for people on the alternatives more easy to access. But we lose something.
I think there's the old movie theaters where a sort of temples where people would gather, there was a communal connection once a week and go to the movies twice a week, in this special atmosphere, that had a spiritual vibe to it and people were collecting theirs, almost like going to church in a way, the pricinium, the beautiful theater and so on. And it was a magic in all of that. I think that attracted people.
And we don't have that anymore, even in the newly constructed theaters, have far less the utilitarian, of course, but far less imagination in the way this stage is constructed and so on. Right. If I think I think it turned, I don't know if it's all for subject, but we think of the music of Bach three or four hundred years ago, there were no concert halls. If you wanted to hear music, you had to go to church to hear an organ, to hear people sing. And that's where you received your music.
You wanted to hear Bach Contata, you heard it in church, you didn't, not in the concert hall. The concert hall is in a way constructed to ring the antiquarian bells, I guess you could say, of our collective memory that were gathered for something very, very special. We listened to Beethoven in this atmosphere. Right. Or we go and we watch Cari Grant and Audrey Hepburn in that atmosphere. Well, that's so interesting.
I think all of the social changes and pragmatic aspects of all of this has changed so much that I think that spiritual aspect of the experience of seeing films is largely gone, a complex series of reasons for that. But I think from a technological perspective, have you found that you've changed, wanted to change, resisted change, had to change the way in which you think about your scores in that when people are watching at home, for the most part, they're not in the best
sound environment possible. A lot of them are watching in stereo. Some have this sort of the surround button pressed on their television, but they're still, they're not getting the kind of experience audio wise that they get in a theater. And do you find that that affects the way you think about creating a balance of instruments and where they would live in the channels? I think the answer has to be no because what I'm working, I'm thinking of some kind of ideal
that I know is ever going to be there. It makes me want to say there are other differences. I think the technology and special effects that can be accomplished make it unnecessary to do a 10-minute one-take complicated dance number by Fred Astaire, where the actual performance is something that is breathtaking. We don't know that it's not edited, but we can feel that that aspect of physical exertion and mastery of one's body, same as the truth of singing.
The same can be said of orchestras, I think also, the difference between so much beautiful work, by the way, of sound design that's done in combination with orchestras. Now, a wonderful development. However, if we have a scene that's four minutes long and the orchestra is going to play that in the studio, we may make five takes of that four-minute scene and each one is different. One take is alive, is a performance that is above and beyond spiritually all the other four,
and you have to believe that the audience will respond to that. It's like live performances as you all know are different every night. Some night is full of magic and the next night it's flat. We say the audience isn't good. So I think technology has affected the performance aspect of film, making it very easy to sort of mark up something that is beyond most people's ability to do.
Yeah, that makes sense. Which brings me to a question I have about your process. I read somewhere that you don't read the scripts on purpose, and the first time that you're exposed to the film is the rough cut in the edit. When you're sitting there watching the movie, whether it be Star Wars, Jurassic Park, or Jaws, whatever it is, Indiana Jones, do you keep going? I know, it's just a moment of unbelievable. Are you crafting a melody in your head as you're
watching it? Then is that the melody that we actually end up hearing? Or how does that process work for you? Or is there temp in there? Yeah, there is. It's good if possible, not to even read a script or see anything until the thing has been edited when we can form first impressions that will lead us in our work more effectively than almost anything else. You read a book, you cast it, you develop the atmosphere and so on, and you can be very disappointed. You
see a director's impression of what that would be. Or if delighted and surprised also, it's not always possible. We have to discuss certain things with the director's maybe forwards, but finished. Your second question about maybe I can call it thematic inspiration, if you like. That is not something I just pick up immediately when I see the film.
In my case, it's working back to the panel, working a scene or two or three, manipulating them into something that seems inevitable like it's been there always. Yeah, that's the hardest part of it. I think of the work. The simplest thing is the hardest thing. Yeah, and as a true that when you did JAWS, E-F-E-F-E-F-E-F, that Spielberg thought you were
kidding, is that true? Is that true? Well, it is true. I wonder what to do about the shark, but he came in and I played boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, there was a D-R-Third note. All right, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right, right, right, right. And he looked at me and said, really? He said,
he's exactly what I thought maybe I had lost my mind. And I don't really remember the conversation, but it must have been something like, well, Stephen, I think when the cellos and basses and the orchestra would do it, it could be very ominous. And what is good about it is that it can be very slow, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right, can speed up as the shark is approaching or red herring is approaching.
All right, right. And the orchestra can join. It can be deafening if it needs to be. Yeah, the horns come in there and that's an alert. I don't know. Yeah, exactly. And we will be right back. We're brought to you in part by Zip Recruiter. Many of us have heard the famous quote by Abraham Lincoln that says, good things come to those who wait, but that's only part of the quote. The fault quote, I think is good things come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
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and then he's maybe a little reluctant or he thinks that you're kidding. Do you notice, or have you noticed over the years, because it's such a collaborative experience working on a family
when you're working with the director? Have you noticed that maybe they didn't start with, they didn't have such an appreciation of music in the same way that you do, and that they've learned, or have certain directors learned to become, that you've in fact educated them over the years, and that their sense of their sophistication when it comes to approaching music has gotten much
better. Sorry, there's a poorly worded question, but after working for years with Steven, have you noticed that his ability to appreciate what you're doing has gotten more collaborative? Yeah, or sophisticated. Yeah. It's tough, because there's so much variation in the training of these directors and the tastes that they develop or don't develop, and their educations are all at a different level and from different angles and so on. If you talk about a bar talk while
in concert or something, most of them will not know what that is. Right. Most film directors will have some familiarity with film music. They will know Bernad Harmon and they will know McLeis Rosia and so on and so forth, but they won't know Legetti or even less esoteric things than that. I don't know if you all remember Martin Ritt, a director who was a theater director in New York came out here like Kazan and did some wonderful
films, was very suspicious of music in his film. He'd become from Broadway where we didn't have background music or rarely had it and he wanted people to believe what they were seeing and what they were hearing was real. And so you have put a symphony orchestra behind his dialogue scene and they say, man, like Martin Ritt says, I can't believe that. I don't need to have that. I've created the scene where actors have done the job. You don't need to help them. And that's the opposite
of Stephen who can't seem to quite get enough music in his film. Good for me. There's such variation there, but I think what people truly recognize is that it's true what Bernard Harman said, there's no such thing as a silent film. We go back when the silence we had the sounds we had organ or we had an orchestra in the pit. We had somebody playing a violin something. It would animate and music seems an inseparable part of a film making and whether it's
contemporary electronic music or classical romantic music. Yeah, we recognize the need of it. And actors will be sometimes very unhappy when you play too much music for them. Yeah. Yeah. Was the tonal shift and filmmaking shift that you both went through on Schindler's list? Was it a comfortable transition for him into what was a much more paired down approach by design? I'm sure. And much more potentially, I don't know, sophisticated as the right word, but it was
definitely a departure from what you guys had been doing for so long. Was that exciting to you guys or a little scary for him maybe? You mean the resources and Schindler's more chamber music was a smaller. Yeah. Yeah. A lot less single instruments at times as opposed to a more full body or orchestral. Some of the scenes were it's like preling the loan. Right.
One of the most breathtaking and horrible things was just his violin. Whether it was a conscious decision to make it a more intimate chamber music kind of thing was something we must have made out of unconsciously or through dialogue. I'm guessing something like that. That would work. So we stayed with this up Berlin. You mentioned earlier the magic of a live performance and what a shame it is that the audience can't truly enjoy that because they can't
fully trust it because of the process of putting together a score. But one of the greatest cultural things I find in Los Angeles of which there aren't many I think everybody admits is at the Hollywood Bowl when they run a movie on the big screen. Yeah. And they pull all the music out and they have
the L.A. Phil do it and oftentimes you'll conduct that. But so for Tracy like all the music you hear and you know take take jobs for example if you pulled all the music out of it and you just watch the movie with all the dialogue and sound effects that's that's something but the music is an enormous character in any John Williams film. And so they just pull all that music out and then they play it live with the entire picture. Yeah. The entire symphony or the entire orchestra.
Do you like doing that? I mean for me it's it's magic because it is that live performance. You're seeing it done pristine match. Yeah. It feels like if you miss one there's energy too right? Yeah it's just it's just stunning. I love it. I like doing it. Yes it is fun. I also like not
doing it. I can play the score for for the audience in the theater or at the bowl without the film yeah without the distraction of the film and I can describe to the audience they're about to hear the kind of virtual acidity they go over here in action scenes and so on where the music is extremely difficult to play. Yeah. It's a virtual soul level which when you watch the film you you can't appreciate it. It's just right. Right. Yeah. That's right. I can take it
very happily both ways. Yeah. With film over without it. Yeah. Wait talk about things that are difficult to play. We might not have to cut this but I try to get the end credits music to ET and you can't find it. It's not published anywhere and so my husband Scotty scoured the internet. We finally got it. This is me playing the end which is one of my favorite pieces and it's so hard because you write very difficult music. It's it's it's insane and it's a little fast. I was
I think you wrote it slow. I think you wrote it slow. It is a little fast. Sean, but now Sean take the note. Okay. Take the note from John Williams. But now tell people now tell people the story of the last 15 minutes of ET because that's fast name. Just a moment ago you said Stephen really loves a lot of music in his movies. Yes. So what happened in the last 15 minutes of ET? Well, you remember the last 15 minutes had started with the bike chase. That's right. The police
chasing the kids. Right. Kids trying to get ET back to his spaceship and they accelerate to to escape velocity which I understand is 17,500 miles an hour and we buy that. You know, right. When the kids fly over the moon. Right. I've gotten I got that to chill from NASA by the way. Now fast you have to go on a bike to go over the moon. 17,500 miles. That's a stereotype. Oh, and they land and they the spaceship lands and ET and his little
friends, earthling children say goodbye to ET is very sentimental. At the end of the sequence, the ship will go up and does a whirling left turn to the flourishes of trumpets at that moment and so on. So in that 10 minutes, there's probably in every minute of the 10, there are probably 10 sink points. Okay. Maybe more. Somebody's foot bicycle going up something falling, whatever. Almost like a cartoon, but you don't you don't want to hear it that way, but you want to support at least in the
style of this thing, right. This film. And so on the day of recording, I had the orchestra and we rehearsed a piece and made a few takes and I accomplished the first two minutes, which we could have done separately. And I had problems in four thinking. Not the orchestra wanted to, wanted to bloom out or blossom out a little bit more than the film would allow me to do. Right. Or another some concentrated action film that's sped up and sped up and arrived here. So a little quicker
than I wanted to get the orchestra to it. And I couldn't, I couldn't really couldn't get the sink the way it should be. And I finally said to Steven, this is, I can't seem to be able to get this, right. He said, we'll turn the film off. We know where the sink points are. The music is constructed for for that end. And you record the music where all the rubati, you know, the phrasing and so on, is done for musical satisfaction. The revival, the breathing of the whole thing.
And he offered to recut the film. And he said, I will just recut the film to the track. So you're right. Which is what he did. And I really believe that there's a kind of a, this is not a, I'm, I'm placing himself. There's something operatic about that last 10 minutes. Yeah. That, that I think without that, give and take breathing of the whole orchestra, the way they wanted to, in the way the, the boasts in this year, but not here. This kind of, yeah, kinetic, if you like,
is more satisfactory. It seems to be more satisfactory than a take that is slavishly in sink. Right. Yes. Yeah. I love that that demanded it. That that music demanded that the film be cut to it. I mean, it shows the power of the music. Is there ever been a film or a project that you've, you've come, you've come into and you've thought, yeah, this is going to be great. And then you realize that you were intimidated by it or you thought, you just gave an example of a difficult,
a difficult situation you were in. But was there ever something that you thought, like, I don't know if I, I don't know if I have, I don't know if I can do this, particularly the right. If I can match the power of what's on the screen with the, with the right music. Have you ever been intimidated in that way? He's like, no, look at me. Yes. Every film. Oh, really? Really? Is it doing that work? Yeah. I could say it glimply. But to reduce it a little bit, I would say the
close encounters was I had that, that kind of feeling about it. Right. I'm sure. Somehow, something about that grammar, I think it was 1977. And I had done first Star Wars and Close Encounters the same year. And it was, talk about a head turn thing. You know, I really struggled to get out of Star Wars and into Close Encounters. Talk about spiritual aspects of, I mean, the whole end of that film took us to a place. Yeah. A high place. And, and the orchestra had to,
it almost has a religious quality to it. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And, and, uh, where Star Wars is all fun and fanfare is an action and comedy and all of us, that. But this was a more serious thought about our circumstance in, in the universe. Where we are and where we'll maybe be going. It deeply affected me as a young boy. Me too.
It was the first film that I, you know, I was young when it, when it came out, but I, but I saw, and I've seen it so many times over the years, it's one of the only films that I will rewatch consistently. And it did have that say, it's funny you say that. That one in the first Teletubbies, right? And Teletubbies obviously, you know, and also your square for the Gilligan's island pie. Yeah. People don't know that you wrote. That's true, actually. That's a true story,
maybe. Yeah. That's really hard. Um, John, um, can the, um, what portion of that, um, iconic, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, was scripted. Um, and what portion of it was open to your autonomy, you know, it's sort of like, how was that described in the script? Where did the script stop and where did you pick up? And do you remember the moment that you came up with, uh, with
those notes? I think the script asked for five notes, I believe. And I, and my first sort of attempt at that, I kept saying this even, it's much easier to do seven. But seven, five is like a doorbell. It's like a signal. Where seven notes, you, you just get over that top. And now you've got, when you wish upon a star, if you like, I don't know how many notes that is in the phrase, but it becomes a melody rather than a signal. So in six and seven,
were those big, heavy bomb, bomb. No, no, four and five. Four and five. One, two, three, four, five, bomb, bomb, bomb. And then there was, oh, that was a response. That was the response. Yeah. Oh, that was such a nice. So then, then I took some paper. I still have the papers. And I, I think I wrote about, I don't know, a hundred or more five note motifs in any intervolic relationship up, down. So to speak, and no, no consideration of length of the notes. It isn't
derpy bomb, bomb, it doesn't do that. And I kept playing and perceiving it, come over my piano, and we'll go through these things. And we both kept circling this one without deciding. And finally, one day in frustration, we weren't getting anywhere in C set or I said, let's just use this one. It seems fine. Yeah. Fine. But it was, but it was scripted that the strategy of the scientists were to communicate with the ship via five musical notes sound. Yeah. So that must have
been enormously intimidating, intimidating, right? Because you're like, it's not score. It's actually language that is written into this script. And I got to come up with what the language is. That's right. That's true. Well, there's a lot of the conversation that we now know back and forth between this computer, Trufo and his group and, and, and the ship's answers was much more elaborate with color and lights. Steven eventually correctly cut it down a little bit so it was meant more
manageable. But it's a wonderful idea. I mean, there are like Kodai, who's a Hungarian composer, with this idea of hand signals that's almost like deaf people would hear notes. And Screabin, a Russian composer who was, who was obsessed with the idea of color and read his, certain kind of note or certain texture and so on. So a lot of work it had been done and, you know, not really very scientific work at all, but it was so primary. It was like how, how you would
maybe elect to communicate with a child that doesn't yet know language. That's what was so powerful and, and evergreen and universal about it. And then when the conversation gets going and they're getting a conversation, I mean, John, that was just magic. How you just made that all blossom. And it just became like a celebration. And they all got all carried away. It was just incredible. It was all written out. I have, so I'm then put into a computer to produce it.
But John, it's true. Like what Jason says is, and again, I'm sort of going back and doubling down on this. But the idea that Jay and Sean too, that we as young men, we were, you know, still single digits. I was about eight when that seven or eight when I came out. But I understood that in a way that was meant to be understood in the way that my parents could understand it emotionally. What was what was going on? Leaving the theater with my mom in the parking lot. I
said to her, I want to be taken, you know, and I was, I was, I was serious. She said, we did, we wanted you to and they gave you back. Yeah. Right. They wouldn't take you. You're a return. He told me that's a fine treat. I would say at this point is that it's probably true that music is older than language. And yeah, and that's deeply embedded in all of our structure. And you understood it not linguistically, but musically or spiritually in some way. Yeah. We'll be right back.
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Is he connecting to complimentary Wi-Fi? Oh my, look at that, he is. And you will not believe where he's going next. The MX dedicated card member entrance for the win. Unbelievable. When you get travel perks with AMX Platinum, you're part of the action. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms apply, learn more at americanexpressed.com slash with AMX. All right, back to the show. John, you know all of your music every single time like you're talking, we see ET or
Schindler's List or Riders of the Lost Arch or just whatever it is. Start over. That was four five six hours seven eight nine. Evokes emotion right a very deep emotion. Is there a piece of music that you've written or another composer is written that to this day affects you emotionally every single time like your music does to me and us. Oh, that's so difficult. Beethoven night, Oh, to joy. Yeah. And I start there, I guess.
Yeah. One thing I wanted to add about the five note signal, which is after the fact, rationalization. But you have what is, Ray Do Doe, Doe, so, OK? Ray Doe Doe, that's the tonic note. Doe again, the tonic note down. And so, so in music, which is the fifth degree, is an equivalent in language to a conjunctive but or and. So I say, da da da ba ba, that's not over with. Right. If I do da da da ba ba. That's, yeah, yeah. That's five, one, that's da da da da. So you're soliciting a response. Right.
Da da da da da da da da. Would be the end would be a period. What this does is, da da da da. Maybe. Yeah. It's a really interesting. Yeah. You're asking for a response from the ship. It's what you remember as a child somehow that you know, it's not a sense, it's part of a sentence. It's an ellipses, yeah. But it's not a complete sentence. I think once you realize that, there's a great power in the fact that it doesn't settle. Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense.
You can almost, it's a musical version of a hand being left out. And all of a reaching for someone. Yeah, like come back to me or grab this, let's unite. It absolutely works. And you don't need to think about it. Yeah. It does that for us. Yeah, that came across. John, I have a question from my husband, Scotty, who is a self-proclaimed expert. I'm just about everything you've ever composed and are required to. It's totally true.
He says, this is from Scotty, there's been a longstanding rumor over many years that you played piano for the soundtrack recording sessions for the film version of West Side Story. Is that true? Yes. Wow. So that's you on the album playing piano. Yes. That's crazy. Oh, wow. That is crazy. I played that in the pit a long time ago, and it's really, really hard. Yeah, I did. Like, especially the prologue is just all over the place.
Especially the theater theater was tough, because you got mashed potatoes thrown at you. Wait, John, it is true. Well, I think a lot of Lennie's music was awkward. And frankly, you played it. So you know, why now that's said. But it's a lot of part of the animated energy that he left in his music. Yeah, yeah, for sure. John, when you first started, first of all, you grew up and tell me where you grew up again, Brooklyn, or where? Queens, literally. Queens, Queens, Queens.
And then when you studied jazz as a kid, did you always know that, like, when did the love of film composing come in? Like, did you always want to do that? Are you happy being a musician on Broadway and theaters and gigs? I never, frankly, planned to develop, as a film composer at all. My father was one of the things that he did in his professional life as a musician was to play in Hollywood studio orchestras. And so it was a teenager. And I was a serious piano student.
I really wanted to be a concert pianist. He took me to recording sessions at a studio. And it became fascinated by what people were doing to score the films, how it was orchestrated, written, and so on. Wow. And eventually, my job was playing piano in those orchestras. I mentioned that I played in Westridge, where I also played way back some like a touch. Do you remember that? Yeah. That was you playing in the movie? Yes, I played on that. And the apartment, do you remember the apartment?
Yes, yes. Yeah, promises, promises, is based on the apartment. And Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn in funny face. So my introduction to writing for film was through the influence of older colleagues for whom I played the piano. And they said, can you orchestrate? And I said, yes, well, here's a piece for next Tuesday. Orchestra is for me, which I did. And then just at that point in my development, television became very, very popular.
And I did a lot of television, alcohol, theater, and Chrysler theater. Yes. And will, as Will said, Gilligan's Island. And it's crazy that you wrote a piece for that. Are you happy to move away from television again? Or did you like that? Must be such a faster process, of course. Time wise, must have been more. It was such a slow, unplanned process, I must say.
Really moving from television to feature films, I think at that time in my life, it was wonderful because I had so much more time to work on the feature film. Television show, you did alcohol or theater, for example. It was an hour show, which you would have to write it within a week, 25 minutes of music or so, orchestrated and conducted. Wow. And so that was hard to do a feature film may have 25 or 30 minutes of music, but you have six weeks to do it.
And a higher fee, a better orchestra, and so forth. So it was a gradual step up that was evolutionary rather than anything planned. And is it true you can play six instruments? I read piano, bassoon, clarinet, cello, trombone and trumpet, is that right? It's incorrect on all counts. Thank you. Thank you. I tried to play all of them. I spent time with piano, of course.
Yeah. One of the things I love so much about listening to classical music is that it is the closest thing we have to a time machine, because reading that music, playing that music, note for note verbatim, is exactly how they heard it, save the conductor adjusting time or pacing or whatever, is exactly what they heard 200, 300, 400, 500 years ago. And those were their rock concerts.
That was, and so when you're sitting there, you're listening to one of these orchestras play these, one of these pieces of music. It's as close to the exact experience people in the past had in anything we can do, I think. It's a very unifying thing. Yeah. One of the things that draws our humanity, can sheels it in? I think what you say about listening presents something very hopeful, I think, about music, mentioned before, that it's not language. It's something general.
It may be in the end that Bernstein was right, that it is international. It goes beyond language. We're talking about the divisions of the Oxford and Fifth and the Fifth being the conjunctive. It's something that I think we have, we can place a little hope in that it's something we all may share at an intellectual level that is particularly linguistic. Is there a piece of music that you've written, now I'm going to get into those sort of regrets?
Do you have something that you've listened to and you go, I wish I had just done it like this, like that you've driven home from recording. You've just scored a thing that we all are really familiar with. But when you were driving home, you thought, I wish I had done it a little bit differently. Do you have any? Because as actors, we do that all the time. Yeah, we do it all the time. I wish I had done this scene.
Oh, sometimes you drive home and you get into your driver and you go, oh, that's what the scene was about. Oh, I see it finally up on the screen. Yeah. We all do it. We all do that. Absolutely. Wish that could be better or a change of note, or a phrase or whatever timing. Absolutely. You know, John, we didn't even touch on your time in the military, the US Air Force. Nor would we touch on golf. Our golf.
Yes, but really quick, so many of your themes, especially Raiders and Superman and the Darth Vader theme, they're all very militaristic. They're very march, they feel like they is that inspired by your time in the military or is that just what was required for the film? I think probably the latter of what was required, at the moment. Yeah. Although one of the things that I did have wonderful opportunity in service to orchestrate for military band is a wonderful way.
We're not a lot of publications for that instrumental combination available beyond Susa and a few other earlier lights. Were they any good, those bands? Oh, yes. Well, presently, our military bands, the Marines and Army in Washington are superb. Superb? The Marine band in Washington, there's a brass section that is equivalent to Chicago Symphony. I mean, it's not an exaggeration to say. Wow, wow, that's cool. That's absolutely fantastic.
Our principal trumpet, Tom Houton, and LA Philharmonic is the former Marine trumpeter. I don't know, two or three years in the Marine band there, and it came here in auditioned in one Los Angeles Philharmonic. So they've been, it's been a big tradition in our country, band tradition. Tell me about this wonderful routine you have at our, where Will and I are also at the same golf course that you play at, and we will see you almost every day, about four or five o'clock.
You'll take the cart down to the bottom of the hill and the first hole, you'll park it, and then you will walk the rest of the hole, play your ball out. Do you go on to the second hole, or is that enough, and is it just a sort of a meditative, wonderful routine? Because we're not, we're not stalking you, but we have seen you. Oh, it's always such a thrill. Everybody always stops and says, Hey, look, there he is. I've been going up there for about a close to 50 years.
You would never know it by the way I play. I don't, I never did play well. It's gotten worse over the years. You worked too hard. But I sit all day at the piano from early in the morning, lunch, to keep working, so I had to keep this old bag of bones moving. I have to walk. And I'm living very close to the course, so I can go up there and walk for, and I try to walk for an hour, so that could be holes one, two, three, and four, or one, two, six, and seven, depending on the traffic and so on.
That's good. And I get a cart so that I can stay out of the way of people like you guys who can really play. Well, and that first hill is kind of a bear. But you're always alone, which I love, because I'm a bit of an alone guy myself. Is that on purpose, or is that just because you don't want to schedule on anybody else? It's very relaxing. You don't have to entertain anybody. You'll be entertained. I can mull and meditate things, flashing through my mind.
But you got to know, we play with Jason Pleas with people all the time, and he never entertains them. Yeah, I mean, that's very good. Yeah, that's possible. And also, any golf course, such a piece of beautiful work, particularly when there's nobody on it, you can see the contours of this glorious green park. It's a beautiful invention. Great, great as possible luxury in a crowded urban area. It's incredible. I've gotten quite, I've been doing it to you, I think it's way this J.B.
I'll go sometimes on a Sunday afternoon by myself and then just strap my bag on, and just walk by myself and play nine holes at sort of three, four o'clock. It's my favorite, yeah, it's my favorite thing to do. Yeah, it's just so good. Great recreation. Next time we see you out there fair warning, I'm gonna run up and give you a handshake, a hug, or a tip of the cap or something. Oh, great. I love it. All right. John, thank you for being here today.
So, you know, this is like one of my, it's such a massive inspiration to me, as a pianist, as a wannabe composer in my early 20s to everything you've ever done. And, you know, I, I always want to, I always say I want to retire when I'm 60, and then I start looking at your resume and I get a second wind. Because I'm just like, it's just unbelievable. All the incredible work we wouldn't have had he stopped at 60.
Yeah, it should be noted, John, and Sean might not say this because he's embarrassed, but there have been, in the 20 plus years that I've been friends with Sean, there have been too many times to remember the times that he's referenced, mentioned you, referenced your music, referenced you, what you've done, it's absolutely incredible. And I know it's such a thrill for him that you're here. And for us as well. I guarantee you he's 10 seconds away from tears.
Yeah, truly, you've had a real impact on this young man's life. Yeah, you have, and mine as well. And you have, you have, you have created my love classical music because of what you've done. Not my work. Not true. Not true. That was my entry point to it. It was just being such an incredible fan of movies and focusing on the music and what that does. And then discovering classical music. And I listen to it all day every day. There'll never be another one like you.
Ever. Thank you, Sean, so much for this. I've enjoyed it all three of you. Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure. Don't even possibly think of 60 as an age to retire. No, no, it's just I'm just throwing it out there. That's a teenager. No. No, thank you. You've got years and years of productive work from your lips. You're enriching everybody. You do absolutely do enjoy. It's there. You have it. Thank you so much. I'll see you at Cal. Thank you, John. Love you to pieces. What a thrill. Thank you.
Bye. That's how appropriate was that remark? Yeah. So listen to right. As we were signing off, he said to his assistant, he said, huh. So that was a pod. Yeah. So he's now been, uh, had an experience. Legend. Yeah. What is he's just a legend? I'm really taken with that interview. I could have asked a whole lot of things. I know. You know, like do you know that Steven Spielberg played clarinet on Jaws? He played it so bad that they put the sound into the local marching band.
Because Steven wasn't, it wasn't great. So it's actually Steven playing, but and it's some kid faking it in the movie. So funny. And then Steven played clarinet in 1941, the movie 1941. Is that the movie? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, and his son was the lead singer of Toto. Like we didn't even get to that. Who? His son. John Williamson is the lead singer in Toto. Yeah. Wait. Yeah. It's where to go. Why didn't you bring that? Joseph, you know, wait a minute. I got 80 million questions.
I'm gonna ask where to go. I did, but I didn't want to get into his family. So I, and I wanted it to make it about him. And, you know, but I guess that is about him. That's his son. But, uh, yeah, he's, yeah. Oh, he's kind of got the eye of the tiger. I guess he's son. That's not Toto. Is it it? I have the tiger. No. Toto's in Africa. Well, who did, uh, eye of the tiger? Survivor. Survivor, yeah. Um, guys, I've got to go. But, all right. Okay. Um, I don't think he ever in jaws.
I don't think he ever scored the moment when jaws actually took a bite out of anybody. Did he? Why? Why you really have to go? I really, really, really love my phone. I love my phone. And, uh, we'll see you next week. I kind of got it. I guess. I guess. Nobody wanted to say anything about my restraint. I had so many bits in there where you said, but the Marines and their horn section, I said, you're going to say, Sean, you're Sean, you blew a Marine. Oh, all of that.
I mean, and I never said that. Listen, I believe that it's not as extra as for all of Will's bits from this week. I had so many. And I give it to you. And you can only find an organ in a church. Oh, that's not it. I didn't say any of it. Good for you. Uh, uh, love to love. Love you. Bye. Bye. Bye, bye. Smartless is 100% organic and artisanally handcrafted by Bennett Barbaco, Michael Grant Terry, and Rob Unjurf.
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