Paul Williams, a Songwriters Hall of Famer and an Oscar and three-time Grammy winner, is being honored at the TCM Classic Film Festival, where he’ll attend screenings of two films for which he wrote tunes, 1979’s The Muppet Movie and 1987’s Ishtar. The 85-year-old spoke with THR from a convention, where many of his fans had not yet been born when he wrote “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “The Rainbow Connection” but may know him for his Daft Punk collaborations “Touch” and “Beyond.”
How did you learn about your TCM tribute? Were you involved in selecting the films they’ll show?
I got an email and was told that they had run out of people. (Laughs.) No, it’s wonderful, and TCM is such a great channel. The older I get, the more I appreciate classic films — my favorites include A Place in the Sun and Paths of Glory — and they are kept alive by TCM. At any rate, they picked the films for my tribute, and I was thrilled with the choices. Ishtar, to me, was one of my greatest challenges — being hired to write “bad songs” [for characters who are bad songwriters] was really interesting. As for The Muppet Movie, it started when I was a guest on The Muppet Show and met Jim Henson and all the Muppet performers, and we formed almost a blood brotherhood.
Paul Williams in the ’70s, around the time he wrote “Rainy Days and Mondays” and Williams in 2026.
Jim McCrary/Redferns/Getty Images; Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
How did you get started in the business?
I’ve described myself as an out-of-work actor who got really lucky. I did a movie called The Loved One [1965] and had a nice part in it. Then I worked for several months on a picture called The Chase [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 with my instincts as an actor — I try to crawl inside the characters and write like they would. The longest partnership of my life was with Roger Nichols, who was at A&M Records when I was signed there. They were looking for a lyricist for Roger. He would present me a finished melody. We wrote songs together like “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays.”
With “Evergreen,” my understanding is Barbra Streisand wrote the melody and you wrote the lyrics.
I was hired [to write the songs for 1976’s A Star Is Born] by Barbra and [producer] Jon Peters. There was a song that I’d written with Kenny Ascher that she loved called “You and Me Against the World,” and she said, “There’s a scene after [Kris Kristofferson’s character is] killed where I find a song that he’s written, and I’d like to have something like ‘You and Me Against the World.’ “
Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson in 1976’s A Star Is Born, for which Williams wrote the lyrics to “Evergreen.”
Courtesy Everett Collection
At one of my first meetings with Barbra, she sat down and took out a guitar, which she was just learning to play, and she went, “Could you do anything with this?” It was such a beautiful melody, but she was very shy and demure as she was offering it. I went, “Are you joking? I think that’s your love theme!” The shooting schedule was such that the song came very late in the shoot. I worked on Kris’ songs first, and I heard again and again from Barbra, “Where’s my lyric?” Eventually I wrote “Evergreen.”
You were omnipresent as a public figure for many years — performing, acting, appearing on TV game shows, etc. — but then you sort of disappeared for a while. What was that about?
I was a major cocaine addict and alcoholic, and for 10 years I was missing in action — it was as if somebody else was using my body. You know you’re an alcoholic when you misplace a decade. For me, the ’80s were essentially gone. But I just celebrated 36 years of sobriety. I went to treatment, and I loved it — I felt a connection to the world around me, I felt safe, and I felt unashamed. I felt like Lazarus, and I began to rebuild my life. Then I went to UCLA, got my certification as a drug and alcohol counselor and focused on that instead of music. The phone was not ringing, I was not the new kid in town, and I had a reputation that was not the best. But then a wonderful thing happened. The phone rang and it was Brian Henson [Jim’s son], who was doing The Muppet Christmas Carol [1992], and he asked if I would write the songs for it. It was the toe-in-the-water experience that gave me my musical career back.
This story appeared in the April 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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