Search Results for: sondheim

Here's a message I posted here eons ago, all the way back on 8/31/10. But it's a message a lot of people have linked to or asked me about. It concerns meeting deadlines as a writer and everything in it still applies except that now I've been writing professionally for six more years…

Jeremy W. writes…

I was impressed with your advice to writers about being late with their work. What advice can you give to those of us who have trouble summoning up the muse on demand? I have trouble creating with a deadline. When I don't have a deadline, I'm usually able to come up with something that I like. When they tell me it has to be in on Tuesday, I freeze up and have trouble concentrating. What can you suggest?

Well, my first piece of advice ties in with all that counsel about not being late. If deadlines inhibit you, try to get started A.S.A.P., which makes the deadline that much less threatening and formidable. If it has to be in on Tuesday, don't wait 'til Sunday night or Monday morning to get started.

My second piece of advice is to search for the spine of what you're doing. If you're having trouble getting started, you may not really know where it is you have to go. Let's say the chore at hand is to write a commercial for cheese-straighteners. Ask yourself what it's really about: Why should anyone buy a cheese-straightener? Why should they buy your cheese-straightener? What is it about cheese-straighteners that people need to hear?

If you can't answer those questions, maybe you don't know enough about this project to write it and you need to turn your attention there. If you have to write a story about a talking gerbil, ask yourself what it is about this particular talking gerbil that interests you and would interest someone else? Again, if you can't answer that question, there's where the problem is located.

Or maybe you don't have enough of an assignment. Stephen Sondheim used to say that the most difficult job was when someone comes to him and says, "Just write a song" or "Just write a song about love." There are simply too many starting places in a task of that sort. On the other hand, if someone approaches him and suggests, "Write a song about a lady sitting at a bar whose boyfriend has just dumped her and she's feeling sorry for herself," then he has something to build on.

If an editor tells you, "Write me a fantasy story" and that's all the direction you have, maybe you need to impose a discipline on yourself. Maybe you need to arbitrarily pick something you care about — you're mad at your sister, you're afraid of grasshoppers, you love ham, whatever — and use that feeling as a foundation on which to build. You may wind up writing about something else but that could get you started. And moving — even in the wrong direction — can often be preferable to not moving at all.

That's especially true if you're the kind of writer that I hope you are, and which I try to be. That's the kind that's prolific but who recognizes that sometimes, you have to throw out everything you wrote yesterday.

You have to like what you write, at least when you write it, but not so much that you can't bring yourself to toss it into the dumpster and rebuild. Fear of spending time and energy writing the wrong thing can be very inhibiting for a writer. Given the choice, I would rather write for three hours and then delete it all than spend those three hours staring at the screen, trying to think of the perfect thing to write. The latter usually doesn't lead me to knowing what I want to write, whereas the former usually does.

Which brings me to the best cure for Writer's Block I've ever come up with. It's so good that I can't believe I'm the first or even the millionth to come up with it. It's to decide to write something you're definitely going to throw away…and to make it childish and utterly self-indulgent.

You're stuck on what to write…where to start or how to pick up on a script or article you started on and have to finish. Instead of spending the next hour or two banging your head against the stucco, try this. Spend that time writing something that wallows in the most adolescent, shameful fantasy you have.

Pick the person in your life, past or present, you most despise. Write a story about how you got total revenge on them and they came to you begging for forgiveness. Or you can go a sexual route with this. Remember that kid who sat across from you in Geometry in High School? The one you lusted after but who treated you like you had smallpox? Write a story about how that person came to you and begged you to have sex with them.

Forget about logic or typos or clever verbiage. Just tell the story in direct, earthy terms. When you're done with it, read it over once, delete it and turn back to the thing you have to write. If that doesn't unjam your writing muscles and get them limber and functioning, then I would consider another line of work.

I'm serious about that. Imagine a dentist who had days when he couldn't bear to fill a cavity or file down some old lady's lower bridge. Maybe he shouldn't be doing that for a living anymore. You don't have to be a writer, you know. It's not compulsory.

There are quotes where famous writers like Dorothy Parker say things like, "I hate writing but I love having written." I never think that attitude makes a writer intriguing or colorful or anything of the sort, just as I never think that suffering for one's art automatically makes the art any better.

Some of us have bad, non-productive periods and that's usually something else, something that (probably) has to do with some aspect of our lives other than the pure writing part. I'm not talking about the times that are the exceptions. I'm talking about if you constantly find that writing gives you headaches and a need for Maalox™ and if you're starting to find it an unpleasant chore to stop playing Spider Solitaire and use your computer for the reason you got it in the first place.

When writers tell me how painful writing can be for them, I respond with something like, "No one's forcing you to be a writer and it's inconceivable that it's the only thing you can do in this world. Go do one of those other things."

Invariably, they say, "Aren't there times when you hate writing?" I tell them no. I may not like certain jobs or certain people I have to work with…but hey, if I were selling porta-potties, I probably wouldn't like every customer that came in to buy a porta-potty. Don't confuse a bad gig with a bad profession.

I've been doing this for 41 years because I enjoy it and can't think of anything attainable I'd enjoy more. I also can't think of too many moves stupider than doing something you don't like for 41 years if you have any choice in the matter. If you're a writer who doesn't love writing, find another profession…something you'd gladly do for the next 41 years without complaining about it all the time. You'll do yourself — and your friends and your family and maybe even your audience — a tremendous favor.

So what's up with the next Stephen Sondheim musical? Alan Burnett sent me this link to an article that tells us what is presently known about it.

A new Stephen Sondheim musical is on the horizon — and by "horizon," we mean maybe in 2017. Since Mr. Sondheim is 86, it might be a good idea to hurry it along a bit, huh? Maybe?

No word on any productions of the musical based on the Jerry Lewis film, The Nutty Professor. Jerry's last known announcement of it definitely opening on Broadway as that it would be there in November of 2014. It's not on any lists of shows that are set or likely to open there in the foreseeable future. Surely some theater company somewhere would like to do it?

Stephen Sondheim discussing lyric writing. What the hell does he know about it? (Thanks to James Troutman for the link.)

Another Sondheim moment. From the PBS version of Company (the one starring Neil Patrick Harris), we have Anika Noni Rose performing "Another Hundred People." I once saw a really low budget version of this show done in a 99-seat theater with too small a cast. Some people had to double, playing two roles that would usually be played by separate actors. Afterwards, I tried to talk the director into changing this song to "Another Seven People"…

Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin recreate a Sondheim moment from Sunday in the Park with George…

We'll watch and link to any interview of Stephen Sondheim. Here's a recent one conducted on the stage of the National Theatre in London. It's all worth watching but the most interesting question to me was the final one in which Mr. Sondheim speaks of the difference between a musical on stage and on screen, and why he thinks West Side Story was not a good movie…

Today is Leap Year Day. Back in 1952 when my mother was seriously preggo with me, I was expected to be born on 2/29/52. I somehow missed my entrance cue and a few days later, they went in and got me…but when I was eight and old enough to understand a concept I couldn't have grasped at age four, I was told, "If you'd been born when you were supposed to be, this would be your second birthday." Somehow, my relatives joked, that would have made me two years old instead of eight.

I understood of course that this was a joke but it was an intriguing concept with which to play. If it worked like that, when all my friends were eighty and close to passing on, I would be twenty and in my prime of life. Of course, think of all the birthday presents I would have missed over the years…and how about that long, frustrating wait for puberty? Or to be old enough to drive a car?

Speaking of driving a car, my knee has healed to the point where I've been doing some limited driving, mainly at times when traffic is likely to be at a minimum. It's now been four months since the second of my two operations and I'm doing that plus walking some decent distances. There's still the occasional time when I can't and it's still painful to get up from a chair…especially a low chair. But I'm pretty happy with the recovery process and fairly certain my mobility is better than it would be by now if I hadn't had the knee replacement.

I have stuff to do today more pressing than blogging but before I return to it…

Josh Marshall has a good article up on why the portions of the Republican party who want to stop Trump are unable to stop Trump. Sez Marshall, it's because most of what he's selling is the same stuff they've been selling to their constituents for years. I think that's basically correct. Trump's claim that the I.R.S. is auditing him because he's a "good Christian" is as clear a lie as we've ever heard from a politician — unless it's topped by Trump's claim of yesterday that he didn't denounce the Ku Klux Klan in that interview because he had a "bad earpiece." But the G.O.P. leaders can't denounce him for the Christian hooey at least because they've spent years telling Christians that everyone's out to get them and take away their religion.

Nate Silver says not to presume that everyone who calls themselves a Conservative will eventually back Mr. Trump. This election, it might be wise to presume nothing. I'm even skeptical it'll happen in November.

If you love Sondheim and do Spotify, this is the page for you.

The big "left out of the In Memoriam reel" controversy today seems to be about Abe Vigoda, though there are also complaints about the omission of Geoffrey Lewis, Martin Milner, Joan Leslie and a few more. I was glad to see they included Stan Freberg.

All right. I'll be back later…maybe. I dunno. Lots to get done today.

I am just now getting into the works of Steve Reich, the composer who has done much the last few decades to take music in new, interesting directions. One of the many admirers of his work is Stephen Sondheim and a little more than a year ago, the two men took the stage in New York for a joint conversation moderated by John Schaefer and a performance of many of their individual compositions. It runs a little more than two hours but they might just be two hours well spent…

Lots of folks like playing songs by Stephen Sondheim. How many of them like doing crossword puzzles by Stephen Sondheim?

Liz Callaway is a terrific stage/cabaret performer who has been a fine interpreter of the works of Mr. S. Sondheim. So it both startled and delighted an audience recently when she bobbled the lyrics to one of his best tunes. Listen and hear what happens next…

Jack Kirby would have been 98 years old today. Here's a photo I'll bet most of you have never seen.

It was taken in late 1969, not long after I met Jack and not long before he rocked the comic book world by quitting Marvel and signing on with DC. I can't think of a single current analogy in comics or in any medium which would be a comparable jolt. I wanted to write here something like, "It would be as if [Name] quit CBS and went to work for NBC" or "It would be as if [Name] quit the Yankees and went to work for the Dodgers." But no names I could plug into those sentences would equal the impact of the news back then.

This photo was taken either by me or my friend Steve Sherman. It was taken in a party area at the Brown Derby restaurant on Vine Street in Hollywood. That's right: It's Kirby at the Derby. Jack, Steve and I had all gotten involved in that year's Toys for Tots campaign for the U.S. Marine Corps — a most worthy cause that collected donations of toys and steered them to kids who might otherwise have been forgotten by Santa. Jack donated his artistry for that year's Toys for Tots poster.

The guys in the costumes were friends of a promoter we'd all gotten involved with. That's a real long story that is told in this long, long biography of Jack I'm writing that has been a long, long time in coming. No, I don't know when you'll be able to buy a copy but I'm finally able to finish it and am attempting to do so.

Suffice it to say this promoter guy was trying to prove to Marvel that he could make their characters a lot more famous than they already were. He'd convinced the Marines to put Marvel heroes on the poster and he'd gotten some local costume companies to make three costumes under the impression that they were donating to the charity. In truth, he intended to use the suits afterwards for other purposes that would benefit his own enterprises.

Someone out there will be interested in this: He persuaded Western Costume — the biggest company ever in that business and the leading supplier of wardrobe for TV and movies — to agree to make a Captain America costume. Then the folks at Western discovered that they already had a Captain America costume, perhaps the only one then in existence. The one they gave him was the one made for actor Dick Purcell in the 1944 Captain America movie serial. That's it above with ear holes cut into the head piece since Cap's ears didn't show in the serial. And no, I have no idea whatever became of it.

Anyway, Jack was at the Derby for a press event to kick off the Toys for Tots drive and when either Steve or I set up this photo, Jack immediately went into the above pose, explaining that you couldn't just stand passively when you were being photographed with Thor, Spider-Man and Captain America. No, you sure couldn't. So consider that a picture of four super-heroes. I'm not sure the one with the cigar wasn't the most incredible of the four.

That's about all I have to say about this photo but I have an unlimited number of things to say about Jack, starting with the fact that he was one of the nicest people I ever knew and easily the one who most deserved the label of "genius." Some folks didn't pick up on that right away because he talked like a guy in an old Warner Brothers movie about the mob and his mind careened from topic to topic with restless abandon.

This is hard to explain but being around him, I came to the conclusion that his brilliance had a lot to do with being able to make unusual associations. He would take two or more seemingly unrelated concepts or elements — things mere mortals like you and I would never connect — and he'd connect them and arrive at something very, very wonderful. You might never be able to discern the starting points; never be able to fathom how he linked A to B and wound up with a C that resembled neither…but he did.

He talked like that, too. I'd be chatting with Jack about, say, Richard Nixon. Nixon was a big topic for everyone in 1969 but more so for Jack who created many a super-villain using but one of Nixon's odd quirks as a starting point. Jack, like so many of us, was fascinated that such a twisted personality could somehow ascend to be President of the United States. (Thank Goodness that these days, no one that warped ever even becomes a serious contender for the job.)

So I'd be talking about Nixon with him and suddenly I'd be talking about cling peaches with him. Or Mount Kilimanjaro. Or staple guns or something…and I'd go, "Huh? What the hell was the segue and how did I miss it?" Sometimes, days or even years later — and I'm not kidding about the years — I would figure out how we got from Topic A to Topic B. Sometimes, not.

There's a quote from Stephen Sondheim that I like. He once said, "The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is that you know there's a solution." There was always a solution with Jack. Alas, those of us who live in one world at a time were sometimes unable to figure it out. Still, it would not shock me if at some point, some great Kirby Villain started life because Jack started musing about Nixon with a staple gun.

Those two qualities of Kirby's — the Cagneyesque way of speaking and the seeming disconnects in his speech — caused some people to miss how smart the guy was. One of many reasons he left Marvel shortly after this photo was taken is that so many important people there thought he was kind of demented and treated him as a useful idiot.

He told them that characters like the ones surrounding him in the picture would someday be billion-dollar properties appearing in major motion pictures and known the world over. As a vital contributor to the existence of those characters — in many cases, the main creative force — he wanted a piece of that action. This he was denied by men who sounded like Mr. Bumble registering shock that Oliver Twist wanted a smidgen more gruel. And being limited in the visionary department, they of course never dreamed the material would be as lucrative as Kirby said it would be…so they had to grab 100% of what there was while they could. Ergo, no cut for Kirby.

People ask me these days: "What would Jack have said if he was here to see Thor and Captain America and the Avengers and other characters he helped launch become super-heroes of the box office?" That's real easy to answer: He would have said, "I told you so."

He did. He really did. I can't swear he would have imagined Ant Man doing quite as well as he has but the others? Absolutely. He predicted it to me and to Steve and every single day to the wonderful Mrs. Kirby and to others. He predicted lots of things I doubted or at least questioned at the time but have lived to see come true.

I get accused at times of gushing too much about Jack. Fine. If there's anyone I've ever known who deserved a surplus of gushing, it was Jack Kirby. I still think at times I'm underestimating the guy. His work has endured and its popularity has grown to the point where I'm sure it will affect generations as yet unborn.

Tomorrow, I go out to Cal State Northridge in the Valley for the formal opening of a major exhibition of Jack Kirby artistry. You might assume I'm attending to pay tribute to a man who meant so much to me and you'd be right…

…but I'll confess to something. I also write about Jack and host panels about him and attend events about him for selfish reasons. Not only was Jack supremely creative but little flecks of that were contagious. When you were around him, you just plain felt more creative. It was not just me and it was not just people who became professional writers or artists or filmmakers or whatever. He treated everyone as an equal; as someone who at least potentially could make something wonderful. He stood on fertile ground and when you were with him, you did too.

I was seventeen when I met this man. I was already earning money as a writer but I had no particular confidence that the jobs I'd gotten weren't flukes and that I could continue in my chosen profession for the rest of my life. That I finally decided I probably could had a lot to do with being around Jack, seeing how easily it poured out of him and — and this was key — understanding how hard he labored to bring all those good ideas to fruition. Not only was his brain amazing but so was his work ethic. That was one of countless things I learned from him, not that I am always able to apply it.

I felt smarter and more creative around him. The stories and art he left us still have that impact on me as does just writing about him and thinking about him and nurturing my connection to him. I may even be a teensy bit smarter now than when I started writing this blog post but even if I'm not, I feel like I am and that counts for something.

I think I've told this story here before but after Jack died in 1994, I heard from lots of people who wanted to tell someone (anyone!) how much Jack inspired their lives. Most of that rightly went to his widow and life partner, a wonderful woman named Roz who made it possible for him to do what he did and protected him when no one else would or could…but I got a few of the letters and calls. I understood the ones from artists and writers and guys who made movies or wrote gaming software. I was a little surprised at first to hear from a spot welder who wanted me to know how Jack's work inspired him to become a better spot welder.

It wouldn't shock me to run into that spot welder at the gallery showing. I'll bet you everyone who goes out to Cal State Northridge to see that exhibit — like everyone who immerses themselves in the voluminous, perpetually in-print works of Jack Kirby — comes away from the experience a little smarter, a little more creative, a little more confident. If you ever got to meet Jack, you understand totally why that is. If you never had that honor, ask anyone who did. We all feel the same way.

Here is the third part of that list of songs that Stephen Sondheim wishes he'd written.

What one notes is that for the most part, the songs he covets are ones that work in the precise context of the shows. These are not a lot of songs that someone could just sing in a cabaret act without a bit of explanation setting up the storylines.

Stephen Sondheim has occasionally listed songs that other people wrote that he wishes had been written by Stephen Sondheim. One of his followers is compiling a list of them with examples. Here's Volume 1 and then after you check that out, here's Volume 2. Some of us have a simpler list: Just everything Sondheim did write.

Veteran comedian Jack Carter has died from respiratory failure at the age of 93. He had an amazing career and made many, many people laugh but I'm afraid I was not among those many, many people. There was something very abrasive and frantic about his performing that rubbed me the wrong way. He always seemed to me angry and not angry the way Don Rickles is funny when he's angry or Lewis Black is funny when he's angry.

I felt this before the first time I met him, which is when he was called in to do a voice on a cartoon special I wrote in 1982 called Bunnicula. It's on YouTube and it did great in the ratings…but I wasn't happy with the way the network insisted I depart from the book on which it was based. That's another story.

The plot concerns a serious dog and a high-strung cat and we initially cast an actor named Joe Silver as the dog and Howard Morris as the cat. At darn near the last minute, Mr. Silver had to go shoot an additional scene for a movie he was in and the producer was trying to think of someone with a similar deep voice. He turned on the TV and a game show was on with Jack Carter on it. One phone call to an agent later, Mr. Carter was booked.

It seemed like a good selection but as we learned the next morning at the recording studio, there were no two people in show business who hated one another more than Jack Carter and Howie Morris. I have no idea of the backstory to their feud but when Jack walked in and saw Howie, he turned magenta and yelled, "I'm not spending two minutes in a studio with that prick!" Howie fired back with something equally complimentary and the battle was on. Since they were both professionals, they did their jobs but every time one of them screwed up a line, the other would say, "Get it right, moron" or caustic words to that effect…and during breaks, they got even nastier.

I was not the director of that session. I had a more important job. I had to keep our two stars from killing each other.

Somehow, we got through the day. Later on, I got to know Howie better and discovered what a wonderful, sweet man he was when Jack Carter (or five or six other people) were not on the premises. I ran into Jack Carter several times and saw no nicer side of him for a long time.

One time though, he told me and some others a joke that went roughly like this…

This fellow who's never made a movie before announces to all his friends that he's about to produce one. He says, "It'll be great! We got Simon to do the screenplay!" His friends are all impressed. They say, "You got Neil Simon to do the screenplay?" He says, "Well, no…this is Charlie Simon. He's my gardener but he types really well. Oh — and I got Sondheim to do the music!" His friends gasp and say, "You got Stephen Sondheim to do the music?" He says, "No, Bruce Sondheim. He's a butcher but he likes to make up little tunes as he cuts meat. Oh — and we got Spielberg to direct!" The friends say, "You got Steven Spielberg?" He says, "No, Agnes Spielberg. She's a neighbor but she's done some interesting things with her camera. And finally, to star in the film, we got Goulet!" His friends say, "Really? You got Robert Goulet?" And he says, "Certainly!"

That's the joke — and of course, the premise of it was that Robert Goulet was famous in the business for never saying no to anything.

Less than a year later, I was in Las Vegas. A comedian I knew was opening for Robert Goulet at the Desert Inn and when I went backstage to see my friend, we joined a small group of folks who were in Goulet's dressing room. There, I heard Robert Goulet tell the exact same joke except that in his version, the punchline was, "Really? You got Jack Carter? And he says, "Certainly!"

I remember thinking, "It works either way."

Most of the time when I encountered Jack Carter though, he wasn't telling jokes. It always went like this: I'd say hello, remind him of my name and tell him we'd worked together on that Bunnicula cartoon. He'd ask me what I was doing now. I'd tell him about the show I was working on. He'd say, like he was genuinely pissed, "Why haven't you written a part for me on it?" Discussion was not possible on any other topic. If I wasn't going to get him hired for something, he had no use for me.

I ran into him a number of times after that and I'd look the other way and make like I didn't recognize him. I absolutely respected his career and how hard he obviously worked to cut himself away from a herd of thousands of comedians who never gained his fame or stature. I just didn't like him on or off screen.

Then one night around ten years ago, I was in the Porterhouse Bistro on Wilshire Boulevard — a great restaurant that is no longer there — and I found myself waiting for someone, standing alongside Jack Carter. He seemed cheerful and was joking with the hostess so I took a chance and said hello. He was charming and friendly and I don't know if old age had changed him or if our previous encounters had been atypical but it was a very pleasant encounter. I was very glad I gambled and spoke to him.

A few years later — in 2009 — Mr. Carter experienced an awful tragedy. He was standing in the parking lot of the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, talking with Toni Murray, the widow of comedian Jan Murray. A driver who somehow didn't see them backed her car into the two of them. Carter suffered severe injuries that kept him pretty much confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Ms. Murray's injuries were worse and ultimately fatal. A very sad story.

The last time I saw Jack Carter, it was a little over a year ago in a Costco. I told that story here.

Like I said, he had a great career and a lot of fans. We've lost so many comedians from his era that I'm saddened even at the passing of one I didn't particularly like.

Oddly enough, Jack Carter is in the video clip I'd planned on posting later tonight. As a matter of fact, he's pretty good in it. Check back here later for it.