Mr. Morrissey was born on Feb. 23, 1938, in Manhattan to Joseph and Eleanor Morrissey, and grew up in Yonkers, N.Y. He attended Roman Catholic schools and studied English at Fordham University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1955 and began making 16-millimeter silent films. His first effort, a one-reeler, showed a priest saying Mass on a cliff top and then throwing his altar boy over the edge.

Despite the subject, Mr. Morrissey was not rebelling against the church. He enjoyed perplexing interviewers by fully endorsing his Jesuit education, heaping scorn on liberals and denouncing sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll even as he presented, without comment, scenes of shocking degradation on film.

“With us, everything is acceptance,” he once said of his collaborations with Warhol. “Nothing is critical. Everything is amoral. People can be whatever they are, and we record it on film.”

After serving in the Army, Mr. Morrissey ran, and lived in, an underground cinema in the East Village, where he showed his own films and those of others, including “Icarus,” an early effort by Brian De Palma. Mr. Morrissey later took pains to explain that he was not part of the experimental-film movement. With his interest in stars and narrative, he was, as he liked to put it, “independent of the independents.”

Mr. Morrissey was introduced to Warhol in 1965 by the poet and filmmaker Gerard Malanga at a film screening, and the Factory phase of Mr. Morrissey’s career began. At the time, Warhol was making experimental films at the commercial loft on East 47th Street known as the Factory. The titles capture their static, impassive aesthetic: “Hair Cut No. 1,” “Shoulder,” “Couch.” The camera stared, unblinking, and whatever happened, happened — or didn’t.

Early in 1958, prior to leaving home in Philadelphia for Columbia University, De Palma had been working to document his father's infidelity by recording his phone calls, following him to work and snapping photos outside his father's office window. According to the book Shock Value by Jason Zinoman, De Palma told one friend that year that the photos were his "first film." In 1970, De Palma mentioned his "background in photography" to Joseph Gelmis (for Gelmis' book The Film Director As Superstar) as he explained how he ended up directing his first short film, Icarus, in 1960:

I started making movies when I was at Columbia University as a sophomore. I was with the Columbia Players, and I had a background in photography. I was obsessed with the idea of directing the Players. But they wouldn't let undergraduates direct them, so I was frustrated. I figured I'd go out and direct movies instead.

Laurent Bouzereau (in The De Palma Cut) states that De Palma "created a film association between Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College. The famous stage director Wilford Leach, who conducted a theater class at Sarah Lawrence, was immediately impressed by the young man's energy and interest in filmmaking. Leach soon became De Palma's mentor. According to De Palma, Leach was one of the very few people who ever understood him." Bouzereau goes into further detail about the making of Icarus:

In 1960, Brian De Palma made Icarus, which he today considers a pretentious film, though he admits that it encouraged him to learn more. At first, De Palma was only supposed to be the cameraman on Icarus, but the director left the set after many arguments with De Palma, who was already trying to impose his own visual ideas, regardless of his position. Luckily, De Palma was then offered the opportunity to finish the film himself.

WFAA's Paul Wedding has an article about the evening's event:

DALLAS — "The Paradise — the ultimate rock palace."

That was the Majestic Theatre in Dallas 50 years ago during the filming of the horror musical cult classic, "Phantom of the Paradise." Although considered a box office bomb upon initial release, its influence and fandom have carried on all these decades later.

And on Saturday night, The Majestic got to play the part of the ultimate rock palace once again.

A screening of a restored version of the film was played in the theatre, with a big name in attendance. Paul Williams, a legendary award-winning composer and songwriter, who wrote all of the songs for the film and played the film's antagonist, spoke afterward about the making of the film.

It's not often someone gets to see a movie in the very location it was filmed. So to be able to see a scene in the movie that takes place on a balcony, and then to turn your head and look at that very same balcony — where fans dressed up as the eponymous phantom of the paradise are sitting — is a one-of-a-kind experience.

Shooting the concert scenes of the movie with Dallas residents as extras — some of whom were in attendance for this screening — was not the usual concert. Advertisements in local papers invited extras for a filming of "Phanton (sic) of the Paradise) at 9 a.m. on Thursday. But as Williams tells it, not many people really showed up.

"The fact is that it was cold, and there were not nearly enough people in the audience so there was a lot of moving around," Williams said about the filming of the movie, which took place around Christmas and New Year's.

FROM VINCENT CANBY'S NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW, OCT. 26, 1984:

FROM DOUBLE DE PALMA BY SUSAN DWORKIN:

Before Jake Scully finds his way to Holly Body via Frankie Goes To Hollywood, he distractedly watches a music video on a TV in the house he's taking care of while his new actor friend is in Seattle. The song is "The House Is Burning (But There’s No One Home)" by the band Vivabeat, and the video, directed by Derek Chang, had won an MTV award for Best Video from a New Band. Vivabeat founder Marina Muhlfriedel had met Peter Gabriel in the late 1970's while working as entertainment editor at Teen magazine. Earlier this year, Muhlfriedel wrote an article about Vivabeat for Flood Magazine:

As soon as we wrote our first four songs, we booked time at an 8-track studio off Hollywood Boulevard and cut a new demo. I was ready to reconnect with Peter [Gabriel]. A month later, I went to England, and ringing him from my London hotel, Peter invited me to a party at his home in Bath the following evening. I invited my friend, Rich Barbieri, the keyboard player from the band Japan (now in Porcupine Tree), and he agreed to drive.

It was magical—20 or so guests playing croquet by moonlight, surrounded by towering wormwood hedges and sipping peppermint tea. Saying goodbye late in the evening, I didn’t mention to Peter that I left the cassette demo in a fruit bowl on his dining room table.

Nonetheless, a month later, I received a pre-dawn morning call from Peter, introducing me to a jovial Brit named Tony Stratton Smith. Tony owned Charisma Records, the label for which Peter, Genesis, Monty Python, Van der Graaf Generator, among others, recorded. Strat, as he was known, said everyone in his office was whistling “Man From China” and that he had no choice but to take us under the “famous Charisma wing.” We became their first American signing.

This sort of thing did not happen, even in the ’80s. We knew dozens of bands, far more experienced and popular than us. Bands who struggled for years to get a second glance from a label. We played three gigs before suddenly finding ourselves at the Record Plant with Rod Stewart in the next room. We had clothing and equipment allowances. A famous director shot our first video. We signed with the William Morris Agency and were convinced we were on a trajectory to the big time.

Our first album, Party in the War Zone—featuring “Man From China”—came out in 1980. The song became a dance club hit in much of the world, and we got to lip-synch it at all the big gay discos. However, good fortune is often ephemeral. The fact that our first manager’s vanity license plate read “IM SPACED” should have rung a warning bell. It didn’t. Clueless, we forged ahead as he repeatedly dropped the ball. When two band members became heroin addicts and could barely perform, Charisma rejected our demos for a second album and dropped us from the label. And we dropped Connie and Alec from the band.

Soon, our drummer Doug crashed his motorcycle on Fountain Avenue. He was high with no helmet, and Mick found him listed as a John Doe in a coma at Cedars Sinai. He survived, but lost the use of three limbs.

Mick, Terrance, and I pulled together a funkier and more inventive version of Vivabeat with guitarist Rob Dean, who had been in the band Japan, and local session drummer Chris Schendel. We got another manager—and a record deal with Polygram—for a while. But while recording our next album, the manager went AWOL, not returning our calls. Once again, we were in rock ‘n’ roll limbo.

But all was not lost. A couple of dance club promoters released a limited-edition follow-up EP featuring a song called “The House Is Burning (But There’s No One Home).” The song became a European dance club hit and was picked up along with its video (which won an MTV award) to appear in the movie Body Double. Vivabeat was on track to live out a few more fab ’80s cocaine-fueled years, recording some of our strongest work yet. When Rob Dean left Vivabeat for Gary Numan’s band, Jeff Gilbert, a tech-brained San Francisco transplant who later became one of the wizards at Mackie, joined us.

Vivabeat never hit the great big time, but we got a whiff of its heady enchantment, making music we loved, going on the road with bands like Gang of Four, Human League, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, Thompson Twins, and The B-52’s (R.E.M. opened for us). We also found a dream production partner in Earle Mankey, who got us like no one else.

Discussing the Visco glasses worn by several IMF agents in the opera gala sequence, Dapkunaite tells the podcast hosts, "You know, the glasses, those days, thirty years ago, they were miracle glasses - they literally go dark...and blank."

"Oh, those were a real thing...?" one of the hosts responds.

"Yes, they were the real thing," Dapkunaite confirms.

"Oh, I thought that was just an effect," he says.

"They were the real thing," she assures him. "We carried them as if they were, I don't know, made of diamonds. Which probably, they cost that much. And Tom [Cruise] was very very cool about it. Very proud and all that. So we all played with them."

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Here's Griwkowsky's intro to the Edmonton Journal article:

Living a life of unparalleled collaboration, Paul Williams is surely the only person on Earth able to claim a direct creative pipeline to David Bowie, Barbra Streisand/Kris Kristofferson and Kermit the Frog, all of whom sang his lyrics to the world — including Hunky Dory’s Fill Your Heart, A Star Is Born’s Grammy-winning Evergreen, and the immortal Muppet Movie opening theme, Rainbow Connection.

Remarkably, it’s just the tip of Williams’ creative iceberg.

His staggeringly diverse accolades stretch back to a different Grammy win with Daft Punk in 2014, singing with a lit cigarette in full Battle for the Planet of the Apes makeup on Johnny Carson in ’73, co-writing We’ve Only Just Begun and Rainy Days and Mondays for The Carpenters — never mind penning the words to The Love Boat theme!

Insanely, the list goes on, including voicing the beloved Batman Animated Series’ Penguin amid countless guest spots on everything from Babylon 5 to The Hardy Boys, occupying a Hollywood Square in the midst of it all.

To try and zoom in like that helicopter shot into Kermit’s swamp, the 84-year-old legend is here Tuesday at Metro Cinema for NorthwestFEARFest’s closing–night, 50th-anniversary screening of Brian De Palma’s beautifully weird and musically wondrous cult classic Phantom of the Paradise, scored by and indeed starring Williams.

In a long and magnificent conversation I can just barely sample here, the Oscar/Grammy/Golden Globe-winner talks about it all, laughing as he asks to flip from the phone over to Zoom, “I’m so f—ing old, I listened to everything at 11 for 40 years!”