John Williams talks Indy score and writing “An hour and a half of music, maybe more”

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With the score for 30th June’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny completed on 10th February, John Williams talks walking back his retirement plans at 91 (“I might have meant that at the moment, but you never want to say no unequivocally.”), working on the Oscar-nominated The Fabelmans for Steven Spielberg (“I felt like I was being invited into an inner-family, close-circle discussion of their lives together”), how impressed he is with James Mangold (“He’s done a very, very expert job on a very difficult kind of film to make”) and the 90 minutes plus of music he’s written for Indy 5.

“It’s certainly got to be an hour and a half of music, maybe more, but I’m quite happy with it. There’s a lot of new material. The old material works very well as a touchstone of memory, but I had great fun, and I have a theme that I’ve written for Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the wonderful actress.”

https://youtu.be/IT3MU0j67D8

“Harrison is wonderful in it. He looks great, he moves beautifully. The best part of it for me is the writing and the interplay of dialogue between Harrison and Phoebe, like the old-style Hepburn-and-Tracy kind of bickering. It’s witty and bright and snappy, like a duet that goes on for two hours.”

The “Indiana Jones” scores, Williams notes, “are unified by Indy’s theme, and the general style of the film, which is in my mind a kind of action-comedy, because you never take the action seriously. It’s certainly a swashbuckling affair from beginning to end, fashioned more like movies of the ’30s and ’40s where the orchestra is racing along with the action, which you wouldn’t do in contemporary films very much.”

[lasso box=”B00GP3GS52″ ref=”amzn-indiana-jones-the-soundtracks-collection-box-set-limited-edition-original-recording-remastered-edition-2008-audio-cd” id=”169321″ link_id=”44648″]

SourceVariety
Mark Newbold
Mark Newbold
Exploring the galaxy since 1978, Mark wrote his first fan fiction in 1981 and been a presence online since his first webpage Fanta War in 1996. He's contributed to Star Wars Insider (since '06) and Starburst Magazine (since '16) as well as ILM.com, SkywalkerSound.com, StarWars.com, Star Wars Encyclopedia, Build The Millennium Falcon, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia, Model and Collectors Mart, Star Trek magazine and StarTrek.com. He is a four-time Star Wars Celebration Stage host, the only podcaster to have appeared on every Celebration podcast stage since the stage began in 2015, the Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and the co-host of Making Tracks, Canon Fodder and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
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With the score for 30th June’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny completed on 10th February, John Williams talks walking back his retirement plans at 91 (“I might have meant that at the moment, but you never want to say no unequivocally.”), working on the Oscar-nominated The Fabelmans for Steven Spielberg (“I felt like I was being invited into an inner-family, close-circle discussion of their lives together”), how impressed he is with James Mangold (“He’s done a very, very expert job on a very difficult kind of film to make”) and the 90 minutes plus of music he’s written for Indy 5.

“It’s certainly got to be an hour and a half of music, maybe more, but I’m quite happy with it. There’s a lot of new material. The old material works very well as a touchstone of memory, but I had great fun, and I have a theme that I’ve written for Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the wonderful actress.”

https://youtu.be/IT3MU0j67D8

“Harrison is wonderful in it. He looks great, he moves beautifully. The best part of it for me is the writing and the interplay of dialogue between Harrison and Phoebe, like the old-style Hepburn-and-Tracy kind of bickering. It’s witty and bright and snappy, like a duet that goes on for two hours.”

The “Indiana Jones” scores, Williams notes, “are unified by Indy’s theme, and the general style of the film, which is in my mind a kind of action-comedy, because you never take the action seriously. It’s certainly a swashbuckling affair from beginning to end, fashioned more like movies of the ’30s and ’40s where the orchestra is racing along with the action, which you wouldn’t do in contemporary films very much.”

[lasso box=”B00GP3GS52″ ref=”amzn-indiana-jones-the-soundtracks-collection-box-set-limited-edition-original-recording-remastered-edition-2008-audio-cd” id=”169321″ link_id=”44648″]

SourceVariety
Mark Newbold
Mark Newbold
Exploring the galaxy since 1978, Mark wrote his first fan fiction in 1981 and been a presence online since his first webpage Fanta War in 1996. He's contributed to Star Wars Insider (since '06) and Starburst Magazine (since '16) as well as ILM.com, SkywalkerSound.com, StarWars.com, Star Wars Encyclopedia, Build The Millennium Falcon, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia, Model and Collectors Mart, Star Trek magazine and StarTrek.com. He is a four-time Star Wars Celebration Stage host, the only podcaster to have appeared on every Celebration podcast stage since the stage began in 2015, the Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and the co-host of Making Tracks, Canon Fodder and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
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