Paul Williams still alive and composing

Not only is Paul Williams still alive, he’s still writing songs.

Paul Williams

The Oscar and multiple Grammy winner who penned “Rainbow Connection,” “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Evergreen” among hundreds of other songs has just finished the title track for Stephen Kessler’s new doc Paul Williams Still Alive, which has its world premiere at TIFF Sunday at 7:30 p.m. “I think he summed up his life in a very honest way. It really adds something,” Kessler said of the simple guitar and vocal track that Williams was working on when we spoke last week for an interview in Sunday’s Star. Williams kindly sent an mp3 of the song “Still Alive;” it has the signature Williams mix of melancholy and flashes of self-deprecating humour.

And here’s a co-incidence: not long after the lights come up following Paul Williams Still Alive on Sunday, they go down for the TIFF premiere of the Russian drama Faust at the Scotiabank Theatre. Remember that song from the Brian De Palma film Phantom of the Paradise? Besides starring, Williams wrote the music for that movie, too, and arguably the biggest hit was the song “Faust.”

-- Linda Barnard