A Quote by Stephen Sondheim

I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged. — © Stephen Sondheim
I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.
A lot of times I think the cast members, the lead characters in a show really set the tone for the show. On some shows, the stars of the show will just be whining and complaining and spending the whole time texting their boyfriends on their Blackberries, and there's just no attention given to the work.
There were a lot of lessons of production to be learned. On the page, the biggest thing you learn on any TV show is how to write to your cast. You write the show at the beginning with certain voices in your head and you have a way that you think the characters will be, and then you have an actor go out there, and you start watching dailies and episodes. Then, you start realizing what they can do and what they can't do, what they're good at and what they're not so good at, how they say things and what fits in their mouth, and you start tailoring the voice of the show to your cast.
Victor Young had been hired to write the score for the dances of The Ten Commandments but he became very ill. You were then hired to write the score. But at the same time you'd written The Man with the Golden Arm score.
I want to cast correctly, and then I want them to live on screen. If I cast the wrong actor, I'm screwed. But, if I cast the right actor, it really works out. The casting process is so important.
What happens with a good score is, somehow the composer manages to cast himself or herself in the role of the protagonist. And then you write from their perspective.
I want to write a score for a film. It can be a proper film, maybe for a film kind of like... I saw that movie 'Drive', or a bit of a 'Blade Runner' vibe. A little bit sci-fi, but I don't know. I've just always wanted to write a score for a film.
I watched some shows like 'The Simple Life' and 'The Anna Nicole Smith Show,' but I hadn't really watched 'The Bachelor' until I was cast on 'UnReal.'
I know exactly what I want to write. I do not write until I do. Usually I write it all down only once. And that goes relatively quickly, since it really depends only on how fast I type.
In 1977, at age ten, I was cast on the TV sitcom 'Good Times.' My character was Penny, an abused child in desperate need of love. I really didn't want to do the show. I didn't want to be away from my family.
We were kind of never one of CBS favorites [with Threshold], even though we'd gotten really good reviews for the pilot. We were on at, what was it, 10 o'clock on a Friday night? That's kind of where you bury a show if you don't want it to last. But, wow, what a cast, huh? You could never get that cast together again.
A screenplay is really a blueprint for something that will be filmed. Therefore you must always keep in mind that whatever you write is going to be staged, for real.
'Ragtime' was the most magical show that I've done. I had an incredible experience with that, with the show itself, with the cast, with the audience. The response to that show - my God, it really blew me away, the reactions to that show, the way it changed their lives and altered their thinking, their own self-discovery.
I don't have writer's block, really. I do have times when I can't get the lead, and that is the only part of the story which I have serious trouble with. I don't write a word of the article until I have the lead. It just sets the whole tone - the whole point of view.
If I do what I really want to do, I'm not going to do a typical commercial Broadway show, so I'm going to write what I want to write.
When I was nine or 10, I had jumped off of a bunk bed and shattered and dislocated my shoulder. That was on the same arm as the cast was on, which I didn't really put together until I was really starting to feel a little uncomfortable in my shoulder area, and then I was like, "Oh, this cast is on that arm. That's what that is about."
Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.
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