In an interview with Sondheim.com, Stephen Sondheim said the following about a past interest in taking Sunset Blvd. to the stage:
I never wrote anything for Sunset Boulevard... shortly after Forum, Burt Shevelove and I started to write a version of Sunset Boulevard. We got maybe an outline, I think, and just the beginnings of a first scene, and I happened to meet Billy Wilder at a cocktail party, and shyly said to him that a friend of mine and I were starting to make a musical of his movie, and he said, "Oh you can't do that," and I figured that he was going to say that we couldn't get the rights; but he went on to say, "It can't be a musical - it has to be an opera, because it's about a dethroned queen." And that seemed to me such a shrewd observation that I called Burt and said "Let's forget it, because I certainly don't want to do an opera."Many years later after Night Music, Hugh Wheeler wanted to do it for Angie with Hal Prince. Hal had originally planned to do it with Andrew Lloyd Webber, but they had a financial falling-out, and then with Kander and Ebb, but he asked me if I would do it, and I told him the same anecdote, and he said "Well, let's do an opera then." And I said, "If I wanted to do an opera, that sounds like a perfectly possible idea, but I don't want to do an opera, and therefore I really don't want to do Sunset Boulevard."
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community forum: Finishing the Chat... ››
“Assassins is about how society interprets the American Dream, marginalizes outsiders and rewrites and sanitizes its collective history. "Something Just Broke" is a major distraction and plays like an afterthought, shoe horned simply to appease. The song breaks the dramatic fluidity and obstructs the overall pacing and climactic arc which derails the very intent and momentum that makes this work so compelling...”
- Mark Bakalor
“I found [the Sondheim Celebration's Company] to be completely delightful. Almost all of the numbers excited and energized me, and most of the scenes were about as pitch-perfect as you can get. I just sat there with a big smile on my face the whole show.
Which is not to say that it is perfect...”
- popcornonmyknees
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