Songwriters Hall of Fame member and three-time Academy Award and Grammy Award winner Paul Williams will be honored at the TCM Classic Film Festival, where he will attend screenings of two films for which he wrote tunes, “1979.” The Muppets movie And 1987 Ishtar. The 85-year-old spoke with THR From a convention, where many of his fans weren’t even born yet when he wrote “We’ve Just Begun” and “The Rainbow Connection” but might know him for his collaborations with Daft Punk on “Touch” and “Beyond.”
How did you learn about your TCM honor? Were you involved in choosing the films to be shown?
I received an email and they told me they were out of people. (He laughs.) No, it’s great, and TCM is a great channel. The older I get, the more I appreciate classic films, including my favorites A place in the sun and Paths of glory – They are kept alive by traditional Chinese medicine. Anyway, they chose the movies to honor me, and I was thrilled by the choices. IshtarFor me, one of my biggest challenges was being hired to write “bad songs.” [for characters who are bad songwriters] It was really interesting. As for The Muppets movieIt started when I was a guest Puppet show And we met Jim Henson and all the Muppets, and we were almost blood brothers.
How did you get started in work?
I described myself as an unemployed actor who was really lucky. I did a movie called The beloved [1965] He had a beautiful role in it. Then I worked for several months on a picture called Stalking [1966] With Marlon Brando and Robert Redford, but I was inches away from being an extra in that. And then I started writing songs. I think I write songs based on my instincts as an actor, and I try to crawl into the characters and write as they do. The longest partnership of my life was with Roger Nichols, who was at A&M Records when I signed there. They were looking for a lyricist for Roger. He’ll give me a finished tune. We wrote songs together like “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays.”
On the song “Evergreen,” my understanding is that Barbra Streisand wrote the melody and you wrote the lyrics.
I was hired[towrite’70ssongs[towritethesongsfor1976’sA star is born]By Barbara W [producer] John Peters. There was a song she wrote with Kenny Asher that she loved called “You and Me Against the World,” and she said, “There’s a scene after that.” [Kris Kristofferson’s character is] I kill where I find a song he’s written, and I’d love to have something like “You and Me Against the World.” “
On one of my first meetings with Barbara, I sat down, took out a guitar she was just learning to play, and asked her, “Can you do anything with this?” It was a beautiful melody, but she was so shy and demure when she was presenting it. I said, “Are you kidding? I think this is what your love is about!” The filming schedule was such that the song came very late during filming. I worked on Chris’ songs first, and heard over and over again from Barbara, “Where’s my lyric?” In the end I wrote “Evergreen”.
I was all over the place as a public figure for many years — performing, acting, appearing on TV game shows, etc. — but then I kind of disappeared for a while. What was that?
I was a major cocaine addict and alcoholic, and for 10 years I was missing in action – it was as if someone else was using my body. You know you’re an alcoholic when you waste a decade. For me, the 80s are basically over. But I just celebrated 36 years of sobriety. I went to therapy, and I loved it—I felt connected to the world around me, I felt safe, and I didn’t feel ashamed. I felt like Lazarus, and I began to rebuild my life. Then I went to UCLA, got my degree as a drug and alcohol counselor and focused on that instead of music. The phone wasn’t ringing, I wasn’t the new kid in town, and I had a reputation that wasn’t the best. But then something wonderful happened. The phone rang and it was Brian Henson [Jim’s son]which he was doing Christmas Carol Dolls [1992]He asked me if I would write songs for her. It was that toe-in-the-water experience that gave me back my music career.
This story appeared in the April 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
