Steven Spielberg is producing a documentary about his old buddy John Williams
Spielberg's Amblin Television is working on a documentary about his legendary composer and long-time friend
At this point in movie history, it’d be fair to say that there’s no more iconic pairing of director and composer than Steven Spielberg and John Williams. Since 1974's The Sugarland Express—and with shockingly few exceptions across two 50-plus-year careers—Williams has been the sound of Spielberg’s films, right up through this year’s semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans, almost literally making his music the soundtrack of Spielberg’s life.
Now, Spielberg is set to return the favor: THR reports that the director is moving forward, with Amblin Television, as a producer on an upcoming documentary on Williams’ life and career. Co-produced with Imagine Documentaries and Nedland Media, the film will be directed by Laurent Bouzereau. Bouzereau is, among other things, the documentarian behind docuseries like Five Came Back, in which Spielberg prominently featured, talking about the works of director William Wyler (He’s also Spielberg’s go-to director for behind-the-scenes and making-of featurettes on his films.)
Williams, who’s 90, worked most recently on the score for the new Spielberg-produced Indiana Jones movie, James Mangold’s Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny. He’d been making some noises about retiring, but then about-faced on that during a conversation with Spielberg recently. (Who responded by noting that he’d better start figuring out his next movie, then; he also remarked, on his “perfect marriage” with Williams: “I mean, what am I going to do? Sit down and write the music myself?”)
Williams has more than 100 film and television scores to his name (even after you filter out god knows how many credits he’s picked up for his work on Star Wars alone). We’d normally list a bunch of accolades here, but it’s John Williams: He’s got every major composing award you could care to name, he’s scored some of the m0st influential films in human history, and he shows no signs of stopping any time soon.