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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)

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AG/DC Jan 06 2008 06:08 PM

This is listed in the Stephen Sondheim pantheon, but it's not it's more like something others developed and commissioned him to write for --- there's only about five songs. It's got more of Richard Lester's fingerprints than Sondheim's. There's something strange about seeing Zero Mostel and Phil Silvers in the same film as they each just represented the amoral id in anything they were in. I like to imagine they would regularly cross paths auditioning for the same parts. The two of them in one movie? That's a lot of id.

RealityChuck Mar 17 2008 12:08 PM

On of Sondheim's better scores (he may write great lyrics, but he's a third-rate composer, and his best work is when someone else wrote the music), but the movie tries too hard and doesn't succeed.

Vic Sage Mar 17 2008 03:41 PM

RealityChuck wrote: On of Sondheim's better scores (he may write great lyrics, but he's a third-rate composer, and his best work is when someone else wrote the music)... You've said some stuff in the past that has made me scratch my head, or just shake it in vigorous disagreement, but this one is a topper.

AG/DC Mar 17 2008 05:00 PM

Me scratch also.

RealityChuck Mar 17 2008 07:41 PM

Simple. Sondheim couldn't write a decent tune if his life depended on it. His music sucks dead rats. All those big Broadway shows and only three memorable songs: Comedy Tonight, Send in the Clowns, and Everybody Ought to Have a Maid. The rest is either tuneless chanting or third rate melodies that have been turned unmemorable by the need to fit with his lyrics (which are clever, but unsophisticated). Sondheim doesn't know the meaning of the word "subtle." Now compare Sondheim's entire output with that of West Side Story and Gypsy, where he worked with a first-rate composer. West Side Story are more great songs in the first act than in Stevie's entire career, and Gypsy, while not quite as good, still has some great ones. Plenty of people sing Sondheim songs. But who ever played them as intrumentals? Because, without lyrics, they are just plain mediocre.

AG/DC Mar 17 2008 07:55 PM Edited 2 time(s), most recently on Mar 17 2008 08:27 PM

Much more than his life depended on his skills --- multi-million productions and the viablity of the musical theatre industry in a culture that demanded increased nuance and complexity in a form that had been consigned to the silly bin. He's not writing songs, he's writing operettas. They're not meant for easy radio digestion, but for tranformative eXploration. Not to be a critical wanker --- and if he's not your cup of tea, he's not --- but if he's not writing hit songs for Cher, I'm certain that it's not because he can't. This shit goes from a sweet folk song to jazz-age depravity, as the singer dialogues between her two natures. It's brilliant.

AG/DC Mar 17 2008 08:00 PM

Youtube is full of 150 amateur covers of Johanna. Obviously somebody thinks it's excellent. Listen to Basketball Jones sing it.

RealityChuck Mar 26 2008 09:56 AM You just proved my point.

As I said, no one plays Stevie's music. People sing it. I don't see either of those clips as being an instrumental -- which is what I specified. The quality of his lyrics (which are definitely clever, if a bit superficial) obscure the fact that he just can't write music. It's all just a vehicle to showcase the words, and if it's tuneless and unmemorable, Stevie doesn't care, because the music isn't all that important to him. And without the lyrics, there's nothing there. Compare him to great Broadway composers like Bernstein, Cole Porter, John Kander, Marvin Hamlisch, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Frederick Lowe, Adler and Ross. People play their music. They don't play Stevie-boy's music -- they sing his lyrics and let the music limp along. Hell, Andrew Lloyd Weber -- who is generally a hack -- can put together a good melody once or twice a musical, a track record that Stevie should envy. Most orchestras play the music of perhaps the greatest of Broadway composers -- George Gershwin. Do they ever play Stevie's? Without singers?

AG/DC Mar 26 2008 10:05 AM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Mar 26 2008 10:11 AM

You said a lot omore than that. You said "Sondheim couldn't write a decent tune if his life depended on it. His music sucks dead rats." Those clps dispute that, whether they're sung or played on a sousaphone. That they're sung doesn't argue against their musicality. Not any more than a picture of a man in a car suggests he can't walk. Yes, he can write music and YouTube is hardly full of insturmentals of Marvin Hamlisch, even though he is director and conductor of the NSO pops orchestra. So that's a strange metric.

AG/DC Mar 26 2008 10:08 AM

Again, it's operetta. It's written to be sung.

Vic Sage Mar 26 2008 04:32 PM

Chuckie, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. But the depth of your ignorance on this topic is so profound, I've been rendered nearly mute. Nearly.