Hey, guys, welcome to the cold open. Hey, anything you'd like to say? No. Will, you can't start a cold open with a yawn.

Sorry, dude.

Shawn, anything to fire up the cold open with?

You want a dad joke?

Yeah, open up the book.

Okay.

Sorry, listener, just give us 1 second. Welcome to our cold open.

And did you hear about the cheese that's been working out?

I did. What happened?

The dude is shredded.

Welcome to Smartless. Smart less. Smart less.

Smart less.

Hello, my name is Jason.

Hi, Jason.

This is Sean.

I'd love to pod with you guys. Are you guys up for podding?

Sure.

Let's get this potty with this potting starting.

Let's get this potty started.

That's a good one. I've never heard that. Let's get this potty started.

Anything worth talking about?

I looked up right before this. I was looking up how to survive a nuclear war.

Seven.

Jason had a good one.

Yeah, mark it down. I know. Will, anything exciting in your life today?

This morning, still just in recovery.

You want to know how to survive?

You're still trying to kick your virus?

Yeah. Sean, what were you saying? You want to what?

Do you want to know how to survive a nuclear war or a 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, you know, 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'd like just to say really quick, Jason, I missed.

Okay, sorry. Do you want to make a statement?

I do.

I would just like to say if.

I can get in here.

Wait, Willie's got a really. We got a really fast good joke for Jason today.

Well, about the fact that dogs can't do mris, but cats can.

Okay, so here we go.

Great. Did you guys get on early?

We both watched the same tic tac video.

Oh, no, I don't have the TikTok.

Anyway, Sean's got a few written down. Go ahead, Sean. He wrote, 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.

Anything else you want to help the people driving to finish off their car accident with.

No. Because they're going to get super excited about our guest today. And now listen. I love when we get a true living legend on this podcast. My guest 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. Guys, it's the illustrious, incomparable one of my heroes, John Williams. Williams.

Got it.

Yes. Incredible. Wow. Look at this.

Wow.

Good day, sir.

This is so cool.

Unbelievable.

Hi, John.

Hello, gentlemen.

How are you today?

Pictures of all three of you, and you looked healthy to me. Like three NFL players on their day off.

Yeah, that's stretching it.

So, Sean, how is 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 still. You know, I worked on all the things an actor should work on, the.

Did you voice, the walk, this thing, research? A lot of things.

I did. I read all his books. I went, you know, 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 on YouTube. 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.

John, did you get a chance to see Sean do his play on Broadway? No.

No.

Oh, he was just incredible. I mean, you would. You would have been very impressed with his piano playing ability. You have somebody who would know what to look for. This guy's classically trained, and he did the entire Rhapsody in blue solo on. On stage, on a. On a grand piano.

Now, Sean, who. 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.

Okay.

Yeah, so. And that's what Oscar was known for. And he tried to. It's a very salieri Mozart kind of relationship where they love hate, where Oscar revered Gershwin, but could never be quite like.

The books are wonderful. His wit and the whole thing. I met him once in the office.

Oh, you did?

Yes. In the office of Louis B. Mayer.

Oh, my God.

Accompanying Howard Kiel and a woman. His 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, sheepishly through the back door to accompany these people and then leave before they. The discussion started.

Really?

I've always adored Oscar Levant.

Yeah, he's fantastic.

He's a student of Schoenberg. Did you know that?

Wow.

You were Oscar Wilde. Oh, yeah. It was a very serious, well, Oscar was.

You said you were.

No, no, Oscar was.

Yes, I knew that.

But what. How can I help you guys? What on earth can I possibly give.

You've already done plenty by getting 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 blow.

Yeah.

This is, by the way, I'm will. It's such a pleasure to meet you.

He was a big studio head, like, mogul film executive.

Yeah. What were those days like? 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 of 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 he referred to me as Beethoven. At the end of the preview, he would say, beethoven, we need a little more music in real five. And I just say, yes, sir, we'll do that. But the other moguls, I'm afraid, 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, when I say ideologues, who are probably a little bit naive in their approach to the world.

Yeah.

Were they as showmany and as gregarious as they're portrayed in the movies as these guys smoking 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, worldwide production of film that not eclipses Hollywood, but it puts it in a different kind of a frame of lighting and creativity.

John, what would you say? That's a great. 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 sort of imminent threat to what we've got?

Well, probably the access and easy availability to all manner of things on film and whatever that is available at home. And so the great. I mean, just to be flip about it, I mean, the great impediments might be said to be traffic jams and parking lots. You know, a thing of going to movies has become more difficult, I think, for people and the alternatives more easy to access, but we lose something. I think there's a. The old movie theaters were kinds of, sort of temples where people would gather. It was a communal connection. Once a week you go to the movies, or 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 proscenium, 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 newly constructed theaters have far less. They're utilitarian, of course, but far less imagination in the way the stages are constructed and so on.

Right.

I think in terms. I don't know if this is off the subject, but we think of the music of Bach. Three or 400 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 cantata. You heard it in church, 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. And we listen to Beethoven in this atmosphere, or we go and we watch Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in that atmosphere.

Oh, 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. Complex series of reasons for that. Yeah, but I think.

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 the sort of the surround button pressed on their television, but 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 when 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 technologies and special effects that can be accomplished make it unnecessary to do a ten 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 aspect of physical exertion and mastery of one's body. Same is true 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's 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 or however we want. So I think technology has affected the performance aspect of film making it very easy to sort of mock 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. And when you're sitting there watching the movie, whether it be Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Jaws, whatever it is, Indiana Jones, do you.

Are you keep going.

Craft. I know, it's just unbelievable. Are you crafting a melody in your head as you're watching it? And 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. Is there.

It 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 atmospheres and so on, and you can be very disappointed if you see a director's impression of what that would be or delighted and surprised. Also, it's not always possible. We have to discuss certain things with the directors, maybe before it's been 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 work going back to the piano, working a theme or two or three.

Right.

Manipulating them into something that seems inevitable, like it's been there always.

Yeah. That's. Wow.

And that's the hardest part of, I think, of the work. The simplest thing is the hardest thing, you know?

Yeah. And is it 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 wondered what to do about the shark, but he came in and I played. There's a d in the third note.

All right.

Bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump.

Right? Yeah.

Right.

And he looked at me and said, really? You think that could work? 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 in the orchestra could 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. It can speed up as the shark is approaching or the red herring is approaching.

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 right on it.

Yeah, exactly.

And we will be right back.

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You know, it's interesting you say that when you sort of pitch that to Steven and then he maybe is 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 film? And when you're working with a 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, this is a poorly worded question, but after working for years with Stephen, have you noticed that his ability to appreciate what you're doing has gotten more collaborative? Yeah.

And sophisticated?

Yeah.

It's a tough one 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 Bartok violin concerto or something, most of them will not know what that is. Most film directors will know, have some familiarity with film music. They will know Bernard Herman and they will know Miklas Roza and so on and so forth. But they won't know Ligeti or even even less esoteric things than that. I don't know if you all remember Martin Ritt, the 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 come 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 what? You have put a symphony orchestra behind this dialog scene. And they said, man, like Martin says, I can't believe that. I don't need to have that. I've created the scene.

My actors have done the job. You don't need to help them. But that's the opposite of Stephen, who can't seem to quite get enough music in his film. Different. Good for me, by the way, partner for me.

Was he. Go ahead. Sorry.

No, 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 silence. We had organs 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 filmmaking. And whether it's contemporary electronic music or classical romantic music, we recognize the need of it. 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 that a comfortable transition for him into what was a much more pared down approach by design, I'm sure, and much more potentially. I don't know. Sophisticated is 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? Scary for him, maybe.

You mean the resources and Schindler, more chamber music. It was a smaller.

Right.

Yeah.

Less single instruments at times as opposed to a more full bodied orchestral.

Some of the scenes was. It were. It's like Perlman alone.

Right.

The most breathtaking and horrible things. Violin, whether it was a conscious decision to make it a more intimate chamber music kind of thing was something we must have made either unconsciously or through dialog. I don't know.

I'm guessing something like.

Trump is blowing their brains out. I don't think it would work quite well.

Right, right.

So we stay with this upper one.

You know, you mentioned earlier that 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 and they pull all the music out and they have the La Phil do it. And oftentimes you'll conduct that. But so for Tracy, like, all the music you hear, take jaws, for example. If you pulled all the music out of it and you just watched the movie with all the dialog and sound effects, 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, yeah. The entire symphony or the entire orchestra. Do you like doing that? I mean, for me it's magic because it is that live performance. You're seeing it done, pristine magic.

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 the audience in the theater or at the bowl without the film, without the distraction of the film. And I can describe to the audience they're about to hear the kind of virtuosity they hear in action scenes and so on, where the music is extremely difficult to play. It's a virtuoso level, which, when you watch the film, you. You can't appreciate it.

It's just right. Yeah.

So I. I can take it very happily both ways, with film or without it.

Wait. Talk about things that are difficult to play. We might have to cut this, but I try to get the end credits music to ET, and you can't find. 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 crazy. It's insane. And it's really good.

Sean, you knocked.

It's a little fast. I was just a little disturbed.

I think you wrote it slow. I think you wrote it slow. It is a little fast.

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 fascinating. Just a moment ago, you said Steven 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 started with the bike chase.

That's right.

The police chasing the kids. Kids trying to get e team back to a spaceship, and they accelerate to escape velocity, which I understand is 17,500 miles an hour. And we buy that the kids fly over the moon. I got that, that detail from NASA, by the way.

Yes, sure.

How fast do you have to go on a bike to go over the moon? 17,500 miles. That's hysterical. And they land and the spaceship lands. Et and his little friends, earthling children, say goodbye to et is very sentimental. And 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. And so in that ten minutes, there's probably, in every minute of the ten, there are probably ten sync points. Okay, maybe more. Somebody's foot, bicycle going up, something falling, whatever. Almost like a cartoon. But you don't want to hear it that way, but you want to support, at least in the style of this thing, 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 could accomplish the first two minutes, which we could have done separately. And I had problems in four thinking not the orchestra wanted to bloom out or blossom out a little bit more than the film would allow me to do, or some concentrated action film that sped up and sped up and arrived here.

So a little quicker than I wanted to get the orchestra to it. And I really couldn't get the sync the way it should be. And I finally said to Stephen, I can't seem to be able to get this right. He said, we'll turn the film off. We know where the sync points are. The music is constructed 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 to your man, which is what he did. And I really believe that there's a kind of a. This is not a rabbi facing himself. There's something operatic about that last ten minutes that I think without that give and take breathing of the whole orchestra the way they wanted to and the way the bows finish here but not here. This kind of kinetic, if you like, is more satisfactory, seems to be more satisfactory than a take that is slavishly in sync.

Right? Yes. Yeah. Gosh, 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. Has there ever been a film or a project that you've come into and you've thought, yeah, this is gonna be great. And then you realize that you were in 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 particular.

The right fight 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 intimidating that way. I could say it glibly, but to reduce it a little bit, I would say the close encounters was I had that kind of feeling about it 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. I had really struggled to get out of Star wars and into close encounters. Talk about spiritual aspects of. I mean, that whole end of that film took us to a place, a high place, and the orchestra had to. It almost has a religious quality to it.

Yeah, for sure.

And where Star wars is all fun and fanfares and action and comedy and all the rest of that. But this was a more serious thought about our circumstance in the universe, where we are and where we may 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 it. But I saw it 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 also your score for the Gilligan's island.

People don't know that you wrote. That's true, actually.

It's a true story, JB.

Yeah, that's really hard.

John, can the. What portion of that iconic dun dun dun dun dun was scripted and what portion of it was open to your autonomy? 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 those notes?

I think the script asked for five notes, I believe. And I. And my first sort of attempts at that, I kept saying to Stephen, 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 hump. 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 six and seven were those big, heavy bom bom.

That's right.

No, four and five, break the glass.

12345. And then there was.

That was a response.

That was the response. Yeah. That was such a.

So then I took some paper. I still have the papers. And I think I wrote about, I don't know, 100 or more five note motifs in any intervalic relationship. Up, down, so to speak. And no consideration of length of the notes. It isn't. It doesn't do that. And I kept playing and perceiving, come over my piano and we'd go through these things and we both kept circling this one without deciding. And finally, one day, in frustration, we weren't getting anywhere. And he said, or I said, let's just use this one. It seems fine.

Yeah, fine.

Seems 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 they've written into this script, and I got to come up with what the language is.

Wow, that's true. Well, there's a lot of the conversation that we now know back and forth between this computer Truffaut and his group, and the ship's answers was much more elaborate with color and lights. Stephen 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 was a hungarian composer with this idea of hand signals that almost like deaf people would hear notes, and Skiaben, a russian composer who was obsessed with the idea of color, and red is a certain kind of note or a certain texture and so on. So a lot of work that had been done and, you know, not really very scientific work at all, but it was so primary.

It was like how you would maybe elect to communicate with a child that doesn't yet know language. That's what was so powerful and evergreen and universal about it. And then when the conversation gets going and they're getting into 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. Incredible.

It was all written out. I have it, and then put into a computer to produce it.

But, John, it's truly what Jason says is. And again, I'm sort of going back and doubling down on this, but the idea that Jay, that, and Sean, too, that we as young men, we were 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. I 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 serious.

She said, we did, too. We wanted you to. And they gave you back.

Yeah, right.

They wouldn't take you.

You were like, turn.

He told me that just last week.

One thing I would say at this point is that it's probably true that music is older than language, and that's deeply embedded in all of our structure, and you understood it not linguistically, but musically or spiritually in some way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We'll be right back.

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All right, back to the show.

John, you know all of your music. Every single time, like we're talking, we see et or Schindler's list or Raiders of the Lost Ark or whatever.

Star Wars.

Star wars. Four, five, six. Star wars seven, eight, nine. Evokes emotion. Right. A very deep emotion. Is there a piece of music that you've written or another composer has written that, to this day affects you emotionally every single time, like your music does to me and us.

Oh, that's so difficult. Beta of a 9th ode to joy.

Yeah.

I start there, I guess.

Yeah.

One thing. One thing I wanted to add about the five note signal, which is an after the fact rationalization, but you have. You have. What is re do? So. Okay. Re do. That's. That's the tonic note. Do again. The tonic note. Down. And soul. Soul 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. Right.

If I do da, da, da, ba, ba, that's.

Yeah, yeah.

That's five, one. That's.

So you're soliciting a response.

Right. Would be. The end would be a period.

What this does is maybe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's really interesting.

Yeah.

You're asking for a response from the ship.

It's what you remembered as a child, somehow that, you know, it's not a sentence. 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 great power in the fact that it doesn't settle.

Yeah, it's.

No, that makes a lot of sense. You can almost. It's a musical version of a hand being left out, an olive branch 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. It does that for us.

Yeah, that came across.

John, I have a question from my husband, Scotty, who is a self proclaimed expert on just about everything you've ever composed and or recorded.

It's true.

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.

So that's you on the album playing piano?

Yes. That's crazy.

That is crazy. I played that in the pit a long time ago, and it's really, really hard.

Yeah, it is. Yeah.

Like, especially the prolog. It's just all over the place, especially.

At a dinner theater. It was tough because you get mashed potatoes thrown at you. Wait wait, John, it is true.

Well, I think a lot of Lenny's music was awkward, frankly. You played it, so you know that, you know how, why and how that is 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 in. Tell me where you grew up again. Brooklyn or Queens?

Long Island?

Queens. Queens.

Queens.

And then when you, 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 or were you happy being a musician on Broadway and theaters and gigs?

I never frankly planned to developed as a films 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 I was a teenager and I was a serious piano student. I really wanted to be a concert pianist. He took me to recording sessions there in the studio, and I 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. You mentioned that I played in western story. I also played way back. Some like it hot. Do you remember that?

Yeah. That was you playing in the movie?

Yes, I played on that. And the apartment, you remember the apartment?

Yes. Yeah. Promises, promises is based on the apartment.

And Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn and funny face. So I, 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. Orchestrate this 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, Alcoa Theater and Chrysler Theater.

And as will said, Gilligan's island. That's crazy that you wrote music for that.

Were you happy to move away from television again or did you like that? Must be such a faster process. Of course, time wise, it was such.

A slow, unplanned process. I must say, really moving, 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. If you did Alcoa Theater, for example, it was an hour show, which you would have to write it within a week, 25 minutes of music or so, orchestrate it and conduct it. 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, 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. And so when you're sitting there, you're listening to one of these orchestras play 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. One of the things that draws our humanity, conceals it. I think what you say about listening presents something very hopeful. I think about music we 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 isn't particularly linguistic.

Is there a piece of music that you've written? And now I'm going to get into the sort of the regrets. Do you have. 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 know, 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, you know, sometimes you drive home and you get into your driveway and you go, oh, that's what the scene was about.

Or when you 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 phrase or whatever. Timing. Absolutely.

You know, John, we didn't even touch it. Touch on your time in the military? The US Air Force, nor.

We touched on golf.

Our golf, yes. But really quick. So many of your themes, especially raiders and Superman and, you know, 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. What was required, you know, at the moment, although one of the things that I. I did have wonderful opportunity in service to orchestrate for military band because there weren't a lot. There were not a lot of publications for that instrumental combination available beyond Sousa and a few other earlier lights.

Were they any good, those bands?

Oh, yes. Well, presently there are military bands, marines and army in Washington. Superb.

Superb.

Yeah.

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 absolutely fantastic. Our principal trumpet, Tom Hooton in La Philharmonic, is the former marine trumpeter. He did, I don't know, two or three years in the marine band there, and then came here and auditioned and won Los Angeles Philharmonic. So it's been a big tradition in our country band to band tradition.

Tell me, tell me about this wonderful routine you have at our 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 05:00 you'll take the cart down to the bottom of the hill in the first hole, you park it, and then you will walk the rest of the hole, play your ball out. Do you go onto the second hall, 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.

It's always such a thrill. Everybody always stops and says, hey, look, there he is.

I've been going up there for close to 50 years. You would never know it by the way I play. I never did play. Well, it's gotten worse over the years.

You worked too hard.

Sit all day at the piano from early in the morning, lunch, 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.

I get a car 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 around anybody else?

It's very relaxing. You don't have to entertain anybody or be entertained. I can mull and meditate. Things flashing through my mind.

But you gotta know that we play with. Jason plays with people all the time and he never entertains them. So, I mean, that's very. Yeah, that's possible.

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. Greatest possible luxury in a crowded urban area.

It's incredible. I've gotten quite. I've been doing it, too. I think I've toyed this. 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 304:00 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.

Great. I love it.

Yeah.

All right, John, thank you for being here today. What if this is like one of my. Is such a massive inspiration to me as a. As a pianist, as a wannabe composer in my early twenties to everything you've ever done. And, you know, 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, 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 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.

Yes, I'm going to hold it. You've had a real impact on this young man's life.

Yeah, you have.

And mine.

As well.

You have created my love of classical music because of what you've done. That was my entry point to. 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, Jens, so much for this. I've enjoyed it.

All three of you, 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, thank you, guys.

You've got years and years of productive work from your lips, enriching everybody. You do absolutely do enjoy. It's. There you have it.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, John.

Love you to pieces.

What a thrill.

Thank you.

Bye.

That's. How appropriate was that remark.

Yeah, yeah. So, listener, 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. Had an experience.

He's just a legend.

I'm really taken with that interview.

I could have asked.

I know.

You know, like, do you know that Steven Spielberg played clarinet on Jaws? But he played it so bad that they put the sound into the local marching band because Steven was. 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 Williams son is the lead singer in Toto.

Yeah. Wait, what? Yeah. Swear to God.

Why didn't you bring that? Joseph, I got 80 million questions I want to ask.

But I didn't. We didn't 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, yeah, he's. Yeah, that's not Toto. Is it the tiger? No, Toto's African.

Well, who did eye the tiger?

Survivor.

Survivor, yeah.

Really?

Yeah, yeah.

Guys, I've gotta go, but.

All right.

Okay. 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?

Wow. You really have to go.

I love you both. And we'll see. Smart list.

Nobody wanted to say anything about my respect. I had so many bits in there. He's talking about the marines and their horn section. I was gonna say, sean, you blew a marine. All of that. I mean, and I never said it.

Please go to smart list extras for all of Will's bits from this week.

I had so many that I've been into. You can only find an organ in a church.

All that.

None of it. I didn't say any of it.

Good for you.

Good restraint.

Love to love love.

Goodbye.

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Survey it's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alena Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly. And our show is part true crime, spooky and part comedy. The stories we cover are well researched, he claimed, and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people with a touch of humor. I just like to go ahead and say that if there's no band called malevolent deity, that is pretty great, a dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. This mother lied like a liar like a liar. And if you're a weird weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the way back machine and dissect the details of some of historys most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast morbid. Follow morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad free by joining Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.