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E.T. making Elliott’s bike fly over trees against the backdrop of the moon was such a captivating moment
that not only does Williams cite it as one of his favorite scenes melding his music with Spielberg’s visuals, the
director also uses it as the logo for his production company, Amblin Entertainment, which was founded the year
before
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
hit theaters.
Thomas) takes a nocturnal flight with
the adorable alien on his bicycle. “I love
it for its sweetness and sense of inno-
cence,” he said, “and absence of gravity.”
Spielberg selected the elaborately
staged chase/action scene from
Raiders
where a wounded Indiana Jones (Park
Ridge, IL, native Harrison Ford) inven-
tively uses his whip to thwart Nazis.
“There’s a musical progression,” he said,
“an amazing, accelerated ostinato where
Johnny actually tells you when to really
get excited. I love the percussion. I love
the horns. Once again, I can close my
eyes and not need the visuals to feel like
I’m on a journey to save the Lost Ark of
the Covenant.”
The theme to
Raiders
ranks as one of
Williams’s most iconic works. Spielberg
credits its success to the composer’s
sense of timing and restraint. “He
sparingly uses it,” Spielberg elaborated.
“When he uses it, it allows us to root for
the hero. When he doesn’t use it, we are
worried about our hero. He’s so wise as
to when to release the main theme.”
When creating his movie music mag-
ic, Williams eschews computers. He uses
pencils, paper, and a piano. Sometimes,
Spielberg quietly pays a visit to the
composer and hints for a status report.
“If I feel like I’ve got something for him,
I’ll play a few notes,” Williams said. “I
can always tell by his eyes, his facial
expression, his voice, if he’s unsure, if he
dislikes it, or likes it. The great thing is
that he always leaves happy.”
Williams rarely reads screenplays,
although he did read
Close Encounters
of the Third Kind
to synchronize the
score with the alien spacecraft’s musical
exchange. Surprisingly, he doesn’t watch
movies much. “I didn’t go [to movies] as
a child,” he confessed. “I had radio.”
Williams turned in February, and
Spielberg turned 1 in December. How
do they keep their partnership fresh?
“He [Williams] makes the promise,”
Spielberg said, “and it’s my job to keep
the promise. Then if I can’t, then it’s his
job to write better music than I directed,
so he can keep the promise for me.
“That’s kind of how it’s been working
for the past 0 years or so.”
Gee, this could qualify as the longest
“showmance” in Hollywood history.
OTHER FAMOUS COMPOSER/DIRECTOR
TEAMS
have conducted themselves into
cinematic forces similar to the Williams/
Spielberg and Herrmann/Hitchcock
duos, and doubtlessly more will contin-
ue to surface and one day receive the
mantle of “greatest today.” Despite the
year-in–year-out ubiquity of certain
names under the line “Music by,” an
examination of these ear/eye-catching
combos reveals how democratic the
job of scoring films can be, with the
musicians’ origins varying from concert
pianists to pop or rock band singers.
Ennio Morricone/Sergio Leone, lms.
Although Italian composer Ennio Mor-
ricone paired with other directors more
times than with Sergio Leone, American
audiences are most familiar with them
primarily for their collaboration on
Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name”
spaghetti western trilogy, beginning
with
A Fistful of Dollars
in 1. The mi-
serly music budget did not allow for an
orchestra, forcing Morricone to impro-
vise by inserting bells and whip cracks
into the score. Morricone also bucked
western movie tradition by boldly using
anachronistic electric guitars, one of
the fixtures in the composer’s iconic
masterpiece for
The Good, the Bad, and
the Ugly
with its stunning, operatic track
“The Ecstasy of Gold.”
Nino Rota/Federico Fellini, lms
(plus a TV movie and a documentary).
A child prodigy who composed an ora-
torio at age 11 (and published his works
at 1), Nino Rota became best known
in America for his romantic theme to
Franco Zefferelli’s
Romeo and Juliet
and
highly romanticized theme to Francis
Ford Coppola’s
The Godfather
. But his
simple, memorably melodic works
(more than 10 scores) will be forever
tied to the films of the great Federico
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RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JULY 23 – AUGUST 5, 2018
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