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" If you're dealing with a musical in which you're trying to tell a story, it's got to sound like speech. At the same time it's got to be a song. "
Stephen Sondheim
Time
Story
Speech
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" Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten. "
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" I happen to like movies and plays about dislikeable people as long as I get to know why they are what they are. "
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" Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you're making art. "
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" I have inherited my father's sense of humour about myself. It's a lot more pleasant to make fun of yourself than when someone else does. "
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" I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface. "
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" I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on. "
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" There's something inimical about the camera and song. "
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" All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists. "
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" When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't. "
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" I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it. "
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" After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes. "
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" The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them. "
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" The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890? "
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" Nice is different than good. "
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" My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other. "
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Each
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" Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall. "
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Imagination
Meaning
" I think 'lunch' is one of the funniest words in the world. "
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Words
Think
" A close-up on screen can say all a song can. "
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Close-Up
Say
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" When I'm writing a song, I try to be the character. "
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Character
Try
Song
" On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point. "
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" When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written. "
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" I'm always conscious of what I'm writing, conscious of what the actor may ask me. I have a defense for nearly every line in the song. "
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Line
Me
" I would have been a geologist. "
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Geologist
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Been
" So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work. "
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" I'm a great audience. I cry very easily. I suspend disbelief in two seconds. "
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Disbelief
Great
Two
" One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there. "
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Music
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" Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words! "
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" I'm very opinionated about movie musicals when they're adapted from live shows. You'll sit still for a three-minute song in a theater. But in movies, a glance from someone's eyes will tell you the whole story in a few seconds. "
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" One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music. "
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