I stopped following all the Spider-man threads, but I assume DMM asked for them to be deleted because Julie Taymor wasn't there to defend herself, yes?
Well, there's a photo of him and Bernstein, reclining on opposite couches, in a hotel room or fancy suite of some sort, no doubt while coming up with the slowest lyric in the history of yearning lyrics, "There's. . . a. . . place. . . forus" - a place which, Sondheim said on Stephen Colbert, was probably New Jersey, given the WEST SIDE STORY set - and it's 1957, I guess, in the photograph, and SS looks quite cute and chipmunk-cheeked.
Reginald - This does mean, however, that we can say anything we like about DMM and the moderators don't have to delete it because he is here to defend himself.
"You mean what was the best picture of the year or what did they pick as the best picture of the year?" - California Suite
To quote Barbara Cook - or rather, Arnold B. Howitt, set to Albert Hague's music, or should I say "music," as interpreted by Barbara Cook - "This Is All Very New to Me," which is to say: I'm new here, and who's DMM?
I noticed in my admittedly very brief plunge into SONDHEIM'S BIG BOOK OF SONDHEIM that the Master (unless he's a Slave!) has unfailingly nice things to say about all his living collaborators - Hal Prince, particularly, but also all his book writers; whereas he is entirely willing to speak the truth the power about, say, Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers and Agnes Demille (though he doesn't go so far as to tell the whole truth about RoHamm, which is that they're partly responsible for the Vietnam War). I wonder if he'd have more critical things to say about Prince, for instance, if the dude were dead.
I would like to see him devote such a book to his music.
I saw him do an interview recently and he said he wouldn't want to write a music book, because musical theory is difficult to write about, and not as many people would be interested in it to be worth the effort.
Like a firework unexploded
Wanting life but never
knowing how
I love Sondheim and his work by did anyone else get a little annoyed when he would write "X" for criticizing people that are still alive? I could see he was trying to save people's feelings but couldn't he have just left it out?
"Look I made a hat... where there never was a hat."
"Think of how I adore you, think of how much you love me. If I were perfect for you, wouldn't you tire of me?"
"Somebody, crowd me with love. Somebody, force 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!"
"There are worse things than staring at the water as you're posing for a picture after sleeping on the ferry after getting up at seven to come over to an island in the middle of a river half an hour from the city on a Sunday!"
Wow, I didn't get to the GYPSY chapter. Now I have to buy the damned book, instead of sneaking chapters in other people's houses. The only mention of Laurents I noticed was SS's praising and praising of Laurents's dialogue for WEST SIDE STORY - which, by the way, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the most embarrassing things about WSS, it's fake street lingo. SS is all impressed with Laurents for coming up with his very own - "timeless," I think is the word SS uses - "street" vocabulary. But I have always found the hokey jive talk to be kind of foolish.
And of course WSS is horribly racist, certainly in its original Bway incarnation.
I, like you, need to get this book instead of catching snippets here and there. Hadn't read that SS praised Laurents' gawd-awful "street" vocabulary. Hard to believe he said that.
darquegk, I thought you'd never ask! RoHamm made it safe to condescend to South Pacific islanders in, of course, SOUTH PACIFIC, a musical I deeply love, but which I cannot enjoy without being aware of its reducing Asian women to 2 stereotypes: ravenous pidgin-English-talking hustler/pimp; and: sweet mute virgin non-threatening sex toy.
ghostlight2, have I made your acquaintance? I bought my *mother* a copy of SONDHEIM'S BIG BOOK OF SONDHEIM for Xmas, and she would not let me read it! Now I have to by my own copy, damn. . .
Several things throughout made me think he must have reallly hated a lot of the lyrics in rent. "With condos on the top/whose rent keeps open our shop" must have giving him a stilted language aneurysm.