'Variety' on our very own Marc Shaiman!

[mateo]

Posted: 7/9/07 at 7:06pm

Marc Shaiman has a light touch, versatility
Composer in demand for stage, film music in every genre

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117968241.html?categoryid=13&cs=1


It seems like Marc Shaiman never stops. While he tinkers with the mix of the bigscreen adaptation of his smash Broadway musical "Hairspray" (opening July 20), he's also composing the score for the upcoming Jack Nicholson/Morgan Freeman movie "The Bucket List" and preparing for a workshop of his next musical, based on the Steven Spielberg film "Catch Me if You Can."

To quote fellow tunesmith Jerry Herman, "the best of times is now" for the 47-year-old musician whose awards shelf showcases a Tony, an Emmy and a Grammy along with five Oscar nominations.

No longer typecast as either a composer for romantic comedies ("Sleepless in Seattle") or as Billy Crystal's muse for funny Oscar-night medleys, he's now an in-demand songwriter for the New York stage and continues to write film music in every genre.

A throwback to an earlier Hollywood era, when top film composers like Victor Young and Henry Mancini were also much-admired songwriters, Shaiman confesses that things were looking bleak prior to "Hairspray."

"I was at the end of my rope," Shaiman recounts in the living room of his Laurel Canyon home in L.A. "I did not have another car chase in me, and I was writing the same cue over and over again on different movies. It was just a rat race. And then (producer) Margo Lion called out of the blue and said, 'I have the rights to "Hairspray," and you're the perfect composer for it.' It was a dream come true."

Since "Hairspray" -- both stage and film versions -- Shaiman is rejuvenated. Says Crystal: "When he decided to take time off from the movie business and do 'Hairspray,' that was an important thing for him. He's the same, but better."

As Crystal quipped at the recent ASCAP Film and TV Awards, where Shaiman received the performing-rights organization's Henry Mancini Award for career achievement: "If Edward G. Robinson and Oscar Levant had a child, it would be Marc Shaiman."

Showbiz, it seems, was always Shaiman's destiny. A gifted pianist as a child, he made up songs for his cat ("arpeggiated chords, it was very Philip Glass") and to harass his brother ("Ronnie Is a Turkey" in two-part harmony). A chance audition to play for a community-theater production of "Funny Girl" while he was still in junior high "really changed my life," says Shaiman.

Obsessed with Bette Midler ("so fantastic and funny and so diverse in her musicality"), he eventually became music director for her backup group, the Harlettes, which led to a job as Midler's own vocal arranger before he was 18. "We still are like brother and sister," Shaiman says. "Nothing has ever changed."

The jump to 'SNL'

Touring with Midler, writing musicals that almost got produced, and a growing reputation in the New York theater community led to work arranging songs and writing special material for "Saturday Night Live," where he met Crystal and Martin Short. Shaiman would later do HBO specials for both, and in 1989 when Crystal was making "When Harry Met Sally ...," he introduced his piano pal to director Rob Reiner, who in turn put Shaiman together with Harry Connick Jr. to sing the standards that Shaiman arranged.

Reiner was so impressed that he gave Shaiman -- who had not previously written a dramatic underscore -- a shot at scoring his next film, the Stephen King thriller "Misery."

"I just knew Marc had this amazing talent," says Reiner. "I saw him, on the spot, look at something and just improvise music that would go along with what was there. He's maybe the most talented musical person I've ever met. There's nobody with the range that this guy has."

Shaiman had already logged some film experience: He was music supervisor on "Beaches," where he convinced a reluctant Midler to sing "Wind Beneath My Wings." But Reiner's vote of confidence on "Misery" launched a new career for Shaiman, who had discovered, he says, that "I was blessed with the talent to match music to action or image."

Many of the three dozen films since then have been comedies, including a rousing, tongue-in-cheek Western score for "City Slickers"; the grandly romantic, slyly macabre music of "The Addams Family"; the Connick song "A Wink and a Smile" from "Sleepless in Seattle," which earned Shaiman his first Oscar nomination; and his retro '60s style for the Doris Day/Rock Hudson-styled send-up "Down With Love."

Scoring romantic comedy, notes Reiner, "is tricky, because you don't want to make it sappy. You have to hit that delicate balance between being reverent and irreverent. Marc is able to do that, because as emotional as he is -- and he can be very emotional -- he also has a healthy dose of cynicism and realism."

Then there's his dramatic sensibility, apparent in the powerful score for the courtroom drama "A Few Good Men," with its elegiac trumpet solos; the magical and touching score for the Robert Downey Jr. fantasy "Heart and Souls"; and the grandeur of his much imitated, Coplandesque anthem for "The American President," another Oscar nominee and perhaps his best-known theme.

'Uncut' & uncensored

All of Shaiman's talents, from songwriting to arranging to score-composing, came to the fore in "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut," the raucous 1999 animated musical for which Shaiman (and co-writer Trey Parker) received his most recent Oscar nod for the song "Blame Canada."

Shaiman is steeped in the Great American Songbook, with an encyclopedic memory of hundreds of Tin Pan Alley and Brill Building tunes. That knowledge informs his musical choices in every medium.

"I just look at the scene and the character and come up with a melody," he explains. "I grew up with many piano lessons from Henry Mancini/Johnny Mercer songs, where there were actual lyrics to the melody that you were hearing in the movie."

'You mean like this?'

Reiner says he was at Shaiman's house recently working on the score for "The Bucket List" (their 10th film together) and Reiner suggested that Shaiman resurrect a theme from earlier in the film and develop it further. "He says, 'You mean like this?' and he started doing it right then and there at the piano. That was it. It wasn't like, 'Let me think about this.' He just feels it and does it. It was astounding."

Short, who reunited with the composer for last year's Broadway show "Fame Becomes Me," thinks Shaiman "is a great combination of an enormous work ethic and a great improvisational spirit -- which is unusual because often people with an improvisational talent don't really want to work hard. Marc combines both instincts: He can come up with something in a moment, and he can happily work on something for a year."

Says Shaiman: "To me, it's all music. I enjoy arranging as much as writing, orchestrating, playing, accompanying, performing, whatever. It's all just one big ball of showbiz wax."



But WAIT! there is more! Its a Marc-bonanza!!

Pick up Daily Variety tomorrow for all this Shaiman goodness!


'Hairspray' team adjusts music for the film
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117968239.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

Billy Crystal on Marc Shaiman
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117968237.html?categoryid=16&cs=1

Catch me If You Can News!
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117968236.html?categoryId=2615&cs=1

Apatow on Shaiman
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117968231.html?categoryId=2615&cs=1

10 things you may not know about Marc
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117968233.html?categoryId=2615&cs=1

Updated On: 7/9/07 at 07:06 PM

[Marc Shaiman]

Posted: 7/9/07 at 7:12pm

I never thought the day would come, but this is too much me for even ME! Six articles. I feel like Paris Hilton!
Updated On: 7/9/07 at 07:12 PM

[mateo]

Posted: 7/9/07 at 7:19pm

yeah, mhmmm!


hehehe.

I guess it would be a little surreal to have an entire publication devoted to oneself. But you deserve it!

You do great work.

[DottieD'Luscia]

Posted: 7/9/07 at 7:43pm

Wow, before the age of 18 he's working with Bette Midler. I, on the other hand, was working in a sporting goods store so I could buy a pair of Nike sneakers!!

Great article.

[Marc Shaiman]

Posted: 7/9/07 at 8:05pm

DD'L,

We were both pursuing our dreams. Yours were just a little more practical and available!

And I bet you made many people happy selling basketballs, guns n stuff at that sporting goods store. I bet there is a moose head with your name on it above someone's fireplace right now!

xox M

[Jonwo]

Posted: 7/9/07 at 8:10pm

After reading the Variety article, I think that it is great that Marc is getting the recognition he deserves. As someone who is a big fan of the Hairspray cast recording but haven't of yet seen the show because I live in in London, I will be experience Hairspray by the film first and then the stage version when it opened in October at the Shaftesbury with Michael Ball

BTW Marc, will you be coming to London at all? Updated On: 7/9/07 at 08:10 PM

[Marc Shaiman]

Posted: 7/9/07 at 8:12pm

I wouldn't miss it for the world!

[BroadwayEnthusiast2]

Posted: 7/9/07 at 8:44pm

Can you buy Daily Variety anywhere?

[emo_geek]

Posted: 7/9/07 at 10:29pm

Ya, when I read that article I was really...I dunno jealous? I really want to reach for the stars. I've tried to do as much as I can and I am only 18 and have some cool things under my belt...but nothing like that. Sure I've met the occasional cool actor but thats about it. I really want to be a producer...and at this point I feel like I am stepping blindly. Yet Marc, by 19, was doing such great things!
Well Mazel Tov!

Updated On: 7/9/07 at 10:29 PM

[amoni]

Posted: 7/10/07 at 12:58am

Well Marc, I'd be a fan just from the last five minutes of "First Wives Club" alone. Stop, take a breath and enjoy every minute of it, Kiddo. OK, that's enough, now get back to work!

[Marc Shaiman]

Posted: 7/10/07 at 1:24am

Mr. Geek (or may I call you Emo?)

Stop that self abuse!! My career starting so early was freakish. Don't for a second feel that that is the way it has to be. Just DO what you love, and DO it wherever and whenever you can ( I am, of course, talking about theatre, nothing dirty!!)

OK?

'nuff said!

Marc

[B3TA07]

Posted: 7/10/07 at 1:40am

Christian Borle? I like Matt Morrison a lot more from the demo.

[Julian2]

Posted: 7/10/07 at 2:00am

"( I am, of course, talking about theatre, nothing dirty!!)"

From Backstage Video at GG:
Matt: "Who do I have to *whistle* to make that happen?" [Perform at the Kennedy Center]

. . .

Christine: "Why anybody that you would like darling."

[HoshiForever]

Posted: 7/10/07 at 2:20am

Wow, gotta say; I'm impressed!

[Marc Shaiman]

Posted: 7/10/07 at 3:34pm

what's a Hoshi?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 7/10/07 at 3:40pm

Isn't it a line from Dreamgirls?

When Effie comes in and sees the new Dream at the dressing-room table, doesn't she say "Hoshi?"

[Marc Shaiman]

Posted: 7/10/07 at 3:41pm

groooooooaaaaan

[emo_geek]

Posted: 7/10/07 at 6:08pm

Will do Marc. Any of thoser names are fine...as I made them in my early teen years. Now that the hormones are settled people just call me Logan. Thanks for the advice.