Big ‘Six’ appeal
HBO sends in Sondheim for a look back
STEPHEN SONDHEIM says he hates the word “hummable.”
Based on this new HBO biopic on the widely admired Broadway composer, he may not be big on “cuddly,” either.
Sondheim comes off as distant and a bit cool here, reluctant to make eye contact and often speaking with a professorial air even when he’s talking about himself.
But what most people want in Sondheim isn’t a drinking buddy. It’s a musical composer, and in that he qualifies on all counts. So “Six” is a tour of his past, with special emphasis on a halfdozen tunes.
Most gratifying for purposes of this film, he also speaks of music in a way that’s understandable to those of us whose musical sophistication is limited to “we know what we like.”
He explains the genesis of an unlikely show like “Sunday in the Park With George,” where he saw a picture in which no one was looking at anyone else.
He recalls with some amusement how “Send in the Clowns” was originally conceived as a “minor” number, sat around for two years and then become the closest he has had to a “hit song.”
He j okes about an ex pla nation Sinatra once gave for the song: “You fall in love with a girl, she leaves you, send in the clowns.”
On the personal side, Sondheim talks about a childhood that was materially comfortable and emotionally barren. If it weren’t for some surrogate parenting by Oscar Hammerstein II, which had the side benefit of musical mentoring, he suggests he would have been in big trouble.
Presumably by design, Sondheim says little of his personal life as an adult. He lets slip the occasional brief allusion to a habit like drinking, but sticks more to the chronology of his writing.
If he’s thinking that’s what people will remember, he’s right.