ON PHANTOM: "THAT'S THE BEST DESCRIPTION OF IT I'VE EVER HEARD!"
Paul Williams is the guest on the above episode of The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan, and it's a great conversation, with Corgan asking Williams questions that cover his long career in music, TV, and films. These two songwriters also discuss songwriting. About an hour in, they talk about Phantom Of The Paradise.
"Speaking of Hollywood fantasies," Corgan says, "I’d seen reference to the movie Phantom Of The Paradise (1974), but somehow I ended up with the laser disc. And that’s one of those movies, like, you put it in, you sit back and watch a movie, you know, it’s quasi-musical, right? And, I don’t know whatever I was on substance-wise, but I remember thinking, how did this movie ever get made? Like, it’s so cool that it got made, and obviously it’s become – I don’t want to say it’s a cult classic because I think it’s better than that – but at the same time, you think like, who the f--- greenlit this movie?? It’s like, things like that don’t really happen, but, they do. You know, it’s like somehow when the inmates get to run the asylum for five minutes, look what they do – you know, they make a movie like Phantom Of The Paradise!"
Paul Williams, laughing so hard he can barely get the words out, responds, "That’s the best description of it I’ve ever heard! That’s exactly what it was like."