Jon Burlingame: Last News

Jon Burlingame editor “The Fabelmans” music is up for an Oscar and the score for “Indiana Jones 5” is completed, but 91-year-old John Williams is far from retired. He is mulling new concert works for leading classical soloists and preparing for a series of conducting gigs in the coming months that will take him from Chicago to Tokyo. Williams celebrated his birthday on Feb. 8 quietly, just dinner with his wife and daughter, he tells Variety in a rare interview. “When you finally get to be 90, you think, ‘This is great, I made it.’ It’s wonderful. I recommend it to everybody.” Nonagenarian status hasn’t slowed down the five-time Academy Award winner, who is on his 53rd Oscar nomination for Steven Spielberg’s film about his childhood and the trauma of his parents’ divorce. It’s their 29th film together, and three of his five Oscars are for Spielberg films (“Jaws,” “E.T.,” “Schindler’s List”).

Jon Burlingame It’s anybody’s game: this is a rare year when any of the five original-score nominees could win the Oscar. Two of the nominees are previous winners, two more are past nominees; only one is a newcomer, and it’s a three-man ensemble. Four films are period pieces: an admired German-language war film, a character study set against the Irish civil war, an epic of late 1920s Hollywood, and a coming-of-age story for a young filmmaker in the ‘50s and ‘60s; the fifth is a wild, anarchic tale of a Chinese American family that saves the universe. And the nominees are:

Jon Burlingame editor Composer Gerald Fried, who won an Emmy for the landmark miniseries “Roots” and whose 1960s scores, from “Star Trek” to “Gilligan’s Island,” left an indelible impression on a generation of TV watchers, died of pneumonia Friday at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Bridgeport, Ct. He was 95. His wide-ranging career included scoring five early Stanley Kubrick films, including “Paths of Glory” and “The Killing”; receiving the only Oscar nomination ever given for a documentary score, 1975’s “Birds Do It, Bees Do It”; and earning five other Emmy nominations for music in specials, TV movies and miniseries. The prolific Fried scored approximately 40 films, some three dozen TV-movies and miniseries, and episodes of another 40 TV series during a career that spanned more than six decades.

Jon Burlingame editor Five of this year’s Oscar-nominated songwriters gathered to talk about their process during an hour-long conversation, moderated by Oscar-winning songwriter Paul Williams and Grammy-winning writer Nile Rodgers, released Monday morning by the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Four of the five nominated songs were represented. Participants included Chandrabose, lyricist for “Naatu Naatu” from Telugu-language “RRR”; Ludwig Göransson, co-composer of “Lift Me Up” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”; Diane Warren, for “Applause” from “Tell It Like a Woman”; and Ryan Lott and David Byrne, two of the writers of “This Is a Life” from “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

Jon Burlingame editor The Grammys’ new video game score category appears to be a success in its first year, as more than 70 original scores have been entered. First-round voting is underway now, and Recording Academy members have plenty to choose from. But will they vote based on popularity of the game or on quality of the music? Grammy voters tell Variety the ballot includes currently popular games such as the dark fantasy “Elden Ring” (music by Yuka Kitamura, Yoshimi Kudo, Shoi Miyazawa, Tsukasa Saitoh and Tai Tomisawa), the action-adventure “Tunic” (music by Janice Kwan and Terence Lee), the post-apocalyptic “Horizon Forbidden West” (music by “various artists,” the only game on the ballot that doesn’t specify a composer) and the horror-filled “The Quarry” (music by Ian Livingstone).

Jon Burlingame editor The centennial of Henry Mancini, composer of “The Pink Panther,” “Moon River” and other movie songs, isn’t until 2024. But the celebration began on Thursday when an all-star parade of Oscar, Emmy and Grammy-winning musicians got together to re-record one of his most famous works: “Peter Gunn.” With legendary composers John Williams and Herbie Hancock on keyboards, jazz great Arturo Sandoval on trumpet and music mogul Quincy Jones conducting an 18-piece band of L.A. session players, Mancini’s 1958 TV theme rocked the Warner Bros. scoring stage all afternoon. It was old home week for many, who seemingly spent half the three-hour session embracing, laughing and snapping photos. Williams and Jones called each other “Q” and “John T.,” the nicknames they had when the two were toiling side-by-side at Universal Television in the 1960s, before each started collecting Oscars and Grammys for their work in films and records.

Jon Burlingame February 2023 will be the first time a composer will walk away with a Grammy for scoring a video game. And many in the creative community are saying “it’s about time.” Game scores have, over the past two decades, become a huge part of the media music landscape. Yet, despite being eligible for music’s highest honor since 1999 (in the film and TV music category), only one game has ever been nominated: Austin Wintory’s landmark score for “Journey,” in 2012. After years of lobbying by game executives and composers alike, in June the Recording Academy announced a new category, the tongue-twister score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media to “recognize excellence in score soundtrack albums comprised predominantly of original scores and created specifically for, or as a companion to, a current video game or other interactive media.”

Jon Burlingame editor Marvel fans tuning in to “Werewolf by Night” Friday on Disney+ may be surprised when they read the director’s name as the end titles roll. It’s Michael Giacchino, who is far better known as the Oscar- and Emmy-winning composer of “Up” and “Lost,” not to mention such other high-profile, big-grossing films as “The Batman” and the last three entries in the “Spider-Man” franchise. But, as Giacchino reminds us, he’s been behind the camera since he was a youngster in Edgewater Park, N.J. “I love making movies,” he says. “I’ve loved it since I was 9 years old. That’s what it was about, gathering every kid in the neighborhood and creating movies in my parents’ backyard.”

Jon Burlingame editor Writing new music for the “Star Wars” universe would be daunting for any composer, considering its iconic scores by the legendary John Williams. Luckily for “Andor” composer Nicholas Britell, writer-producer Tony Gilroy and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy gave him “total freedom” to imagine a new, totally unique soundscape for the backstory of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), the rebel spy first encountered in the 2016 film “Rogue One.” So, unlike “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” the “Star Wars” series for which Williams wrote a new theme earlier this year, there isn’t a note of Williams music in “Andor,” which launched a 12-episode run last Wednesday on Disney+.

Jon Burlingame editor Does Doja Cat’s hit song “Vegas” qualify to be an Oscar Best Song nominee? The short answer is: Maybe. But the tune from Baz Luhrmann’s biopic “Elvis” faces more challenges than the average new movie song. The three-and-a-half-minute, commercially released version of “Vegas,” a portion of which is heard during the first half-hour of the film, interpolates the 1950s classic “Hound Dog,” although more in its repeated use of a famous lyrical phrase (“you ain’t nothin’ but a…”) than any musical element. Because of that, original “Hound Dog” songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller are co-credited as writers on “Vegas” along with Doja Cat (under her real name, Amala Zandile Dlamini), David Sprecher and Roget Lufti Chahayed, the latter two of whom are the credited producers.

Jon Burlingame editor It took the combined talents of four Grammy winners, a symphony orchestra and a choir of African-American opera singers to make “The Woman King” resonate with the sounds of 19th-century West Africa. “This was one of those once-in-a-lifetime films,” says composer Terence Blanchard of director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s project, for which he wrote a powerful score – the likes of which haven’t been heard in a period African film since Quincy Jones’ “Roots” 45 years ago. “All of your experiences lead you to this moment, to work on something like this,” says the two-time Oscar nominee and five-time Grammy winner. “As soon as I saw it, I was floored. I looked at these characters as the founding DNA of all the strong African-American women I experienced growing up.”

Jon Burlingame editor Dick Ebersol is one of the seminal figures in the past 50 years of broadcast television. He helped create “Saturday Night Live”; he hired Brandon Tartikoff, genius programmer and innovator, to revive NBC’s primetime fortunes. As president of NBC Sports, he oversaw the network’s Olympic strategy for many years. “Sunday Night Football” was his idea. Ebersol recounts the high (and sometimes low) points of his career in television in a new autobiography, “From Saturday Night to Sunday Night: My Forty Years of Laughter, Tears and Touchdowns in TV,” published this week by Simon & Schuster. While all of the great moments in his career were at NBC, Ebersol, now 75, started as a researcher at ABC Sports in 1967. Legendary ABC Sports chief Roone Arledge, Ebersol tells Variety, “was the most important figure in my life,” and the executive who eventually took on Ebersol as a trusted associate.

Jon Burlingame editor Nearly half of all the music played on American broadcast and cable TV is production music, according to a new study by music data company BMAT. The survey, commissioned by the Production Music Association, looked at 47 high-rated channels including broadcast networks ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW; and cable channels including A&E, CNN, Discovery, Disney, ESPN, Food Network, Fox News, HGTV, Lifetime, MTV, National Geographic, Nickelodeon, TBS, Telemundo, Univision and USA. Non-advertiser-supported pay cable and streaming services were not included. The survey, done in February and March of this year, indicated that music was used in 39% of the total airtime, and that 46% of that music originated in production music companies or music libraries.

Jon Burlingame editor The music of “The White Lotus,” “Severance,” “Stranger Things” and “Schmigadoon!” won Creative Arts Emmys Sunday night in a mixture of predicted wins and upsets. The big winner was Chilean-born, Montreal-based composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer who walked off with a pair of statues for his music for HBO’s “The White Lotus,” for main title theme music and for music composition for a limited or anthology series, movie or special. His primal drumbeats, wordless voices and wooden flutes set a tropical vibe for the Hawaiian resort and its offbeat visitors. And although it was entered in the “limited series” category, “The White Lotus” is slated to return for a second season.

Jon Burlingame editorJudy Garland, who would have turned 100 years old this week, wasn’t just billed as “the world’s greatest entertainer” – in her time, she really was.Garland was much more than just little Dorothy Gale from Kansas who once had an adventure in far-off Oz. She spent 45 of her 47 years in show business, eventually making 34 feature films and more than 200 radio appearances, releasing 80 singles and 12 albums, making 60 TV appearances (including 30 of her own shows), and doing 1,100 concerts.“She had the amazing ability to convey joy and pathos and humor and sincerity and honesty,” says author and Emmy-winning producer John Fricke (“Judy Garland: A Portrait in Art and Anecdote”), “yet by giving of herself on that level, she had no guard, no protective shield.

Jon Burlingame editor“Star Trek” has always been known for its progressive casting on screen. But over seven live-action series and 13 movies dating back more than half a century, the science-fiction franchise has never had a woman composer – until now.Nami Melumad, who has been scoring the animated “Star Trek: Prodigy,” has stepped up a notch and is scoring weekly episodes of “Strange New Worlds,” the new Paramount Plus series that chronicles the voyages of the pre-Captain Kirk Enterprise.“It’s been a very busy few months,” says the Israeli-born composer, who has been writing an average of 45 minutes of music per episode of “Strange New Worlds” and is now on her 14th episode of “Prodigy” for Nickelodeon.

Jon Burlingame editorBrian Tyler, composer of the “Fast and Furious” franchise, “The Avengers: Age of Ultron” and “Crazy Rich Asians,” was named a BMI Icon at Wednesday night’s 38th annual Broadcast Music Inc. Film, TV and Visual Media Awards in Beverly Hills.Tyler (above, right) is among the top 10 highest-grossing film composers of all time.

Jon Burlingame Film composers are always looking for novel ways to express ideas and convey character in music. Two of this year’s original-score nominees were especially innovative in finding musical solutions for storytelling challenges.“Dune” demanded a sonic landscape unlike anything composer Hans Zimmer had ever tackled (including such sci-fi projects as “Inception” and “Interstellar,” which brought him two of his previous 11 Oscar nominations).

Jon Burlingame editor“Turning Red,” Pixar’s latest animated adventure, posed some pretty big musical challenges: it’s about a 13-year-old girl, obsessed with a boy band, whose Chinese ancestry literally looms large as she turns into a giant panda when her emotions spin out of control.It demanded a trio of world-class talents: Grammy winners Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell for the songs and Oscar, Emmy and Grammy winner Ludwig Göransson to compose the score.That such high-profile talents were available and eager to contribute to “Turning Red” says a lot about the music-friendly reputation of Pixar, which has won five music Oscars (including last year’s “Soul”) and 11 more nominations for either song or score since the original “Toy Story” in 1995. Tom MacDougall, president of Walt Disney Music, conferred with director Domee Shi — whose personal coming-of-age, mother-daughter conflict story inspired “Turning Red” — and reached out to all of them in 2019, before production on the film began.MacDougall had been a fan since Eilish’s early hit “Ocean Eyes” and was impressed, he says, “by the breadth of the territory that their songwriting and performing covered” ever since.

Jon Burlingame “Misty watercolor memories of the way we were…”“Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind…”“I could sell my soul for just a little light in the heat of the night…”Those lyrics, just three of the hundreds written by Marilyn Bergman, along with her husband, Alan, resonate with millions of moviegoers and record-buyers. Marilyn, who died on Jan.

Jon Burlingame editor“We have all the time in the world.”When James Bond (Daniel Craig) says that line to Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) nine minutes into “No Time to Die,” it may not mean much to the average moviegoer.