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Charles and Toni’s adventures are set to music. Merry, mood-setting, narrative-driving traditional Newfoundland tunes, such as The Squid Jigging Ground and Lots of Fish in Bonavist’ Harbour. Taken as a whole, it is an unremarkable soundtrack except for one remarkable fact: John Williams was the composer.

John Williams.

That John Williams. The Star Wars and Jaws and Superman and Schindler’s List and Close Encounters of the Third Kind multiple-Oscar-Grammy-and-Golden-Globe-Award-winning John Williams. The John Williams who will soon be honoured as the first film composer to win the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. He is a legendary American composer who, way back when, made his cinematic debut by scoring the music on a hokey Newfoundland tourist flick.

“The first time I saw Star Wars I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, that music sounds just like John Williams from our little Newfoundland film,’” says Derek Norman. “But when you listen to the music, he has two or three themes he uses in our film. When things are upbeat – it is in the major keys, and there is a little bit of brass in it — and when things are a little more mellow, and moody, the music reflects that.

“It is a score. The music evokes emotions. And this was Williams first kick at the can.”

Norman, a Newfoundlander, was on a moose-hunting trip when I spoke with him recently about the long lost movie and the famous American’s connection to it. The independent filmmaker and sometime archivist with the province initially connected the dots between Williams and You Are Welcome several years ago while cataloguing old and otherwise garbage-bin bound material from Atlantic Films, a local and now defunct production company.