JeffTheAlpaca

Yes if you are a fan though some parts of Tom Hanks speech were not suppose to be funny but the audience laughed.

Solid Snake

How was Morricone not successful? I'm not sure how that even works out really. If the man got the job and got more jobs after that.. seems like it worked out for him. Critically rocked it too. That's success.

I'm not going to argue that Williams isn't the most well-known or whatever. His association w/ Spielberg (and SW) lets that happen easily. Not saying he couldn't be big w/o him but... seriously.. those films get MASSIVE exposure. That's a bit unfair to hit with.

I'm not even sure how you're gauging success. I'm pretty sure Morricone plays his career much differently than Williams. Especially as he got older too. Both men have the same career title but both go about it differently as well due to their tastes and passions.

CCGoldRush

Successful as in sales, both of the movies themselves and the soundtracks. Sure, Morricone had Leone and now Tarantino, and Williams had Spielberg, but Williams also did JFK, some of the Harry Potter movies, Home Alone and a bunch more culturally significant and extremely successful movies.

Now, I will admit that by that qualification, James Horner should be in the conversation considering he did the scores on the top 2 grossing movies of all time. So it's by no means and end-all and be-all.

I apologize, I wasn't looking to start a Morricone vs. Williams fight, I was more or less more interested in just pointing out how good a composer Thomas Newman is.

inri222

Along with mainstream films, Morricione did a lot of lower budget genre and artsy European films. Guess who did the score to Salo?

PatD

JFK was Williams' greatest score. Sorry, Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

E Unit

Not too many kids spanning several generations can hum the theme to JFK. Sorry JFK.

TomOpus

Too bad for Williams he doesn't get paid each time someone hums Jaws before getting into the ocean.

JumpCutz

Oh how I agree with this statement. JFK is without a doubt his finest work.

Solid Snake

Jesus. Never noticed that. Now I need to see Salo more than I cared to. I still haven't seen it but I kind of just want to get the BD based on how it being Salo... that and it's a CC BD... so my money's worth on features, I'd guess.

Ash Ketchum

Morricone did tons of scores for films that were very successful in Italy and Europe but not as well known here. He did lots of Euro arthouse films and TV miniseries, as well. If you ever checked the foreign soundtrack bins in record stores in the LP era, you saw tons of import Morricone soundtracks, mostly for films that never came to the U.S. In the U.S., we initially knew him from the Italian western scores before he branched out into U.S. films like TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA, ORCA, THE MISSION, THE UNTOUCHABLES, BUGSY, etc. But he was continuing to do prestigious Italian films during that period. (CINEMA PARADISO, anyone?)

Yes, Williams was lucky to have scored some of the biggest boxoffice hits of all time, so that puts him on a different level of success than Morricone, but it doesn't necessarily trump or overshadow Morricone's own unique level of success.

JeffTheAlpaca

Maybe it was mentioned but John Williams did the themes for NBC Nightly News and Sunday Night Football though now they replaced it with music from a Casio keyboard.

His music can be heard during the Olympics coverage and the promos and it gets you pumped up for the games.

iggystar

John Williams is the most iconic composer and I love him, but I can't lie my favorite is Hans Zimmer. Yes I said it, Hans Zimmer.

dex14

TheBang

Just FYI, this AFI tribute is re-airing on TCM on Mon., Sept 12, as well as another 1 hour "AFI Master Class" episode with John Williams/Steven Spielberg from 2011.

GuessWho

No, I didn't.