January 20, 2026 • 50 mins
Marc Shaiman is a renowned composer, lyricist, arranger, and music producer known for his prolific work across film, television, and theater. In this episode, Alec and Marc discuss his career, as well as his new memoir, Never Mind The Happy. Shaiman's work in film includes “When Harry Met Sally”, “Sister Act”, “City Slickers”, “A Few Good Men”, “Sleepless in Seattle”, “The American President”, and the first “South Park” movie. Shaiman has written and arranged music for countless artists such as Harry Connick Jr., Mariah Carey, Billy Crystal, and Bette Midler. Shaiman earned widespread acclaim for co-writing the hit Broadway musical “Hairspray” alongside his co-lyricist Scott Wittman. Shaiman and Wittman went on to co-create musicals “Catch Me If You Can”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “Some Like It Hot”, and “Smash”. Marc Shaiman has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, two BAFTA awards, and has won a Tony, two Emmys, and two Grammys.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. You can't Stop.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And races down hilt.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
You can try to stop this season stir, but you
know you naw win. It is a skill that feels
like a gift from the divine. To write an unforgettable song,
one that gets stuck in your head or makes you
want to dance is a talent that should be exalted.
Now imagine it's your life's work for fifty years. That's
(00:52):
you Can't Stop the Beat from the two thousand and
two Broadway cast recording of Hairspray, written by my Guest
Today composer and lyricist Mark Shaman. Shaman is a two
time Emmy, Grammy, and BAFTA winner, as well as a
Tony Award recipient. He's also been nominated for seven Academy Awards.
(01:16):
His five decade career began at just sixteen years of age.
His work as a composer, lyricist, arranger, and producer spans film, television,
and theater. In addition to the hit musical Hairspray, Shaman
is known for co creating the musicals Catch Me If
You Can, Charlie in the Chocolate Factory and Some Like
(01:39):
It Hot. His film scores include smash hits like The
Adams Family, City Slickers, Sister Act, Sleepless in Seattle, and
the first South Park Movie. Perhaps most famously, Mark Shaman
was also a frequent collaborator with the late Rob Reiner.
For Reiner, he penned the scores of classic films like
(02:00):
When Harry Met Sally, Misery, A Few Good Men, The
American President, and many others. As someone who set out
to work in the theater, I was curious how Shaman
and Ryner's paths crossed between New York and.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
La I was lucky enough to work up at Saturday
Night Live freelance for you know, after the original cast
left and Paul Schaeffer was, you know, the funny Jewish
guy at the piano, and then he wasn't there for
a few years, and so I started getting that call
to go up there, and so I met Billy Crystal
and Martin Short, Christopher Guest. I worked their previous years,
(02:37):
but I worked there a lot that year that they
came on that one year and really hit it off
with them all, and Billy Crystal asked me to go
out on the road with him, and I would play
for his act, even though it was a comic act.
He would sing a Sammy Davis Junior, he would sing
his other things. And also I would underscore some of
his monologues. And so Rob Reiner came to see that
(03:00):
kind of heard me underscoring even though there's comedic, but
he heard that. And then Billy was making when Harry
met Sally and asked Rob, what are you going to
do for the music?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
And Rob said, I need.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
A guy who knows like every song from the American Songbook.
And Billy was like, have I got a guy for you?
Because Billy is a real mens like that. And I
went and met Rob and I brought him my Rogers
and Heart's Songbook because after reading the script, I knew
that the song if they asked me, I could write
a book ends with the lyric. Then the world discovers
(03:34):
as my book ends how to make two Lovers from Friends,
which seemed perfect for When Harry met Sally and Rob
said you're hired, and that began a lifelong relationship.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
What did you like about what did you prefer about
working with him?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Well, you know, I often think about the fact that
once you've established that you have the talent to do that.
I know that Rob would say the same thing. It's
about the hang. I'm sure you understand and know that.
You know, once everyone knows that, you know you got
the job and you can do what you can do.
It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that
(04:15):
you're with and so you know, Rob and I was
always a great hang. When he would come over to
listen to what I was doing, we would sit in
kibbets for hours and then eventually get around to the music.
That's what I mostly think of when I think of
him is just the time together, laughing.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
When you were producing music with him and scoring music
for his films, was a lot of that worked un
at Warners. Is that where Castle Rock had their equipment,
so to speak, where would you go? We went everywhere.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
You know, that's about just whatever recording studio is available
at the time you're recording. When Harry met Sally was
the first one, and that one I was just arranging
and orchestrating existing music, helping to choose the records or
the songs, and deciding whether to use the recordings or
create our own. At the same time, Rob's friend Bobby Columbia,
(05:04):
who used to be the drummer for Blood, Sweat and Tears.
Bobby Columbia had become an executive at CBS at Columbia Records,
and he said, I've got this kid named Harry Connick
Junior who sounds like he'd be perfect for this. So
I was sent up to Seattle where Harry was doing
a gig with just this trio. This was before he
was blew up, you know, because the movie is what
(05:25):
made that happen, and I think we both kind of
felt this probably the same with like, well, who's this
guy who needs Like we both thought I'm the young
whipper snapper at the piano and figuring it out. And
the first session when he came down to LA with
his trio, I had worked it out with Rob. You
know what song, what tempo, what key it had to
(05:46):
be in because it had to segue into another record
or whatever. And that first meeting, that first session, Harry
was a little like, don't tell me how to you know,
play or what to play. I'm not just coloring in
the lines that you've drawn. I mean it was just
a subtext all day. Arthur Murray, Yeah, yeah, so I
(06:06):
remember driving home and I think I even called Rob
and said, see Mondays with the orchestra, it's we can't
have that kind of like big discussions about everything with
an orchestra sitting there, you know the clock, you just
can't have that. I was petrified of what was going
to happen. Meanwhile, it was that song I could write
(06:28):
a book, was going to be the first thing we
were going to record. They had filmed the scene. This
is where Harry and Sally are at a New Year's
Eve celebration and they start dancing and they kind of
realize there's a chemistry there. And so I had said,
this is a perfect spot for that song, and let's
make sure that lyric about make two lovers of friends
(06:48):
falls right at that perfect moment. And I had orchestrated
and I had, you know, adored Nelson Riddle's orchestrations for
Frank Sinatra. You know that was my you know, the king,
and so I created a Frank Sinatra Nelson Riddle style
orchestration for this one moment. And then Harry was behind me.
I can't see him, but I counted the orchestra and
(07:13):
he starts singing and whatever had happened the previous Friday
between us dissipated immediately. We were just fell in love.
It was like he was singing like Frank Sinatra and
I was doing my best Nelson riddle and it was.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Just, you know, it was just together again for the
first yes.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
So then we made that record. So then Bobby Columbia said, hey, guys,
a lot of the records that we used in the movie,
thank god for us, they couldn't get the rights to
use for soundtrack. It's actually mostly el Fitzgerald, whoever negotiated
her deals back in the day, made it very different
about using in a movie and using it on a record.
(07:53):
So he said, how about you guys just make your
own record, kind of inspired by the music from when
Harry met Sally, here's a couple of dollars. So Harry
and I went off to New York and we recorded
that album, which blew up.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
All Sinatra standards.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
No, it was just all the songs that were in
the movie, some of them Sinatra, one of the biggest
one being It Had to Be You. And that made
Harry connic Junior a star, and it made both of
us suddenly the co producers of a of a platinum
plus album, and it just that's how it all started.
And at the same time I was working with Bette Midler,
(08:30):
so that was Beaches, and the same kind of thing
happened there. An album where I was arranging and orchestrating
blew up and I suddenly had these two albums and
these two movies, and then damn, it just started one
after another.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
I'm shooting Goes to Mississippi with Rob and Rob was
you know, the actress director, as people mentioned all the time,
and on the refaget he says to me, you mind
if I put the camera in the back of the church,
I'm gonna put the in the court room. I'm gonna
put a way in the back, big master of all
you guys doing. And you got your big speech, would
you do it one more time for me? May maybe
do it twice? It was like a three page or
(09:06):
two in page monologue court summation. You're gonna put the
camera in the back of shoot you might we do that.
We'll do like maybe two takes. I go, yeah, that
sounds great to be You see what I mean? You
got a great piece of dialogue speech. You do it
over and over again because you know your next movie,
you're gonna say one line the whole day. It's gonna
be get down, everybody, get down. So when you're a
real dialogue, you know you really like it. And then
(09:27):
he says to Diane lad comes to work one day,
I'll never forget that's gonna be worshiped. Her worship She
has a dog. And she says, and she goes, now, Rob, wow,
would I give him the gun? It makes no sense, Rob,
I wouldn't just hand him the wrath of this piece
of evidence that her husband had hidden. He was the
judge in the case. So Rob sits down with Diane
(09:47):
Ladd on a piece of furniture on this set and
talks to her for like forty five minutes. He trys
to be goes, would you give me a minute? And
I leave? And he talks to her and he and
when it's over, he looks, he goes, we're gonna have
to do this sooner or later. Might as well get
it out of the way. Sooner, you know what I mean.
She had to go through her process, regardless of how
many gears she was grinding to a halt. And I
was amazed how patient he was. I didn't expect him
(10:09):
to be that patient because he seems so.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
That actually surprises me because the one thing I would
never say.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
That he was patient.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
He was with Diane Love when you say he was
an actors director, so I know when he would come
over to me, Misery was the next movie, and now
I was really composing my own music, and he would
always like what he heard, but sometimes he would say
can I go here?
Speaker 1 (10:30):
And then he would sing a note.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
And it took a few movies for me to finally
say to him, Rob, if you're going to keep singing
giving me line readings with notes, I'm going to send
you to a voice teacher to exactly span your reign.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Now, when you did Misery was I told you had
some doubts about that because it was kind of a
dark movie.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Or well, so I had done when Harry met Sally.
I had learned how music gets put in a movie.
And then Rob came to see an HBO special that
Billy Crystal made where I got to score like five
minutes of it in a real cinematic fashion, and he
called me the next morning and said, hey, buddy, you
want to do my next movie. It's a psychological thriller.
Called misery, and of course I want to say yes.
(11:09):
I wasn't going to say no, but I was petrified.
I was like, why would he? I don't know that
I can do that, especially a psychological thriller. I mean
I would understain if someone thought, hey, you want to
do a burlesque, a movie about Vaudeville, I would get.
And I had just gotten with an agent, and even
my agent, Richard said to Rob, Rob, are you sure
(11:32):
he can do this? What makes you think he can
do this? And Rob said, Richard, talent is talent. And
that became Richard, my agent's mantra on all these other
jobs he started getting me where no one had heard
anything I'd ever written. He would just give them the
Rob Reiner talent is talent. So I've robbed the thank
for that, and then I also have robbed the thank
(11:53):
for that. I used to smoke dope constantly.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Why I met reference to this?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I read this, Yeah, so I you know I smoked
ope before a movie, before a meal, before sex.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I think I just smoked up while you were composing always.
So what were you the most stoned on? What's the
music that is unearthed from your deepest level.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Of stone, No nothing, nothing that's on in a movie,
because I just thought I had to get stone before
I could write or arrange music. And by the second
or third day of trying to write misery, and I
was so petrified. Anyway, I couldn't wake up at ten
in the morning and take a few tokes. I'd want
to go to sleep by noon, and I had to
(12:33):
work until ten at night. I mean, writing a movie
score is a big time stop. So I thought, let
me try one day, can I write music without getting stoned?
And I did? And then it was another day and another,
and then I thought, let me get through the end
of the week, and so Rob Reiner helped me quit
pot cold turkey.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
God did you find that when you were stone? Sometimes?
And then you would come back and revisit and you
weren't stone. Was the music not what it might have been? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I think it was Hemingway maybe who said write drunk
and edit sober.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Talk about Ben Midler, because you have collaborations with people
where they're doing shows. One thing was like Billy Crystal
does his farewell on Leno and you came in. That's
that's on Leno shows.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Both of Leno's farewells. Okay, there were many of them.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
You're going on there and what are you doing to
help contribute to the.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Show writing the special lyrics. I mean, that's something I've
done with Billy. You know, we did all those Oscar medleys,
the medleys, so for both those Leno appearances. Yeah, the
second one, the one that was the actual farewell, that
was we wrote for Carol Burnett and Oprah and Kim
Kardashian and it was quite a group of people who
sang so long farewell. We wrote new lyrics the sound
(13:48):
of Yeah. So that's just something Billy and I do
all the constantly. You know. The greatest one was with
Bette Midler on the final Johnny Carson. I mean, that's
a memory of mine. Will it's just you.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Never thought you'd cry from Johnny Carson. Yeah, what do
you do?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
You know that the song again one for my Baby
went for the Road. And that's the kind of other
kind of gig that I do a lot, or did
a lot where Bet called and said they asked me
to be the last guest.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
What song should I sing?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
And I remember I was taking a shower after getting
off the phone with her, and I thought it's quarter
to three, there's no one in the place. It's about
your singing to a bartender who's been listening to you
talk and talk and he just wants to go home.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
And I thought it's perfect. Now you're in a bar
with him, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
So I called Bet dripping wet, I've got it the
perfect song, and she always says, yeah, what else she got?
But she came over and we worked it out.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Quarter to three, there's no one in the place, six
cent you and me, so set them up.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Joe got a little story I think you should know.
And we did change a few of the lyrics at
the end, which was rather ballsy of us to change
Johnny Mercer lyrics, But we addressed Johnny Carson specifically in
the last verse, for all of the years, for the last,
(15:13):
for the tears for the class that you showed, tears.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
For the class that you showed.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Make it one for my baby and one.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
For the road.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Had long.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Road.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
And you know that moment was just I'll never ever
forget it.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
The most compelling thing about that, because I've seen that
many many times, is how attentive he has. Meaning here's
a guy who had the attention span sometimes not every show.
If he liked you when you were an old pal
and he's right there with Dean Martin and those kinds
of icons, but at other times he had the attention
span of a TITSI flock and you'd sit there, but
he's locked into her eyes. He doesn't move. He thinks
(16:25):
he's you'd think he's carry Grant with ingrad Bergman, and
that the director kind of knew that that was maybe
going to happen, because that angle that had never been
used before over Bett's shoulder of Carson watching and listening.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
It's so you're just mesmerized by it and exactly what
you're saying.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
He's so locked in. Composer and lyricist Mark Shaman. If
you enjoy conversations with composers whose careers began at a
young age, check out my episode with Paul Williams.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Most pop songwriters writing for a film or a stage play.
When I have a hit, of course, we all want
to have a hit. But because I come from an
acting background, I want to advance this story and I
want to expose something of the inner life of the
character I'm writing for. That was the whole point with Kermlin.
There is that he has a spiritual life. You know,
I was never a kid that within a gang that
(17:22):
had a tree house. When I walked on the set
of The Muppet Show, I was with a gang that
had a treehouse.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Well.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
To hear more of my conversation with Paul Williams, go
to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Mark
Shaman talks about how he wound up living in Bette
Midler's guest room at age seventeen. I'm Alec Baldwin and
(17:57):
this is Here's the Thing. Sixteen years old, Mark Shaman
decided to leave school and begin working in the New
York theater scene. This bold decision paid off handsomely. It
wasn't long before Mark found himself playing at Downtown theaters
and eventually the stages of Saturday Night Live. Incredibly, before
(18:19):
he'd even turned eighteen, Shaman would find himself arranging music
for his childhood idol. I wanted to know how he
managed to kickstart his career at such a tender age.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I went to New York with a friend, I Witman,
I met Well, I met Scott Whitman there, which was
amazing because I just went to see a musical that
was at the Actors playhouse that used to be there
in Sheridan Square called Boy Meets Boy. It was like
a nineteen thirty style musical, but about two guys. This
is back in like nineteen oh exactly nineteen seventy six,
and we ran into some other friends from New Jersey
(18:54):
on the street and we said, oh, let's let's step
into this little place here and catch up. And there
was a piano in there, and so I was sixteen
and full of you know, vim and vigor, and I
went to the piano and started playing, and just like
out of an old black and white movie, the bartender
was sweeping up and he stopped and he went, hey, kid,
you're good, wait right here. And he went down to
(19:16):
the duplex two doors down where there was a comedy
group that was looking for a funnier piano player than
who they had. And they came in and said, can
you play together wherever we go from Gypsy? And I
played it like it is in the musical. They said no, no, no,
can you play it cheesy? I said, oh, you mean
like out of bar Mitzvah, like or how Steve and
Edie would do it on a merv Griffin where we go.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
They were like, that's it, You're hired. And John Michelle,
the guy who was sweeping up behind the bar, he
also hired me that very afternoon to play at Maurice's
Crisis because of I guess, the way I played piano.
No one could imagine that I was only sixteen years old.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Oh so your talent that the piano obscured your age,
you believe.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah, if you see pictures of me, I'm.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
A very boyish face when you were younger, and imagine
you were very boyish. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I was like I was a pimple on two legs.
I remember that cli so. But John Michelle hired me,
never asked me how old I was. And when I
turned seventeen that October, I lied and said, it's my
birthday and I'm turning eighteen, so I have been here.
Well I shouldn't have been. They didn't seem to care,
but I was lying. I was only turning seventeen. That
(20:25):
New Year's Eve, they lowered me from the balcony in
a diaper, and that's when I thought, maybe it's time
to move on to another job. But that was my
start at Maurice Crisis.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Where'd you go from there.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
I was very lucky my fairy tale. I just adored
Bet Midler. When Boogie Woogie Biggle Boy came on the
radio when I was like thirteen and a kid in
New Jersey, I became obsessed with her, truly obsessed, like
posters on the wall, lifting money from my father's wallet
and cutting school to go see her in concert on Broadway.
And then Scott whit who was the director of that
(21:01):
comedy act, I started staying at his apartment to play
for the act on the weekends. And he lived across
the hall from one of Bette Midler's backup singers who
were called the Harlettes, and they wanted to do their
own act. And there I was across the hall, and
I was at seventeen at that point, and I would
work for free, and I was right there, and I
knew the kind of harmonies they wanted from my no no, no, no,
(21:25):
These are you know, beyond it, beyond yeah, legit. So
I became their musical director. Then Bett said, girls, I'm
doing another tour. I'll let you do a whole opening
act if you come back, and also be my backup singers.
So I was flowing to La and after having the
fantasy of running down a n aisle to Bette Midler,
when I went to see her in concert, saying oh,
miss Midler, I knew every note of every song, of
(21:48):
every arrangement on every record, Please let me play for you.
I was flowing to La I taught Bett's band the
Harlett's material, and then in walks Bette Midler and I'm
just like a year and a half away from having
her posters on the wall, and I'm watching her rehearse,
and she calls out a song to the band that
she wants to do from her third album, but the
music is in on their music stands, and one of
(22:09):
the hard lets goes over to Bet and says, you
see him back, and Steve Harrington moment very and Bet
said do you know how to play? No gesturing, And
I got to actually walk up to a stage and say, oh,
miss Midler, I know every note of every song of
every arrangement on every record, Please let me play for you.
So my dream came true. I hadn't even turned eighteen
and you're seventeen. Yeah. And because she's a frugal gal,
(22:32):
she said, you know, stick around. I could use you,
but instead of putting me in a hotel, she put
me in her guest room of her rented house that
she was staying at. So and it wasn't even it
wasn't even a guest house in the backyard.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
La.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I was living with Bete Midler suddenly for the Maize.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Crisis to Bette Miller's house.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, which was was sort of the same material, only
only the right person was singing at her piano. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
What is about her that you sustained? I mean, obviously
people have these batteries, these linkages between people, and you
have this profound relationship with her. What was it about
her that you admire the most?
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Well, I just love the way she performs, as anyone
who's seen her does. You know the fact that she
does it all, that she can be so funny and
then heartbreaking, and how she can turn it on a dime,
how she can change you know, she's just so in
command and she's just the greatest.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
She's the opposite of what my friend said about Chicago.
My friend said that a famous actress came in she
did the piece to play Roxy in Chicago, and in
that cycle of famous dames that came into the show,
and he said, she walks in and she leaves, and
everyone's sitting there quietly, and he turns to me and goes,
she can't sing, she can't dance, she can't act. She's
a star. Well that can awesome, which as bad as
(23:49):
the opposite. She can sing and dance and act.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yes, And we have a similar personality of you know,
like the title of my book, never mind the Happy
that comes from my mother. One New Year's Day, my
sister said, ma, I want to be the first to
wish you a happy and healthy New Year. And my
mother defined judaism when she said, never mind that happy.
(24:12):
So that's in.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
My where'd you grow up again?
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Jersey in New Jersey?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Right over there? Yeah, over there?
Speaker 2 (24:18):
And so Bet had had her father was a similar
kind of personality, and we both just clicked that way
and argue that way. You know, we have a real
brother sister relationship.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Was she right a lot of the time? What did
she be alone on you being by most of the time?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Well, you know, her taste is impeccable, but like I
mentioned before, she's always saying what else you got? She's
just always second guessing? Was a cover every best Even
that night on the Johnny Carson show. On the final one,
she asked the band that afternoon, what's his favorite song?
And they all said, Here's that Rainy Day? And I
could see the wheels turning in her. Even then, she
was still doubting, should we really do one for my baby?
(24:58):
And sure enough, during that show, she starts singing Here's
that Rainy Day with him, and he starts singing with her,
which is a whole other magical moment. But I'm backstage
at the piano because the next thing that's gonna happen
is one for my baby, and I have a little
TV monitor on the piano, and I'm having this schizoid
(25:18):
conversation in my head. On the one hand, I'm going,
this is magical. What's happening between Bett and Johnny Carson?
And he's singing, and he's singing in key and she
the piano players not coming in. Should I join in?
The other part of my brain is coming She's spoiling.
She knows if this moment happens, she's not gonna have
to sing the song that we've planned. And I'm like, no, no, no,
I should I should start banging away to make it
(25:40):
stop or something. But I'm a piano player, I'm a companist.
I start joining and so I actually got to play
for Johnny Cartson singing Here's that Rainy Day. And luckily
they came back and said, okay, we're still set for
the big ballad at the end. So it all worked out.
But she's always wondering, what else, what else.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Could it be? You did a piece with Peter I
did how We're going to describe it in a minute.
But when I was in college in gw in Washington
for the first three years, one woman I dated, she
really got me turned onto a lot of you know,
what would be pretty eclectic music for somebody from my
background who was smoking pot in the woods and massive
people were listening to Beatles, Zeppelin, Stones, who you know,
British Invasion, rock and roller in my mind know Clapton
(26:20):
and Moody Blues and so forth. And she turned me
on too, Peter Allen and it's Live with Peter rolland
and Boss Skags I never heard of, and they turned
me on him, who I love. And it always takes
me back to Hugh Jackman and here he's playing Wolverine
and all the psychotic craziness and murderers and superheroes, and
he plays Peter Allen on broad I find that rain. Yeah,
(26:42):
it is breathtaking. Describe how you met him and how
you we were involved with him.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
That was another out of the blue. I got a
phone call from Craig Zayden and Neil Meren. Craig was
going to direct Peter Allen was doing a Broadway concert
called Up and One that was basically just a concert,
but it had a kind of a story of his
life through line. And they had heard about me from
this cabaret and Bette Midler's circuit and they called me
(27:08):
out of the blue and said, you want to be
Peter Allen's musical director for the show. I was that time.
I was ripe old age of nineteen and I was
was my first Broadway gig. You mentioned Clapton. I have
to tell you I have a Rob Reiner Clapton story
on the movie The Story of Us with Bruce Willis
and Michelle Pfeiffer. Rob said, buddy, Eric Clapton's going to
(27:28):
write songs for the movie, but would you still help
figure out how to turn those songs into the underscore?
Speaker 1 (27:34):
And I was like work with Clapton Okay, let me
get back to you.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah, but when you talked about Rob patients in patients
at the one scoring session, there's a song that Clapton
wrote that runs throughout the movie, but in the end titles.
We did like a full record version of it. So
I had a string section and I had this one
evocative chord, a very film noir chord over. It seemed
to fit the lyric and the chord that Clapton had written.
(28:00):
But it's what we call a C minor major seventh chorded.
But the first time the strings played it, it sounded
a little odd because it can be almost discordant.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Let's say yes.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
And Rob immediately went what's that? And you know, he
starts rubbing that one side of his head and that
would only like one side of his head would sweat.
He said, what's that? I said, just let me work
with the strings for just a minute to get the
right balance. And so I'm working for a few ten
twenty seconds morning He's still like, what is that?
Speaker 1 (28:26):
What is that?
Speaker 2 (28:27):
And I'm still trying to get my nice chord in there.
And then Eric clapped and strolled out to the conductor's
stand and said, you know, Mark those chords at measure
thirty three. I think they're just too attractive. And I
had to tell the whole orchestra, I said. I was
just told to get over it, and the nicest way
I've ever possibly heard, the classiest way.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
To they're just too attractive.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Which was true. It just meant it's calling your ear
too much to it. You're calling too much attention.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
To sleeping out. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Also, they him and Rob came over that house once
to work out stuff. I was also working on the
South Park movie at the same time, and I need
to talk about in tense deadlines. I had to finish
what I was writing to get to the orchestrator and
Rob and Eric Clapton were just talking, and then Eric
Clapton had his guitar out and I could tell he
kind of wanted to just sit and jam with me,
but I had to get back to the South Park
(29:20):
and I actually had to tell them both to get lost.
So my big chance to jam with Eric Clapton, I
threw it away.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Well. Speaking of the South Park movie, which I am
the president of the Film Actors Guild, bag big banner.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Of that was the second movie.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yesaid was that that was the.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Team America, which I got I got.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Fired from you got fired?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Why Well, I'd done South Park bigger, longer, and uncut
and had the greatest, greatest experience.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Of my life with the two of them.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Yeah, I mean, and Trey Parker is you know that
word that gets thrown around genius.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
He is a genius.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
He can do it all right, music, lyrics, act right,
wrecked and extremely open and collaborative. So when I got
involved through Scott Rudin on this on the South Park movie,
I suddenly was the oldert like professor who would help
Trey realize his vision of creating a musical and that
(30:17):
that was just the greatest year maybe I'd ever had
it in the movies. And then so they know, a
few years later, he asked me to do Team America
and in the same way, never came to listen to
what I was writing, didn't even come through the orchestra sessions.
He just trusted me. But then like on the third
after the third day of the recording sessions, the music
editor played him what I'd been recording and he didn't
(30:40):
like it. He said, oh, it's too specific to the movie.
I wanted to be like wallpaper music that they he
felt like those top Gun movies just kind of got
library music, you know, that was just being like rolled
out that it wasn't specific enough to the movie. And
so I had the most awkward meeting of my life
where they were like, we want you to start over,
(31:03):
but we need it in ten days. Do you think
you can do it? And not only did I not
know if I could physically do it, but emotionally I
was so devastated. I was like, if I have to, okay,
but I think I'd rather just crawl into a hole
and maybe you get someone else to do it, which
they did, which didn't make Scott Ruden very happy. And
(31:23):
Scott Ruden put me under house arrest and I had
to stay in my house in LA for a full
month until other people came in, wrote new music, It
got recorded in case I was needed to be brought
back in. I wasn't allowed to leave Los Angeles and
I was prisoner of the house. So that was devastating
having just had the most glorious experience with them. But
(31:46):
that's you know, show business. That's the a lot of
the points into yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Like they say you got ten days and he writes
the score one of the most legendaries.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
In ten days only, I was the guy who they
fired and got. I wasn't Harry Goldsmith. He wrote it
in ten days. Yeah, maybe I could have pulled it off,
but I was just devastated and I just didn't think
I could.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Let me ask you this because I've made films, and
I made, you know, bigger studio films and starred in
those films. I haven't seen them. Well, I don't assume
that at all. But music can make such a profound
of course, what I want to go is, fellas, if
the music isn't anything cut it, Yeah, no music.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Jerry Goldsmith had a quote that he used to say
to them, Fellas, I could put makeup on the corpse,
but I can't make it breathe, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Right, And don't you do you feel that sometimes people
are saying to you, I want more music here, you
know whatever?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, yeah, I had all sorts of experiences like that.
But yes, you know, the music. A movie without music,
it's just it's even the greatest movies you could watch.
And if you're watch without music, there's just it's naked.
It's naked. Yeah, it's dry. And then they art is
knowing where and when not to put music and you
know how much.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Are you usually right about that? Or the director of
both with the editor. It's a collaboration.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
I talk in the book about how on Sleepless in
Seattle there were two spots that I thought really should
have music, and Nora Efron was like, I don't think so,
but you know, go with your instinct and write it.
And when we went to record the music at that point,
she her personality had changed over a few weeks and
I was seeing another side of her and at the
(33:27):
recording sessions when I recorded those two pieces of music.
When we were finished, she said, it's very nice music. Mark.
I just wish I had somewhere in the movie to
use it.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Jonathan Demi once said to me we were shooting him, but
he goes, that's a great idea, he said, just not
for this movie.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Yeah, well there you go.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Thank you, telemen.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
So those are two spots in that movie that doesn't
have music that my agent says sometimes he teaches film
score classes and he uses those two moments to give
to the students to say, here are two moments that
really could use music, but don't have it, so write music.
There and that way when you send it off to
a producer and all they get to see a movie,
they know that, you know, they already seeing movie stars
(34:07):
and they're hearing music on here. So I'm very happy
for those students who are getting to write the music
that I wanted.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Are you someone who your proximity to the film business
and your intimate relationship with the film business on this deep,
deep level of writing this music? And then when you're
away from that, you don't watch movies, You don't watch
TV or do you watch programming?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
No?
Speaker 1 (34:26):
I watch what do you watch?
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Well? I married an avid sports man, so now I
watch football and is an avid sportsman. What would you
call an avid sports fan?
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Fan fan not man fan?
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Yeah, I watched sports. If my father was alive, he
wouldn't believe that when I think of when I used
to walk into the house and you'd be watching football
with his friends, and I would just quickly go into
my little room and my piano. I had no interest
in football or anything. But now I go to Knicks games.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, he's a sports nut. Yes? What is he like everything?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Anything that involves a sphere being thrown or kicked?
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Violence?
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yeah? Yeah, he loves it all. It's a real odd couple.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yeah, you know, I take one and look at him.
He's like a villain in a Bond film. This guy,
he's so good looking and so built, and I've really
learned to love it. I really do love watching it all.
Composer and lyricist Mark Shaman. If you're enjoying this conversation,
tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the
(35:30):
Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get
your podcasts. When we come back, Mark Shaman tells us
which of Rob Reiner's films he will always stop to
watch on TV and why it's the most meaningful of
his fourteen scores for the late director. I'm Alec Baldwin
(36:05):
and this is Here's the Thing. Mark Shaman has written
and arranged music for countless artists such as Mariah Carey,
Bette Midler, Harry Connock Junior, and Billy Crystal. Whether for
late night TV, award shows, concerts, or a Christmas album,
Shaman adapts to the task at hand. I was curious
(36:27):
as a musician what differences he found between working with actors,
singers and comedians.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah, the thing that makes me think of is I
did Sister act and Whoopy Goldberg, you would maybe say that, well,
you're saying about Billy, you know. And when and then
when we got together this sing it turns out she
started singing like a white folk singer.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
She was singing like that. I was like, really, yus.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Not what you would expect to come out of Whoopi Goldberg.
But I put together two friends, Charlotte Crossley and Jennifer
leewe Us, who are very funny girls, who were both
harlets with Bette Midler and our gregarious, funny, great girls,
and I knew, well, I kind of figured if I
put them together with Whoope and we rehearse the songs
(37:13):
for Sister Rac with her, we'll just laugh and we'll
laugh and we'll have a good time and then she'll
just forget about being nervous about singing. And that's exactly
what happened. We had a great time, and when by
the time it was time to record and film, well,
we didn't give a fuck anymore about like all the
other things that she might have been thinking of. We
were just laughing. We were just had such a good time.
(37:36):
And of course you've record a lot of takes, and
you take a note from track one, and you take
a note from track four. But that's a whole other thing.
But yeah, it's really a matter of yeah, coaxing sometimes,
So whoever you work without thean sonia, Ah, now.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Your first sociore and into Broadbay was what.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Well. I wanted to write Broadway shows when I was
in my twenties and but couldn't get a break. And
me my colyricist and at that time life partner Scott Whitman,
we were trying to write shows but we just couldn't
get in there. And it was the time of the
big British musicals and and then my movie career fell
on my lap and we were suddenly living in la
(38:15):
for a year. But then luckily, yeah, I mean I
wanted to be Broadway, and then the movies fell on
my lap, and then the entire nineties I was scoring
one movie after another. And that was the other reason
why the South Park movie was the greatest gig ever,
because not only was it onto itself the greatest gig,
it suddenly put my name back in the mouths of
(38:36):
the Broadway crowd. And a woman named Margot Lyon had
just gotten the rights to Hairspray, the John Waters film,
and everyone she went to the said, who do you
think should I should get to do the score for Hairspray?
And everyone had just come from the South Park movie
and said, you got to.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Get Mark Shaman.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
You got to get Mark Shaman. So that movie led
me to the absolute dream come true, which was writing Hairspray.
And because Scott had moved to LA with me, and
I had really torn him away from the theatrical community
of New York, and I was scoring one movie after
another and Scott didn't have much to do. Scott is
quoted as saying in La he learned how to drink
(39:15):
and drive. Uh. So, when Margo said, you know, I
would you like to write the music for Hairspray's like yes,
And she said who would you like to write the lyrics?
I said, well, me and my partner Scott, and I
won't do it unless it's me and my partner Scott.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
And they acquiesced.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Well, she said, well, I don't know you guys. As
a lyricist, I don't know. And I said, well, the
South Park movie it says additional music and lyrics, but
you know, music by was what most people have ever seen,
and she didn't, and also she was scared of it.
I think of hiring a couple, you know, like what
happens if they fight? But yeah, So luckily she said,
(39:53):
you know, would you write some songs on spec for
me to hear? And I was like sure, and so
Scott and I immediately started working and we The four
songs we wrote are a Good Morning Baltimore, Welcome to
the Sixties, big Blonde, and Beautiful and I Know Where
I've Been, which are still now kind of the four
tent poles of that musical, which is shows you what
(40:14):
a fairy tale it was in that Usually the first
songs you write for show get discarded along the way
as you start to discover what's needed. But the first
four songs we wrote are still like those strong Snakes ones. Yeah,
and then that just became just the greatest dream come true. Well,
we wrote a musical with Marty Short Marty Short, Fame
(40:36):
Becomes Me, which was a one man show but with
a cast, and I was on stage within and that
was a thrill, although it was tough because it was
the kind of inside baseball kind of thing about how
Broadway was full of all these one person shows, and
so Marty was spoofing the idea that he had a
one person showing him for all the trials and tribulations
(40:59):
of his life, because he's the happiest man on earth,
so it's not really true. And then catch Me if
you Can was the next one Scott and I did,
which you know.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Was based on the film Yeah who Comes Ringing Your
doorbit of Spielberg ring the bell or.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Something, and that in this case, Scott and I we
went to the drama bookstore to get a copy of
Stage Door. Someone had asked us this if we would
be interested in writing musical stage Door, which is the
old Katherine Heppern movie The Catada Lizar and Bloom. I
hope all your readers and listeners will now you now
did as far as I'm coogle stage Door and you
(41:33):
just can do anything. So so we went to get
that play, but there was a coffee table book out
elsewhere in the drama bookstore of Catch Me if you Can,
about the making of it. And Scott looked at that
and the pictures of pan Am stewardesses and Leonardo DiCaprio
and all the different disguises, and he said, I'd rather
write a musical of that. And because I knew Steven
(41:55):
Spieople only through Marty short Christmas parties. One year, he
brought his clarinet and I played hanakkah ohonnakah while him
and Cape capp Shaw he played the clarinet and she danced.
So I felt like I had worked with him. So
I asked Marty to give me like a phone number
or email or whatever, and I just wrote Steven Spierberg directly.
(42:19):
I said, we have this idea to do a musical
of Castrini if you can. So I completely didn't go
through agents or lawyers. I just went straight to the
man and we got the rights. And how did that go?
It didn't have a long run. It gets done all
the time now and I go to see it. We
had this idea that it was Frank Junior was putting
(42:39):
on his life as if it was a television variety
show from like nineteen sixty four, which was still the
peak time of like Show Business on TV where Sinatra
and Judy Garland, where it wasn't cheesy yet it wasn't
like you know the bad seventies, you know Brady Bunch
variety kind of shows. But we couldn't transplant it on stage.
(42:59):
We never quite figured it out with our collaborators. So
we all adore, but we just didn't quite this flay
didn't completely rise. I mean, I'm very proud of the score.
I love it very much, and it gets done all
the time now, and I do go to see it,
Scott says. When we go to see it, sometimes it's
like a football coach bringing us into the locker room
after the game and showing us footage of the game
(43:21):
with a laser point, or going that's where you went wrong.
If we got a chance to do it again, I
think I would know how to like fix it, make
it or even better. But it's still good. Who directed
Jack O'Brien right.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
But the question also is what I'm told I don't
know this is intimately maybe as you do. But my friends,
I think said to somebody said to me that there's
only four new musicals on Broadbay this year. What's you know,
whither the Broadway Musical the New Broadway Musical, because they're
going to have four in that every show that's on
is going to get nominated. They got four slots.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
If only I had because we did some like it
hot it was three years ago and we were just
at the beginning of coming out of COVID and although
we smelled like a hit, everyone thought we were this
big hit and we ran for a year, but it
should have run for years and years and years.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
But it's so expensive. Now, yeah, that's your critique of
because I would ask you, what's your critique of brought
right now?
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Well, the last two shows I've done, people were really
enjoying them, but we couldn't make enough money to pay
what it cost the weekly. The money is just the
math as.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
I wonder why they can't find a way to bring
that down.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
I don't know, And it's only going to keep getting
worse because if you talk to the actors or the
stage crew, they're like, you know, and the orchestra, and
they're like, yeah, you understand why they're fighting for what
they want in the next deal. But somehow it's just
just blown up out of proportion that there is no
kind of middle. You know, if you look at classic musicals,
they only ran for like a year and a half,
(44:48):
like The Music Man or whatever.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
It wasn't like now where.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
They have to if they don't run for ten years,
it's considered a flop.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Everyone's chasing it.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
It's just impossible. So not many get to grabbed that
brass ring the way that you could back in the day.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Who are people out there that you admire? Alfred Newman,
you know, John Williams, any contemporaries. I mean, who's somebody
now that you like? You think there's work is good.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
There's a great guy. The last time I was nominated
for an Oscar, I lost to Ludwig Gorenson for what
he had written for Black Panther, and I had written
for Mary Poppins' Returns, and I kind of thought maybe.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Black Panther, Mary Poppins.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
I thought, you know, it was my, it was my.
It was my seventh nomination. I thought this might be
like my Susan Lucci moment. But Ludwig one. But he's
a sweet guy and he's brilliant. He just did Sinners
he so he's someone I very much admire. And he's
also so sweet and so nice and just such a
great guy.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
So there were pieces in the classical repertoire that I
just weep. Saw Organ Symphony, whatever, there's the alot of
thing a Dvoreshoch, New World whatever. I'm a classical nut
are the pieces you've written or the pieces you've been
involved the movies and scenes with the picture in the
move music match which brings you to tears like they're
really powerful to you.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
The one that and obviously now more than ever is
the American President with Rob Reiner, and god knows, because
of what's happened in America, all these things converge to
make that piece of music. I got to write for
that movie very very meaningful to me, and I'll.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Try not to start weeping, but.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
It was a beautiful movie and I got to write
music that was just full of the respect that one
used to have for the American President. Yeah, exactly, And
it works so well. And it's one movie of mine
that I could if I channel hop up across it,
I'll stick with it.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Michael Douglas was phenomenally phenomena.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
So yeah, So the music for that one is meaningful
to me on so many levels. So and I did
you know, I did a concert last year and see
and Diego and I'm at the piano and kibbitzing with
the audience. But for that one piece, I did get
up and conduct the orchestra, which is a very hard thing.
To do conducting an orchestra and making them go at
the speed that you want. That's a real talent that
(47:15):
I don't really have because I'm in a companist. So
I let them lead, which you can't do because suddenly
it gets much slower. But I was conducting it to
the film the main title, so I had to keep
them going. And now, of course, I mean, I'm lucky
that I had this moment with Rob in a Sedona.
There's a Sedona Film Festival and I was an honoree
(47:38):
one night, and Rob was the honoree the next night.
And for the Rob night, they showed this beautiful pristine
print of the American President, which I had seen on
TV a lot, but I'd never seen it up on
the screen again. It had been maybe twenty years. So
I just watched this beautiful movie and got to hear
this music. I got to write for it, and it
(47:58):
was so grateful to Rob Reiner for everything, and especially
this movie and especially what it's about and what had
just started happening with Trump, and it just all bubbled up.
And so my job was to then go to the
mic and introduce Rob. The audience knew me from the
night before, and it was my job to introduce Rob,
(48:22):
and I was, you know, I had a whole bunch
of jokes. I was going to crack. And I got
up there at the mic and just started sobbing, just
absolute couldn't get a word out, just stamping my feet.
All I tried to say was I'm so grateful to
Rob Reiner and and so the tears had to just
completely speak for me.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
My thanks to composer Mark Shanmon. I'll leave you with
a piece of Shaman's score from Rob Reiner's The American President.
I'm alec One. Here's the thing that's brought to you
by iHeart Radio.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. You can't Stop.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And races down hilt.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
You can try to stop this season stir, but you
know you naw win. It is a skill that feels
like a gift from the divine. To write an unforgettable song,
one that gets stuck in your head or makes you
want to dance is a talent that should be exalted.
Now imagine it's your life's work for fifty years. That's
(00:52):
you Can't Stop the Beat from the two thousand and
two Broadway cast recording of Hairspray, written by my Guest
Today composer and lyricist Mark Shaman. Shaman is a two
time Emmy, Grammy, and BAFTA winner, as well as a
Tony Award recipient. He's also been nominated for seven Academy Awards.
(01:16):
His five decade career began at just sixteen years of age.
His work as a composer, lyricist, arranger, and producer spans film, television,
and theater. In addition to the hit musical Hairspray, Shaman
is known for co creating the musicals Catch Me If
You Can, Charlie in the Chocolate Factory and Some Like
(01:39):
It Hot. His film scores include smash hits like The
Adams Family, City Slickers, Sister Act, Sleepless in Seattle, and
the first South Park Movie. Perhaps most famously, Mark Shaman
was also a frequent collaborator with the late Rob Reiner.
For Reiner, he penned the scores of classic films like
(02:00):
When Harry Met Sally, Misery, A Few Good Men, The
American President, and many others. As someone who set out
to work in the theater, I was curious how Shaman
and Ryner's paths crossed between New York and.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
La I was lucky enough to work up at Saturday
Night Live freelance for you know, after the original cast
left and Paul Schaeffer was, you know, the funny Jewish
guy at the piano, and then he wasn't there for
a few years, and so I started getting that call
to go up there, and so I met Billy Crystal
and Martin Short, Christopher Guest. I worked their previous years,
(02:37):
but I worked there a lot that year that they
came on that one year and really hit it off
with them all, and Billy Crystal asked me to go
out on the road with him, and I would play
for his act, even though it was a comic act.
He would sing a Sammy Davis Junior, he would sing
his other things. And also I would underscore some of
his monologues. And so Rob Reiner came to see that
(03:00):
kind of heard me underscoring even though there's comedic, but
he heard that. And then Billy was making when Harry
met Sally and asked Rob, what are you going to
do for the music?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
And Rob said, I need.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
A guy who knows like every song from the American Songbook.
And Billy was like, have I got a guy for you?
Because Billy is a real mens like that. And I
went and met Rob and I brought him my Rogers
and Heart's Songbook because after reading the script, I knew
that the song if they asked me, I could write
a book ends with the lyric. Then the world discovers
(03:34):
as my book ends how to make two Lovers from Friends,
which seemed perfect for When Harry met Sally and Rob
said you're hired, and that began a lifelong relationship.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
What did you like about what did you prefer about
working with him?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Well, you know, I often think about the fact that
once you've established that you have the talent to do that.
I know that Rob would say the same thing. It's
about the hang. I'm sure you understand and know that.
You know, once everyone knows that, you know you got
the job and you can do what you can do.
It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that
(04:15):
you're with and so you know, Rob and I was
always a great hang. When he would come over to
listen to what I was doing, we would sit in
kibbets for hours and then eventually get around to the music.
That's what I mostly think of when I think of
him is just the time together, laughing.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
When you were producing music with him and scoring music
for his films, was a lot of that worked un
at Warners. Is that where Castle Rock had their equipment,
so to speak, where would you go? We went everywhere.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
You know, that's about just whatever recording studio is available
at the time you're recording. When Harry met Sally was
the first one, and that one I was just arranging
and orchestrating existing music, helping to choose the records or
the songs, and deciding whether to use the recordings or
create our own. At the same time, Rob's friend Bobby Columbia,
(05:04):
who used to be the drummer for Blood, Sweat and Tears.
Bobby Columbia had become an executive at CBS at Columbia Records,
and he said, I've got this kid named Harry Connick
Junior who sounds like he'd be perfect for this. So
I was sent up to Seattle where Harry was doing
a gig with just this trio. This was before he
was blew up, you know, because the movie is what
(05:25):
made that happen, and I think we both kind of
felt this probably the same with like, well, who's this
guy who needs Like we both thought I'm the young
whipper snapper at the piano and figuring it out. And
the first session when he came down to LA with
his trio, I had worked it out with Rob. You
know what song, what tempo, what key it had to
(05:46):
be in because it had to segue into another record
or whatever. And that first meeting, that first session, Harry
was a little like, don't tell me how to you know,
play or what to play. I'm not just coloring in
the lines that you've drawn. I mean it was just
a subtext all day. Arthur Murray, Yeah, yeah, so I
(06:06):
remember driving home and I think I even called Rob
and said, see Mondays with the orchestra, it's we can't
have that kind of like big discussions about everything with
an orchestra sitting there, you know the clock, you just
can't have that. I was petrified of what was going
to happen. Meanwhile, it was that song I could write
(06:28):
a book, was going to be the first thing we
were going to record. They had filmed the scene. This
is where Harry and Sally are at a New Year's
Eve celebration and they start dancing and they kind of
realize there's a chemistry there. And so I had said,
this is a perfect spot for that song, and let's
make sure that lyric about make two lovers of friends
(06:48):
falls right at that perfect moment. And I had orchestrated
and I had, you know, adored Nelson Riddle's orchestrations for
Frank Sinatra. You know that was my you know, the king,
and so I created a Frank Sinatra Nelson Riddle style
orchestration for this one moment. And then Harry was behind me.
I can't see him, but I counted the orchestra and
(07:13):
he starts singing and whatever had happened the previous Friday
between us dissipated immediately. We were just fell in love.
It was like he was singing like Frank Sinatra and
I was doing my best Nelson riddle and it was.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Just, you know, it was just together again for the
first yes.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
So then we made that record. So then Bobby Columbia said, hey, guys,
a lot of the records that we used in the movie,
thank god for us, they couldn't get the rights to
use for soundtrack. It's actually mostly el Fitzgerald, whoever negotiated
her deals back in the day, made it very different
about using in a movie and using it on a record.
(07:53):
So he said, how about you guys just make your
own record, kind of inspired by the music from when
Harry met Sally, here's a couple of dollars. So Harry
and I went off to New York and we recorded
that album, which blew up.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
All Sinatra standards.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
No, it was just all the songs that were in
the movie, some of them Sinatra, one of the biggest
one being It Had to Be You. And that made
Harry connic Junior a star, and it made both of
us suddenly the co producers of a of a platinum
plus album, and it just that's how it all started.
And at the same time I was working with Bette Midler,
(08:30):
so that was Beaches, and the same kind of thing
happened there. An album where I was arranging and orchestrating
blew up and I suddenly had these two albums and
these two movies, and then damn, it just started one
after another.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
I'm shooting Goes to Mississippi with Rob and Rob was
you know, the actress director, as people mentioned all the time,
and on the refaget he says to me, you mind
if I put the camera in the back of the church,
I'm gonna put the in the court room. I'm gonna
put a way in the back, big master of all
you guys doing. And you got your big speech, would
you do it one more time for me? May maybe
do it twice? It was like a three page or
(09:06):
two in page monologue court summation. You're gonna put the
camera in the back of shoot you might we do that.
We'll do like maybe two takes. I go, yeah, that
sounds great to be You see what I mean? You
got a great piece of dialogue speech. You do it
over and over again because you know your next movie,
you're gonna say one line the whole day. It's gonna
be get down, everybody, get down. So when you're a
real dialogue, you know you really like it. And then
(09:27):
he says to Diane lad comes to work one day,
I'll never forget that's gonna be worshiped. Her worship She
has a dog. And she says, and she goes, now, Rob, wow,
would I give him the gun? It makes no sense, Rob,
I wouldn't just hand him the wrath of this piece
of evidence that her husband had hidden. He was the
judge in the case. So Rob sits down with Diane
(09:47):
Ladd on a piece of furniture on this set and
talks to her for like forty five minutes. He trys
to be goes, would you give me a minute? And
I leave? And he talks to her and he and
when it's over, he looks, he goes, we're gonna have
to do this sooner or later. Might as well get
it out of the way. Sooner, you know what I mean.
She had to go through her process, regardless of how
many gears she was grinding to a halt. And I
was amazed how patient he was. I didn't expect him
(10:09):
to be that patient because he seems so.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
That actually surprises me because the one thing I would
never say.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
That he was patient.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
He was with Diane Love when you say he was
an actors director, so I know when he would come
over to me, Misery was the next movie, and now
I was really composing my own music, and he would
always like what he heard, but sometimes he would say
can I go here?
Speaker 1 (10:30):
And then he would sing a note.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
And it took a few movies for me to finally
say to him, Rob, if you're going to keep singing
giving me line readings with notes, I'm going to send
you to a voice teacher to exactly span your reign.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Now, when you did Misery was I told you had
some doubts about that because it was kind of a
dark movie.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Or well, so I had done when Harry met Sally.
I had learned how music gets put in a movie.
And then Rob came to see an HBO special that
Billy Crystal made where I got to score like five
minutes of it in a real cinematic fashion, and he
called me the next morning and said, hey, buddy, you
want to do my next movie. It's a psychological thriller.
Called misery, and of course I want to say yes.
(11:09):
I wasn't going to say no, but I was petrified.
I was like, why would he? I don't know that
I can do that, especially a psychological thriller. I mean
I would understain if someone thought, hey, you want to
do a burlesque, a movie about Vaudeville, I would get.
And I had just gotten with an agent, and even
my agent, Richard said to Rob, Rob, are you sure
(11:32):
he can do this? What makes you think he can
do this? And Rob said, Richard, talent is talent. And
that became Richard, my agent's mantra on all these other
jobs he started getting me where no one had heard
anything I'd ever written. He would just give them the
Rob Reiner talent is talent. So I've robbed the thank
for that, and then I also have robbed the thank
(11:53):
for that. I used to smoke dope constantly.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Why I met reference to this?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I read this, Yeah, so I you know I smoked
ope before a movie, before a meal, before sex.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I think I just smoked up while you were composing always.
So what were you the most stoned on? What's the
music that is unearthed from your deepest level.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Of stone, No nothing, nothing that's on in a movie,
because I just thought I had to get stone before
I could write or arrange music. And by the second
or third day of trying to write misery, and I
was so petrified. Anyway, I couldn't wake up at ten
in the morning and take a few tokes. I'd want
to go to sleep by noon, and I had to
(12:33):
work until ten at night. I mean, writing a movie
score is a big time stop. So I thought, let
me try one day, can I write music without getting stoned?
And I did? And then it was another day and another,
and then I thought, let me get through the end
of the week, and so Rob Reiner helped me quit
pot cold turkey.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
God did you find that when you were stone? Sometimes?
And then you would come back and revisit and you
weren't stone. Was the music not what it might have been? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I think it was Hemingway maybe who said write drunk
and edit sober.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Talk about Ben Midler, because you have collaborations with people
where they're doing shows. One thing was like Billy Crystal
does his farewell on Leno and you came in. That's
that's on Leno shows.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Both of Leno's farewells. Okay, there were many of them.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
You're going on there and what are you doing to
help contribute to the.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Show writing the special lyrics. I mean, that's something I've
done with Billy. You know, we did all those Oscar medleys,
the medleys, so for both those Leno appearances. Yeah, the
second one, the one that was the actual farewell, that
was we wrote for Carol Burnett and Oprah and Kim
Kardashian and it was quite a group of people who
sang so long farewell. We wrote new lyrics the sound
(13:48):
of Yeah. So that's just something Billy and I do
all the constantly. You know. The greatest one was with
Bette Midler on the final Johnny Carson. I mean, that's
a memory of mine. Will it's just you.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Never thought you'd cry from Johnny Carson. Yeah, what do
you do?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
You know that the song again one for my Baby
went for the Road. And that's the kind of other
kind of gig that I do a lot, or did
a lot where Bet called and said they asked me
to be the last guest.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
What song should I sing?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
And I remember I was taking a shower after getting
off the phone with her, and I thought it's quarter
to three, there's no one in the place. It's about
your singing to a bartender who's been listening to you
talk and talk and he just wants to go home.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
And I thought it's perfect. Now you're in a bar
with him, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
So I called Bet dripping wet, I've got it the
perfect song, and she always says, yeah, what else she got?
But she came over and we worked it out.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Quarter to three, there's no one in the place, six
cent you and me, so set them up.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Joe got a little story I think you should know.
And we did change a few of the lyrics at
the end, which was rather ballsy of us to change
Johnny Mercer lyrics, But we addressed Johnny Carson specifically in
the last verse, for all of the years, for the last,
(15:13):
for the tears for the class that you showed, tears.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
For the class that you showed.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Make it one for my baby and one.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
For the road.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Had long.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Road.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
And you know that moment was just I'll never ever
forget it.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
The most compelling thing about that, because I've seen that
many many times, is how attentive he has. Meaning here's
a guy who had the attention span sometimes not every show.
If he liked you when you were an old pal
and he's right there with Dean Martin and those kinds
of icons, but at other times he had the attention
span of a TITSI flock and you'd sit there, but
he's locked into her eyes. He doesn't move. He thinks
(16:25):
he's you'd think he's carry Grant with ingrad Bergman, and
that the director kind of knew that that was maybe
going to happen, because that angle that had never been
used before over Bett's shoulder of Carson watching and listening.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
It's so you're just mesmerized by it and exactly what
you're saying.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
He's so locked in. Composer and lyricist Mark Shaman. If
you enjoy conversations with composers whose careers began at a
young age, check out my episode with Paul Williams.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Most pop songwriters writing for a film or a stage play.
When I have a hit, of course, we all want
to have a hit. But because I come from an
acting background, I want to advance this story and I
want to expose something of the inner life of the
character I'm writing for. That was the whole point with Kermlin.
There is that he has a spiritual life. You know,
I was never a kid that within a gang that
(17:22):
had a tree house. When I walked on the set
of The Muppet Show, I was with a gang that
had a treehouse.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Well.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
To hear more of my conversation with Paul Williams, go
to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Mark
Shaman talks about how he wound up living in Bette
Midler's guest room at age seventeen. I'm Alec Baldwin and
(17:57):
this is Here's the Thing. Sixteen years old, Mark Shaman
decided to leave school and begin working in the New
York theater scene. This bold decision paid off handsomely. It
wasn't long before Mark found himself playing at Downtown theaters
and eventually the stages of Saturday Night Live. Incredibly, before
(18:19):
he'd even turned eighteen, Shaman would find himself arranging music
for his childhood idol. I wanted to know how he
managed to kickstart his career at such a tender age.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I went to New York with a friend, I Witman,
I met Well, I met Scott Whitman there, which was
amazing because I just went to see a musical that
was at the Actors playhouse that used to be there
in Sheridan Square called Boy Meets Boy. It was like
a nineteen thirty style musical, but about two guys. This
is back in like nineteen oh exactly nineteen seventy six,
and we ran into some other friends from New Jersey
(18:54):
on the street and we said, oh, let's let's step
into this little place here and catch up. And there
was a piano in there, and so I was sixteen
and full of you know, vim and vigor, and I
went to the piano and started playing, and just like
out of an old black and white movie, the bartender
was sweeping up and he stopped and he went, hey, kid,
you're good, wait right here. And he went down to
(19:16):
the duplex two doors down where there was a comedy
group that was looking for a funnier piano player than
who they had. And they came in and said, can
you play together wherever we go from Gypsy? And I
played it like it is in the musical. They said no, no, no,
can you play it cheesy? I said, oh, you mean
like out of bar Mitzvah, like or how Steve and
Edie would do it on a merv Griffin where we go.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
They were like, that's it, You're hired. And John Michelle,
the guy who was sweeping up behind the bar, he
also hired me that very afternoon to play at Maurice's
Crisis because of I guess, the way I played piano.
No one could imagine that I was only sixteen years old.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Oh so your talent that the piano obscured your age,
you believe.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah, if you see pictures of me, I'm.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
A very boyish face when you were younger, and imagine
you were very boyish. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I was like I was a pimple on two legs.
I remember that cli so. But John Michelle hired me,
never asked me how old I was. And when I
turned seventeen that October, I lied and said, it's my
birthday and I'm turning eighteen, so I have been here.
Well I shouldn't have been. They didn't seem to care,
but I was lying. I was only turning seventeen. That
(20:25):
New Year's Eve, they lowered me from the balcony in
a diaper, and that's when I thought, maybe it's time
to move on to another job. But that was my
start at Maurice Crisis.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Where'd you go from there.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
I was very lucky my fairy tale. I just adored
Bet Midler. When Boogie Woogie Biggle Boy came on the
radio when I was like thirteen and a kid in
New Jersey, I became obsessed with her, truly obsessed, like
posters on the wall, lifting money from my father's wallet
and cutting school to go see her in concert on Broadway.
And then Scott whit who was the director of that
(21:01):
comedy act, I started staying at his apartment to play
for the act on the weekends. And he lived across
the hall from one of Bette Midler's backup singers who
were called the Harlettes, and they wanted to do their
own act. And there I was across the hall, and
I was at seventeen at that point, and I would
work for free, and I was right there, and I
knew the kind of harmonies they wanted from my no no, no, no,
(21:25):
These are you know, beyond it, beyond yeah, legit. So
I became their musical director. Then Bett said, girls, I'm
doing another tour. I'll let you do a whole opening
act if you come back, and also be my backup singers.
So I was flowing to La and after having the
fantasy of running down a n aisle to Bette Midler,
when I went to see her in concert, saying oh,
miss Midler, I knew every note of every song, of
(21:48):
every arrangement on every record, Please let me play for you.
I was flowing to La I taught Bett's band the
Harlett's material, and then in walks Bette Midler and I'm
just like a year and a half away from having
her posters on the wall, and I'm watching her rehearse,
and she calls out a song to the band that
she wants to do from her third album, but the
music is in on their music stands, and one of
(22:09):
the hard lets goes over to Bet and says, you
see him back, and Steve Harrington moment very and Bet
said do you know how to play? No gesturing, And
I got to actually walk up to a stage and say, oh,
miss Midler, I know every note of every song of
every arrangement on every record, Please let me play for you.
So my dream came true. I hadn't even turned eighteen
and you're seventeen. Yeah. And because she's a frugal gal,
(22:32):
she said, you know, stick around. I could use you,
but instead of putting me in a hotel, she put
me in her guest room of her rented house that
she was staying at. So and it wasn't even it
wasn't even a guest house in the backyard.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
La.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I was living with Bete Midler suddenly for the Maize.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Crisis to Bette Miller's house.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, which was was sort of the same material, only
only the right person was singing at her piano. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
What is about her that you sustained? I mean, obviously
people have these batteries, these linkages between people, and you
have this profound relationship with her. What was it about
her that you admire the most?
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Well, I just love the way she performs, as anyone
who's seen her does. You know the fact that she
does it all, that she can be so funny and
then heartbreaking, and how she can turn it on a dime,
how she can change you know, she's just so in
command and she's just the greatest.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
She's the opposite of what my friend said about Chicago.
My friend said that a famous actress came in she
did the piece to play Roxy in Chicago, and in
that cycle of famous dames that came into the show,
and he said, she walks in and she leaves, and
everyone's sitting there quietly, and he turns to me and goes,
she can't sing, she can't dance, she can't act. She's
a star. Well that can awesome, which as bad as
(23:49):
the opposite. She can sing and dance and act.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yes, And we have a similar personality of you know,
like the title of my book, never mind the Happy
that comes from my mother. One New Year's Day, my
sister said, ma, I want to be the first to
wish you a happy and healthy New Year. And my
mother defined judaism when she said, never mind that happy.
(24:12):
So that's in.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
My where'd you grow up again?
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Jersey in New Jersey?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Right over there? Yeah, over there?
Speaker 2 (24:18):
And so Bet had had her father was a similar
kind of personality, and we both just clicked that way
and argue that way. You know, we have a real
brother sister relationship.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Was she right a lot of the time? What did
she be alone on you being by most of the time?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Well, you know, her taste is impeccable, but like I
mentioned before, she's always saying what else you got? She's
just always second guessing? Was a cover every best Even
that night on the Johnny Carson show. On the final one,
she asked the band that afternoon, what's his favorite song?
And they all said, Here's that Rainy Day? And I
could see the wheels turning in her. Even then, she
was still doubting, should we really do one for my baby?
(24:58):
And sure enough, during that show, she starts singing Here's
that Rainy Day with him, and he starts singing with her,
which is a whole other magical moment. But I'm backstage
at the piano because the next thing that's gonna happen
is one for my baby, and I have a little
TV monitor on the piano, and I'm having this schizoid
(25:18):
conversation in my head. On the one hand, I'm going,
this is magical. What's happening between Bett and Johnny Carson?
And he's singing, and he's singing in key and she
the piano players not coming in. Should I join in?
The other part of my brain is coming She's spoiling.
She knows if this moment happens, she's not gonna have
to sing the song that we've planned. And I'm like, no, no, no,
I should I should start banging away to make it
(25:40):
stop or something. But I'm a piano player, I'm a companist.
I start joining and so I actually got to play
for Johnny Cartson singing Here's that Rainy Day. And luckily
they came back and said, okay, we're still set for
the big ballad at the end. So it all worked out.
But she's always wondering, what else, what else.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Could it be? You did a piece with Peter I
did how We're going to describe it in a minute.
But when I was in college in gw in Washington
for the first three years, one woman I dated, she
really got me turned onto a lot of you know,
what would be pretty eclectic music for somebody from my
background who was smoking pot in the woods and massive
people were listening to Beatles, Zeppelin, Stones, who you know,
British Invasion, rock and roller in my mind know Clapton
(26:20):
and Moody Blues and so forth. And she turned me
on too, Peter Allen and it's Live with Peter rolland
and Boss Skags I never heard of, and they turned
me on him, who I love. And it always takes
me back to Hugh Jackman and here he's playing Wolverine
and all the psychotic craziness and murderers and superheroes, and
he plays Peter Allen on broad I find that rain. Yeah,
(26:42):
it is breathtaking. Describe how you met him and how
you we were involved with him.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
That was another out of the blue. I got a
phone call from Craig Zayden and Neil Meren. Craig was
going to direct Peter Allen was doing a Broadway concert
called Up and One that was basically just a concert,
but it had a kind of a story of his
life through line. And they had heard about me from
this cabaret and Bette Midler's circuit and they called me
(27:08):
out of the blue and said, you want to be
Peter Allen's musical director for the show. I was that time.
I was ripe old age of nineteen and I was
was my first Broadway gig. You mentioned Clapton. I have
to tell you I have a Rob Reiner Clapton story
on the movie The Story of Us with Bruce Willis
and Michelle Pfeiffer. Rob said, buddy, Eric Clapton's going to
(27:28):
write songs for the movie, but would you still help
figure out how to turn those songs into the underscore?
Speaker 1 (27:34):
And I was like work with Clapton Okay, let me
get back to you.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah, but when you talked about Rob patients in patients
at the one scoring session, there's a song that Clapton
wrote that runs throughout the movie, but in the end titles.
We did like a full record version of it. So
I had a string section and I had this one
evocative chord, a very film noir chord over. It seemed
to fit the lyric and the chord that Clapton had written.
(28:00):
But it's what we call a C minor major seventh chorded.
But the first time the strings played it, it sounded
a little odd because it can be almost discordant.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Let's say yes.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
And Rob immediately went what's that? And you know, he
starts rubbing that one side of his head and that
would only like one side of his head would sweat.
He said, what's that? I said, just let me work
with the strings for just a minute to get the
right balance. And so I'm working for a few ten
twenty seconds morning He's still like, what is that?
Speaker 1 (28:26):
What is that?
Speaker 2 (28:27):
And I'm still trying to get my nice chord in there.
And then Eric clapped and strolled out to the conductor's
stand and said, you know, Mark those chords at measure
thirty three. I think they're just too attractive. And I
had to tell the whole orchestra, I said. I was
just told to get over it, and the nicest way
I've ever possibly heard, the classiest way.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
To they're just too attractive.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Which was true. It just meant it's calling your ear
too much to it. You're calling too much attention.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
To sleeping out. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Also, they him and Rob came over that house once
to work out stuff. I was also working on the
South Park movie at the same time, and I need
to talk about in tense deadlines. I had to finish
what I was writing to get to the orchestrator and
Rob and Eric Clapton were just talking, and then Eric
Clapton had his guitar out and I could tell he
kind of wanted to just sit and jam with me,
but I had to get back to the South Park
(29:20):
and I actually had to tell them both to get lost.
So my big chance to jam with Eric Clapton, I
threw it away.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Well. Speaking of the South Park movie, which I am
the president of the Film Actors Guild, bag big banner.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Of that was the second movie.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yesaid was that that was the.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Team America, which I got I got.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Fired from you got fired?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Why Well, I'd done South Park bigger, longer, and uncut
and had the greatest, greatest experience.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Of my life with the two of them.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Yeah, I mean, and Trey Parker is you know that
word that gets thrown around genius.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
He is a genius.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
He can do it all right, music, lyrics, act right,
wrecked and extremely open and collaborative. So when I got
involved through Scott Rudin on this on the South Park movie,
I suddenly was the oldert like professor who would help
Trey realize his vision of creating a musical and that
(30:17):
that was just the greatest year maybe I'd ever had
it in the movies. And then so they know, a
few years later, he asked me to do Team America
and in the same way, never came to listen to
what I was writing, didn't even come through the orchestra sessions.
He just trusted me. But then like on the third
after the third day of the recording sessions, the music
editor played him what I'd been recording and he didn't
(30:40):
like it. He said, oh, it's too specific to the movie.
I wanted to be like wallpaper music that they he
felt like those top Gun movies just kind of got
library music, you know, that was just being like rolled
out that it wasn't specific enough to the movie. And
so I had the most awkward meeting of my life
where they were like, we want you to start over,
(31:03):
but we need it in ten days. Do you think
you can do it? And not only did I not
know if I could physically do it, but emotionally I
was so devastated. I was like, if I have to, okay,
but I think I'd rather just crawl into a hole
and maybe you get someone else to do it, which
they did, which didn't make Scott Ruden very happy. And
(31:23):
Scott Ruden put me under house arrest and I had
to stay in my house in LA for a full
month until other people came in, wrote new music, It
got recorded in case I was needed to be brought
back in. I wasn't allowed to leave Los Angeles and
I was prisoner of the house. So that was devastating
having just had the most glorious experience with them. But
(31:46):
that's you know, show business. That's the a lot of
the points into yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Like they say you got ten days and he writes
the score one of the most legendaries.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
In ten days only, I was the guy who they
fired and got. I wasn't Harry Goldsmith. He wrote it
in ten days. Yeah, maybe I could have pulled it off,
but I was just devastated and I just didn't think
I could.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Let me ask you this because I've made films, and
I made, you know, bigger studio films and starred in
those films. I haven't seen them. Well, I don't assume
that at all. But music can make such a profound
of course, what I want to go is, fellas, if
the music isn't anything cut it, Yeah, no music.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Jerry Goldsmith had a quote that he used to say
to them, Fellas, I could put makeup on the corpse,
but I can't make it breathe, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Right, And don't you do you feel that sometimes people
are saying to you, I want more music here, you
know whatever?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, yeah, I had all sorts of experiences like that.
But yes, you know, the music. A movie without music,
it's just it's even the greatest movies you could watch.
And if you're watch without music, there's just it's naked.
It's naked. Yeah, it's dry. And then they art is
knowing where and when not to put music and you
know how much.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Are you usually right about that? Or the director of
both with the editor. It's a collaboration.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
I talk in the book about how on Sleepless in
Seattle there were two spots that I thought really should
have music, and Nora Efron was like, I don't think so,
but you know, go with your instinct and write it.
And when we went to record the music at that point,
she her personality had changed over a few weeks and
I was seeing another side of her and at the
(33:27):
recording sessions when I recorded those two pieces of music.
When we were finished, she said, it's very nice music. Mark.
I just wish I had somewhere in the movie to
use it.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Jonathan Demi once said to me we were shooting him, but
he goes, that's a great idea, he said, just not
for this movie.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Yeah, well there you go.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Thank you, telemen.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
So those are two spots in that movie that doesn't
have music that my agent says sometimes he teaches film
score classes and he uses those two moments to give
to the students to say, here are two moments that
really could use music, but don't have it, so write music.
There and that way when you send it off to
a producer and all they get to see a movie,
they know that, you know, they already seeing movie stars
(34:07):
and they're hearing music on here. So I'm very happy
for those students who are getting to write the music
that I wanted.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Are you someone who your proximity to the film business
and your intimate relationship with the film business on this deep,
deep level of writing this music? And then when you're
away from that, you don't watch movies, You don't watch
TV or do you watch programming?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
No?
Speaker 1 (34:26):
I watch what do you watch?
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Well? I married an avid sports man, so now I
watch football and is an avid sportsman. What would you
call an avid sports fan?
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Fan fan not man fan?
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Yeah, I watched sports. If my father was alive, he
wouldn't believe that when I think of when I used
to walk into the house and you'd be watching football
with his friends, and I would just quickly go into
my little room and my piano. I had no interest
in football or anything. But now I go to Knicks games.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, he's a sports nut. Yes? What is he like everything?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Anything that involves a sphere being thrown or kicked?
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Violence?
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yeah? Yeah, he loves it all. It's a real odd couple.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yeah, you know, I take one and look at him.
He's like a villain in a Bond film. This guy,
he's so good looking and so built, and I've really
learned to love it. I really do love watching it all.
Composer and lyricist Mark Shaman. If you're enjoying this conversation,
tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the
(35:30):
Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get
your podcasts. When we come back, Mark Shaman tells us
which of Rob Reiner's films he will always stop to
watch on TV and why it's the most meaningful of
his fourteen scores for the late director. I'm Alec Baldwin
(36:05):
and this is Here's the Thing. Mark Shaman has written
and arranged music for countless artists such as Mariah Carey,
Bette Midler, Harry Connock Junior, and Billy Crystal. Whether for
late night TV, award shows, concerts, or a Christmas album,
Shaman adapts to the task at hand. I was curious
(36:27):
as a musician what differences he found between working with actors,
singers and comedians.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah, the thing that makes me think of is I
did Sister act and Whoopy Goldberg, you would maybe say that, well,
you're saying about Billy, you know. And when and then
when we got together this sing it turns out she
started singing like a white folk singer.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
She was singing like that. I was like, really, yus.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Not what you would expect to come out of Whoopi Goldberg.
But I put together two friends, Charlotte Crossley and Jennifer
leewe Us, who are very funny girls, who were both
harlets with Bette Midler and our gregarious, funny, great girls,
and I knew, well, I kind of figured if I
put them together with Whoope and we rehearse the songs
(37:13):
for Sister Rac with her, we'll just laugh and we'll
laugh and we'll have a good time and then she'll
just forget about being nervous about singing. And that's exactly
what happened. We had a great time, and when by
the time it was time to record and film, well,
we didn't give a fuck anymore about like all the
other things that she might have been thinking of. We
were just laughing. We were just had such a good time.
(37:36):
And of course you've record a lot of takes, and
you take a note from track one, and you take
a note from track four. But that's a whole other thing.
But yeah, it's really a matter of yeah, coaxing sometimes,
So whoever you work without thean sonia, Ah, now.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Your first sociore and into Broadbay was what.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Well. I wanted to write Broadway shows when I was
in my twenties and but couldn't get a break. And
me my colyricist and at that time life partner Scott Whitman,
we were trying to write shows but we just couldn't
get in there. And it was the time of the
big British musicals and and then my movie career fell
on my lap and we were suddenly living in la
(38:15):
for a year. But then luckily, yeah, I mean I
wanted to be Broadway, and then the movies fell on
my lap, and then the entire nineties I was scoring
one movie after another. And that was the other reason
why the South Park movie was the greatest gig ever,
because not only was it onto itself the greatest gig,
it suddenly put my name back in the mouths of
(38:36):
the Broadway crowd. And a woman named Margot Lyon had
just gotten the rights to Hairspray, the John Waters film,
and everyone she went to the said, who do you
think should I should get to do the score for Hairspray?
And everyone had just come from the South Park movie
and said, you got to.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Get Mark Shaman.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
You got to get Mark Shaman. So that movie led
me to the absolute dream come true, which was writing Hairspray.
And because Scott had moved to LA with me, and
I had really torn him away from the theatrical community
of New York, and I was scoring one movie after
another and Scott didn't have much to do. Scott is
quoted as saying in La he learned how to drink
(39:15):
and drive. Uh. So, when Margo said, you know, I
would you like to write the music for Hairspray's like yes,
And she said who would you like to write the lyrics?
I said, well, me and my partner Scott, and I
won't do it unless it's me and my partner Scott.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
And they acquiesced.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Well, she said, well, I don't know you guys. As
a lyricist, I don't know. And I said, well, the
South Park movie it says additional music and lyrics, but
you know, music by was what most people have ever seen,
and she didn't, and also she was scared of it.
I think of hiring a couple, you know, like what
happens if they fight? But yeah, So luckily she said,
(39:53):
you know, would you write some songs on spec for
me to hear? And I was like sure, and so
Scott and I immediately started working and we The four
songs we wrote are a Good Morning Baltimore, Welcome to
the Sixties, big Blonde, and Beautiful and I Know Where
I've Been, which are still now kind of the four
tent poles of that musical, which is shows you what
(40:14):
a fairy tale it was in that Usually the first
songs you write for show get discarded along the way
as you start to discover what's needed. But the first
four songs we wrote are still like those strong Snakes ones. Yeah,
and then that just became just the greatest dream come true. Well,
we wrote a musical with Marty Short Marty Short, Fame
(40:36):
Becomes Me, which was a one man show but with
a cast, and I was on stage within and that
was a thrill, although it was tough because it was
the kind of inside baseball kind of thing about how
Broadway was full of all these one person shows, and
so Marty was spoofing the idea that he had a
one person showing him for all the trials and tribulations
(40:59):
of his life, because he's the happiest man on earth,
so it's not really true. And then catch Me if
you Can was the next one Scott and I did,
which you know.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Was based on the film Yeah who Comes Ringing Your
doorbit of Spielberg ring the bell or.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Something, and that in this case, Scott and I we
went to the drama bookstore to get a copy of
Stage Door. Someone had asked us this if we would
be interested in writing musical stage Door, which is the
old Katherine Heppern movie The Catada Lizar and Bloom. I
hope all your readers and listeners will now you now
did as far as I'm coogle stage Door and you
(41:33):
just can do anything. So so we went to get
that play, but there was a coffee table book out
elsewhere in the drama bookstore of Catch Me if you Can,
about the making of it. And Scott looked at that
and the pictures of pan Am stewardesses and Leonardo DiCaprio
and all the different disguises, and he said, I'd rather
write a musical of that. And because I knew Steven
(41:55):
Spieople only through Marty short Christmas parties. One year, he
brought his clarinet and I played hanakkah ohonnakah while him
and Cape capp Shaw he played the clarinet and she danced.
So I felt like I had worked with him. So
I asked Marty to give me like a phone number
or email or whatever, and I just wrote Steven Spierberg directly.
(42:19):
I said, we have this idea to do a musical
of Castrini if you can. So I completely didn't go
through agents or lawyers. I just went straight to the
man and we got the rights. And how did that go?
It didn't have a long run. It gets done all
the time now and I go to see it. We
had this idea that it was Frank Junior was putting
(42:39):
on his life as if it was a television variety
show from like nineteen sixty four, which was still the
peak time of like Show Business on TV where Sinatra
and Judy Garland, where it wasn't cheesy yet it wasn't
like you know the bad seventies, you know Brady Bunch
variety kind of shows. But we couldn't transplant it on stage.
(42:59):
We never quite figured it out with our collaborators. So
we all adore, but we just didn't quite this flay
didn't completely rise. I mean, I'm very proud of the score.
I love it very much, and it gets done all
the time now, and I do go to see it,
Scott says. When we go to see it, sometimes it's
like a football coach bringing us into the locker room
after the game and showing us footage of the game
(43:21):
with a laser point, or going that's where you went wrong.
If we got a chance to do it again, I
think I would know how to like fix it, make
it or even better. But it's still good. Who directed
Jack O'Brien right.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
But the question also is what I'm told I don't
know this is intimately maybe as you do. But my friends,
I think said to somebody said to me that there's
only four new musicals on Broadbay this year. What's you know,
whither the Broadway Musical the New Broadway Musical, because they're
going to have four in that every show that's on
is going to get nominated. They got four slots.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
If only I had because we did some like it
hot it was three years ago and we were just
at the beginning of coming out of COVID and although
we smelled like a hit, everyone thought we were this
big hit and we ran for a year, but it
should have run for years and years and years.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
But it's so expensive. Now, yeah, that's your critique of
because I would ask you, what's your critique of brought
right now?
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Well, the last two shows I've done, people were really
enjoying them, but we couldn't make enough money to pay
what it cost the weekly. The money is just the
math as.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
I wonder why they can't find a way to bring
that down.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
I don't know, And it's only going to keep getting
worse because if you talk to the actors or the
stage crew, they're like, you know, and the orchestra, and
they're like, yeah, you understand why they're fighting for what
they want in the next deal. But somehow it's just
just blown up out of proportion that there is no
kind of middle. You know, if you look at classic musicals,
they only ran for like a year and a half,
(44:48):
like The Music Man or whatever.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
It wasn't like now where.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
They have to if they don't run for ten years,
it's considered a flop.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Everyone's chasing it.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
It's just impossible. So not many get to grabbed that
brass ring the way that you could back in the day.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Who are people out there that you admire? Alfred Newman,
you know, John Williams, any contemporaries. I mean, who's somebody
now that you like? You think there's work is good.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
There's a great guy. The last time I was nominated
for an Oscar, I lost to Ludwig Gorenson for what
he had written for Black Panther, and I had written
for Mary Poppins' Returns, and I kind of thought maybe.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Black Panther, Mary Poppins.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
I thought, you know, it was my, it was my.
It was my seventh nomination. I thought this might be
like my Susan Lucci moment. But Ludwig one. But he's
a sweet guy and he's brilliant. He just did Sinners
he so he's someone I very much admire. And he's
also so sweet and so nice and just such a
great guy.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
So there were pieces in the classical repertoire that I
just weep. Saw Organ Symphony, whatever, there's the alot of
thing a Dvoreshoch, New World whatever. I'm a classical nut
are the pieces you've written or the pieces you've been
involved the movies and scenes with the picture in the
move music match which brings you to tears like they're
really powerful to you.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
The one that and obviously now more than ever is
the American President with Rob Reiner, and god knows, because
of what's happened in America, all these things converge to
make that piece of music. I got to write for
that movie very very meaningful to me, and I'll.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Try not to start weeping, but.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
It was a beautiful movie and I got to write
music that was just full of the respect that one
used to have for the American President. Yeah, exactly, And
it works so well. And it's one movie of mine
that I could if I channel hop up across it,
I'll stick with it.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Michael Douglas was phenomenally phenomena.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
So yeah, So the music for that one is meaningful
to me on so many levels. So and I did
you know, I did a concert last year and see
and Diego and I'm at the piano and kibbitzing with
the audience. But for that one piece, I did get
up and conduct the orchestra, which is a very hard thing.
To do conducting an orchestra and making them go at
the speed that you want. That's a real talent that
(47:15):
I don't really have because I'm in a companist. So
I let them lead, which you can't do because suddenly
it gets much slower. But I was conducting it to
the film the main title, so I had to keep
them going. And now, of course, I mean, I'm lucky
that I had this moment with Rob in a Sedona.
There's a Sedona Film Festival and I was an honoree
(47:38):
one night, and Rob was the honoree the next night.
And for the Rob night, they showed this beautiful pristine
print of the American President, which I had seen on
TV a lot, but I'd never seen it up on
the screen again. It had been maybe twenty years. So
I just watched this beautiful movie and got to hear
this music. I got to write for it, and it
(47:58):
was so grateful to Rob Reiner for everything, and especially
this movie and especially what it's about and what had
just started happening with Trump, and it just all bubbled up.
And so my job was to then go to the
mic and introduce Rob. The audience knew me from the
night before, and it was my job to introduce Rob,
(48:22):
and I was, you know, I had a whole bunch
of jokes. I was going to crack. And I got
up there at the mic and just started sobbing, just
absolute couldn't get a word out, just stamping my feet.
All I tried to say was I'm so grateful to
Rob Reiner and and so the tears had to just
completely speak for me.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
My thanks to composer Mark Shanmon. I'll leave you with
a piece of Shaman's score from Rob Reiner's The American President.
I'm alec One. Here's the thing that's brought to you
by iHeart Radio.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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