Steven Spielberg collaborator John Williams backtracks on retiring
Steven Spielberg's longtime composer John Williams, 90, is not retiring, despite previously announcing he was ready to stop working.
Steven Spielberg's longtime composer John Williams is not retiring.
Williams had previously insisted that the upcoming 'Indiana Jones' movie would be his last but admitted that after working with Spielberg on 'The Fabelmans', he is not ready to give up work.
Speaking to Variety, during a joint appearance with Spielberg, John, 90, said: "Well, Steven is a lot of things. He’s a director, he’s a producer, he’s a studio head, he’s a writer, he’s a philanthropist, he’s an educator. One thing he isn’t is a man you can say no to.”
A shocked Steven replied at the American Cinematheque event: "You never told me that before today."
And John went on: "I had a 90th birthday and I met a woman at my age up in Boston. She was a very nice lady, exactly the same age as I, and I said to her, the greatest decade in a man’s life is 80 to 90, if you have your health, because if you get to 90, there’s an enormous compensation. You see everything with such magnetic vision that you see the most beautiful thing in the world are Peruvian butterflies. There’s nothing more beautiful than that. And so it’s the greatest decade.
"And she said, ‘No, the greatest decade in a person’s life is 90 to 100. So I’ll stick around for a while… But also, you can’t retire from music. I said earlier, it’s like breathing. It’s your life. It’s my life. And so a day without music is a mistake."
Steven, 76, quipped: "I gotta get working, to find out what the hell I’m doing next."
Spielberg and Williams have worked together for over 50 years and the director said: "It’s very hard to sum it up because we’re still in it together, and so I feel when I start to think about summing it up, it’s almost like we’re both retiring at the same time. I just found out that he’s not. So, obviously this is a whole new wrinkle to the story, other pages, other chapters."
