A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Animation courtesy of Intrada Records. Art by Roger Kastel  © 1975, 2015 Universal Pictures "Dick Zanuck and David Brown, thank you both for giving me the opportunity to work with this extraordinary man, Steven Spielberg. The great Universal orchestra, my friend Herb Spencer, thank you, and all the members of this Academy for giving me this honor. I'm a grateful man, thank you very much." - John Williams' Oscar acceptance speech, 48th Academy Awards, March 29, 1976 "In doing the score for Jaws , John Williams has really outdone himself. The soundtrack is a stunning symphonic achievement and a great leap ahead in the revitalization of film music as a foreground component for the total motion picture experience...." - Steven Spielberg, director of Jaws , in the original 1975 LP liner notes In 2015, Oakland (California)-based Intrada Records released a deluxe 2-CD edition of composer-conductor John Williams' Academy Award-winning score for...

Album cover from A.I.: Artificial Intelligence - Music from the Motion Picture. (C) 2001, 2018 Warner Sunset/Amazon LLC.  In 2001, Warner Sunset, the now-defunct record label that produced soundtrack albums for Warner Bros. movies, released A.I. Artificial Intelligence – Music from the Motion Picture. This was a 13-track collection of themes and cues composed and conducted by John Williams for Steven Spielberg’s eponymous science-fiction film. Performed by a Los Angeles-based studio orchestra and recorded at Sony Pictures Studios Royce Hall near Hollywood, the score features some of the orchestral themes, action cues, and two versions of the song For Always, which features lyrics by Cynthia Weil and a haunting melody by Maestro Williams. As is often the case with “original motion picture soundtrack albums,” the 2001 commercial release of A.I. Artificial Intelligence – Music from the Motion Picture does not present Williams’ complete score, which is almost two ...

In 1991, Sony Classical released The Spielberg/Williams Collaboration, a 13-track album that features music composed by John Williams for the movies by director Steven Spielberg. Those compositions - marches, main title themes, and scene-specific cues - covered the first 15 years or so of what is one of the longest artistic partnerships in film history. As  Variety's film music writer Jon Burlingame states in the liner notes to Sony Classical's John Williams/Steven Spielberg: The Ultimate Collection that there have been other famous director-composer duos: "Film historians often cite Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, for example, or Federico Fellini and Nino Rota; others might name Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, or Blake Edwards and Henry Mancini." But, as Burlingame points out: None, however, have been as long or as fruitful as the forty-three-year collaboration of Steven Spielberg and John Williams. None have encompassed such a wide range of subje...