Steven Spielberg Intros ‘Music by John Williams’ AFI Fest Doc Premiere

Even without the John Williams factor, the premiere event for the 38th annual AFI Fest would have been notable in one particular think about, Steven Spielberg shelp. “First of all, I thank the AFI board and everyone for doing someskinnyg they’ve never done before, which is to uncover the AFI Festival with a recordary,” Spielberg shelp in introducing the 2025 events’s uncovering-night enticeion at the TCL Chinese Theatre. “That is a wonderful skinnyg, to reassociate be able to place the recordary establish exactly where it beextfinisheds, right up aextfinishedside the narrative establish.”

But “even without the John Williams factor” is not someskinnyg that Spielberg has wanted to experience very standardly in his filmmaking atsoft. From his debut feature, “The Sugarland Express,” thcdisorrowfulmireful his most recent film, 2022’s “The Fabelmans,” Spielberg has bcdisorrowfulmirefult Williams in to score 29 of his features. And now they more or less allot a 30th together: “Music by John Williams,” a Disney+ recordary for which Spielberg served as one of the producers as well as (apart from Williams) the primary interseeee.

“I cherish John,” Spielberg telderly the crowd, saying he is “much more” than a family frifinish — reassociate, “a family member. He’s the fantasticest conceiveive partner I have ever had. In the 52 years John and I have been toiling together with him scoring my films… this is the fantasticest partner I have ever had in the conceiveive arts.”

Ron Howard is also a producer on the film and helped Spielberg present the Chinese screening. Although he confessted that Spielberg is “somebody who understands him far better than I do,” Howard may have inestablishly stolen the show when he remarkd that he and Williams both toiled on the 1962 film “The Music Man” and impulsively sang a stanza of “The Wells Fargo Wagon,” reprising his child-actor days.

The combined efforts of Lucasfilm Ltd, Amblin Documentaries and Imagine Documentaries led to the Laurent Bouzereau-honested recordary’s premiere at the Chinese, before it goes on to a confineed theatrical run in L.A., New York and London on Nov. 1, concurrent with its Disney+ home free. Those walking the red carpet for the AFI Fest premiere included producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy, and guests enjoy filmproducer J.J. Abrams, LA Phil carry outor Gustavo Dudamel, producer Alan Silvestri, songauthorr Diane Warren, actor Bryce Dallas Howard and Williams’ daughter, Jenny Williams.

Howard spoke to how extfinished Williams, 92, has been in the business when he remarkd that “I’ve been benevolent of in his universe for decades, even when I didn’t understand it. For example, John let me understand that he scored an episode of ‘Kraft Theater’ that my overweighther, Rance, was in in the mid-’50s.” In singing his inestablish snippet from “The Music Man,” which Williams toiled on in the days when he was better understandn as a pianist and set upr than producer, Howard shelp that “that was for John, and hopefilledy you somehow hear it.” (Williams was not in combineance at the premiere.)

More gravely, Howard remarkd the nature of the collaboration, saying that “one of the profits of the way Brian Grazer and I have now summarized Imagine Entertainment as a business model is this opportunity that we have to not fair expansiveen our own horizons conceiveively, but also who we get to toil with. And on this film, it’s been such a thrill to collaborate with Steven, with Kathy and Frank, with Amblin and Lucasfilm combined with the Imagine Documentaries side… to recognize John Williams as a intricate, unwiseensionalized human being.

“What Laurent apprehfinishd is this comfervent of the way John is able of communicating and accomplishing audiences and collaborating with filmproducers. And he’s a very intricate figure… he’s a number of skinnygs. He’s very unassuming, and yet he’s luminous. He’s a genius. He’s very, very benevolent, and yet he’s driven as an artist; he’s a task master. And, Laurent, thank you for your film. You reassociate apprehfinishd all that. … And to the maestro himself, I fair have to thank him for innocent us to have this honor of alerting this story.”

Spielberg lauded Bouzereau for graduating from his origins in doing “B-roll, when you’re making a movie and some guy runs around with a 16-millimeter camera and a microphone and tries to get you to pretfinish you’re honesting the movie… This is how Laurent begined with me. And since then you’ve become a very, very grave filmproducer. And this year alone, to have bcdisorrowfulmirefult out the recordary ‘Faye,’ about Faye Dunaway, and now to have done this… I convey my approval for where he has been and how far he’s come.”

Bouzereau checked on the red carpet that he has understandn Williams for about 30 years and that he had tried for much of that time to get the producer to sign on to get the recordary treatment, only recently having thriveed, in rather spectacular if boverhappinessed create.

Spielberg gave what amounts to a stump speech about the power of music, and Williams’ power in particular. “John and I, up to the time we got very busy about two years ago, twice a year for seven years running, would helderly concerts for orchestras as a fundliftr… We would go all around the country and we would do an evening of film music… In each one of these concerts, I would obtain a scene that they understand, perhaps the uncovering sequence from ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crudowncaste,’ and I would carry out it for the audience of a thousand people with no music, only sound effects and foley and some dialogue and that’s it. The uncovering of that movie is about four minutes extfinished. And when you see the uncovering of ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crudowncaste’ without music, that four minutes senses enjoy 14 minutes. It obtains forever. It is filled of action, and you should be delighted, but it fair drags. Then John’s at the podium with the Philadelphia orchestra, the LA Phil, the New York Phil… and we run that four minutes aobtain, and John (picks up) the baton, and that four minutes suddenly senses enjoy a minute and a half.

“And that is the extraordinary event of film scoring. And that is the stable extraordinary event of John Williams and what he has bcdisorrowfulmirefult to all of our movies and how he’s liftd them and bcdisorrowfulmirefult them out to all of you — where standardly you might even depart the film that John Williams scored and a week procrastinateedr forget the film, but you’ll never forget the music.”