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I like neurotic people.

I'm neurotic myself and I like neurotic people--

MICHAEL DOUGLAS: Everyone is, aren't they, to a degree?

Well, that's exactly what I think.

You see, I think it's universal.

Neurotic is one of those fashionable words

that to some people means crazy.

What it means is that everybody is troubled.

Everybody has problems,

and there are problems of circumstance,

and there are problems that start

when you're young and you're growing up

and there are professional problems

and there are personal problems.

Nobody goes through life unscathed,

and I think if you write about those things,

you're going to touch people.

[Film projector whirring]

♪

SONDHEIM: ♪ When I get famous ♪

♪ I'll be free on my own ♪

♪ You wait and see... ♪

EARL WRIGHTSON: While no one can predict the future

of the theater, the American musical theater,

one thing is very certain.

Talented men, such as our guest today, are going

to be making very important changes from time to time.

Mr. Stephen Sondheim.

TERRY WOGAN: Ladies and gentlemen,

welcome Stephen Sondheim.

LARRY KING: Someone who's made the musical what it is today--

Stephen Sondheim.

STEPHEN COLBERT: Please welcome Stephen Sondheim!

MICHAEL DOUGLAS: Here is Stephen Sondheim.

CHARLES OSGOOD: He's often called the father

of the modern American musical.

He earned the title by experimenting

with form and content.

He earned it by asking audiences not to sit back and relax,

but to sit up and take notice.

DIANE SAWYER: Not that Sondheim suits everyone's taste--

If you don't know the name Stephen Sondheim,

you know his words and music.

WOMAN: And the Tony Award goes to...

MAN: Music and lyrics, Stephen Sondheim.

[Applause]

SONDHEIM: ♪ Woman, take my view... ♪

WOMAN:...by Stephen Sondheim.

MAN:..."Sweeney Todd."

SONDHEIM: ♪ I'm telling you... ♪

ANNA QUINDLEN: Ladies and gentlemen, Stephen Sondheim.

SONDHEIM: ♪...make your dream true ♪

♪

I mean, an awful lot of people have gone historically

to musicals to forget their troubles,

"Come on, get happy."

I'm not interested in that.

I'm not interested in making people unhappy,

but I'm not interested in not looking at life,

'cause then I don't know why

I want to write it otherwise.

♪

SONDHEIM: I have no idea where the music came from.

My father used to pick out tunes,

Broadway tunes on the piano.

And when I was a kid, he would put my hand on his fingers

so I would sort of feel like I was playing the piano.

And then I took piano lessons when I was 7 years old, which is

what every nice Jewish boy did on the west side, for two years.

And my mother was very visual, and she was a very talented

designer, and I have no visual talent whatsoever,

so there goes the entire theory of genes.

The Stephen and the Joshua were chosen

by my parents out of the Bible.

They didn't know what to name me,

so they just flipped the pages open

and put their fingers in and it came out Stephen Joshua.

In fact, I was known as Josh

until I was about 10 or 11 years old.

I always thought I was born at 3:30 in the morning

'cause my mother told me that.

She wanted me to feel that I had kept her awake

and made the birth as difficult as possible.

I found out from my father I was born at 9:00 in the evening

and it was not a difficult birth at all.

That disagreement was sort of typical of them

and ended in a divorce 10 years after I was born.

My mother got custody of me and bought a house

in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

There was a kind of myth that if your family broke up,

what you needed was discipline,

so you were sent to military school.

Again, the surpri--

JEREMY ISAACS: Did you need discipline?

I don't think so, but I loved it.

Everything was so chaotic at home, that to be told

to be at a certain place at 9:12

and another place at 9:37

and to have to go on parade and that sort of thing--

Again, I was 10, 11 years old;

we had little wooden rifles--

But it was called New York Military Academy.

And I thrived. I thought it was terrific.

My father was a dress manufacturer,

and he was certainly the most liked man

in the industry, but not the most successful.

And they go together, I think.

His second marriage was very successful.

He married a very nice lady, and so I liked my stepmother

and my father very much.

He loved the theater,

so when he had his visiting privileges with me--

The court-appointed visiting privileges,

he would take me to musicals.

I was an only child,

and both my parents were working parents,

so because I had no sort of childhood companion,

and my mother was a celebrity hunter--

She knew slightly the Oscar Hammersteins,

and they lived about 3 miles away.

So she sort of foisted me on them

because they had a son my own age--

Actually a year younger, Jimmy Hammerstein.

And as a result, I sort of osmosed myself

into the Hammerstein household,

and Dorothy and Oscar Hammerstein became

my surrogate parents during my teen years,

and that's essentially how I became a songwriter,

because I wanted to do what Oscar did.

You know, I've often said

that if he'd been an archaeologist,

I would have been an archaeologist.

Maybe I wouldn't have had the talent for archaeology,

and luckily he was in a profession

that obviously I have gifts for,

so it worked out very nicely.

But it was essentially imitating him.

I majored in music at college,

and I always wanted to write music and lyrics.

And the first show I wrote

that was scheduled for production

was called "Saturday Night,"

but the producer died and the show didn't get on.

And I was then asked to do just the lyrics

for "West Side Story."

♪

I was 25 years old at the time.

I'd been writing music up until then,

and I didn't want to write just lyrics,

but Oscar said that it would be

very good experience for me,

even though I would be frustrated

not writing music,

because I'd be dealing with people with enormous talent

and ability-- that's Leonard Bernstein

and Jerry Robbins and Arthur Laurents.

And I would learn a great deal

through practical experience,

and I should not worry about the time lost

in not writing music, and he was right.

LARRY KERT: ♪ Could be ♪

♪ Who knows? ♪

♪ There's somethin' due any day ♪

♪ I will know right away ♪

♪ Soon as it shows ♪

♪ It may come cannonballin' down through the sky ♪

♪ Gleam in its eye, bright as a rose ♪

♪ Who knows? ♪

SONDHEIM: Well, there's the true nostalgia.

Lenny and I wrote "Something's Coming"

essentially in one day, which was one of

the most exciting days of my life.

And we finished at about 11:00 in the evening

and we woke Felicia-- Mrs. Bernstein--up,

got her out of bed, and played it for her,

and she sleepily said, "It's wonderful,"

and went back to bed, having not, I don't think,

heard the number, poor thing.

But we had to share the excitement,

and tonight I got it all over again.

I mean, it's a song I dearly love.

We wrote it during rehearsals

because the boy playing Tony, named Larry Kert,

wasn't registering in his first scene

with the kind of weight that made you want

to follow his adventures through the show.

And I suggested that we write a song

that has real drive to it.

A paradigmatic one would be...

♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah ♪

The kind of thing that Judy Garland

made her reputation from,

a driving, fast-beat song.

GARLAND: ♪ The Lord is waitin' to take your hand ♪

♪ Shout Hallelujah, come on, get happy... ♪

SONDHEIM: And that's exactly what we did.

And Larry did it on opening night in Washington

and stopped the show.

♪ It's only just out of reach, down the block... ♪

SONDHEIM: He had the audience

in the palm of his hand, and it gave him confidence.

It was his first major musical.

Of all the people in the cast, he had to be

the one to carry that strength forward,

and that number gave him that strength.

KERT: ♪ Could it be? Yes, it could ♪

♪ Something's comin', somethin' good ♪

♪ If I can wait ♪

♪ Something's comin' ♪

♪ I don't know what it is ♪

♪ But it is gonna be great ♪

SONDHEIM: What surprised me about it and still does is

all the baseball terminology comes out of--you know,

"one-handed catch," all that sort of thing.

Somehow I got the image of Tony as a ball player.

I don't mean specifically; it's just the words kept--

Those were the images that occurred to me,

and they're the right images.

You know, "cannonballin' down through the sky,"

all that stuff about forward motion,

and I know what it was.

It was echoing Tony's desire to move forward,

to get away from his gang life,

and he knows there's something

around the corner that's gonna make his life perfect,

And you just--whoosh!-- and it's a baseball.

♪...Catch the moon, one-handed catch ♪

♪ Around the corner ♪

♪ Or whistlin' down the river ♪

♪ Come on, deliver ♪

♪ To me ♪

♪ Will it be? Yes, it will ♪

♪ Maybe just by holdin' still ♪

♪ It'll be there ♪

♪ Come on, somethin' ♪

♪ Come on in, don't be shy ♪

♪ Meet a guy, pull up a chair ♪

♪ The air is hummin' ♪

♪ And somethin' great is comin' ♪

♪ Who knows? ♪

♪ It's only just out of reach ♪

♪ Down the block, on a beach ♪

♪ Maybe tonight ♪

♪

[crowd whistles]

MAN: Mr. Robbins, how does it feel

now that the opening night is over?

Well, we're all very tired and also very happy.

♪

SONDHEIM: The opening reviews

in Washington mentioned

everybody connected with the show.

They were all raves, except me.

I was obviously disappointed and chagrined,

my first professional show.

And so, on the morning after, I was riding

from the theater back to the hotel with Lenny.

And he said, "Look, the lyrics are yours.

I'm perfectly happy to take my name off the lyrics."

And I said, "Oh, that's really nice of you.

Thank you."

And he said, "And, of course,

we'll adjust the royalties."

And I said, "Oh, who cares about the money?

It's just the credit."

If somebody had only put a gag in my mouth

at that point,

I would have made a lot more money over the years.

But the fact is, we all thought the show was

just gonna be sort of a prestigious show.

Nobody dreamed that it would be a hit

and, in fact, it wasn't a hit.

The movie was a gigantic hit. The show was not.

The show was disliked by most people.

Score was particularly disliked,

particularly in the papers and by the public,

all of whom said they couldn't hum it.

It was all very exciting,

but they couldn't hum anything.

Then, 4 years later-- there were

only two single records made from "West Side Story"

in a period of 4 years:

one by Johnny Mathis and one by Dinah Shore.

Johnny Mathis sang "Maria," Dinah Shore sang "Tonight"

and that was it because everybody said, "Yes, it's

very exciting theatrically,

but you can't hum those tunes."

And then the movie came out and, of course,

the movie company put a million dollars or so

or maybe more into the advertising of the movie

and they started making the disc jockeys--

Or getting the disc jockeys to play the tunes,

and suddenly everybody could hum them,

which is why the word "hummable" about songs

drives me up the wall.

BERNSTEIN: I expected, after "West Side"

that a lot of new, young people would come in

and take the next step and the next step,

next step, and by now we'd have had something

that we could call the equivalent of opera,

American opera.

And we don't, with the solitary exception

of Steve Sondheim, who does take a step

with every show he does.

Well, now we're leaving the music

of Mr. Bernstein

and going to discuss Mr. Sondheim

as the composer,

not just the lyricist.

From now on, that's going to be

the set-up, is it not?

Well, with the--

There's always possibly an exception,

but I intend from now on to write my own music

because it's about 3 times as much fun

as writing lyrics.

But there may always come along something

that's just so wildly exciting

that I can't keep my hands off it.

ETHEL MERMAN: ♪ Here she is, boys! ♪

♪ Here she is, world! ♪

♪ Here's Rose! ♪

♪

♪ Curtain up ♪

♪ Light the lights ♪

♪ Play it, boys! ♪

♪ You either got it ♪

♪ Or you ain't ♪

♪ And, boys, I got it ♪

SONDHEIM: I was supposed to do

music and lyrics for "Gypsy,"

and David Merrick and Leland Hayward,

who were producing it,

it's OK with them, OK with Arthur Laurents,

and Ethel Merman had just been burned

by two young writers;

that is to say, she had had a flop and blamed it

on the inexperience, or having two young writers--

A show called "Happy Hunting."

So she was very wary of taking a chance

on another one,

so she said no, and then Arthur and Oscar--

Again, Oscar said,

"It'll frustrate you even more, but now

"you have a chance to write for a specific personality,

and that's something you should learn to do."

And he was right, that was also very valuable

because we wrote that show not for Madam Rose,

but for Ethel Merman as Madam Rose

because she and David Merrick came up

with the idea together to buy Gypsy Rose Lee's book,

and so she came with the package.

Usually I just write and then we cast it,

but in this case, we were writing

for a very specific lady to take advantage

of her strengths and to minimize her weaknesses.

And so it was good experience.

But it unfortunately taped me

as a lyric writer, which I knew it would, so the minute

I started to write music, I was treated by critics

and public and the old pros--and still am--

As a sort of upstart: "How dare I,"

"Why aren't I satisfied just writing lyrics,"

and, "I can't write music, so what"--you know.

If I'd started out as a musician

and come to the lyrics,

they would have said the same thing.

One of my favorite Ethel Merman stories--

It's apocryphal,

it's been attributed to other people, but I like

to believe it's true of Ethel,

because it is profoundly true of Ethel--

Is the time that she went on "The Loretta Young Show."

Loretta Young was a lady with a capital "L"

who had a half-hour show, she was Catholic,

and she did not like swearing on her set.

And Ethel had the mouth of a truck driver,

so when Ethel came in for rehearsals, it wasn't long

before she said, "Where's the damn prop?"

And Loretta came over to her and said, "Ethel,

"I really don't approve of swearing,

and anytime anybody swears on my set,

I charge them a quarter."

So Ethel gave her a quarter, and a few minutes later,

of course, Ethel was annoyed at something else

and she said, "God damn it!"

And Loretta said, "Ethel, a quarter, please."

Ethel dutifully gave it again.

And a few minutes after that, of course, Ethel said,

"For Christ's sake!"

And Loretta Young came over and said, "Ethel--"

And before she could finish the sentence, Ethel said,

"Loretta, here's 10 bucks and go fuck yourself."

♪

The songs I write don't really reflect me

in any conscious way.

I mean, they all are about the characters

that the book writer has made,

and I'm getting into those characters.

I never think of it in my own terms at all, no.

I get to know the style, the way they think,

the way they speak, and I get inside them almost

as if I were an actor playing the part,

and then I write.

But I always take from the book writer.

I couldn't invent those people.

♪

Often what attracts me to material in the first place

is that I find some way of projecting myself.

Like all writing, you know, there's no difference.

Part of the author is always in what he writes

and part of it is a work of imagination.

♪

As soon as you write anything,

obviously it must touch on something.

It's that thing that Faulkner said

about observation, imagination, and experience.

You can do without one of them,

but you can't do without two,

and writers and actors observe.

♪

It's true that in every character you write,

a part of you is there somewhere.

That's true of every author, but there's only been one

autobiographical song I've ever written,

and that was "Opening Doors" in "Merrily We Roll Along."

♪

It's about two writers trying to bust their way

into show business and their best friend.

It's about me and Hal Prince,

it's about Mary Rodgers,

and it's about Sheldon Harnick,

it's about Jerry Bock,

it's about all of us in the fifties, knocking

on the doors of producers and trying to get heard.

I was trying to recapture what I was like

when I was 25 and 30 years old.

The show goes backwards in time and ends up

in the early sixties, late fifties,

and I wanted to write songs that they would have written

in those days without making a comment on them.

You try to write what you were like

when you were 25 years old,

you're gonna have a lot of trouble, and I did.

FRANK RICH: It turned out pretty well nonetheless.

Yeah, it turned out great.

♪

[Sighs] Rrr!

Oh! How's it going?

Good. You?

Fair. Yeah, tell me.

[Rings] Chinese Raundry.

Hi. Mary. Say hello!

♪ I think I got a job ♪ Where?

"True Romances." Posing?

Thank you. Writing captions.

What about the book? What about the book?

Nothing. Are you working on the book?

Yes. Good. No. Mary!

♪ Right, I know, yes, me and Balzac ♪

♪

Ugh.

♪ I finished the one-act ♪

♪ I got an audition ♪ ♪ I started the story ♪

♪ Rehearsal pianist ♪ ♪ So, where are we eating? ♪

♪ I'm moving to "Playboy" ♪ ♪ The publisher called me ♪

♪ I'm doing a rewrite ♪ ♪ My parents are coming ♪

♪ I saw "My Fair Lady" ♪

♪ I rewrote the rewrite ♪

♪ I sort of enjoyed it ♪

♪ I threw out the story ♪

♪ I'm meeting an agent ♪

ALL: ♪ We'll all get together on Sunday ♪

♪ We're opening doors ♪

♪ Singing, "Here we are!" ♪

♪ We're filling up days ♪

♪ On a dime ♪

♪ That faraway shore's ♪

♪ Looking not too far ♪

♪ We're following every star ♪

♪ There's not enough time ♪

[Whistles along]

♪ I called a producer ♪ ♪ I sent off the one-act ♪

♪ I started the story ♪ ♪ He said to come see him ♪

♪ I dropped out of college ♪ ♪ I met this musician ♪

♪ I'm playing a nightclub ♪ ♪ They're doing my one-act ♪

♪ I'm working for "Redbook" ♪ ♪ I rewrote the ballad ♪

♪ I finished the story ♪ ♪ We started rehearsals ♪

♪ I threw out the story and then the musician ♪

♪ I'm moving to "Popular Science" ♪

ALL: ♪ We're opening doors ♪

♪ Singing, "Look who's here" ♪

♪ Beginning to sail ♪

♪ On a dime ♪

♪ That faraway shore's ♪

♪ Getting very near ♪

♪ We haven't a thing to fear ♪

♪ We haven't got time ♪

OSGOOD: In a sense, your fascination with puzzles,

you can't help but wonder about whether that's

in any way analogous to putting together a show.

Oh, it is, very much. Sure.

I think that's what art is anyway.

I mean, after all, a puzzle is like art,

is making order out of chaos, you know?

Take a jigsaw puzzle, right? It's chaos.

Put it together, it's a picture.

And I think art is the same way

on a slightly higher level.

SONDHEIM: When I moved to my first apartment

in Manhattan,

I didn't have enough money to buy prints

and put them on the walls.

But a girl I knew gave me an early 19th-century game,

a weird one called

the New and Fashionable Game of the Jew.

It was a dice-throwing, chip-betting game

that taught kids to be anti-Semitic.

And it was a hateful game,

but it was really pretty to look at,

and she had it framed for me.

And I went to the store where she bought it--

It was a rare bookstore--

And the owner had a lot of 19th-century games.

And I bought a lot of them 'cause they only cost

two and three bucks apiece,

and that's what started my game collection.

It's a curious and perverted ability to be able to see

a word as a collection of letters

instead of as having a meaning or a sound.

For example, you love puns.

So obviously the sound of words is something

you're very into and you're very quick and good at puns.

And of course, the precision of your language.

You just don't see words as collections of letters.

I passed under--when Cinerama first was invented,

I passed under the sign

that was being erected on Broadway.

It said "Cinerama" and I immediately thought "American."

Didn't have to think about it.

PREVIN: Wait a minute. "Cinerama" --

And "American" are anagrams of each other...

SONDHEIM: Actually, it was Oscar Hammerstein who got me

interested in words and crossword puzzles

and anagrams.

He played Anagrams at his house,

and he did the puns and anagrams puzzle

in "The New York Times."

As a matter of fact, he encouraged me to send

a puzzle in to "The Times" when I was about 13,

and I did, and it was rejected very nicely by them

with a letter that said

that they admired my perspicacity,

and I had to look the word up

to find out what it meant.

What is that?

♪ It's priest ♪

♪ Have a little priest ♪

♪ Is it really good? ♪

♪ Sir, it's too good, at least ♪

♪ Then again, they don't commit sins of the flesh ♪

♪ So it's pretty fresh ♪

♪ Awful lot of fat ♪

♪ Only where it sat ♪

♪ Haven't you got poet or something like that? ♪

♪ No, you see, the trouble with poet ♪

♪ Is how do you know it's deceased? ♪

♪ Try the priest ♪

[Audience laughter]

Heavenly!

SONDHEIM: I still get pleasure out of--

Out of writing a musical phrase

that I think is really good.

I still get a pleasure out of writing a line

that I think really encapsulates

what I want to say.

And you know instantly when it's right?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

When it's right for me, absolutely.

There's that first moment, you know, the first--

The first flush, the falling in love,

and then you got to let it cook and see

if you're still in love in the morning

'cause it's a form of showing off.

But it's also a form of sharing.

You want to say,

"Hey, I caught this moment" with people.

But it's a wonderful feeling. It's a wonderful feeling.

It's what everybody who writes or paints

or composes feels, or else they wouldn't go on with it.

If you didn't get those moments,

you couldn't put up with the rest of it:

the loneliness and the tedium

and the endless amounts of work, you know, the sweat.

I love inventing.

The hard part is the execution, obviously.

But even that's fun, the working out.

When I say "fun," of course,

I'm talking about agonizing fun.

I'm not talking about pleasant fun.

To make art sound effortless takes a lot of effort.

♪

And another thing, Dick.

If you and Larry don't fix up the opening

for that second act by tomorrow--

Excuse me, Mr. Morley. This is Miss Marrel,

the feature writer of the United Syndicate.

Good evening.

Mr. Hart. How do you do?

Mr. Rodgers.

How do you do?

She'd like to do a story with you.

Gentlemen, you're about to be interviewed.

Wait till I fix my tie.

Don't you like being interviewed?

Well, I don't mind as long as you don't ask us

which we write first, the words or the music.

♪

SONDHEIM: The question asked of most songwriters is,

"Which comes first, the music or the lyrics?"

And most people think it's a dumb question.

It isn't; it's just very hard to answer,

and it varies from writer to writer.

When I have written with Leonard Bernstein

or Jule Styne,

sometimes the music came first, sometimes the lyrics.

In the case of Jule, mostly the lyric.

In the case of Lenny, mostly we wrote together.

But when I write with myself,

I do what Cole Porter did.

I found, by going through his papers

at the Library of Congress,

that he would take his title line--

like "It Was Just One of Those Things"--

and he would write it out rhythmically:

"It was just one of those things"

on music paper, but with no notes attached,

only the rhythm.

And from that, he would extrapolate the melody.

The inflection of the title

would give him the rise and fall

of the melody, and the rhythm of the title

would give him the rhythm of the melody.

It was just--heh!-- one of those things.

♪ Just one of those crazy flings ♪

♪ One of those bells ♪

♪ That now and then rings ♪

♪ Just one of those things ♪

SONDHEIM: Once I get a scene,

I sometimes will put the scene

on the easel of the piano

and just improvise at the piano,

just reading the dialogue.

Other times, I will scour the dialogue

for useful phrases

that might be refrain lines or central ideas.

I strictly lie down--

ISAACS: How can you write lying down?

Uh, because it's easy to fall asleep.

Actually, I do that less than I used to,

but I got in the habit of doing it.

No, one of the reasons I have bad posture is

from many, many years of hunched over a piano

and lying down

with a pad propped on my knees.

I work entirely with Blackwing pencils

for a number of reasons.

One is it's very soft lead

and therefore wears down very quickly.

So you can spend a lot of time re-sharpening,

which is a lot easier and more fun than writing.

I've often used alcohol as a help in writing.

It's very good for loosening up the inhibitions

as long as you don't drink too much.

And in fact, the only thing I've ever written

that's just on water was

the score for a movie called "Stavisky."

And I realized it was 'cause I didn't have to write lyrics.

There are so few words in a lyric that each--

3 or 4 words is the equivalent of a scene

in a play or a chapter in a novel.

And unless every word is right, it stands out

like a sore thumb and becomes much bigger

than you had intended it.

And it's very hard because of the limitations

of the language and the restrictions

of what music does to words to come out with a lyric

that is consistently good from beginning to end.

WOMAN: ♪ It's a very short road from the pinch and the punch ♪

♪ To the paunch and the pouch ♪

♪ And the pension... ♪

SAWYER: I'm trying to imagine what it is

to be able to sit down and write,

"It's a very short road from the pinch and the punch

to the paunch and the pouch and the pension."

Does it make you laugh? Yeah.

Once I got the idea of that song--

Well, it's true of all the songs I write of,

particularly when they're very verbal songs.

You make lists is what you do,

and you start getting into the character.

It's always about getting into the character,

and you start to make lists of what she would talk about.

And you suddenly find that certain words either--

If they don't rhyme with each other, relate to each other.

And things can catenate. It's very much about serendipity.

It's a very-- "Oh, I didn't think.

Pinch? Paunch! Pension!"

Once you get the idea of, let's say, jowls,

and you think of pouch, you say, "Wait a minute.

"You know, that--maybe we can make something

out of the similarity of those sounds."

I've never heard an audience laugh as much and as loud

and as long as they do at his lyrics in this show.

Audiences don't listen to lyrics,

incidentally, very much.

I think they do because they love--

Because they have so much to take in.

You have to take in music and lyrics--

JAMES MacANDREW: You mean, if they don't hear your lyrics--

You have to blame it on Mr. Montresor and Mr. Rodgers?

No, I don't blame it on anybody.

I think we'd argue with you. Seriously.

I think they don't listen,

9 times out of 10, for the right reason.

A song starts and it says,

"When you took my hand" --

and they say, "Yes, you took my hand,

"we fell in love, all right.

Let's get through this song."

But Steve's lyrics always have a development

of what has been said in the scene.

They always carry it further, they're always

written in the diction of the character.

I mean, not only funny.

I think it's easier to be clever

than it is to carry a character further,

and I think he's the only one

who can do it today.

SONDHEIM, VOICE-OVER: As a writer,

I think what I am is an actor.

I'm an actor when I'm writing songs,

and it's one of my strengths as a writer

and one of the reasons

that actors and singers like to sing my stuff.

It's not only the insight of the librettist

and me working together,

but the fact is I write conversational songs,

and... so that the actors find that the rise and fall

of the tune and the harmonies,

and particularly the rhythms,

help them as singers to act the song.

They don't have to act against it.

I thought you loved Ciara.

I did love Ciara. I did.

♪ But no one has ever loved me ♪

♪ As deeply as you ♪

♪ No one has truly loved me ♪

♪ As you have, Fosca ♪

♪ Love without reason ♪

♪ Love without mercy ♪

♪ Love without pride ♪

♪ Or shame ♪

♪ Love unconcerned with being returned ♪

♪ No wisdom, no judgment ♪

♪ No caution, no blame ♪

♪ No one has ever known me ♪

♪ As clearly as you ♪

♪ No one has ever shown me ♪

♪ What love could be like until now ♪

♪ Not pretty or safe or easy ♪

♪ But more than I ever knew ♪

♪ Love within reason, that isn't love ♪

♪ And I've learned that from you ♪

SONDHEIM: Making lyrics feel natural,

sit on music... in such a way

that you don't feel the effort of the author

and so they shine and bubble

and rise and fall

is very, very, very, very, very hard to do.

And whereas you can sit at the piano and just do that--

[Laughter] Feel you're making art.

My piano technique is moderate.

I have a very good right hand and a very lumpy left hand.

I'm very right-handed. A lumpy left hand?

[Laughter] Oh, yeah, it's good--

Good for that sort of stuff.

But the right hand is very flashy.

If you write at the piano, you tend--

First of all, your muscle memory tends to make

your fingers fall into the same chords.

And secondly, if you have a bad left hand,

it's gonna show up in the music, so I try

to write away from the piano as much as possible.

Do you always have music playing in your head?

Ah, when I'm writing, yeah, yeah. Always.

For the entire-- Yes, and when it turns

out to be somebody else's tune,

I get very worried.

[Laughter] Seriously.

If I wake up in the morning and I'm

humming "Some Enchanted Evening," I take a very

close look at what I wrote the night before.

SONDHEIM, VOICE-OVER: Oscar Hammerstein talked to me

about Jerome Kern.

Jerome Kern was, you know, maybe our grea--

He was the Schubert of the American musical theater,

you know, probably our greatest melodist.

And you think he gets up in the morning and he goes:

♪ You are the the promised kiss of springtime ♪

And he's just--coming out of his head in the shower,

just jots it down, whatever.

Oscar told me about writing that song.

He said, "I was in one room writing the lyric. He was

in another room," and he hears Jerome Kern go...

[Humming notes]

[Hums same notes with different ending note]

[Hums same notes with different ending note]

[Starts to hum same notes, stops]

Every single key, he just--he took--

He tried every single note in the scale

until he got the one-- [Hums notes]

Now he had to go on. [Hums next new notes]

[Repeats same notes with different ending note]

[Humming varying different notes]

[Laughter]

And that's how one of the most gorgeous,

free-flowing melodies ever written came out.

And I thought, "Boy,

that's good news for the rest of us."

[Laughter]

MAN: One thing about Steve Sondheim--

When he likes a song, really likes it,

he'll say, "No, that's a good song."

Then, the fact that I don't like it or don't get it,

which is not all that infrequent--

It's quite frequent that I hear something;

the first time out, and I don't know

what I'm listening to.

And he doesn't force it on me, but when he says,

"No, that's a good song," by God, it is.

♪

♪ Isn't it rich? ♪

♪ Are we a pair? ♪

♪ Me here at last on the ground ♪

♪ You in midair ♪

♪ Send in the clowns ♪

HUGHES RUDD: When you sit down to write a show, do you

make a conscious effort to write hit songs or--

Oh, no, no.

I've had very few hit songs, actually.

They generally tend to step out on their own

if they're going to become hits.

I don't know what makes a hit song.

Every writer who's ever had a huge success wrote

what he wanted to write, and it hit.

Nobody sits and says, "OK, now the formula for a show

is we'll have a nun and a dog and Abraham Lincoln."

Ha ha! And it never works.

I want to be able to stand in the back of the house

and be proud of what I see,

not just in terms of my own work,

but say, "Yes, that musical was worth spending

a year and a half of your life on."

Most of the biggest hits of the twenties, thirties,

and forties came from shows and movies.

Starting in the fifties

with the rock revolution.

The split, the divergence occurred, and so you could

get shows that were huge hits without any hit songs.

The fact about "Send In the Clowns" is that

for two years after the show opened,

when that song was available,

only one person was attracted to it--

A man named Bobby Short.

And then, about two years later,

both Judy Collins and Frank Sinatra

got interested in it,

and the artists made the hit.

I've often claimed

that "Hello, Dolly" might not have been

a hit if Louis Armstrong hadn't picked it up.

Often it is the artist--meaning,

in the English sense, the singer--

Who makes the song a hit.

DOUGLAS: Was that a surprise to you that that became a hit?

SONDHEIM: Oh, absolutely flabbergasting.

It's my only really big hit song,

and it was designed as a little throwaway song

for a touching moment for Desirée.

There's a, as you probably know,

a tradition in show business that some of the best songs

and some of the most popular ones were written

out of town, while a show is trying out of town.

And everybody says, "Isn't it remarkable

"what pressure will do to a writer, how it'll make you

"write so well when you only have a few days

in Boston or in Philadelphia to write?"

Well, the truth is, it's not the pressure; it's the fact

that you see the cast

and you know who you're writing for.

I wrote "Send in the Clowns" for Glynis Johns,

who was the star of "A Little Night Music."

She did not have a song in the second act,

and Hal Prince, the director,

felt that she should.

There was one big scene

between her and the leading man,

and I always felt it was the leading man's scene

and I was outlining a song for him.

And Hal said, "Let me show you the scene," and he

directed the scene in such a way that even though

on paper it was Fredrik's scene, by the time I saw

the scene down at rehearsal, it was Desirée's scene.

I went home and wrote the song that night.

GLYNIS JOHNS: At 10:00 the next morning,

when we started rehearsal, Steve put his hands

and played the first chord.

And my eyes absolutely brimmed.

I was absolutely choked, like I am now.

And I looked at Len, who was not an emotional person,

or doesn't show it, and his eyes were filled up, too.

We knew.

We knew.

The first few chords.

SONDHEIM: Glynis was not a singer with a capital "S."

She had a lovely, sweet bell-like voice,

which was breathy and short-winded,

and so it's written in short phrases.

♪ Isn't it rich? ♪

Pause, pause, take your breath.

♪ Are we a pair? ♪

Pause, pause, take a breath.

[Laughter] [Humming notes]

Now she got a sustained line. [Hums notes]

♪ Me here at last on the ground ♪

Breath. [Hums notes]

Pause, pause, breath, so, you know,

it's not hard to sing.

♪ Isn't it rich? ♪

♪ Are we a pair? ♪

♪ Me here at last on the ground ♪

♪ You in ♪

♪ Midair ♪

♪ Send in the clowns ♪

♪ Isn't it bliss? ♪

♪ Don't you approve? ♪

♪ One who keeps tearing around ♪

♪ One who can't move ♪

♪ Where are the clowns? ♪

♪ Send in the clowns ♪

♪ Just when I'd stopped ♪

♪ Opening doors ♪

♪ Finally knowing ♪

♪ The one that I wanted ♪

♪ Was yours ♪

♪ Making my entrance again with my usual flair ♪

♪ Sure of my lines ♪

♪ No one is there ♪

♪

♪ Don't you love farce? ♪

♪ My fault, I fear ♪

♪ I thought that you'd want what I want ♪

♪ Sorry, my dear ♪

♪ But where are the clowns? ♪

♪ There ought to be clowns ♪

♪ Send in the clowns ♪

♪ What a surprise ♪

♪ Who could foresee ♪

♪ I'd come to feel about you what you felt ♪

♪ About me? ♪

♪ Why only now ♪

♪ When I see that you've drifted away? ♪

♪ What a surprise ♪

♪ What a cliché ♪

♪ Isn't it rich? ♪

♪ Isn't it queer? ♪

♪ Losing my timing this late ♪

♪ In my career? ♪

♪ But where are the clowns? ♪

♪ Quick, send in the clowns ♪

♪ Don't bother ♪

♪ They're here ♪

I've had letters all over--

All during the years from people who say

they love the song, but they don't know what it means.

And in fact, I even remember Frank Sinatra,

who, after all,

was responsible for making it a hit, he was asked

in an article what the lyric meant.

He said, "I don't know, I don't care what--look.

"Ya meet a girl, you take up with her, ya leave the girl.

Send in the clowns."

BERNARD LEVIN: Do you call yourself a poet?

Do you write poetry apart from your lyrics?

Never, never. No. Never?

Do you think it's a different--

You're a different world? Really?

Yes, it's mostly because-- You do write poetry.

You call it lyrics, but so what?

No, you see, I think they're poetic lyrics.

It's not a question, and that's not modesty in any way.

It's a description.

Poetry seems to me to exist in terms

of its conciseness, how much can be packed in.

Lyric-writing has to exist in time.

The audience, the listener cannot do

what the reader of poetry does.

He cannot go at his own speed.

He cannot go back

over the sentence.

Therefore it must be crystal clear as it goes on.

That means you have to under-write.

You have to lay the sentences out

so there's enough air

for the ear to take them in.

Also, what has to be considered, and what

not enough people who write dense lyrics consider,

is that there's a great deal going on besides the lyric.

There's music, there's costumes, there's lighting.

There's a lot of things

to listen to and look at.

And therefore, the lyric must be, in that sense, simple.

It can be full of complex thoughts,

and it certainly can have resonance,

but it must be easy to follow.

That is not true of poetry; poetry need not

and probably often should not be easy to follow.

"Oh, what a beautiful morning" is a line I'd be ashamed

to put on paper, but once you hear it

with Rodgers' melodic line, it's--

Couldn't be better. That's known as poetic.

♪ Oh, what a beautiful mornin' ♪

♪ Oh, what a beautiful day ♪

♪ I got a beautiful feelin' ♪

♪ Everything's goin' my way ♪

SONDHEIM: Hammerstein's most famous opening number is

"Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,"

which was a startling number

when he wrote it because most shows--in fact,

probably all of them, opened with chorus numbers.

And here came a lonely cowboy,

came strolling onto the stage

and started to sing a cappella

and then the orchestra joined in, and right away,

the audience knew they were in for something odd,

and therefore it prepared them

for the rest of the evening.

People do not understand that Oscar was

an experimental playwright, that his--I think

his major contribution to the theater

is not the songs,

but the playwriting, and you could say, "Oh,

"but those plays are so naive,

those characters are so naive."

But think of the theatrical imagination

going on with them.

My entire generation, you know--Bock and Harnick,

and Kander and Ebb--

Our entire generation of songwriters

is based on what Oscar encouraged us to do.

Well, he really literally taught me everything I know

and mostly in one afternoon.

When I was 15 years old, I'd written a show for school.

I asked him to judge it as if he would judge

a professional show,

because I was so sure it was so wonderful.

He said, "In that case,

it's the worst thing I ever read."

[Laughter]

I was terribly upset because I thought

I was gonna be the first 15-year-old

to have a show on Broadway, you know?

He really did say,

"The worst thing I have ever read"?

"Worst" sounds cruel,

and he was not cruel that way,

but he made it very clear that if I were going to ask

for professional standards,

he was going to treat me like a professional.

But he did say, he said, "It isn't that it's

"untalented; I think you're talented,

but I'll tell you where it's wrong."

And he then went through the show, word by word,

all the songs, all the dialogue,

to show me where everything was terrible.

And I picked up from that afternoon

a couple of principles

which I'm perfectly happy to pass on...

EARL WRIGHTSON: Please do.

Such as that a song should be like a play.

It should have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

It should have an idea.

State the idea,

and then build the idea and develop it and finish.

And at the end, you should be at a place

different from where you began.

I probably learned more about writing

in that afternoon than I've learned the rest of my life.

'Cause it was all just force-fed to me

as if I was a Strasbourg goose.

It was just crammed into me, and I've never forgotten it.

I can repeat everything he said that afternoon.

And everything he said, incidentally, was true.

He did not say a single thing that I disagree with.

My style is entirely different than his 'cause

one of the things he told me to do was

not to imitate him.

"If you write what you feel, it'll come out true.

If you write what I feel, it'll come out false."

And of course, he was right.

"Write for yourself." Then he said,

"If you do, you'll be 90% ahead of everybody else."

And, of course, the minute he put it into

those competitive terms, I zoomed away from him

and never wrote like him again.

If I didn't take what he gave us

and further it, there would be no point.

All of us have done that.

And others will do that after us, I hope.

But the whole point is to further things,

to take what you've gotten and make more

and make more and go in different directions,

but always based on what he was telling us.

You can't learn in a classroom

and you can't learn on paper.

You only learn by writing

and doing and writing and doing.

As a friend of mine says, "Write something, put it on.

Write something, put it on. Write something, put it--"

Well, you can't always put it on,

but that's the only way to do it.

That's how everybody who's ever been good got good.

♪

♪ He may--hasn't much that's plus ♪

♪ You might describe him thus ♪

♪ A false alarm ♪

♪ A broken arm ♪

♪ An imitation Hitler and with littler charm ♪

♪ But, oh ♪

♪ Can that boy foxtrot ♪

♪ His mouth is mean ♪

♪ He's not too clean ♪

♪ What makes him look reptilian ♪

♪ Is the brilliantine ♪

♪ But, oh ♪

♪ Can that boy foxtrot... ♪

We were in Boston with Follies

and we were having... a problem

with the song called "Can That Boy Foxtrot,"

which had originally been written as a throwaway song

for a minor character.

But Hal Prince, the director,

had cast Yvonne DeCarlo, who was a movie star.

She was a name in the cast,

so whatever number she sang had to land.

It didn't necessarily have to stop the show,

but it had to--

You had to feel that it was worthwhile, her being

in the cast for her to have sung this number to you.

DAVID FROST: What was the song that went out?

It was called "Oh, Boy, Can That Boy Foxtrot."

[Laughter]

SONDHEIM: That was the joke.

And you do that once, it's funny.

You do that twice, it's all right.

You do that 8 times? Ha ha!

"I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it."

The number was just sort of a filler.

It didn't really relate to the emotions

or the story of the evening,

and it was just a number for a movie star.

So we knew that we could improve it

if I could find a way of replacing it.

And I couldn't think of a song to write for her,

and we were sitting around a table--James Goldman

and Michael Bennett and Hal Prince, the directors,

and I--

And James said, "You know, it probably should be,

"you know, a song of surviving.

I mean, well, you know, I'm still here."

And I said, "That's it. Thank you very much."

And just that single phrase

then suggested the whole song

and this whole history of her life.

YVONNE DeCARLO: ♪ I've slept in shanties ♪

♪ Guest of the W.P.A. ♪

♪ And I'm here ♪

Ha ha!

♪ Danced in my scanties ♪

♪ 3 bucks a night was the pay ♪

♪ And I'm here ♪

♪ I've stood on breadlines with the best ♪

♪ Watched while the headlines did the rest ♪

♪ In the Depression, was I depressed? ♪

♪ Nowhere near ♪

♪ I met a big financier ♪

♪ And I'm here ♪

SONDHEIM: So I thought,

"I'll write something of substance."

And I thought about, "All right, this lady is

an ex-movie star who's now in TV,"

and being a movie buff, I thought,

"I know, I'll base it on Joan Crawford

and her career."

She started as a silent film star.

Then she became a sound star,

and then she eventually became, you know,

superannuated and started to do camp movies

where she was a hatchet murderer and, you know,

she did "Baby Jane," all that sort of stuff.

She became a joke on and of herself, but she survived.

She survived, what everyone thinks.

I thought, "That's who this lady is."

And so I took Joan Crawford's career

and the history of the United States through--

[Laughter]

Well, because she went through all those things.

She went through Beebe's Bathysphere,

she went through the... you know,

the King's abdication.

She lived through all those era--thing--at the same time

she lived through what happened in Hollywood.

She lived through the drug era in Hollywood.

She lived through the Communist scare

in Hollywood.

I thought, Put all that together and now there's

at least a song of substance so it doesn't have

one childish joke on the word "foxtrot."

[Laughter]

And, at least--so if it doesn't stop the show, fine,

but the audience will know that they've been served

a meal and not an hors d'oeuvre.

♪

♪ Good times and bum times ♪

♪ I've seen them all and, my dear ♪

♪ I'm still here ♪

♪ Plush velvet sometimes ♪

♪ Sometimes just pretzels and beer ♪

♪ But I'm here ♪

♪ I've stuffed the dailies in my shoes ♪

♪ I have strummed ukuleles ♪

♪ Sung the blues ♪

♪ I have watched my dreams disappear ♪

♪ But I'm still here ♪

♪ I've been through Reno ♪

♪ I've been through Beverly Hills ♪

♪ Now I'm here ♪

♪ Reefers and vino ♪

♪ Rest cures, religion, and pills ♪

♪ And I'm here ♪

♪ I've been called a pinko ♪

♪ Commie tool ♪

♪ But I got through it stinko ♪

♪ By my pool, I ♪

♪ I should have been through an acting school ♪

♪ That seems clear ♪

♪ Still, someone said-- ♪

WOMAN: You're sincere.

♪ So I'm here ♪

♪ I've gotten through ♪

♪ Herbert and J. Edgar Hoover ♪

♪ Wow, that was fun and a half ♪

♪ When you've been through ♪

♪ Herbert and J. Edgar Hoover ♪

♪ Well, anything else is a laugh ♪

♪ Black sable one day ♪

♪ The next day it goes into hock ♪

♪ But I'm here ♪

♪ Top billing Monday ♪

♪ Tuesday you're tourin' in stock ♪

♪ But I'm here ♪

♪ Oh, first you're another sloe-eyed vamp ♪

♪ Then someone's mother ♪

♪ Ooh, and then you're camp ♪

♪ And then you career ♪

♪ From career to career ♪

♪ And I'm almost through my memoirs ♪

♪ And you know that I'm here ♪

♪ I've gotten through "Hey, lady, aren't you whose's?" ♪

♪ "Ooh, what a looker you were" ♪

♪ Or, better yet, "Oh, lady--sorry" ♪

♪ "I thought you were whose's" ♪

♪ "Well, what ever happened to her?" ♪

[sighs]

♪ Good times and bum times ♪

♪ I've seen 'em all and, my dear ♪

♪ I'm still here ♪

♪ Plush velvet sometimes ♪

♪ Sometimes just pretzels and beer ♪

♪ But I'm here ♪

♪ Well, I've run the gamut A to Z ♪

♪ 3 cheers and, damn it, c'est la vie ♪

♪ Well, I even got through all of last year ♪

♪ And I'm here ♪

♪ Look who's here ♪

♪ I'm still here, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪

♪ You better believe it ♪

♪ I'm still here ♪

♪ I'm still here ♪

♪ I'm still ♪

♪ Here ♪

PRINCE: I think because "Follies" was such a cult show

and there's been so much written about it,

the fact that it did not pay off

was something of a "scandale."

To hear it spoken of,

it was this great disaster economically.

The reason for that is that everyone thought

it was a success until it closed one day

and then they suddenly realized, "My God,

it never was a success."

SONDHEIM: One of the advantages of having

a collaborator is you're never slammed

in the face alone, even if you get the bad reviews.

It's still you're in a boat with somebody.

I had three successes my first 3 times out.

They were not personal successes.

I got terrible reviews or completely ignored,

but they were successes.

I was making a living.

I could afford to write another show--

"Anyone Can Whistle," which came next.

When I saw that it was going to be a failure,

I thought I'd be devastated, and I wasn't.

I was disappointed that more of my friends

wouldn't get a chance to see the show,

and that's really the extent of it.

You know, it wasn't sort of resilience and chin up.

It was, you know-- I like writing songs,

I like writing shows and, you know,

if that had been my first show,

I'm not sure I would have bounced back.

But then I experienced a real failure

when I did "Do I Hear a Waltz?,"

which Arthur Laurents was-- based on a play by Arthur

called "Time of the Cuckoo."

I thought, by adapting "Time of the Cuckoo"

as a musical with Arthur doing the book--

I liked writing with Arthur--

I would be doing Arthur a favor,

and I would also be paying off my unspoken promise

to Oscar to write a show with Dick Rodgers.

And we thought, "Well, this will be an easy job

and we'll make a quick buck."

Those are all reasons never to write a musical.

♪ Do I hear a waltz? ♪

♪ I want more than to hear a waltz ♪

♪ I want you to share it 'cause, oh, boy ♪

♪ Do I hear a waltz? ♪

SONDHEIM: It was a respectable show.

It was not lambasted by the critics.

It was very politely received,

and politely received by the audience,

and had no passion and no blood

and no reason to be.

And I learned from that

the only reason to write is from love.

You must not write because you think

it's gonna be a hit,

because it's expedient, or anything like that.

It's so difficult to write,

it's so difficult to put on a show, you better--

If you have the privilege of being able to write it,

you write it out of passion.

That's what failure taught me,

and that was the real failure.

JAMES LAPINE: When I met you, you were pretty down

in the dumps after "Merrily We Roll Along."

SONDHEIM: Yeah. You were even talking about--

You know, maybe tryin' to do somethin' else or--

Yes, it was personal.

I really felt, paranoid or not,

and I think Hal did, too,

that everybody in, as we say,

"the business," really wanted us to fail.

They were glad that the show was--

And I thought, "I can't work in this hostile atmosphere."

I really--you know, because you do have to go

out there in public, and I'm a Broadway baby, you know?

Luckily, I discovered the joys of off-Broadway,

and that's what revived me.

When we wrote "Sunday in the Park with George,"

we didn't know it was gonna go to Broadway,

and that was fun.

You know, it was Mickey and Judy putting on a show.

I'm sure I would have eventually

gotten back to songwriting anyway, 'cause there's

nothing else I could do,

but that's what did it.

MAN: A 5, 6, 7, 8.

♪

♪ We love you ♪

♪ Phone rings, door chimes, in comes company ♪

♪ No strings, good times, just chums, company ♪

♪ Late nights, quick bites, party games, deep talks ♪

♪ Long walks, telephone calls ♪

♪ Thoughts shared, souls bared, private names ♪

♪ All those photos up on the walls ♪

"Company" is a show about marriage

and the difficulties of marriage and the joys of marriage.

And I had never been married, either officially

or unofficially, when I wrote "Company."

I thought, "How am I gonna write about something

"I know nothing about?

"I've observed marriages and I have feelings and opinions

and insights, but I don't know anything about it."

So I called my good friend Mary Rodgers,

who was on her second marriage,

and very happily on her second marriage.

And I said, "Tell me about marriage,"

and she spent an evening with me and she told me about marriage,

about her marriages, and about her observations on marriage.

And I took a yellow pad out and I took notes,

exactly as if it were a lecture,

and "Company" is a result of that evening.

♪ It's the little things you do together ♪

♪ Do together, do together ♪

♪ That make perfect relationships ♪

♪ The hobbies you pursue together ♪

♪ Savings you accrue together ♪

♪ Looks you misconstrue together that make marriage a joy ♪

♪ Mm-hmm ♪

♪ Uh-huh ♪

♪ Kiss kiss ♪

♪ Mm-hmm ♪

SONDHEIM: The reviews in Boston were, to put it mildly, mixed.

One of the reviewers loved the show, and he loved it because

he said it was anti-marriage, which, of course, it isn't.

So we had the ironic reaction of reading a rave review

by a guy who didn't understand the piece at all.

The review in "Variety" was one

of the most scathing I've ever encountered.

The reviewer said it was a show "strictly for homos

and old ladies," and I think he went on from there.

MAN: "Being Alive," take one.

♪

♪ Someone to hold you too close ♪

Well, you're very good, and I don't want to spoil something

that's potentially marvelous, and I need more guitar.

Let's hear guitar.

JONES: ♪ Alive ♪

SONDHEIM: Now this is the first time I'd really like

to feel rhythmic looseness, which you do right here.

That's the explosion.

That's the flower bursting.

And that's where you can take rhythmic liberties.

Just what you're doing is fine.

JONES: ♪ Vary my days ♪

That's nice and free. ♪ But alone... ♪

Well, maybe there's one more in me. Let's find out, huh?

Dino, practically swallow the mic on the end.

OK, I'll stay on. Ha ha ha!

We're gonna slow up the tempo, Dean.

♪

♪ Someone to hold you too close ♪

♪ Someone to hurt you too deep ♪

♪ Someone to sit in your chair ♪

♪ To ruin your sleep ♪

That's true, but there's more than that.

Is that all you think there is to it?

You've got so many reasons for not being with someone,

but, Robert, you haven't one good reason for being alone.

Come on, you're on to something Bobby.

You're on to something.

JONES: ♪ Someone to need you too much ♪

♪ Someone to know you too well ♪

♪ Someone to pull you up short ♪

♪ To put you through hell ♪

You see what you look for, you know?

You're not a kid anymore, Robbie.

I don't think you'll ever be a kid again, kiddo.

Hey, buddy, don't be afraid that it won't be perfect.

The only thing to be afraid of really is that it won't be.

WOMAN: Don't stop now. Keep going.

♪ Someone you have to let in ♪

♪ Someone whose feelings you spare ♪

♪ Someone who, like it or not ♪

♪ Will want you to share ♪

♪ A little, a lot ♪

And what does all that mean?

Robert, how do you know so much about it

when you've never been there?

It's much better living it than looking at it, Robert.

Add 'em up, Bobby. Add 'em up.

♪ Someone to crowd you with love ♪

♪ Someone to force you to care ♪

♪ Someone to make you come through ♪

♪ Who'll always be there ♪

♪ As frightened as you of being alive ♪

♪ Being alive ♪

♪ Being alive ♪

♪ Being alive ♪

Blow out the candles, Robert, and make a wish.

Want something.

Want something.

♪ Somebody hold me too close ♪

♪ Somebody hurt me too deep ♪

♪ Somebody sit in my chair ♪

♪ And ruin my sleep ♪

♪ And make me aware of being alive ♪

♪ Being alive ♪

♪ Somebody need me too much ♪

♪ Somebody know me too well ♪

♪ Somebody pull me up short ♪

♪ Put me through hell ♪

♪ Give me support for being alive ♪

♪ Make me alive ♪

♪ Make me alive ♪

♪ Make me confused ♪

♪ Mock me with praise ♪

♪ Let me be used ♪

♪ Vary my days ♪

♪ But alone is alone ♪

♪ Not alive ♪

♪ Somebody crowd me with love ♪

♪ Somebody push me to care ♪

♪ Somebody make me come through ♪

♪ I'll always be there ♪

♪ As frightened as you ♪

♪ To help us survive ♪

♪ Being alive ♪

♪ Being alive ♪

♪ Being alive ♪

♪

SONDHEIM: My first serious relationship occurred

when I was 60 years old, when I fell in love.

And I think it didn't happen till then because

I wasn't open for it, I wasn't ready for it.

I was brought up as an only child.

I enjoyed being an only child.

I enjoyed being alone.

I still enjoy often being alone,

but I think I'd gotten in the habit of it,

and when I met somebody,

the habit got broken.

♪

Oh, that's the Forum.

Oh. Well, yes. [Man laughs]

A funny thing happened on the way here,

but I--I can't talk about it.

♪

SONDHEIM: Between my freshman and sophomore years in college,

I had discovered that I would-- I had a lot of trouble

with my mother and getting along with her, and she--

She didn't really want a child,

but she was very... very much in love,

I think, with my father and even obsessed with him.

So when he left her, which he did, for another woman,

the wrath of God had nothing on her,

and she, unfortunately,

tried to make me pay for the sins of my father

and so it was not a very good relationship.

And if it hadn't been for the Hammersteins,

I really don't know where I would be, if I'd even be alive.

BOB BROWN: A lot of Sondheim's themes come from having had

his own expectations bruised as a young man

when his parents divorced, and he got trapped in the middle

of bitter resentments that never subsided,

even as he grew older.

He recalls a letter his mother wrote to him

when he was in his 40s

and she was entering a hospital to have a pacemaker implanted.

SONDHEIM: And so she wrote me a letter and had it

hand-delivered the night before she went into the hospital.

And she said--opening sentence was, "Before I undergo

open-heart surgery," which she had underlined 3 times,

"I just wanted to tell you that I have only one regret

in my life, which is giving you birth."

And when I got this note-- and then she went on--

I thought--you know, I was stunned first

and then I thought, "Oh, my God."

I had always thought all those years that,

like so many parent/child relationships,

it was misplaced or misguided love

and, you know, it was all about my father

and she didn't know where to place her feelings.

Then I realized she never wanted me on earth.

I was an inconvenience.

[Distant sounds of children playing]

♪

SAWYER: Do you want children?

Yeah, I'm sorry I didn't have any.

Yep. It's, uh, you know, I am.

But art is the other way

of having children, of teaching.

I believe that very firmly.

The idea of teaching a child everything--

From colors to clouds to music, it's--

Teaching in the sense of opening up the mind.

Not teaching; opening up the mind,

which is what education is about.

All education is just about making people curious.

That's all it's about.

And to get a child to be curious about everything

would be unbearable thrill for me.

Or a bearable thrill.

MAN: ♪ These are my friends ♪

♪ See how they glisten ♪

♪ See this one shine ♪

♪ How he smiles in the light, my friend ♪

♪ My faithful friend ♪

Remember, this is a love song.

It's, in fact, the big ballad

of the show, is his love for his razors.

So let's start it as a genuinely passionate,

intense, semi-whispered ballad

that keeps rising and falling--

Intense, sexual ballad.

And let's start again from that point of view,

and let's not take any rubato.

Let's keep it absolutely rigid to start with...

[Hums notes]

So it has a trance-like quality.

The reason that I wrote this rhythmically,

so squarely is because he's falling into

a state of almost semi-- of self-hypnosis.

So it must have that feeling as opposed to conversation.

The songs we've been working on so far

this afternoon are all about conversation.

This is exactly reverse. This is non-conversational.

This is a ritual.

SONDHEIM: I love teaching, and I've always thought

that all art is a form of teaching.

I think painting's a form of teaching.

Any kind of communication is a form of teaching.

And an artist, a visual artist shows us ways of looking

at the world, and a novelist shows us ways

that people behave; composer teaches us ways to listen.

Is there any conscious decision

to impart some information in songs,

some information spoken--

SONDHEIM: Entirely conscious.

I think people do not think carefully enough

about what to sing and what not to sing.

There's a tendency either to sing everything

or merely to sing songs and speak.

And I think there are certain shows that call

for one technique or another, but the choice

of what to sing and what not to sing is--

First of all, it's delicate,

it's difficult, but it must--

They are choices that must be made consciously.

But one of the things you will discover,

I hope, is that, as your material goes

to actors and actresses, you suddenly find

yourself in the embarrassing position

of having to defend what you've written

because an actor will come to you and say,

"Now, what did you mean by this line?"

And you can't say, "Oh, well, what I mean--"

You've got to tell them exactly what it means.

You must be able to defend every single word and note.

FERRARA: Well, the characters in "Merrily,"

when you first meet them, they're sort of

at their most jaded and kind of most unlikable.

What did you want the audience to take away

from moving backwards and seeing these characters go

from kind of their worst to their most innocent?

SONDHEIM: It's a cautionary tale.

It's what can happen to you.

It's how ideals can get--

It's a show about expedience.

It's about you got to be very careful

if you're gonna take the expedient path.

All they care about is getting their work done

and having it heard.

It is 3 idealists whose idealism

is one of the things that binds them.

The thing about "Opening Doors" is it catches

the whole zeitgeist, the whole thing

of getting excited when you're young writers

and you're knocking on producers' doors

and, you know, every moment is a crisis

and everything requires a phone call

and everything is at a level of hysteria

until you finally get to the producer's office

and then it's all a disaster.

Finished! Let me call you back.

This is just a draft. Probably it stinks. Right.

Haven't had the time to do a polish.

Will you sing? Right.

♪ Who wants to live in New York? ♪

♪ Who wants the worry, the noise, the dirt, the heat? ♪

♪ Who wants the garbage cans clanging in the street? ♪

♪ Suddenly I do ♪

♪ They're always popping their cork ♪

I'll fix that line.

♪ The cops, the cabbies, the salesgirls up at Saks ♪

♪ You got to have a real taste for maniacs ♪

♪ Suddenly I do ♪

♪ That's great ♪

♪ That's swell ♪

♪ The other stuff as well ♪

♪ It isn't every day I hear a score this strong ♪

♪ But, fellas, if I may, there's only one thing wrong ♪

♪ There's not a tune you can hum ♪

♪ There's not a tune you go bum-bum-bum-di-dum ♪

♪ You need a tune to go bum-bum-bum-di-dum ♪

♪ Give me some melody ♪

♪ Why can't you throw 'em a crumb? ♪

♪ What's wrong with lettin' them tap their toes a bit? ♪

♪ I'll let ya know when Stravinsky has a hit ♪

♪ Give me some melody ♪

♪ Oh, sure, I know ♪

♪ It's not that kinda show ♪

♪ But can't you have a score that's sorta in between? ♪

♪ But play a little more, I'll show ya what I mean ♪

♪ Who wants to live in New York? ♪

♪ I always hated the dirt, the heat, the noise ♪

♪ But ever since I met you, I-- ♪

♪ Listen, boys, maybe it's me ♪

♪ But that's just not a hum-a-ma-ma-ma-mable melody ♪

♪ Write more, work hard ♪

♪ Leave your name with the girl ♪

♪ Less avant-garde ♪

♪ Leave your name with the girl ♪

♪ Just write a plain old melodee-dee-dee-dee-dee ♪

♪ Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee ♪

[Traffic noise below]

♪ They're stopping rehearsals, they ran out of money ♪

♪ We lasted one issue, my book was rejected ♪

♪ The nightclub was raided, I have to start coaching ♪

♪ My parents are coming ♪

♪ They screwed up the laundry ♪

♪ My wallet was stolen ♪ ♪ I saw the musician ♪

♪ We're being evicted ♪ ♪ I'm having a breakdown ♪

ALL: ♪ We'll all get together on Sunday ♪

♪ They're slamming the doors, singing, "Go away" ♪

♪ It's less of a sail than a climb ♪

♪ That faraway shore's farther every day ♪

♪ We're learning to ricochet ♪

♪ We still have a lot to say ♪

♪ You know what we'll do? What?

♪ We'll do a revue ♪ What?

♪ We'll do a revue of our own ♪

♪ Who wants to live in New York? ♪

♪ Who wants the worry, the noise, the dirt, the heat? ♪

♪ Who wants the garbage cans clang-- ♪

I can sing higher. Thank you.

We're looking for someone with

a little more experience. Next.

♪ They're always popping their cork ♪

Up a tone.

♪ The cops, the cabbies, the salesgirls up at Saks ♪

Up a tone.

♪ You got to have a real taste for maniacs ♪

Thank you. You're hired.

Oh!

♪ I'm Beth ♪ ♪ I'm Frank ♪

♪ I really thought I stank ♪

♪ I'm Mary ♪ ♪ Charley ♪

♪ By the way, I'm told we open Saturday ♪

♪ What? ♪ ♪ You're not serious? ♪

♪ Nobody's ready ♪

♪ Apparently somebody canceled a booking ♪

♪ The songs aren't finished ♪ ♪ And what about costumes? ♪

♪ And how do I learn all these numbers? ♪

♪ I'll bring you the copies of everything later ♪

♪ This evening ♪ ♪ OK ♪

♪ But I'll have to have all of the music... ♪

[All singing at once]

♪ We'll worry about it on Sunday ♪

♪ We're opening doors ♪

♪ Singing, "Here we are" ♪

♪ We're filling up days on a dime ♪

♪ That faraway shore's looking not too far ♪

♪ We're following every star ♪

♪ There's not enough time ♪

♪ We're banging on doors ♪

♪ Shouting, "Here again" ♪

♪ We're risking it all on a dime ♪

♪ That faraway shore's looking near again ♪

♪ The only thing left is when ♪

♪ We know we should count to 10 ♪

♪ We haven't got time ♪

♪ We haven't got time ♪

[Song ends]

MAN: You are so admired not just for what you've made,

but also for how you've been to people--

That you've been generous about teaching,

that you've been honest, and that you have tried

to be as helpful as you can be.

When you... try to approach your work

as all that you've done and all that people expect from you--

Overwhelming?

Well, the expectations come from the work,

not from the teaching.

Teaching, to me, is the sacred profession and I cry

when I talk about it, and I'll probably cry now.

But my life was saved by teachers;

first a Latin teacher in high school

and then Oscar Hammerstein, who was a teacher,

and who...

just before he died, gave me a portrait of himself.

And I asked him to inscribe it, which is weird

when you think that, you know, it's like asking

your father to inscribe something, you know.

And he wrote...

Tsk. Gonna cry.

He wrote, "For Stevie,

my friend and teacher."

And that describes Oscar better

than any other way I can describe him.

He understood that he--as you know, in "King and I,"

he said, "By your pupils you are taught."

So teaching, to me, is...

it's a necessity.

I couldn't live without it.

MARTHA TEICHNER: If you could conjure up

Oscar Hammerstein right now,

what would you say to him about your career,

having sprung from him in so many ways?

I would say, "Aren't you proud of me?"

♪

[Dogs barking]

SONDHEIM: But when I write now, I'm aware that the people

who like my work are expecting so much, and it makes me tense.

TEICHNER: You've got to top yourself?

It's not so much that you have to top yourself,

it's that you want to write something fresh.

You want to write something you haven't written before.

So it's an act of courage, in a sense, to--

It sure is, and it needs more courage,

I think, as you get older, and that's--see,

that's what I didn't expect.

♪

I suppose if there's one that's closest to my heart,

it would probably be "Sunday in the Park with George"

because of the ambitiousness of what it's trying to say.

James Lapine and I were talking about a play

that James had directed, which had utilized

this particular painting, "Sunday Afternoon."

And we started talking about the painting

and the fact that nobody in the painting is looking

at anybody else, and yet there are 50 people in the painting.

So why aren't they looking at each other?

Are they hiding from each other?

Are they in the park for devious reasons?

Then James said, "The main character is missing."

And I said, "Who?" picking up my cue.

And he said, "The painter," and once he said that,

we knew we had a show.

It's like a photographer went out on the island,

the Grande Jatte, and took a picture of a lot of people

strolling in the park, the humanity of it.

And I thought, "These people don't know

"they're gonna be immortal,

"and so I'm gonna write a song about that,

"that it's gonna be outside of themselves,

"they're gonna be talking, singing about themselves

"and what they're doing, but they're gonna be acknowledging

that they are immortal."

And it all leads to the word "forever," which is--

When I wrote that word, I cried because I thought,

"That's what it's about."

And I then decided...

that I would do it all in one sentence.

It's a lyric that's in one sentence

because there is a kind of...

I don't know how to put it.

Oh, it's--it's like--

It's eternal, it's infinite, it's whatever...

whatever--it's what I feel about art.

It just has no beginning and no end.

It's just one thing.

Then I could see that they would all be singing that one idea...

that "here we are in a park and we're gonna be here forever."

That's why it has that-- you know, it's got

an almost funerary beat to it, you know?

It's almost a funeral march, but it isn't quite.

It's a triumphant march.

CAST: ♪ Let us pass ♪

♪ Through our perfect park ♪

♪ Pausing on a Sunday ♪

♪ By the cool blue triangular water ♪

♪ On the soft green elliptical grass ♪

♪ As we pass ♪

♪ Through arrangements of shadows ♪

♪ Towards the verticals of trees ♪

♪ Forever ♪

♪ By the blue, purple, yellow, red water on the green ♪

♪ Orange, violet mass of the grass ♪

BERNADETTE PETERS: ♪ In our perfect park ♪

MANDY PATINKIN: ♪ Made of flecks of light ♪

♪ And dark ♪

♪ And parasols ♪

♪

♪ Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum ♪

CAST: ♪ People strolling through the trees ♪

♪ Of a small suburban park ♪

♪ On an island in the river ♪

♪ On an ordinary Sunday ♪

♪ Sunday ♪

♪ Sunday... ♪

[Singing fading out]

PATINKIN: White.

A blank page or canvas.

His favorite.

So many...

possibilities.

♪

♪

MAN: ♪ I'm just a Broadway baby ♪

♪ Walking off my tired feet ♪

♪ Pounding 42nd Street ♪

♪ To be in a show ♪

♪ Broadway Baby ♪

♪ Learning how to sing and dance ♪

♪ Waiting for that one big chance ♪

♪ To be in a show ♪

♪ Gee, I'd like to be on some marquee ♪

♪ All twinkling lights ♪

♪ A spark to pierce the dark ♪

♪ From Union Park to Washington Heights ♪

♪ Someday maybe ♪

♪ All my dreams will be repaid ♪

♪ Hell, I'd even play the maid ♪

♪ To be in a show ♪

♪ Say, Mr. Producer ♪

♪ Some girls get the breaks ♪

♪ Just give me my cue, sir ♪

♪ I've got what it takes ♪

♪ Say, Mr. Producer ♪

♪ I'm talking to you, sir ♪

♪ I don't need a lot ♪

♪ Only what I got ♪

♪ Plus a tube of grease paint ♪

♪ And a follow spot ♪

♪ I'm a Broadway baby ♪

♪ Slaving at a 5 and 10 ♪

♪ Dreamin' of the great day when ♪

♪ I'll be in a show ♪

♪ Broadway baby ♪

♪ Making rounds all afternoon ♪

♪ Eatin' at a greasy spoon ♪

♪ To save up my dough ♪

♪ Oh, at my tiny flat ♪

♪ There's just my cat ♪

♪ A bed and a chair ♪

♪ Still, I'll stick it till ♪

♪ I'm on a bill ♪

♪ All over Times Square ♪

♪ Someday maybe ♪

♪ If I stick it long enough ♪

♪ I can get to strut my stuff ♪

♪ Working for a nice man ♪

♪ Like a Ziegfeld or a Weismann ♪

♪ In a big-time Broadway show ♪

[Song ends]