Creativity Quote by J. J. Johnson

It lands like a door slam: not just an observation about Hollywood hiring patterns, but a dare aimed at anyone still pretending the system is neutral. Coming from J. J. Johnson, a musician who understood both the brilliance and the boxing-in of Black talent, the line has the bitter snap of lived experience. He isn’t arguing that Black composers lack the chops; he’s mocking the industry’s imagination, which can picture dinosaurs and aliens before it can picture a Black name above a major studio franchise.

The repetition - “doing the likes of Star Wars... E.T... Jurassic Park” - is strategic. Those titles aren’t random; they’re cultural monuments with John Williams practically carved into their stone. Johnson is invoking “event” scoring: budgets, orchestra access, studio trust, long-term relationships, and the invisible network that crowns certain composers as synonymous with prestige. His point is that this level of access isn’t merely competitive; it’s gated.

Then comes the provocation: “nor will there ever be one.” It’s hyperbole with a purpose, less prophecy than pressure tactic. By saying the quiet part loudly, he forces the listener to confront the machinery of exclusion rather than retreat into incremental optimism. The colloquial punch - “That ain’t about to happen!” - keeps it from sounding like a policy memo. It sounds like someone tired of being asked to be patient while the same names keep getting the same keys to the kingdom.

In the broader context of late-20th-century film scoring, when “symphonic blockbuster” became a brand, Johnson is diagnosing how whiteness gets coded as universal, authoritative, and bankable - and how that coding becomes self-fulfilling.