“finishing the hat”

By Stephen Sondheim.

I spent a good chunk of my Saturday morning reading this in the bookstore. We didn’t go all the way or anything but I still feel bad, like I led it on, got what I wanted, and then walked away. There must have been skintight jeans involved. Subliminal skintight jeans that made me do things.

So I need to go make an honest book of it. I need to commit. I miss it. I need it in my life.

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I love the subtitle:

“With attendant comment, principles, heresies, grudges, whines, and anecdotes.”

Hahaha. And what I was able to read of those was fantastic. Funny. Insightful. Self-deprecating.

Ah, Stephen Sondheim. My Broadway boyfriend.

8 Replies to ““finishing the hat””

  1. Kate P — Tru dat!

    sheila — It was as if I were literally inhaling this book. I was sitting on one of the little low stools they have in bookstores, reading parts of it OUT LOUD. Under my breath, but out loud, like a crazy person.

    The lyrics I don’t need. I know most of them. It’s not all of his shows, actually. It only goes up to 1981, so it doesn’t include, oh, “Passion” — which I love because it’s weird, obsessive, and brutal — and “Assassins.”

    So I wouldn’t buy it to have the lyrics. I’d buy it for the stories. I literally forced MB to listen to me read Sondheim’s story of how he came to the (Sweeney Todd) lyric “Kearney’s lane.” Those two words. He writes a this detailed fascinating analysis of his process of getting to those two words alone, why it was hard, what needed to happen, and, I’m sorry, my world entirely changed.

  2. Also, he wrote the love theme for REDS and was interviewed in the making-of documentary that was included when the movie was finally released on DVD for its 25th anniversary, I think it was.

    He was very interesting on the process of how Beatty worked – and Beatty’s tastes about movies (he didn’t want music to be too much under anything – any music playing had to be on the victrola already or whatever) – and Sondheim listened to him, they went back and forth, and Sondheim finally figured it out: “I know what he wants. He wants a Love Theme.”

    If you remember that love theme, you’ll remember it’s totally haunting. There’s a sadness in it. Everyone portrayed in the film is now dead. There is a nostalgia in the music – which lets us know the ending (if we didn’t know it already). It gives it a really melancholy heart-achey feel.

    It’s woven in throughout.

    But anyway, it was great to hear HIS side of all of those exhausting perfectionistic Beatty interviews. Especially when the end result is so memorable.

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