Sondheim's book is kind of bombastic. . .- Page 2

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 4:49pm

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?

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 4:50pm

And does no one else think he looks cute in a bow tie?

I wish he'd never grown the beard.

(And I hereby disavow in advance all puns on "beard!")

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 4:51pm

I always thought he looked finest in the early 70s.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 5:07pm

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.

[roseaddams]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 6:39pm

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.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 6:59pm

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?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 7:05pm

Full disclosure: I have no connection to the book.

I just feel things to a deeper degree than you wish I did.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 7:10pm

PalJoey!

Feel away!

It's your best quality.

[ljay889]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 7:16pm

This board has been so mental lately.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 7:18pm

Mental brainy, or mental nutty?

[ljay889]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 7:19pm

Mental nutty.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 7:24pm

Feelings are tumbling over feelings
Feelings I do not understand
And I am more than slightly worried
That they are getting out of hand. . .

Who or what is DMM?

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 7:28pm

Oh, wait. . . Nevermind. DMM is one of us! Hnh.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 7:29pm

Dextromethorphan is a cough suppressant.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 7:38pm

But that would be DMP.

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.

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 8:16pm

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.

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 8:18pm

He rips Laurents a new one in the Gypsy chapter.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 8:26pm

I just feel things to a deeper degree than you wish I did.

Yep, that must be it.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 11:28pm

And Arthur isn't even dead yet!

Just imagine what he could put into Volume 2, "Look I Made a Hat," if Arthur managed to die before it was published.

[SondheimFan23]

Posted: 12/26/10 at 11:47pm

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?

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 12:04am

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.

[darquegk]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 12:27am

Okay, and HOW did Rodgers and Hammerstein start the Vietnam War?

(There's a MUSICAL in that story, I'm telling you now.)

[ghostlight2]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 12:32am

Chekky! Long time no see. Where ya been?

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.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 12:42am

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. . .

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 12:58am

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.