John Williams介绍

TIMELINES: John Williams

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Part One: Before Everything Changed (Early 50s-1974)

By Scott Bettencourt

In two recentcolumns, I presented a list of major composers, past and present, and the ages at which they reached various achievements in their careers -- first feature scores, first blockbuster hit, first Oscar nomination, and so forth. But the path of a composer's career involves countless turns and twists, and there's no film composer living today who has had a more remarkable career than John Williams.

Though Williams has been the top composer in Hollywood for the last three decades, his rise to the top was slow, and his career in music moved along several parallel paths. He began scoring TV episodes in the late 1950s, with such series as Playhouse 90, Bachelor Father and M Squad (the M Squad LP even featured some of his music). His first feature score was the 1958 B-movie Daddy-O, which today is best known for its revival as a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode (while its star became the subject of a James Ellroy novella, Dick Contino's Blues).

At the same time he was serving as a session pianist, working for rising composers (Jerry Goldsmith, on 1960's Studs Lonigan) as well as Golden Age masters (Franz Waxman, on 1962's Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man). He was also working as an arranger -- one of his most notable credits was Shelley Manne's jazz LP of the My Fair Lady score, released in 1964.

Before John Williams became a household name with Jaws and Star Wars, the previous household name film composer was Henry Mancini, and though one hardly thinks of Williams' output of the last three decades as Mancini-esque (except perhaps his tuneful Sabrina score), for the first part of the 1960s he seemed to be developing into a B-list Mancini (which is only fitting, since Williams also worked as a session pianist for Mancini, including the classic Peter Gunn album).

Despite his many wonderful dramatic orchestral scores over the years, Mancini was best known for two types of scoring -- jazz scores and comedy music. Mancini had had his first major hit with his azz score for TV's Peter Gunn, and Williams earned his first Grammy nomination for the soundtrack to 1960's Checkmate, a mystery series created by novelist Eric Ambler, with a jazz score and a memorable Williams theme. He also earned back-to-back Emmy nominations, in 1962 and 1963, for his music for Alcoa Premiere.

And though he scored a fair number of dramatic films through the mid-sixties, such as Don Siegel's remake of The Killers and the Western The Rare Breed, Williams' comedy scores were his most high profile feature work, with albums released of his music for Fitzwilly (the best of his '60s score albums),
Not With My Wife, You Don't, Penelope, and How to Steal a Million. The latter was a particularly notable credit for Williams, as it featured two top stars of the era, Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole, and was directed by one of the most awarded filmmakers in Hollywood, William Wyler. (It's a little ironic that Williams' '60s comedy scores should be well represented on LP, since these days it's comedy scores that are least likely to receive soundtrack releases -- just ask David Newman or Teddy Castellucci -- though it helped that Williams' comedies had theme songs and thus the albums were considered commercially viable, especially since the contemporary trend of song-soundtrack albums was years away).

The light-hearted, Mancini-esque Williams was the one best represented at your local record score in the mid-'60s, but it was another side of Williams that was making a big impression on film and TV music fans during that era. Irwin Allen had four science fiction series on the air during the second half of the decade, and Williams made major contributions to three of them. For Lost and Space he provided both of the main themes -- the more cartoonish Season 1 theme, and irresistibly exciting Season 3 -- as well as four individual episode scores. He wrote the pilot score and the inventive main theme for the comparatively short-lived Time Tunnel, and the pilot score (replacing a rejected Alexander Courage score) and two lively main title themes for Land of the Giants. Surprisingly, these wonderful themes didn't lead to any big screen science-fiction scores, but they are still amongst the most memorable TV music of all time. (During this period he also scored over a dozen Gilligan's Island episodes, but despite the show's continuing status as a cult classic, his contribution is little more than an amusing footnote to his career -- there has yet to be any great clamor for a CD release of Williams' Gilligan music, delightful as that would be).

In 1968, he earned his first Oscar nomination, for adapting Andre & Dory Previn's songs for the score to Mark Robson's 1967 film of Valley of the Dolls, and the same year he earned his first Emmy, for a remake of Heidi (the Heidi which became notorious when an NBC exec pre-empted the end of a Jets-Raiders football game so that Heidi would start on time, an incident still remembered four decades later), but it was the following year that would see one of his biggest career breakthroughs. Director Mark Rydell had enjoyed a hit with his first film, the D.H. Lawrence adaptation The Fox, and its Lalo Schifrin score earned the composer his second Oscar nomination, so it was natural that the pair would reteam for Rydell's film of William Faulkner's The Reivers. However, Schifrin's score was ultimately rejected, and Williams' replacement score, a rollicking dose of Americana, earned the composer his first Original Score nomination.

While The Reivers helped establish Williams as a composer, the same year saw the release of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, for which Williams arranged the Leslie Bricusse songs as well providing the incidental music, a mix of Bricusse themes and Williams originals. This was the first year Williams received two Oscar nominations -- an honor for any composer, but for Williams it would occur with almost clockwork regularity over the next three and a half decades.

These achievements didn't make Williams an instant A-list composer -- he was also scoring relative obscurities like the romantic drama Story of a Woman (whose cast included composer Mario Nascimbene), and Daddy's Gone-a-Hunting, a quasi-Hitchcockian thriller about a married woman stalked by a psycho ex-boyfriend who wants revenge for the termination of their pregnancy (directed by Valley of the Dolls' Mark Robson, from a Larry Cohen script).

1970 and 1971 saw the releases of two more Williams' milestones. The Delbert Mann-directed remake of Jane Eyre, starring George C. Scott and Susannah York, was released theatrically in England but shown on TV in the United States. Williams' classically inflected score was a marvelously elaborate and emotionally satisfying work, and earned the composer yet another Emmy. His nominated work on Goodbye, Mr. Chips led to a similar role on Norman Jewison's blockbuster film of Fiddler on the Roof (Williams was even involved with the casting sessions), and his music direction earned the composer his first Oscar.

1972 was a particularly eclectic year for the composer, with four feature scores and a rare TV movie score, the Ray Bradbury adaptation The Screaming Woman, starring Olivia de Havilland. His score for Martin Ritt's comedy-drama Pete 'n' Tillie was a minor work, sparsely spotted (as was common with Ritt's films) but with a memorable main theme. The Cowboys was his second score for Mark Rydell, and with this high-concept John Wayne Western he expanded upon the Americana approach of The Reivers and gave it a more Copland-esque feeling; the film was popular enough to spawn a short-lived TV series.

His other two feature scores for the year were among the five nominated in the Original Score category (the first of seven occasions in which Williams would earn two of the five slots), and the two projects demonstrating differing potential routes for Williams' career. 1970's Airport was the first disaster hit of the decade, but it was the success of Irwin Allen's production of The Poseidon Adventure that insured the trend. With Williams' track record in scoring imperiled travelers in all those Irwin Allen sci-fi shows, he was a natural to score this film about a capsized ocean liner, though his tense, low-key score was not your typical Oscar nominee.

Williams' other Oscar-nominated score of 1972 was even more unusual. Robert Altman was one of the most groundbreaking and influential American filmmakers of the early '70s, and the success of M*A*S*H allowed him to make experimental films like Images, a surreal psychological thriller with Susannah York as a possibly delusional woman. Altman and Williams had worked together in television before Altman's feature career took off (Williams' scored Altman's TV movie Nightmare in Chicago in 1964), and Williams' Images score was one of the most unusual of his career, mixing lovely, classical styled cues with the offbeat vocals and percussive sounds of Stomu Yamashta (who later score Paul Mazursky's Tempest).

Altman and Williams reunited the following year for a more critically successful film (ultimately considered one of Altman's greatest), the modernization of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, and Williams' source-dominated score, with every cue a reworking of his original title song, was droll parody of conventional Hollywood scoring -- Williams would never again be as experimental as he was on Images and Long Goodbye.

The rest of Williams' output in 1973 was similarly eclectic. He wrote a sparse score for the surprise hit The Paper Chase, a lively replacement score for the romantic Western The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (in a very different style from his Copland-esque Cowboys), and worked in a rare blues-pop vein for the romantic drama Cinderella Liberty, his third film for Mark Rydell, which earned him nominations for Score and Song. He managed to achieve the nomination trifecta that year, earning a third nomination for his adaptation of the Sherman Brothers' songs for Tom Sawyer, but it was Marvin Hamlisch who managed to win all three 1973 music Oscars.

Williams was originally announced to score Robert Altman's gambling drama, California Split, which featured his actress wife Barbara Ruick in a supporting role. Ruick died unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage during the filming and Williams left the project, though despite his personal tragedy (which inspired his violin concerto), he kept working. He wrote a relatively brief score for Martin Ritt's Conrack, and scored the first two major disaster films to follow The Poseidon Adventure, both for past Williams' collaborators -- Mark Robson's Earthquake, and Irwin Allen's production of The Towering Inferno (directed by John Guillermin). Both films were boxoffice smashes, with Towering Inferno earning nominations for Best Picture and Original Score among others, while Earthquake was short-listed in the Score category.

Despite the twin disaster successes (if that isn't an oxymoron), it was another, much more obscure release that inaugurated the sea change in Williams' career. It was only when Lalo Schifrin's score was rejected that Williams got the job of scoring The Reivers, and his Americana scores for Reivers and another Mark Rydell film, The Cowboys, were what inspired Steven Spielberg to hire him for his debut feature, the fact-based tragicomedy The Sugarland Express, though Williams ultimately argued against Spielberg's desire for Copland-esque music and wrote a twangy, more intimate score. Despite their disagreement over the approach, the collaboration was successful enough that the following year, they reunited for a project which, for both men, pretty much changed everything.

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PART TWO: WHEN JOHN WILLIAMS BECAME JOHN WILLIAMS (1975-1981)
By Scott Bettencourt

I suppose it's unnecessary to note that Steven Spielberg followed The Sugarland Express with his second film, an adaptation of Peter Benchley's best-selling novel JAWS. Still, until Jaws, Sugarland was the only collaboration between Spielberg and John Williams, so it was hardly a sure thing that the pair would re-team for the over-schedule, over-budget shark thriller. It is rumored that Jerry Goldsmith was also considered for the assignment, and certainly Jaws's musical requirements would be quite different from Sugarland's, though as some considered Jaws to be a kin to the disaster genre, Williams was a plausible choice, even without Spielberg's participation.

But of course, Jaws quickly became the highest grossing film of all time, and though it was a combination of elements (Spielberg's direction, Bill Butler's cinematography, Verna Fields' editing, the performances) that made Jaws that perpetual oxymoron, the instant classic, John Williams' varied and full-bodied score -- especially the repeated two notes of the shark theme -- was one of the most talked about contributors to the film's success, and quite predictably earned Williams his first Original Score Oscar.

Williams followed Jaws with another adaptation of a bestseller, though Clint Eastwood's film of THE EIGER SANCTION was hardly one of the more memorable entries in either's career. Williams' score mixed jazz and orchestral elements in a minor but pleasing effort that reflected the eclectic approach of the early part of his career.

Since the success of Jaws inspired many critics to proclaim Spielberg the new Hitchcock, it was only fitting that Hitchcock himself should hire Spielberg's composer for what would prove to be the director's final film (though he had also considered his Topaz composer Maurice Jarre for the job). FAMILY PLOT proved to be an unusually slight and light-hearted film for the director, and the underrated mystery-thriller was helped enormously by Williams' utterly delightful score, which, to the annoyance of film music devotees everywhere, has yet to receive a soundtrack release (Of course -- because who'd buy a John Williams score for a Hitchcock movie?).

Williams had two more films released in 1976, both in classic Hollywood genres that were on their last legs. MIDWAY was the second film released in "Sensurround," and as the composer of Earthquake, Williams was unofficially the Senssuround Guy. Though it proved to be a boxoffice disaster, the offbeat Western, THE MISSOURI BREAKS, was one of the highest-profile movies of the year (thanks to its teaming of Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson), and thus it was fitting that the top composer of the day should get the scoring assignment. Williams' eclectic Missouri score was more in the vein of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing than The Cowboys, and was one of the last of his scores to demonstrate the stylistically varied sensibility of the early Williams.

The makers of BLACK SUNDAY advertised the film as if it were Jaws with a blimp, though Williams' score is arguably his most Goldsmith-ian work (its director, John Frankenheimer, had worked with Goldsmith on two earlier films, and nearly worked with him again on his final two features, Ronin and Reindeer Games), emphasizing action and momentum over melody (though the score does feature two memorable main themes), and, like Family Plot, has frustratingly never had an official soundtrack release. Around the same time, Williams was announced to score Michael Winner's Satanic horror film THE SENTINEL, but wisely backed out at the last moment -- reportedly due to illness, but probably it was simply good sense, as anyone who has seen Winner's film can attest to. It was the first of many incidents were Williams would back out on a project that turned out to be a disaster.

On Spielberg's recommendation, George Lucas had hired John Williams for STAR WARS back in 1975 -- the rest is, as they say, film music history. There's a good chance James Horner made more money off the Titanic album than Williams did on the original, best-selling two-disc Star Wars LP, but it's hard to imagine a more influential score than Star Wars -- the highest grossing film of all time until E.T. (though Titanic ultimately surpassed them both, Star Wars passed E.T. in its re-releases), it helped bring the Golden Age sensibility back to contemporary scoring, and featured one of the most popular themes of all time (not surprisingly, it was voted the greatest score of all time in AFI's 2005 poll).

Star Wars was enough to make any composer's career, but the release of Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND months later only helped to cement Williams' reputation -- the film was a deserved smash, and Spielberg's screenplay made Williams' music, particularly the classic five-note theme, an integral part of the storyline (reportedly, the success of Williams' Star Wars symphonicallly styled score encouraged the director and composer to pursue a more modernist approach for Close Encounters). Williams was understandably nominated for both scores, and without Star Wars in the running, he almost certainly would have won the Oscar for Close Encounters.

Following these back-to-back blockbusters, Williams' scores developed an impressive consistency, almost a smoothness, and the eclectic quality that produced scores as varied as Images and Cinderella Liberty was largely lost. He scored his only project for director Brian De Palma, the stylish but nonsensical THE FURY, and his lush, brooding music was one of the finest scores in the De Palma canon, and even impressed Pauline Kael (no lover of film music or of Williams). JAWS 2 was a big hit and a competent time-killer, though hardly a worthy successor to one of the greatest popular entertainments of the decade. Williams' score was, not surprisingly, its strongest element, though his smooth score was more adventurous than scary.

SUPERMAN was Williams' first post-Star Wars score in the Star Wars vein, and though many composers would have been tempted to copy themselves, Williams score was an exciting original, deservedly one of his most popular works, with a remarkable assortment of memorable melodies and set-pieces. Like Star Wars, it was graced with a two-disc soundtrack LP, but even that generous assortment of music left out some memorable cues.

1979 saw the release of two high-profile films, neither of which turned out to be hits, but which provided change-of-pace scoring opportunities for the star composer. John Badham's lavish remake of DRACULA was Williams' only attempt at Gothic horror, though the score emphasized romance and adventure over scares. 1941 was one of the very few comedies Williams' scored in his post-Jaws career, and his rousing pastiche (inspired, in part, by Bernstein's classic The Great Escape) gave the uneven but beautifully mounted slapstick epic welcome momentum. Williams' Benny Goodman homage "Swing Swing Swing," for the superb USO dance setpiece, was a stand-alone highlight.

Williams was also announced to score two science-fiction films that proved to be expensive disasters. QUINTET was a bleak post-apocalyptic drama from Robert Altman, with memorable visuals but little in the way of narrative excitement or emotional involvement. It would have been fascinating to see what Williams could have done with such dark material -- especially since Williams' previous collaborations with Altman were so musically unusual -- but Williams left the project, and the striking score was written by Tom Pierson (who was later the music director for Altman's Popeye).

METEOR was a big-budget disaster film with a George Pal flavor, but the troubled project ended up with a lengthy post-production period as the effects were redone (and still came out surprisingly cheap looking). Williams' departure may have been due to the scheduling delays, but it proved to be a commercially wise choice. Laurence Rosenthal's score had some fine passagea, especially his soaring main theme, and, ironically, unlike Dracula and 1941, his score was short-listed for the Oscar (in the last year of the Original Score shortlist) -- it was a rare year that Williams had new scores but no Oscar nominations.

Starting in 1980, Williams would begin to become less prolific, for a variety of plausible reasons -- following blockbusters like Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters and Superman, he could afford to be choosier with his projects; many of his new scores were unusually lengthy; and he became the Director of the Boston Pops Orchestra, a job he would keep for the next thirteen years.

Williams' only score of the year was THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, the highly acclaimed (and inevitable) first sequel to Star Wars, and Williams' score introduced one of the most popular themes from the series, "The Imperial March" (aka "Darth Vader's Theme"), and was a memorable mix of the classic style of the original score and darker, comparatively modernistic music.

Around this time, Williams bailed on two particularly infamous flops. Michael Cimino's visually staggering HEAVEN'S GATE had Williams attached at one point (and Morricone was also considered for the project), but Williams wisely departed (leaving The Missouri Breaks as his final Western score to date), and Cimino went in a markedly different direction with the young composer David Mansfield, whose folksy score proved to be one of the film's most popular elements; he went on to score three more features for the controversial director.

INCHON was an epic about a pivotal battle of the Korean War, financed by Reverend Sun Yung Moon, with Terence Young (From Russia with Love, Wait Until Dark) directing an all-star cast headed by Laurence Olivier as General MacArthur (no, really). The film's U.S. opening was delayed, as major subplots and characters were cut out completely, and it was released very briefly in the fall of 1982 before disappearing completely (as far as I know, it has never been released on video or cable). Jerry Goldsmith ultimately provided the score (which gave him the rare opportunity to write a second theme for MacArthur), a lively work which is practically the only thing about the movie that has survived.

1981 saw two new Williams' projects, at opposite ends of the success spectrum. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK was the first joint project for Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who were also Williams' most popular collaborators, and proved to be an enormous commercial and critical success (it's rare that a popcorn entertainment earns a Best Picture nomination, but Spielberg and Lucas managed the feat with impressive regularity). Though Williams' "Raiders March" was a little on the goofy side (with a distracting resemblance to Yale's "Boola Boola" march), it's one of his most popular and recognizable themes, and the score overall was typically expert (though the annoyingly sequenced soundtrack LP overused the March while ignoring the memorable, stand-alone main title cue).

Since Williams had been shrewd enough to bail on flops like Meteor and Inchon, it was surprising that he stayed with a film like HEARTBEEPS, which came and went quickly during the Christmas season of 1981. The only major starring vehicle for groundbreaking comedian Andy Kaufman (buried under Stan Winston's Oscar-nominated makeup), this kid-friendly robot comedy benefited from Williams' effervescent score, one of the rare works in his canon to make extensive use of electronics. The soundtrack LP was announced by MCA but then canceled (a fate shared with the same year's Raggedy Man, scored by Goldsmith), but fortunately the Varese Sarabande CD Club resurrected the score decades later, where it can be enjoyed without the movie.

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PART THREE: HIS FIRST YEARS AS AMERICA'S COMPOSER (1981-1987)
By Scott Bettencourt

In the previous part of this series, I discussed Williams's projects for the year 1981 without mentioning a memorable project he was tangentially involved with. Considering how great a part of Superman's success his score was, it was only natural that he'd be invited to score SUPERMAN II, much of which was filmed concurrently with the first Superman (though Richard Lester replaced Richard Donner for the completion of the film), but ultimately the film was scored by Lester's regular composer Ken Thorne, basing virtually his entire score on Williams's themes and cues (effectively if unimaginatively). One of Superman's producers has claimed that Williams met with Lester about scoring the film but had such a negative reaction to the director that he turned the job down. Considering how famously easygoing both Lester and Williams are, this scenario is less than plausible -- it's far more likely that the Superman producers simply didn't want to pay Williams' fee (the Brando footage shot for Superman II was deleted for similar financial reasons, while Lester has said he worked on the Superman films mostly to get money owed to him by the producers from their Musketeers films).

It's a pity that Williams didn't get to expand upon his original Superman material for the uneven but superior sequel, but his first project of 1982 proved to be arguably his greatest score in a career chock full of classics. Just like Jaws and Star Wars before it, E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL managed (despite its unwieldy title) to become the highest grossing film of all time (though Star Wars topped it in re-release, and Titanic ultimately topped them both). It's hard to find a false note in Spielberg's intimate, moving fantasy, and it's harder to imagine the film working so beautifully without Williams's subtle, beautifully calibrated score. Though the film was robbed of the Best Picture Oscar (Gandhi? Please), Williams deservedly won yet another Original Score Oscar, his third in the category and his fourth Oscar total.

Williams made a rare non-score contribution to film with his Oscar-nominated song, "If We Were in Love" for the Luciano Pavoratti vehicle YES, GIORGIO, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. It was rumored that Williams was originally set to score the film as well, but the score ended up being written by Michael J. Lewis, who had scored Schaffner's previous film, Sphinx (I've never heard any explanation why Sphinx wasn't scored by Goldsmith, who'd already scored six films for the director). Lewis' score incorporated Williams's theme as well as his own love theme.

Considering the number of failures Williams has managed to bail out of, it's surprising that he stayed with MONSIGNOR, Frank Perry's trashy, badly-reviewed drama with Christopher Reeve as a priest rising to a position of power in the Catholic Church. Williams' score (released on LP but not yet on CD) is a lush and varied work, with a brooding main theme that sounds like a cross between The Elephant Man and The Godfather, a lovely melody for the romantic scenes in Italy, and a stand-alone religious cue "Gloria" for a pivotal (and laughably directed) church scene.

Perhaps it was the failure of Monsignor that inspired Williams to become even choosier with his projects, and his only film for 1983 was the third in the original Star Wars trilogy, RETURN OF THE JEDI. Despite the film's high box-office, it is the least well-regarded of the first three Wars (the omnipresent Ewoks were unimpressive both as a fantasy creation and a creature effects), and Williams's score had its strong points (especially the lovely, little used "Luke & Leia" theme), but was not quite the classic its two predecessors were.

In 1984 Williams wrote the fanfare for the Los Angeles Summer Olympics, the first of several Olympics themes he's composed (he also even wrote a theme for the Special Olympics), ensuring his place as "America's Composer." He had two films released in '84, both earning Original Score nominations. Though INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM was regarded by most (except, surprisingly, Pauline Kael), as a disappointing follow-up to the beloved Raiders of the Lost Ark, Williams' sequel score was actually an improvement on his Raiders, with equally thrilling action cues but even better themes, especially the powerful "Children in Chains."

1984 saw the release of three female-centered farm stories from Hollywood -- Robert Benton's Places in the Heart, Country (which had a shift in directors during production) and Mark Rydell's THE RIVER (amusingly, all three films earned Best Actress nominations for their stars, with Sally Field's win for Places resulting in her immortal "You like me!" speech). It was Williams's fourth project for Rydell and his first since before Jaws and Star Wars made the composer a household name, and though his score was uneven (at times sounding too grand for the modest story), it had typically lovely passages, especially the moving "The Ancestral Home," and stylistically it was a welcome harkening back to the earlier, more eclectic Williams scores.

There were no new Williams feature scores in 1985 (the first year without a new Williams feature score since 1971), though he did make an impressive contribution to the lavish but unsatisfying Spielberg-produced anthology series AMAZING STORIES, composing the main title theme as well as scoring the two Spielberg-directed episodes, writing evocative music for "Ghost Train" (which actually incorporated his Amazing theme in the score) and a stirring score for the hour-long "The Mission."

Williams' break from feature scoring was especially notable since 1985 saw the release of the first of Spielberg's "Oscar-bait" projects, the modestly budgeted but lavish looking adaptation of Alice Walker's THE COLOR PURPLE. Composer Quincy Jones was one of the first people hired for the film, once the Guber-Peters producing team had obtained the film rights, and it was Jones himself who suggested Spielberg to direct. In Spielberg's more than three decades of directing features, Purple is still the only one without a Williams score, and Jones' score, somewhat surprisingly, almost seems to be trying to outdo Williams -- nearly through-composed, it takes a lushly orchestrated, leitmotific approach to the material, with memorable themes (including a main title theme clearly inspired by Georges Delerue's Our Mother's House), and a warm, Bernstein-Williams sound. The score earned Jones and his many collaborators/arrangers a Best Score nomination, though his work was widely panned by mainstream critics, who understandably expected something more authentic sounding and less Williams-esque.

Williams's first feature score in the year and a half following The River was, like Heartbeeps and Monsignor, a flop that it's still surprising Williams signed on for. The juvenile adventure SPACECAMP is today best remembered for its cast, a group of future celebrity consorts including Kate Capshaw (aka Mrs. Spielberg), Kelly Preston (Mrs. Travolta) and Tate Donovan (future boyfriend of Bullock and Aniston) as well as cute child actor Leaf Phoenix, who inexplicably grew up into Joaquin Phoenix, one of the finest actors of his generation. Williams' score was a lively, professional effort with a rousing end title, but the reason for his involvement (beyond the fact that 20th Century Fox apparently considered that this and not Aliens would be their smash hit for summer 1986) is still a mystery. The score was originally available only on LP, and has only been released on CD as an import.

Williams rebounded in 1987 with two amazing Oscar-nominated scores for films which earned mixed reactions at the time of their release. The George Miller-directed adaptation of John Updike's THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK was one of the strangest studio films of the era, beautifully crafted and generally entertaining but tonally and narratively incoherent. The offbeat premise and the all-star cast helped make it a hit, but the only person who seemed to have a cohesive vision of the film was Williams, whose deft and lively score was one of his greatest works of the '80s (arguably one of his all-time greatest), with a spectacular main theme as well as wonderful stand-alone cues. The score CD was out of print for much too long, and is an essential component of any Williams collection.

Witches was followed by EMPIRE OF THE SUN, Spielberg's second "Oscar bait" project and his first feature collaboration with Williams since Temple of Doom three and a half years earlier. Empire received generally positive though mixed reviews at the time of its release, but besides some nominations in the technical categories it was ignored at Oscar time. Which is unfortunate, since, though flawed, Empire is one of Spielberg's most genuinely adult films (and even has a satisfying ending, unlike Schindler and Munich), visually gorgeous (but not distractingly pretty like Color Purple) and aided by a witty Tom Stoppard script and especially Christian Bale's extraordinary lead performance. Williams's score received some harsh reviews at the time of its release -- especially since some of his choral cues seem to reinforce Spielberg's occasionally distracting attempts to be arty rather than simply tell the story -- but it is one of his most purely beautiful works. Two decades later, the film's reputation is slowly but deservedly improving, and with luck the score will be as well regarded.

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PART FOUR: SPIELBERG FINALLY GETS HIS OSCAR, WILLIAMS ORDERS A NEW MANTLE FOR HIS FIFTH (1987-1993)
By Scott Bettencourt

Just as in the second column in this series, where I neglected to mention Williams' almost-participation in Superman II, in the third part I forgot to mention that Williams reportedly wrote two new themes (a love theme and a theme for the villain Nuclear Man) for the last of the Christopher Reeve Supermans, 1987's SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE, scored by Alexander Courage.

Bruce Broughton had his feature career breakthrough with his popular, Oscar-nominated score for Lawrence Kasdan's Silverado. He went on to score Kasdan's production of Cross My Heart, and it was expected that he would score Kasdan's fourth feature, THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST. Rumor has it that Kasdan disagreed with Broughton's ideas for a somber, faux-classical approach, and John Williams was brought on board for his only feature film of 1988. Despite its Best Picture nomination (and a Supporting Actress Oscar for Geena Davis), the film has developed a small, devoted following (myself included) rather than becoming thought of as a classic of its decade, and Williams' score, relying mostly on his main theme (the jubilant "Second Chance") is one of his more modest efforts, but managed to beautifully reinforce the film's delicate balance of grief and hope, and his score shares the film's cultish popularity.

1989 saw the release of three Williams-scored features -- two of them directed by Spielberg (the first of several years in which the pair would have two projects in release). INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE proved to be a (temporary) finale to the series, eschewing the gloom of Temple of Doom in a return to a more lighthearted, Raiders feeling -- in fact, between the storyline (a race against the Nazis for a Biblical relic), the Middle Eastern setting, the return of sidekicks Brody and Sallah (unfortunately, this time played as slapstick bumblers), it's a virtual remake of Raiders, with the notable addition of Sean Connery as Indy's father. As with Temple of Doom, Williams reprises his Raiders march and provides an impressive bounty of new themes (along with a brief, jokey reprise of the Lost Ark theme, a la the snippet of Yoda's theme heard in E.T.).

The end of the year saw the first of three politically themed collaborations between Williams and controversial writer-director Oliver Stone, BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. Williams was an especially shrewd choice for the Stone films -- not only because he's an expert composer, but his unofficial status as "America's composer" (along with his Olympics themes, he'd composed the new theme for the NBC News) gave the projects a genuine Americana feeling which helped counterpoint Stone's portrayals of the anti-war movement, the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, and the Nixon administration. This adaptation of Ron Kovic's memoir of his service in the Vietnam War, the paralyzing injury he suffered and his participation in the anti-war movement was a powerful moviegoing experience, though as Pauline Kael pointed out, the film confusingly makes it seem as if Kovic's objection to the war was based entirely on his own injury. The film showed hints of the more fragmented, experimental style Stone would utilize in such films as JFK and especially Natural Born Killers, and Williams' moving score, with its noble main theme, helped to keep it emotionally anchored. Both Last Crusade and Born earned Best Score nominations for Williams, with the award going to Alan Menken for The Little Mermaid (yes, it was the start of that era).

Speilberg had wanted for years to remake the '40s fantasy romance A Guy Named Joe (there's even a clip from it in the Spielberg-produced Poltergeist), but the project never reached the screen until the Christmas of 1989. ALWAYS turned out to be one of Spielberg's least successful films, both critically and commercially (and the first Spielberg film since Sugarland Express not to receive a single Oscar nomination). The film had excellent visual effects and lovely cinematography, but its attempt at adult romance failed -- the questionable casting of Richard Dreyfuss (in his only post-Close Encounters Spielberg film) as a daredevil pilot didn't help. For a romantic fantasy, Williams' score was surprisingly subdued. Most composers would have provided an endlessly repeated love theme, but Williams's approach was subtler (reportedly, an early screening of the film moved the composer to tears) and effective.

Despite the presence of stars Robert De Niro and Jane Fonda (her last film until Monster-in-Law), STANLEY & IRIS received little notice upon its release in early 1990, but it's an intelligent and appealingly modest romantic drama, featuring the best of Fonda's later performances. It was the third film Williams scored for director Martin Ritt, and proved to be Ritt's final feature. Though the director generally tended toward sparse scores, Stanley & Iris has a significant amount of music, and Williams' lovely score was in the Accidental Tourist vein, delicate and moving without overwhelming the "ordinary" characters.

Director Alan J. Pakula assembled an impressive package for his film version of Scott Turow's best-selling novel PRESUMED INNOCENT, starring Harrison Ford, and the low-key legal thriller was a surprising project for Williams to sign on to. The final film, inexplicably snubbed at Oscar time, was an excellent adaptation of Turow's engrossing novel (though it lacked some of the book's resonant details), with an Oscar-worthy performance by Bonnie Bedelia as Ford's wife, and a supporting cast including Brian Dennehy, Raul Julia, a pre-West Wing John Spencer, and a 10-year-old Jesse Bradford as Ford's son. Williams' score was probably the most subdued effort of his post-Jaws career, with a restrained main theme (slightly reminiscent of the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood") and an atypical use of synthesizers.

Bruce Broughton was originally announced to score HOME ALONE, with Chris Columbus directing producer John Hughes's script, but a scheduling conflict with The Rescuers Down Under led to his departure. As with The Accidental Tourist, John Williams stepped in to fill his slot, and the slight but well-mounted kids' comedy proved to be the blockbuster of the year. Williams' Nutcracker-inspired score was one of its most palatable elements, and earned the composer nominations (his 27th and 28th) for its score and song, "Somewhere in My Memory," beginning a multi-picture relationship with director Columbus.

1991 saw the release of two widely different Williams projects featuring all-star casts. In the '80s, Spielberg had developed a never-made musical film version of Peter Pan, with songs by Williams and Leslie Bricusse. In '91, Spielberg directed HOOK, a revisionist sequel to Pan, and a notable Hollywood agency package from the era, combining a high-concept premise, the top director of our time, and A-list stars: Robin Williams as the adult Pan, Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook, and Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell. It was a predictably lavish but ultimately unsatisfying project. Despite its moments of visual grandeur, Spielberg's heart didn't seem to be in it, and the scenes with the Lost Boys were particularly dispiriting. Williams reportedly used some themes from the unmade Pan musical, and though his score wasn't completely successful (the faux-Grusin music for the early suburbia scene was an unusual but not especially effective choice), his typically multi-thematic approach contained much worthy material, especially the evocative "You Are the Pan" theme.

Williams reunited with Oliver Stone for the director's acclaimed, controversial JFK, which presented a complicated (if not historically validated) view of the Kennedy assassination. Because of the nature of Stone's editing process and the schedule of the Hook scoring, Williams reportedly took an atypical approach to the scoring process, providing pre-recorded cues rather than scoring directly to picture. Williams' moving main theme effectively evoked the tragedy of Kennedy's death, while his rhythmic, percussive "The Conspirators" was one of the freshest and most exciting pieces of his later career, proving to be widely imitated.

Williams earned his 29th and 30th Oscar nominations in 1992, for JFK's score and Hook's song "When You're Alone," but his two scores released in 1992 went entirely un-nominated, the first time since 1979 where Williams's feature output for a year went entirely unacknowledged by the Academy. FAR AND AWAY was his only film (to date) for director Ron Howard, a lavish period romance (filmed in 70mm, no less) about Irish immigration to the United States. Williams's score, featuring the seemingly inevitable participation of Irish-music specialists The Chieftans, is a quasi-controversial effort as far as Williams devotees are concerned -- some consider it an unheralded classic, while others (myself included) find it effective and professional but ultimately surprisingly unmemorable.

His other project for 1992 was in some ways one of the more inexplicable of his later career. For commercial reasons, it was sensible of Williams to score the inevitable HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK, but Williams' later career never seemed to be guided by strictly commercial considerations, and Williams's score, while contributing a pair of new Christmas songs to the Home Alone musical canon, was one of the least necessary scores of his entire career (though not as unnecessary as the film, a virtual remake of the original film featuring John Hughes' patented disturbing mix of extreme sentimentality and grotesque slapstick violence).

Even in a career full of remarkably successful individual years, 1993 was a true milestone for both Williams and Spielberg, as their two collaborations proved to be among their most notable. JURASSIC PARK was Spielberg's first feature since the disappointment of Hook, and Michael Crichton's high concept novel was ideal source material for the director to explore his commercial instincts in his first "scary" film since Jaws. While the "people" scenes could not compare to Jaws's unforgettable character interplay (despite a classy cast including Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Samuel L. Jackson and Richard Attenborough), Spielberg's dinosaur setpieces were superbly realized, aided by revolutionary computer generated effects from ILM. Williams' score featured one of the catchiest of his later themes, and though its "Nature finds a way" grandeur seemed imposed on the material rather than emerging naturally, his action/thriller cues were as effective as ever, and the distinctive "Dennis Steals the Embryo" was a welcome successor to JFK's "The Conspirators."

The holiday season saw the release of Spielberg's second film of the year, the long-in-development SCHINDLER'S LIST. It is still the most acclaimed of all of Speilberg's "Oscar bait" movies -- as a three-hour black-and-white docudrama about the Holocaust, it's almost critically unimpeachable -- and despite an off-key ending, it was an impressive stylistic and dramatic achievement for the director (as well as his first R-rated film), and earned impressive grosses for a film with such grueling subject matter. Williams's sparse score is best remembered for its emotional yet restrained main theme, though I prefer the wry intelligence of such cues as "Schindler's Workforce." Schindler also began a trend of Williams using big-name musicians in its score, with Itzhak Perlman providing the film's pivotal violin solos. Unsurprisingly, Williams won his fifth Oscar for the film (which so far is his only Best Picture winner), which won Spielberg his long-awaited first Best Director Oscar, and his score was widely praised by his peers, including none other than Jerry Goldsmith, who said it was a project he himself would have loved to score.

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PART FIVE: RETIRING, OR BUSIER THAN EVER? (1995-1999)
By Scott Bettencourt

In the mid-90s, there were rumors that Williams was considering retirement (his leadership of the Boston Pops ended in 1993), and he didn't score any new films in 1994. He was originally announced to score Mike Nichols' offbeat werewolf thriller WOLF (which would have made a nice companion piece with Williams's Dracula and The Witches of Eastwick), but Williams ultimately left the project and Ennio Morricone wrote a typically striking score.

Many directors, once they've finally won an Oscar, become drastically less prolific, taking years off between films. With Spielberg finally earning Best Director and Best Picture for Schindler's List, he took a 3 1/2 year break between Schindler and his next film, leaving Williams more time to work with other directors.

In 1985, he scored his first (and to date, only) film for director Sydney Pollack, the lavish but unsatisfying remake of SABRINA. Screenwriter William Goldman astutely observed that the only reason to remake Sabrina was if the original had starred Julia Ormond and you were able to get Audrey Hepburn for the new version; alas Pollack was stuck with the attractive and talented but less than magical Ormond, and his faithful reworking of the popular Billy Wilder comedy (in which Hepburn was torn between brothers Humphrey Bogart and William Holden) was a depressingly mechanical affair. Though Pollack regularly used Dave Grusin throughout the '70s, '80s and '90s, for Sabrina he hired Williams for his first romantic comedy score since the 1960s (Pete 'n' Tillie and Cinderella Liberty were both dramas as much as they were comedies). Williams's score featured a variety of pleasing melodies, including a charming title theme, two new love songs, and a comedic theme for Harrison Ford's protagonist, though the soundtrack album was frustratingly sequenced, featuring little of Ford's theme while containing an endless source suite of standards (one can only assume they were hoping for Sleepless in Seattle-sized soundtrack sales).

Williams's other film of the year was his third politically-themed project for Oliver Stone, and the least critically and commercially successful of the trio. NIXON was an epic-length, psychologically-oriented portrait of the controversial President, and Anthony Hopkins's Oscar-nominated performance in the title role was emotionally impressive, but Nixon's own voice, appearance and manner are so indelible that it was hard to forget you were watching Hopkins (his continued inability to master a convincing American accent didn't help). The film was an honorable failure, a worthy attempt but suffering from a lack of dramatic momentum. The brooding opening scene of the White House at night suggested we were about to see President Kane, and Williams did a first-rate job of exploring a complex character in musical terms, the kind of assignment more associated with Herrmann, North or Goldsmith. "The 1960s: The Turbulent Years" was an unexpectedly rousing cue (heard prominently in the film's advertising), and the score was a well deserved Oscar nominee, arguably the finest of the year. 1995 saw the return of the third music category in the Oscars -- now called "Original Musical or Comedy Score" -- thanks to the Academy's predilection for giving Score Oscars to song-dominated animated musicals, and for the first time since 1973, Williams managed to be nominated in all three music categories, with Sabrina up for Musical or Comedy Score as well as Song (for "Moonlight.")

Williams's only film for 1996 was a particular change-of-pace for the composer. SLEEPERS, Barry Levinson's film of Lorenzo Carcaterra's memoir of his troubled youth leading to a violent revenge, featured an especially star-laden cast led by Brad Pitt, Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman, so it was only fitting that Hollywood's star composer (who had never worked with Levinson before) should take the assignment. Unfortunately, Sleepers proved to be an especially unexciting and unconvincing feature (the source book earned a lot of negative press from journalists who claimed the author's tale of woe was largely fictional), and Williams was certainly a surprising choice to score a story of urban violence -- it's hard to think of any other Williams in a similar genre. Williams' score took a low-key, psychological approach that made it something of a successor to Nixon, and though it was one of his less memorable efforts of the decade (while earning a seemingly inevitable Best Score nomination), it was refreshing to hear the composer venture into new dramatic territory.

Any fears of an imminent Williams retirement were cast aside in 1997, as he had a whopping four films in release. His first project of the year was his most unexpected, as well as his most underappreciated score of the late '90s. Writer-director John Singleton had hit a home run his first time at bat with Boyz N the Hood, earning Oscar nominations for Director and Screenplay (a staggering achievement for such a young filmmaker), but its successors, Poetic Justice and Higher Learning, earned him little respect. His fourth feature, ROSEWOOD, was a historical drama about a rape accusation leading to the massacre of a small town's black population, featuring Ving Rhames (as an somewhat incongruous action hero), Don Cheadle, and Jon Voight as the film's "Schindler," a white resident who helps save his black neighbors. Wynton Marsalis wrote the original score, and it's surprising that there was apparently no controversy when his music was rejected in favor of a new score by the conspicuously white John Williams (Marsalis later released his score on CD as Reel Time). Williams's replacement score harkened back to such '70s scores as Conrack and The Sugarland Express, and was a powerful work with an effective regional sound, refreshingly lacking the glossiness of much later Williams. The film has yet to find its deserved audience, but is undeniably Singleton's best post-Boyz film (Better than 2 Fast 2 Furious? I know, hard to imagine).

Three and a half years after the staggering critical success of Schindler's List, Spielberg returned to directing with, of all things, THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK, a loose adaptation of Michael Crichton's sequel novel. The film had impressive set-pieces but was one of Spielberg's least satisfying efforts; it felt like the director had decided he would only make one more Jurassic sequel so he wanted to cram everything he could in, from a Hatari-style dinosaur hunt to a climactic dinosaur-in-civilization rampage, with the result that none of these setpieces had the impact they would have in a more carefully structured film. For those of us (such as myself) who felt that Williams's original Jurassic score tried too hard to elevate the pulpy material into something "meaningful," his Lost World score was a welcome change, with a more modest approach and an appealing main theme which evoked the age of classic Hollywood adventure scoring like Steiner's Kong.

Williams's new trend towards working with star musicians continued with SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET, with Yo-Yo Ma providing the cello solos for Williams' restrained score for Jean-Jacques Annaud's epic drama about the Dalai Lama and his friendship with an Austrian mountaineer (played by Brad Pitt). The film was, strangely enough, one of two Dalai Lama dramas of the year, with Martin Scorsese's Kundun (featuring an Oscar-nominated Philip Glass score) earning better reviews but Seven Years (due to the presence of Pitt, one can only assume) made about seven times as much money in the U.S. Williams's score had a Schinder-esque somberness and evoked but didn't overemphasize the Tibetan setting. In any other year, it would have been a shoo-in for a Best Score nomination, but it was his third historical drama of the year that earned that slot.

Following the undemanding popcorn entertainment of The Lost World, Spielberg returned to Oscar bait turf with AMISTAD, a historical drama about a mutiny on a slave ship and its repercussions. It took a less sentimental approach than Spielberg's previous venture into the history of blacks in America, The Color Purple, but many critics derided it for ultimately focusing more on the white characters (such as John Quincy Adams, in a nominated performance from Anthony Hopkins) than on its slave hero, an early star performance from Djimon Hounsou. Williams's score mixed moving Americana material (unfairly derided by critics) with Africa-themed cues, including an end title vocal "Dry Your Tears, Afrika," and earned the composer his 36th Oscar nomination.

Following the 3 1/2 year gap between Schindler and Lost World, Spielberg became almost alarmingly prolific, and Amistad was followed soon after by SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. It had been a long time since Hollywood had made a World War II epic, and despite a confused script, Spielberg's superbly crafted drama, featuring stunning battle scenes and a moving lead performance by Tom Hanks, was one of the summer's biggest hits. Williams's score, a much more solemn effort than his last war epic, Midway, was sparsely spotted but still earned knee-jerk pans from mainstream critics. Though his end title theme, "Hymn for the Fallen," seemed too much an attempt to impose greater meaning on what was ultimately just a well-made Hollywood war movie, his scoring of individual scenes was typically deft, especially the lengthy, moving "Omaha Beach" cue.

Williams's other project for 1998 was, like Rosewood, a replacement score, but under even more surprising circumstances. Home Alone's Chris Columbus directed STEPMOM, a comedy-drama about the relationship between two women, with Julia Roberts as the second wife forced to cope with the prospect of raising her husband's children, as first wife Susan Sarandon faces terminal cancer. The project's progression through several writers seemed to leech all the dramatic interest out of the situation -- Roberts's character seems perfectly able to take care of the kids, while Sarandon seems to be expected to just hurry up and die so her ex can enjoy his new life -- while adding layers of creepy sexual politics (hubby Ed Harris is never expected to be take part in the child rearing -- after all, he's a man, and a lawyer). Patrick Doyle wrote the original score during a period when he was being treated (successfully) for leukemia -- he even worked on the film from his hospital room -- so his replacement on the film added an additional layer of distastefulness to what would normally already be a difficult situation. Williams's third score for Columbus (following the Home Alones) lacked the effortless mixture of joy and sadness of his Accidental Tourist and, though highly competent, failed to bring the muddled film to life. The latest star soloist was guitarist Christopher Parkening, while Williams's cue titles like "Always and Always" and "The Days Between" seemed to almost reflect the audience's impatience.

Williams's first feature of 1999 was probably the most eagerly awaited score of his nearly 50-year career. Following a 22-year gap since the first Star Wars, George Lucas decided to return to directing with THE PHANTOM MENACE, the start of the "prequel trilogy" which would tell the story of how young Annakin Skywalker became evil Darth Vader. One can easily imagine actual rioting among film music fans if anyone but John Williams had received the scoring assignment, and the composer had a particularly daunting task, working in the same style as his most popular creation (and 16 years after his last Star Wars score, Return of the Jedi) yet writing a score that takes place before his main Star Wars characters were born. The film turned out to be a box-office bonanza and yet a huge disappointment -- technically remarkable but surprisingly stodgy, with flat dialogue, unengaging characters, and the universally reviled Jar-Jar Binks (whose role in the series Lucas wisely reduced in the two sequels). Williams's score made use of the familiar themes for Luke and Yoda while adding two major new themes, an elaborate theme for the young Annakin (cleverly working in elements of Darth Vader's theme) and a rousing "Duel of the Fates." The original one-disc soundtrack release understandably omitted many cues, and was followed in 2000 by a "complete" two-disc version which did not in fact feature the complete score, but rather the score as heard in the film, complete with music edits. Film music fans were understandably frustrated, and neither of Menace's two sequels have had their original one-disc soundtracks expanded.

Williams was originally announced to score Chris Columbus' megabudget project for 1999, the sci-fi comedy drama BICENTENNIAL MAN, with Robin Williams as a robot fighting for his rights as a sentient being, but the film ended up being scored by James Horner (and was a rare commercial failure for the director). Instead, Williams scored his only (to date) film for director Alan Parker, the underrated adaptation of Frank McCourt's best-selling memoir ANGELA'S ASHES. Williams's restrained score, at times reminiscent of Presumed Innocent, refreshingly avoided all the cliches of Irish-themed scores (especially prevalent in the wake of Titanic's mega-success), and was a particularly moving work, climaxing in the powerful "Back to America." Unfortunately, the U.S. CD release of Williams's score featured narration in a distressing number of tracks -- more narration than was even heard in the movie. Fortunately, the overseas release of the score (as well as the For Your Consideration disc) featured only music.

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PART SIX: A NEW CENTURY, A NEW MASTERPIECE (2000-Present)
By Scott Bettencourt

David Arnold was expected to score THE PATRIOT, director Roland Emmerich's attempt to mix action adventure with an Oscar bait historical story about the American revolution (fittingly enough for the director of Independence Day), but composer and director had a falling out, and the job went to John Williams, his only score of 2000. Intriguingly, The Patriot's 1770s setting is the earliest time period Williams has ever scored for a feature (unless you count the Star Wars films, which are of course set "a long time ago" -- it's frustrating that we've never had the opportunity to hear a Williams-scored Renaissance swashbuckler, or a Biblical epic), and Williams's score, with violinist Mark O'Connor as his latest star soloist, is something of a companion piece to Far and Away -- both because of its historical Americana and because it caused a similarly divided reaction among film music fans. The film was entertaining enough, with typically expert cinematography from Caleb Deschanel (a filmmaker friend joked that it should have been Deschanel's face dominating the poster art instead of Mel Gibson's), but the decision to ascribe Nazi-style atrocities to the British enemy cheapened the film, and in Hollywood the film is most remembered for the scandal that emerged when the news broke that the studio had employees pretend to be enthusiastic audience members in the film's TV spots. The film earned Williams an inevitable nomination (it was also up for Cinematography and Sound), while Emmerich resumed his career with more typical material (The Day After Tomorrow) and a new composer, Harald Kloser.

While skilled but unmemorable scores such as Stepmom and The Patriot suggested that Williams might be starting to wind down a little bit creatively, the 2001 release of A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE proved that this was far from the case. Spielberg took three years off from directing after Saving Private Ryan (which won him his second Best Director Oscar), but starting with A.I. he entered the most prolific period in his career, with six films released in five years. A.I. was a project originally developed by Stanley Kubrick (he nearly filmed it in the mid-'90s before deciding to do Eyes Wide Shut instead), and Spielberg based his script on the material Kubrick had developed for the film, including conceptual art. While the film rarely feels Kubrickean (except for Jack Angel's vocal performance as the teddy bear robot), the film is still one of Spielberg's most impressively adult efforts. The opening act is one of the tightest pieces of dramatic storytelling in his entire career, and the remaining acts, though uneven, feature powerful sequences and staggering visuals, and are anchored by Haley Joel Osment's masterful performance as the robot boy David. Williams's A.I. score is arguably his greatest work of the last two decades. While the music bears the distinctive Williams sound (and his inevitable impeccable craft), he ventured into new areas, with a touch of techno and an expert infusion of minimalism into his classically melodic style. The score features an unusual variety of powerful themes -- flowing melodies for David's relationship with his "mother" and for the Blue Fairy, the wrenching "Abandonment" theme, a lovely, hesitant theme for David himself -- and even an homage to Kubrick, as Williams works in a motif from Der Rosenkavalier (which Kubrick had considered for his film's score) during the approach to "Rouge City." Unfortunately, no completely satisfying soundtrack has been released for this masterpiece. The commercially released album omits some crucial material (such as David's theme and the Rosenkavalier interpolation) while featuring two vocal versions of the mother theme (with lyrics not heard in the film). Academy Music Branch members received a two-disc For Your Consideration pressed CD, but though this set features virtually all of the music from the film, the sequencing at times seems nearly random, so the definitive A.I. soundtrack has yet to appear.

Williams's other score for 2001 was one of the most frustrating of his later career. With Chris Columbus at the helm, Williams was an inevitable choice to score the franchise-starting HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE, especially as the material was something of a cross between Star Wars and The Witches of Eastwick. Williams's multi-thematic score was as musically strong as ever, but the spotting was atypically heavy-handed for the composer, with seemingly every scene in the film's first third featuring a grand cue which made the film seem annoyingly self-congratulatory, giving ammo to the usual Williams-haters (and even some Williams-lovers).

Williams was particularly prolific in 2002 with four films in release, beginning with the second of the Star Wars prequels, ATTACK OF THE CLONES. The film, though uneven, was a big improvement over The Phantom Menace, with exciting action scenes, genuinely cool sequences (especially Obi-Wan's visit to the clone-making planet) and a terrific back-story for Boba Fett (far superior to the Anakin back-story that comprises the prequel trilogy). Williams's score was most notable for a lovely new theme for the romance between Anakin and Padme, "Across the Stars," which evoked his Jane Eyre. Unfortunately, while his Phantom Menace score had suffered somewhat from music editing, his Clones experienced more drastic tampering -- the robot assembly line sequence was a particular victim, with even Yoda's theme popping up at one point for no discernible reason. The one-disc CD release was a good selection from the score, but as always, any Williams Star Wars score cries out for a complete release.

Merely a year after A.I., Spielberg returned to the future with MINORITY REPORT, an uneven but highly enjoyable and visually dazzling expansion of Philip K. Dick's short story about a police force able to predict crimes. A more overtly commercial science-fiction film than A.I., Minority Report featured exciting action scenes and benefited from a terrific supporting cast, including Colin Farrell, Max Von Sydow, Daniel London, Tim Blake Nelson, and especially Samantha Morton as a psychic savant. Even Tom Cruise managed to suppress his Tom Cruise-iness and fit into Spielberg's impressively realized future world, though the final act was a disappointment, the story threads resolving in a prosaic fashion. Williams's score was less stylistically varied than A.I., but was a first-rate effort, balancing spectacular action cues (at times reminiscent of his beloved early Irwin Allen TV scores) with evocative melodic material.

The second Harry Potter film, HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, went into production immediately after the release of the first film, so the sequel emerged in theaters with a promptness associated usually with slasher sequels (even Hostel Part II didn't come out that fast). Chamber of Secrets managed to improve on its predecessor in several ways, despite its unwieldy length, and though Columbus was not an inspired choice for the series, he managed to hire all the right people and remained admirably true to J.K. Rowling's immsensely popular novels. Because of his commitments to other projects (2002 was a two-Spielberg year), Williams was unavailable to write the full score for Chamber of Secrets, so he provided a large chunk of thematic material and individual cues, with William Ross adapting Williams themes from the first two films for the remainder of the score, with a reasonably seamless result (though Williams is rumored to have re-scored certain sequences himself), while the soundtrack album featured only Williams material.

Lasse Hallstrom was originally announced to direct CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, the true story of a young con artist in the 1960s, but the film ended up as a Spielberg project. An appealing mix of comedy and drama, it benefited from the director's confident filmmaking and charming performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Christopher Walken (in a rare role as a reasonably normal human being). Surprisingly, the film was not the major Oscar contender it threatened to be, but did earn nominations for Walken and for Williams's score. I don't know if it was this score or A.I. that inaugurated the current critical cliche of each new Williams score being somehow different from (and superior to) what is expected from the composer, as if every score he'd ever written was a Star Wars clone, ignoring a remarkably varied (and simply remarkable) body of work incorporating everything from Images to The Long Goodbye to Family Plot to Rosewood. Either way, Catch Me If You Can featured one of Williams' most charming scores, with a jazzy '60s flavor and the effortlessness of Mancini at his finest.

With such a busy 2002, Williams understandably took 2003 off, and returned to scoring the following year with a project that allowed him to revisit familiar material with a fresh ear. For HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, Chris Columbus turned over the director's chair to Alfonso Cuaron, and though one might have expected Cuaron to use his Little Princess/Great Expectations composer Patrick Doyle, he was contractually obligated to use Williams. Regardless, it proved to be an excellent match, earning Williams his second Oscar nomination for the series. Cuaron's Potter film was shorter than its predecessors yet emotionally richer, helped greatly by his marvelous gift for visual storytelling. Williams eschewed the grand, Christmas pageant sound of his Sorcerer's Stone score for a more modest approach with a lightly baroque flavor, while providing a change-of-pace sound for setpieces like "The Knight Bus." It is fitting that Williams should match the best Harry Potter film (far superior to the mysteriously overrated Goblet of Fire) with the best Harry Potter score; it was his last in the series for the time being, with Doyle scoring Goblet of Fire for Mike Newell and feature newcomer Nicholas Hooper scoring Order of the Phoenix for his regular director David Yates. With two more Potters yet to be filmed, it's possible Williams may return for the final episode, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (due in 2010 maybe?) to close out the series.

Spielberg had a rare critical and commercial failure with that summer's THE TERMINAL, with Tom Hanks as an Eastern European immigrant stranded in an NY airport terminal. The off-beat comedy-drama featured outstanding performances from Hanks and Stanley Tucci (in a thankless role as Hanks's antagonist) and remarkable production design from Alex McDowall, but the unsatisfying script made it seem like Spielberg, attracted by a reunion with Hanks and the technical challenges of creating a convincing airport terminal from scratch, hadn't really thought the project through, and the end result, though a pleasant time-killer, was disappointing considering all the great talents involved. Williams's light-hearted score was a pleasant harkening back to his early years as a comedy composer, and though it lacked the effortless perfection of his Catch Me If You Can, it was one of the film's most charming elements.

In 2005, Williams had yet another four-score year, with no co-scoring projects a la Chamber of Secrets. REVENGE OF THE SITH was the final entry in the Star Wars prequel trilogy and got the best reviews of the new series. While it was the most consistent of the trio, it lacked the highs of Attack of the Clones, and the trilogy's single biggest problem -- the story hinges on the tragic romance between Anakin and Padme, which is the weakest dramatic element of all six films -- is especially damaging here. Williams's score, which still suffered somewhat from the music editing which damaged his Clones, featured one major new theme, "Battle of the Heroes" (a companion piece to his "Duel of the Fates") while did a typically skillful job of tying together the themes from the original trilogy with his prequel material.

Williams' other project for summer 2005 was another megabudget science-fiction production, with Spielberg tackling a remake of H.G. Wells's WAR OF THE WORLDS. The film made an admirable attempt to be faithful to Wells's novel but in a contemporary setting, and Spielberg's setpieces were some of his most impressive ever, especially the first emergence of the Martian tripods from a New Jersey street. This early sequence was so strong that, even though the later scenes were effective on their own, the film seemed to peak early. Williams took an atypical approach to the score, using his full orchestral resources to amplify the suspense and horror while avoiding the use of a dominating main theme to unify the score. The lack of a central melody made the score seem almost like a string of stand-alone cues, though it does work well in context. The CD featured all the major material, though annoyingly it included Morgan Freeman's narration over the evocative opening and closing cues (Guys, if we wanted the narration we'd buy the DVD), and unfortunately the For Your Consideration discs featured the narration as well.

Williams had two more films released for the 2005 Oscar season, both of which earned him Oscar nominations as well more rave reviews of the "Hey, this doesn't sound like that Star Wars John Williams we always think we're hearing" kind. Steven Spielberg originally planned to direct the film version of Arthur Golden's best-seller MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, and his continued involvement in the production is almost certainly the reason Williams was retained as the film's composer, even after the director's chair was filled by Rob Marshall, fresh off his Chicago success. His film of Geisha was beautifully mounted, earning Oscars for Cinematography, Costume Design and Art Direction, and overall was an entertainingly old-fashioned Hollywood entertainment, hampered mostly by the not especially compelling romance at its center. Williams's score, reuniting him with soloist Yo-Yo Ma, was one of the most gorgeous works of his late career, effectively mixing Eastern and Western musical elements and dominated by a luscious main theme that may be Williams's most memorable theme of the last two decades. With five Oscars under his belt, he didn't really need a sixth one, but for such a splendid score to lose to Gustavo Santaolalla's minor Brokeback Mountain was a predictable disappointment.

Williams's final score for 2005 (and his last score to date) was for one of Spielberg's most fascinating (if not entirely successful) works. MUNICH was an ambitious, fictionalized portrait of Israel's attempt to seek revenge against those it held responsible for the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Spielberg's film was a mixture of historical drama with '70s-style international thriller and for the most part it worked, though as with too many of his "serious" films, he was unable to find a suitable ending, and the strange mish-mash of sex and death in Munich's climax nearly negated all that was effective and memorable in the two-and-a-half hours that preceded it. Williams's score mixed percussive suspense material in the JFK vein with a moving main theme which managed to give the film enough emotion without overpowering it.

There was no new Williams score in 2006, and so far no new one is planned for 2007. 2008 sees the release of the long-awaited (nearly 20 years) fourth Indiana Jones film, teaming Harrison Ford with young star de jour Shia LaBoeuf as well as a supporting cast so strong you hardly need Harrison Ford -- Cate Blanchett, John Hurt, Ray Winstone and Jim Broadbent. The gap between Indy films (and scores) will have proved to be even longer than the gap between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace, and Williams's score will likely be the film music event of 2008.