Dan Okrent: The demons that possessed him and that required in a way his alcohol dependency and such, were demons that could shape his art. Because he could see it as art and not just of the pain of having a mother that he couldn't abide.

Barry Joseph: Welcome to Matching Minds with Sondheim, the podcast. I'm your host, Barry Joseph. Today is a special episode in our Writing Sondheim series. Last time the subject was Richard Schoch and his marvelous book, How Sondheim Can Change Your Life. Today we'll direct our attention to Dan Okrent, and his newly released book: sondheim: Art Isn't Easy. Dan is an American writer and editor. He's best known for having served as the first public editor of the New York Times newspaper, inventing Rotisserie League Baseball, which I didn't learn about until just this moment, and for writing several books such as Last Call: the Rise and Fall of Prohibition. And of particular importance to me in August, 2022, he wrote The New York Times Review of Mary Rogers biography Shy. Dan, welcome.

Dan Okrent: Happy to be here. Barry, how are you?

Barry Joseph: So good to see you. We've spent so much time on emails. It's rare that we get to actually see each other in person like this, even though it's on line.

Dan Okrent: Yeah. But three, three years of email. And I think it's worth saying , off the top, this book probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for Barry. And an email that he sent to me in July of 22.

Barry Joseph: Dan, that is very sweet of you to say, and I wanna talk about that, talk about our relationship and how it informed the process of both of our books. But before we start, to experiment with you. Are you willing to kind of play a word game with me?

Dan Okrent: We'll see.

Barry Joseph: That's fair. The words are simple. They're just, our names. Dan and Barry. And what I wanna do is just say your name. And then all I'm asking you to do in response is just say mine. And let's just go back and forth three times and just see what happens. And I'll start if you're game. Are you ready? Dan?

Dan Okrent: Barry.

Barry Joseph: Dan.

Dan Okrent: Barry.

Barry Joseph: Dan.

Dan Okrent: Barry.

Barry Joseph: This is such a moving moment for me Dan. That we are together now at this point, three and a half years after we first met with your book about to come out next week. Is that correct?

Dan Okrent: March 17th is the official publication date.

Barry Joseph: And to having been a small part of your journey to get to this point, it's been such an honor and it has been remarkable for me to have a, relationship with someone else who was also running a book about Sondheim while I was writing my own. And as you just mentioned, we first connected in August, 2022. I went back and found the email. You want me to hear what you wrote me?

Dan Okrent: Please.

Barry Joseph: He said first thanks for the kind words about my review. 'Cause I wrote you saying how much I love the review. And then I was asking you about your new book, 'cause you mentioned it in that review. And you said, my book isn't a full-fledged bio, but rather a biographical essay of sorts commissioned by Yale University Press. I've just begun working on it, but I'd be happy to be a whatever help I can on your project and I'll talk about the help you provided me. That was invaluable in a bit. But I wanna check in with you now and say three and a half years later, after you wrote that to me. What is the relationship between the book that's coming out in March with your idea three and a half years ago of a biographical essay of sorts?

Dan Okrent: I think it changed over time. I believe it has the elements of a biographical essay, but I ended up doing far more research than I had anticipated doing, which is my way. My books are all history. I, do an enormous amount of original research. I thought this time it's a short book. I don't need to do all that, but I couldn't help myself. So I spent hours, weeks, months in various archives. I interviewed 38 people, 34 of whom knew Sondheim personally. I interviewed his closest living collaborators. And so it ended up being much more of a biography, but not a: "he did this and then he did this biography". It's not a detailed moment by moment, year by year of his life. I mean, it's more thematic, and hitting the high points that I think ended up defining who he was.

Barry Joseph: When I had a chance to read the advanced copy, I was blown away. It's remarkable. It's the first comprehensive biography of Stephen Sondheim in 35 years, and it allows us to understand not only him in a new way. the first time that we can get a contemporary understanding of who he was. It's just magnificent. And as you mentioned, the research is deep. It's rich and it's full of insight. It helps us understand his work and also helps us understand who he is in a new way. It's definitely the next step in the foundation of us understanding who he is and what his work can mean to us in society. And the first time, we're able to look back at him since he's passed away, to get this perspective on his full life. It's really quite remarkable. And I wanna thank you for that

Dan Okrent: Well, thank you for those very kind words, Barry. What I can say is that I enjoyed every minute working on it, which is not the usual case with me and my books. It's a wonderful subject. And I think I got to places where nobody has been before in my research, and I hope in my analysis of who he was.

Barry Joseph: And I hope we'll get to talk about some of those today. But before we do, I wanna ask you in the few weeks before it comes out. How does this moment feel to you?

Dan Okrent: Well, there's a certain amount of apprehension before a book comes out, but I have to say, and I know this is gonna sound like horrible bragging, that the early response from people such as yourself who read advanced copies has been extraordinary. And in addition the very lavish and perhaps earned praise that you gave me, the two other things I would like to note. John Weidman, said, this is the Sondheim I knew. And James Lapine just this week sent me a note saying, "this is the best book ever about, Steve. And it tells me things about Steve that I never knew before." And so to hear that from-

Barry Joseph: Wow. Wow.

Dan Okrent: His two most important living collaborators and really the most important collaborators of the last 40 years of his life. I mean, I get chills even thinking about it, but if they could think that about my book, then I think I've done a good job.

Barry Joseph: Congratulations. I know as an author getting feedback from the people you spoke with, whose voices you have, the responsibility of communicating in a way that honors them and honors the subject, can weigh heavy on us. To have them feel like you did a good job. and done a job as remarkable as that, really kind of cuts to the core.

Dan Okrent: Yeah, it does. In those two particular cases, and one or two others, I agreed with both, , Lapine and Weidman. Lapine, whom I had never met before I interviewed him. John Weidman and I have been friends for 30 years, that I would show them how I'm quoting them. When I had a draft and in both cases they each had one small change. One thing that they said to me in the interviews that they would rather not include in the book,. But otherwise their candor, their openness, their honesty about Sondheim and about their relationships with him. I think they make the book more credible than it could possibly be in any other way.

Barry Joseph: Yeah. One of the things I want to do with you today, Dan, is ask you some of the my favorite questions that people ask me since my book came out last October. My favorite one was, do we really need another book about Sondheim?

Dan Okrent: Well, you know, there have been how many hundreds of biographies of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. And the good ones add to one's knowledge, and in my case, I'll let others decide whether it's good or not. But as you point out, it's been 35 years since Merle Secrest's definitive, to that point, biography. And I have to say, I was very relied at various parts of the book on the interview tapes that she gave to the library at Yale, and that you, Barry, told me about. I didn't know about them until then, which was just phenomenal. There was another 30 years of his life- 25 years of his life from the time he was interviewed by Secrest, that had not been addressed in a real serious biography. And then there were the research I was able to do that she was unable to do because, you know, various collections of letters, archives, I went to God knows how many archives, you know, didn't even exist yet. And there were people that, became involved in his life, after Secrest's book, who had never been interviewed. So I was able to take both her research and my research and do something that I think justifies it as a new and worthwhile biography.

Barry Joseph: And while you don't do it in any way that is sensational you are also able to address around his sexual orientation and around his drug use in ways that help us to understand him better and who he was in ways that Meryle Secrest could not talk about at the time or chose not to.

Dan Okrent: Right. I mean, she, she addresses a little but doesn't really go deep. The one aspect I particularly wanted to go deep into was his alcoholism. And in fact, because the publisher in an early piece of, promotional copy mentioned the alcoholism that created in some of the Sondehim corners of the web: alcoholism. What do you mean alcoholism? That couldn't possibly be. Except I have both John Weidman and James Lapine among many others. And there's no question Steve was an alcoholic. And I was really interested in the relationship between his alcohol use. And I say this as somebody who enjoys a cocktail or two myself. The relationship between his alcohol dependency or reliance and of his personality that almost required something like that, which is to say alcohol is a disinhibitor. And being disinhibited does wonders for certain creative types. And because I believe that Sondheim himself was extremely inhibited in many, many different ways, this was a way that he could open up and say things that he would not otherwise say... in his lyrics and in his music.

Barry Joseph: Many people who write about Stephen Sondheim are stuck with the challenge of the fact that many of us look at him as if he's a deity. And your ability to talk about his human side, I think helps us to ground his work that we love and admire so much, and also lets us find ways to connect with him as a person. So speaking about things like his alcoholism in a way that I, as I said, isn't sensational, but just being honest helps us as you describe, to understand him as a human being, like us, who was getting through life and figuring out how to, at the same time, do remarkable things.

Dan Okrent: Thank you for saying that. At the end of the book, I think. It's the end of the last chapter, but before the epilogue, I believe. The connection between his personality and the inhibitions in his personality and his upbringing, which was so complicated, and the work I think was best exemplified by something that he once said to his friend, Anna Quinlan. He said, I really do miss not having had a family. But he'd added, I suppose if I had had one, I wouldn't have had anything to write about. You know, he was asked, very late in life by an interviewer by Lori Weiner, who wrote the biography of Oscar Hammerstein II, his connection to Sweeney Todd. Which is a very important theme that runs through the book for reasons we can get to. But his answer was, "the difference between Sweeney and me is that I turned it into art". And I think that's absolutely right. The demons that possessed him and that required in a way his alcohol dependency and such, were demons that could shape his art. Because he could see it as art and not just of the pain of having a mother that he couldn't abide and so on.

Barry Joseph: And I want us to go back to that in a moment. Let's talk about his relationship with his mom. But before we do, let's go a little bit deeper into Meryle Secrest and that archive that you referenced in the beginning, that you credit me with introducing you to, and that you talk about being so valuable for you. So let's step back a moment and for those who don't know, explain who was Meryle Secrest, what did she do in 1990s, and what is it that you and I got to discover and mine to such great effect in such different ways in our two books?

Dan Okrent: Well, Secrest was a well established biographer. She had written biographies of among others, Sondheim's very close collaborator, and mostly friend Leonard Bernstein. He was in his mid-sixties, it seemed like the right thing to do, and he agreed to let her interview him and all of his friends with no holds barred at all. And she did a very thorough job. I don't know how many tapes it was, but many, many hours with him. , 20, 30, 40 hours.

Barry Joseph: 36 hours of interviews just with Stephen Sondheim.

Dan Okrent: It's astonishing. She did such a thorough job. She interviewed him for 36 hours over a course of many months. 36 hours of interviews, enable a good. Interviewer as she was, and is, to pull things out that he had probably never thought about before, that he had never said before. And then she leaves them to the library at Yale and makes it available to the rest of us. To you, to me, and to any other scholar or even any other person who just wants to know more about Sondheim's life. And then in addition, there were well over a hundred sides of cassette tapes, of interviews with his friends, and colleagues and contemporaries. They all exist forever. This is a moment in the mid nineties, frozen in time that ev anybody that she could get to, and she got to almost everybody who knew Sondheim, what they had to say exists for everyone. And then one adds to that, the material that I was able to find on my own as you did. And you get a three dimensional look at the person over a period of years.

Barry Joseph: And we are lucky to have it. And it has a very specific historical moment that allows for it. Traditionally in her work, Meryle Secrest only took notes. If she interviewed me, she would take notes. Right. But she wrote specifically in her follow-up book to this biography where she wrote about writing the biography, that she knew how much Stephen Sondheim would remember words and would hold her accountable to them. And she was concerned, I don't wanna say afraid, concerned that she would get a word wrong and he would call her on it and she couldn't back it up. So while she continued to take notes by hand. She decided for the first time to do audio recording with cassettes. And so what we find in Yale is both those audio recordings, but also her handwritten notes at the same time, and we can go back and find any moment that you love or hate from the biography and see exactly what was said and see how she chose to work it into the narrative that she created so beautifully.

Dan Okrent: Yeah, I think it's a kind of an object lesson in, in how to analyze somebody's work in creating a biography, because as you say, you can see what he said and you can see what she said relating what he said. And sometimes there's a little bit of a gap. One person that she didn't get to is Judy Prince. Hal Prince's wife, Judy, who was by his own admission, Sondheim's muse. And probably his very closest friend for a period of several decades. She doesn't give, didn't give, she's still alive in her nineties, interviews. In fact, at one point Sondheim says to Secrest, " well, Judy would know the answer to that, but she won't talk to you". She wouldn't talk to me either, but I did get her to confirm something that I had suspected from the Secrest biography. So in a way, I plunged new territory that was not even reachable by Meryle Secrest.

Barry Joseph: Would you share with us today what that was?

Dan Okrent: I opened the book with a brief prologue about how the book came to be and how I was reliant on many other sources, but specifically on Secrest's tapes. And there's a moment he describes when he invites her over to his house to play the first few songs of Sweeney Todd. And, , As most Sond-heads know, he liked to write in sequence. So he would begin with the overture and then move forward through the show there. And she said, Steve, I'm really not interested in horror stories, which is the way he had described it in advance. And he said, no, no, no, no. It's fun. It's a Grandingon. You'll, you'll love it. And she comes over, he plays the first few songs and she says, stop right now. This isn't Grandingon. This is the story of your life. And he says to Secrest. And she was right. I hadn't realized it until then, but then it stops. Secrest does not go further to say, what does that mean? So my book became the quest how is the story of his life represented in the story of a madman barber who likes to slit people's throats and collaborate with someone who's turning them into meat pies? Well, what it's about is revenge. And he did late in life in 2013, acknowledge that it was revenge, that Judy was talking about. And so playing that out through his work, through his life, through his relations, primarily with his mother, but to some degree with his father, and to a great degree with, various critics and producers and others who dismissed his work early on, he was getting even. There was a lot of getting even. And that shows up not just in Sweeney, but it shows up kind of throughout his work. Finally, I think the sweetest revenge is being the person you want to be and not worrying about it any longer. And I do think that he reached that point in his life where he was past that feeling of revenge. I say that there are, two arcs to Stephen Sondheim's life. One is the one that goes from alienation eventually to connection. The others from ambivalence to resolution. And in his late years when he wasn't producing much work and where the work he was producing was not of the quality of the work by his own acknowledgement that he had done earlier, it was partly because he'd achieved a connection, in this case, a man he loved and married and spent the last 17 years of his life with, Jeff Romley. And the resolution was knowing who he was, that he didn't have to be ambivalent anymore. He could express how he felt. So to those who say, that that art is created by the tormented. He was tormented, but then he wasn't tormented and that was a nice way for him to conclude his last years.

Barry Joseph: So Dan, I wanna go deeper into the alienation arc into connection, but before we do, let's go a little deeper now into revenge. We've just spent a little bit of time in our conversation with the Yale archives. Let's move over to the Library of Congress, which is another source for both you and I that gave us some tremendous insights in which your book, unlike mine, was able to explore something newly discovered that helps us get deeper into an anecdote we've all heard about, but understand it in a new way. So, Dan, last summer, the Library of Congress received from the Sondheim Estate a remarkable collection of materials from Stephen Sondheim. But that wasn't the first time Stephen Sondheim's work appeared in their collection. His work appeared in many other collections. They had one being Mary Rogers collection. And there is something that Sondheim heads like us discovered to our surprise, had been documented to give us a deeper understanding into something Sondheim often spoke about, about his mother, but we never had full documentation around. Can you give us some context about what it was we always heard from Sondheim and where that left us?

Dan Okrent: Now, one of the most famous stories about Sondheim, and as famous as it is because he told it over and over again, was something that he first told to Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times in 1994. When talking about his fraught to say the least relationship with his mother, Foxy as she was known, he said that he had received a letter from her in the late seventies when she had gone to the hospital for a minor procedure, the installation of a pacemaker actually, in which she wrote to him the kind of self dramatizing letter that characterized her. And he said "in the letter, she said, the only thing in life that I regret is giving birth to you". He said this over and over and over and over again. However, in the Mary Rogers papers, which were just opened up at the Library of Congress in the last couple years, the excellent Sondheim Scholar, Gail Leander Wright found a document which then she passed along to our friend, our mutual friend, Michael Mitnick, who passed it along to me with her permission in Sondheim was writing to Rogers. It was part of a conversation they were having about their mothers. In this correspondence, Sondheim tells the story of the letter to Mary, but quotes Foxy in a very different way, from which he had always quoted her before and even after. She did not say according to him in this document that he passed along to his dear friend Mary that Foxy said, "the only thing in life that I regret is giving birth to you." "It was the only thing in my life that I have guilt about is giving birth to you". And the difference between regret and guilt is enormous and his representation of it, so determinately as being regret rather than guilt, I think says a great deal about both parties to it. But particularly about him. At some level, he wanted the world to believe that his mother was a horrible person. So horrible that she regretted that he even existed, which is not what she said.

Barry Joseph: So I love that this letter exists. 'Cause it becomes a Rorschach test for many of us about who Sondheim was and his relationship with his mom. And I love that you dove into it in the book. So let me provide even more context for our listeners. This is a multi-page letter that is presumably a copy of the one he wrote to his mom. And what is clear from the beginning of the letter is that after many years of getting letters from his mom, she articulated things in a way that he had never seen before in print, but he knew in person. So it became a record of how mean she was to him. And so he is shocked that she has done this, and he's writing page after page saying, "now I can prove to others all the things they haven't always believed because you've now demonstrated in print". And after I think three pages of this, he says "Anyway, enough", I'm now directly quoting from the letter. For 35 years I've put up with the fury, the abuse, the self-pity, the hypochondria, the sanctimony, the reproaches and yelling and tears and scorn and disapproval and the endless lies and above all the hatred. Don't tell me it's love, it never was and it never will be. You love three things yourself, money and celebrities. They're all you've ever loved. And I'm sorry. After your letter, the one he's responding to, "I don't ever want to see or talk to you again." Really intense and it's in that context, Dan, that we hear what you just described, that he quotes his mom as saying, "the only guilt I can think of is giving you birth." And for many of us we thought, wait, like you said, guilt is not regret, but it's still, I find an odd phrase. The only guilt I can think of. She doesn't say she feels guilty, it's kind of confusing. But he then goes back and later on in the letter he says, " I can't expect love from you, particularly now that I know you resented my coming into the world at all, but pleasantness and maybe even a little gratitude wouldn't be outta place." So he's taken what he said, she said earlier, the only guilt, which I don't know how to understand, and he's now reframed it as his understanding that it means she resented him coming into the world. When people first saw this letter, many people thought, oh, was he lying? Was he being dramatic? And I don't know what to do with the word guilt. What we do know is that he understood it as resentment, so that that becomes my grounding. Right. And I think it's useful for what you did to say this distance between regret and guilt to explore that. Where I land is looking at the fact that wherever it was, he understood that his mom resented his coming into the world and that's the world he used in the letter. Resentment.

Dan Okrent: I think that's a very fair analysis of it. And, another interesting aspect of it, the intensity of those words you read about "I never wanna deal with you again". You know, within a year or two they were dealing with each other again. And at times in a very pleasant, agreeable way. And he would acknowledge, you know, she's funny, she's smart, and so on and so forth. His mixed up feelings about his mother that's a swamp that no one will ever get to the bottom of. It's impossible. But there's no question that his relationship with his mother was the most important in enduring and influential relationship in his life, and I believe it led to some of his greatest work.

Barry Joseph: Well said.

Dan Okrent: Thank you.

Barry Joseph: Moving on. Page 90 has one of my favorite photos in the book. It's the photo from when Stephen Sondheim was on the TV game show password. How did you get that photo?

Dan Okrent: I got it through the help of the wonderful Jane Klein, whom you know, who is a curator at, at the, museum of Broadcasting. And she had a very good relationship with Sondheim. And he was always interested in gathering evidences of his public life for this sort of multimedia scrapbook. If he appeared on television, he wanted the video. The one thing that he hadn't found, what Jane called the Holy Grail was his appearance on password with Lee Remick, with whom he had truly been in love. And this is after Remick dies, which was long after their, their romantic relationship. Remick dies, I think in the early, mid nineties, and this is around 2000. Jane finally finds it. She finds a kiniscope of the appearance on password, which shows him with Lee Remnick and where you get a sense of their relationship very vividly.

Barry Joseph: I love his appearance on password 'cause it uniquely gives us an opportunity to see Stephen Sondheim at play. My book is all about him and his relationship with play, but you actually get to see what does he like to play with, play against, be on a team with.

Dan Okrent: And he was very young. I think it's 1964, so he was in his early thirties. And you see this kind of shy, kind of awkward but engaging person who's having fun. And as you know, better than anybody alive games were among many other things were a great deal of fun for him.

Barry Joseph: And Dan, I think my favorite passage in the entire book comes from you writing about how Lee responded at one moment they were about to win, and I'm gonna quote it: " When they appeared on the television game show Password, she certainly looked like she was in love with him, her glowing eyes, and art and smile coming from somewhere beyond acting school". I love that touch.

Dan Okrent: Thank you very much. But it's real. I think if you look at the picture, you see it. This is a genuine reaction and a genuine regarding of somebody that she loves. I think it's inescapable. It was a really interesting relationship. You know, he, as I say in the book, he was still referring to her in the present tense two years after she died. Her presence in his life was enormous and meaningful. She was married at the time of their relationship. She eventually separated from that husband, and went on to a another and very happy life. But she and Sondheim remained close. And his regard for her, I think is very well demonstrated in the famous 1986, Lincoln Center production of Follies. When he insisted he wanted her to play, Phyllis. Remick was no singer. And on that great album of Follies, she goes off key, but he wanted her to play that role and it was an absolute insistence. And of course she was more than happy to do so. And Mandy Patinkin pointed out that at the end of that concert, where everybody inside Fisher Hall is going crazy about this fantastic concert they'd just seen. It's a really important moment the sense of Sondheim's position in terms of public regard. The one person that he embraces when he comes out on stage for the encores is Lee Remnick. And Patinkin said, you could see they were in love. And I think they were.

Barry Joseph: Nice. Of course, those who don't know, you can see this very game show appearance on YouTube. Just type in Stephen Sondheim and Password and you can make your own judgment about whether "those glowing eyes and ardent smiles were coming from somewhere beyond acting school." So Dan, I'm curious, as you were writing the book, did you make a decision about when you were gonna speak to an audience of Sondheim Insiders and when you were talking to people from outside the world who were being introduced to his world and his work?

Dan Okrent: That's the hardest thing. For whom am I writing? And I always try every book I've written to have one reader in mind. You know, it could be somebody I know. When I was the editor of Life Magazine, I added the magazine for a non-existent woman named Maryanne, who lived in Kansas City and worked in a veterinary office and had two kids named Buddy and Sis and her husband was in insurance business. Just so that I knew was addressing someone who was that person I was addressing with my magazine. And the same as with books. For this book, I couldn't find one person who fit that had to be interested in Sondheim to want to bother to read this book. I suppose you could conceivably be somebody who says, I don't understand why all my friends are crazy about Sondheim. I don't get it. Maybe I'll read this book. But basically, it is for people who have already been won over. Who are Sondheim fans. But they wanna know more about this person whose work has affected their life in some profound way. So it was really more toward them. And it's always difficult, you know, which things do you say that of course, they already know. How do you say it in a way that isn't insulting to those who already know? So that, that's just one of the hard things about writing, and I'm sure you went through the same thing. I do it on every book. So you find a way to get information in. It's not that in 1978, he wrote a show called Sweeney Todd. It's 1978 when Sweeney Todd opened, so you're not announcing something that somebody you know already knows, and that's obvious. You're putting it in a context.

Barry Joseph: For my book, I had the same challenge to figure out people's relationship with Sondheim as you did but I also had games and puzzles. So it's almost like I had two groups of people facing each other and I had to speak to both audiences at the same time. I had to keep the attention of the insiders, but never exclude the ones who were coming from the outside. And that kept me on my toes.

Dan Okrent: You did a very good job of it, I think. I think you balanced those two audiences. I was lucky. I really only have one audience. Simply people who are interested in the person and or the work of Stephen Sondheim time.

Barry Joseph: Thank you Dan. I find our books to be complimentary in many ways. We'll talk about what impact or not my book might have had on yours. They fit together very nicely and there's one point, for me, it was page 74 might be different in the final version where I just laughed out loud because. Well, I'll read it. "You wrote, Do I Hear a Waltz closed on September 25th, 1965. The only new Sondheim work the world would hear until April 15th, 1970, were dot-dot-dot you list a few songs. Well, almost half of my book could fit between those two sentences. Those five years from 1965 to 1970, which you're kind of suggesting maybe was dull or disengaged or he was failing at his musical side was so productive from him on the games and puzzle side. First, he designed his Murder Game in 1965, which impacted him throughout his life and was the high heyday of his games nights. Second, he created his. Last board game, the trilogy for Leonard Bernstein, the great conductor hunt. He created his first treasure hunt, the Halloween treasure hunt with Anthony Perkins in 1968, which would go on to be one of a dozen or more. And, and, and he was the founding puzzle editor of New York Magazine where he produced 42 cryptic Crosswords. That is a remarkable amount of material to produce in a short period of time, and that all exists between your two sentences. 'Cause musically, it's absolutely true and correct what you said, and yet both are writing about the same person.

Dan Okrent: Right. It is clear, from the record that Company was something that he was not really deeply working on, until very late in that period. He wrote that show rather rapidly. So he was kind of floundering, as a composer and a lyricist during that period. And maybe he was floundering because he was deciding to throw himself more fully into the world of puzzles and games than he ever had before. Of course, we both know, you know, better than anyone that he was always interested in them from the time he was a child. But maybe this was a point where he was comfortable enough in himself and comfortable enough financially because he was get getting those royalties from the three big shows that proceeded Do I Hear a Waltz, that he could, you know: I'm just gonna play some games for a while until I come up with something else to do in the world of music.

Barry Joseph: And for me, that's the big unanswered question. Sometimes when I give book tours and people ask me if I had a chance to interview Sondheim, what would I ask if I had one question? It's just that. During those five years, for example, was that him procrastinating from doing what he knows he wanted to do and what was expected of him in the world of musical theater by escaping into the world of puzzles and games? Or was it him finally getting to do what he really wanted to do? We'll never know.

Dan Okrent: We can't. On the one hand, that's one of the problems of biography, the things you can never know. On the other hand, it's one of the opportunities in biography. To take different pieces of information, and put it together in such a way that there's something suggestive, not definitive, but suggestive of what was going on in that period.

Barry Joseph: And your book suggests a theme that you mentioned earlier, his arc in his life from alienation to connection. That my book looking at puzzles and games also lands on. Where I talk about he used games to create moments of connection for loved ones in his life. Can you say more about that arc of alienation and connection. And let's explore how we both talked about the same thing, but did it in completely different ways.

Dan Okrent: In the case of my book the alienation is expressed in his general remove from other people, except for very dear friends from the first time we know him, which is really basically as a teenager yet to know him. From the testimony of others. He did have dear friends, but everybody else was held at arm's length. There's a letter he wrote to Bernstein on opening night of West Side Story when Sondheim just turned 27 saying, you know, I don't give friendship or receive it easily. This alienation persisted. People, the dear people in his life could make it through that wall, but that wall was very clearly there. His love life was one of constant change, a constant series of lovers, male umalthough. There were a couple women early on. Moving on from one to another. He never thought he was in love with any of them, and he said in public places and also, in private places and letters to his closest friends, that he thought he'd never be in love. And then he fell in love. First with Peter Jones in the nineties. And then second in the early two thousands and permanently with Jeff Romley. Whom he married.

Barry Joseph: And can you say more about how you reflect that, not just in his life, but how that shift from alienation to connection was reflected in his musical work?

Dan Okrent: Well, I think that the most obvious place is in Sunday in the Park with George. When in fact when Dot says "Connect George. Connect." And the separation of the artist and his work from his life that you see in Sunday In the Park with George at various moments when his guard was down, Sondheim would acknowledge that that was something he was very familiar with from his own life. Now he always insisted, as you well know, as everybody listening, knows that "no, my shows are not autobiographical. But in that particular case, he did say in one interview that it's something I know a lot about being an artist and trying to connect to the world. And the inability to do so. So in the first act of Sunday in the Park with George, we have the original George absolutely unable to do that. But in the second act, after much difficulty, there's a certain sense of connection arriving. And I think from that point forward there's a lot of attention to the whole process, I think in, Into the Woods you see that again, No One Is Alone. That phrase "No one is Alone" is not a phrase that Stephen Sondheim could have written 20 years earlier in his life. We're dependent on each other, and this was a longing he had that was finally fulfilled.

Barry Joseph: And going back to Sunday, he did acknowledge that another aspect of the show was autobiographical. He wrote about it in his book of collected lyrics, and occasionally he talked about it with press. But when he talks about the origins of the song, Finishing the Hat, which you talk about in the book, he acknowledged that back in 1965 when he was creating the game, I mentioned earlier The Murder Game for his friend Phyllis Newman. He went into a 11 or a 12 hour creative fugue all night designing this parlor game for her to make her feel better 'cause she'd been in a show that failed out of the city. And when she came back, he wanted to entertain her with it. That state of being in that creative flow is what he said he wanted to reproduce. In the song, Finishing the Hat, it's not about a painter, it's not about creativity in general. It's about. At that time when he was in that creative flow. But that creative flow was so that he could create a game so he could connect with his friends. And that's how it comes back to me about what connection was about. He played games and design games to deal with that struggle that you're talking about, Dan, how could he connect with people? How could he create safe environments, structured environments with the right people so he can create opportunities for 'em to connect with each other and with him? And so Finishing the Hat is a document in some ways of him having spent a time to use play and specifically a parlor game to connect with his friends. And that's what I talk about throughout my book. How he used games to connect with people and to help us connect with each other.

Dan Okrent: I think that's absolutely right. I think you allude to this in your book. That a game can also simply be a manner of introduction to somebody. Here's something we can do together. I can't have a conversation with you, but I might be able to play cutthroat anagrams with you. That's a way of evading the usual way we make connection with one another, to finding this very specific way that worked for him.

Barry Joseph: So Dan, you're the first to write about Sondheim after my book came out. I'm curious, did my work change or inform your book, if at all?

Dan Okrent: Well, it did. Oh, actually, to be honest, You did such a good job of explaining the puzzle and games of Sondheim, that I barely touched on it. As you of all people would notice. You know it. It comes up here and there, but is there a total of three pages about puzzles and games? No. I said, why would there be when we've got Matching Minds with Sondheim by Barry Joseph. That'll take care of that. Let me stick to the music and the words.

Barry Joseph: And I wanna return the compliment that you gave me earlier. You talked about resources that I made you aware of that informed your book. The Murder Game itself is documented in my book because you turned me onto a resource in Boston that actually had a six page typed letter from Stephen Sondheim to director Herbert Ross, that details how one could actually run your own murder game.

Dan Okrent: Wow. You know, the great joys of fortuitous connections that you make. In the course of research. I was dealing with the, the archives of the Boston University Library because of the papers of John Lahr. John Lahr the theater critic. And Sondheim had a long, contentious relationship. He was probably the one critic, maybe after Robert Brustein, whom Sondheim, you know, for 30 years after an offense of Lahr in 1979, he was still talking about that time that John Lahr did such and such. So I had to get to the Lahr papers. I needed John Lahr permission because he's still living and he has a restriction on, on his. So what I'm in touch with the Boston University Library to get those and I say, Hmm, who else is in the Boston University Library? One is Hugh Wheeler, you know, who wrote a couple of, , books for a couple of Sondheim shows. But really nothing interesting. But, oh, Herb Ross is there. Yeah. And Herb Ross was a friend of his and Herb Ross. He directed the Lincoln Center Follies. So let me look in Herb Ross papers and then well up comes this. I wouldn't have even occurred to me to bother with the Herb Ross papers, except I was already in the BU archives.

Barry Joseph: Remarkable. I could spend hours talking with you about how exciting it was to work with so many different research institutions and finding materials that it often felt like no one had seen for decades, if ever. And finding new ways to give it meaning out in the world.

Dan Okrent: Yeah, that was particularly true for me in the Arthur Laurents papers. Nobody's come along to write the Arthur Laurents biography. Arthur Laurents shows up in a lot of other people's work. Usually as a nasty son of a bitch, or as Mary Rogers called him "that little shit". But his true personality is reflected not only in his letters, but in the letters he received from others reacting to his. And that's where some of the most interesting stuff about Sondheim in the sixties, in the nineties, and in the ought's is. It's because of the Arthur Laurents papers, which are a goldmine for anybody writing about the Broadway theater between 1950 and 2000. He did so much on Broadway with so many different people. I was focused on his connection to Sondheim, but it existed with many, many others. He was a prolific letter writer and he saved everything, including everything he got from Steve, and that was invaluable.

Barry Joseph: Dan, a question I'm often asked is, did writing the book change what you thought or feel about Sondheim? And connected to that, I'm often asked or teach me something new about myself? And I'm curious where that lands for you.

Dan Okrent: What was new to me was his struggle. I knew he was a difficult personality, that even his closest friends would acknowledge, you know, well, Steve is like that sometimes, but then, you know, things would be fine the next day. But the degree it was a struggle to create the work, how much he despised writing lyrics. I knew he didn't like writing lyrics, but he despised writing lyrics. And he found it very difficult to be proud of his lyrics 'cause he thought of himself as a composer first. This was all revelation to me. I knew a little bit about it, but going deep on it said to me so much about who he was and the nature of his work. What did I learn about myself? I'm no genius. I mean, it's something that I knew long before. But to see, played out page by page, you know, minute by minute, day by day. As I was working on this book, the depth of his genius, the extent of his genius, showed me how mortal I am. Not that I didn't know it before, but this really underscored it.

Barry Joseph: Dan, I think I had the same response. I felt deeply humbled the more I got to know him and how his mind worked.

Dan Okrent: Exactly. Exactly the same.

Barry Joseph: So let's go back to where we started. We introduced our relationship to the listeners today about us meeting in August, 2022, three and a half years ago, because I wrote you a letter as a sign of appreciation to thank you for what you did and to learn about what is this book that you're working on. like many letters like that, there could be a few responses and that's the end of it. But something else happened at the end of that month. I introduced you to Michael Mitnick. And then the three of us did something that I think is rather remarkable that you and I, I think have been feeling over the course of our time together in this podcast, but we haven't made explicit yet. We did do it in our book however. In my acknowledgement I talk about not just Michael and you, but us. And you do the same. thought it might be nice to read first from my book, how I end my acknowledgement talking about us, and then I'll invite you to do the same. But before we do, I just wanna paint a picture in the mind of the listeners. Dan, Michael and I began an email exchange. As a result of our separate interests. Me writing my book on Sondheim Dan writing his book on Sondheim and Michael's role as one of the world's greatest collectors of Sondheim material. He knows, loves and appreciates Sondheim in a deep way and wants him and his work to be understood out in the world. So for Dan and I, Michael was someone who was always helping us figure out how to make connections, conceptually accessing resources out in the world and people. So we had an ongoing email exchange for the three of us where when I found something, I would say, Hey Dan, check this out. Dan would find something and say, Hey, look what I find. I think you could use this. And Mike would say, have you guys seen this? And we were constantly supporting each other in a way that I have never experienced before as a writer working on subject. And I felt like we were in grade school. It was like we were at the table drawing and I would say, Hey Dan, are you gonna use that? That purple marker? And he'd say, no, I'm done with it. You can use it. And Dan would say, are you gonna use the green? I need a green. And I would give it to him. And we were not competing with each other. We were supporting each other. And writing is such a solitary act and writing about something so iconic as Stephen Sondheim could feel so competitive. And that's the last thing that I felt in this email exchange and it became an endless source of not just information and connections, but the moral support that I needed in the challenge of what it's like to think, is anyone ever gonna care about this?

Dan Okrent: Barry, I agree with you entirely. I am always looking over my shoulder at other people who are doing work on the same subject that I'm doing work. And I remember in my book about prohibition, I would run into this couple people in the same archives. I say, oh shit, is he gonna beat me or am I gonna beat her? Will I be first? Does she know that? Do I tell him about this? And in this particular case, I had looking over my shoulder, David Benedict, who was authorized by Sondheim more than a decade ago to write the official biography. And I was saying, I gotta get mine out before Benedict. But in this case, I wasn't looking over my shoulder and worrying, will Barry Joseph have things that I wanna reveal or not? I said well, here, this is something that would be useful for Barry. Let me send it to him. And that sharing was a wonderful feeling.

Barry Joseph: So here at the end of my book, at the end of my acknowledgements, after I thank my family. I say lastly, there is the singular Michael Mitnick. From the very beginning, he offered his vast contacts, incomparable collections, deep knowledge of all things Sondheim. Whenever I hit a wall, he showed me how to build a door and encouraged me to walk through it. Together with Dan Okrent, shared a bulky year email chain that was a wellspring of inspiration, encouraging each other In our distinct but equally obsessive Sondheim pursuits. The end.

Dan Okrent: In my book, I used you guys at the beginning of my acknowledgements because you're the most important ones. , I mentioned how, when I wrote that piece for the Times Book review, my author Id mentioned that I was working on a book about Sondheim, and that was my way of letting the world of sand heads know. I'm doing this. Start taking your shots at me now. But, one of the people who wrote to me on the other hand was Barry Joseph as Sond-head who was in the midst of writing Matching Minds with Sondheim: The Puzzles and Games of the Broadway Legend. Barry was encouraging from the start and has been helpful all along the way. He also made two absolutely critical introductions. He told me about the Secrest tapes and he introduced me to Michael Mitnick. Without Barry, Michael and the Secrest tapes, this book would be much the poorer, and I think it's worth saying this book wouldn't exist.

Barry Joseph: You can't see my face listeners, but I'm blushing.

Dan Okrent: I can tell you he's blushing. I can see his face.

Barry Joseph: This is only my fourth book. Your book is what number for you?

Dan Okrent: Eight.

Barry Joseph: Have you ever experienced a writing community like this during one of your projects, and if so, I'm curious how it's similar or different?

Dan Okrent: A little bit, on a couple of my books where there would be people who were specialists in one aspect of my subject, who were very, very happy to help. That certainly happened in my book about immigration and eugenics: the Guarded Gate. It was true about The Last Call, my history of prohibition. , People very eager to share. I'm thinking of particularly of one scholar at Georgia State University, who was very helpful on the prohibition book. She had the specific subject in her dissertation was Jews and Prohibition. So I didn't need to do any of my own research about those people, specifically the mobsters who were very involved, you know, Meyer Lansky and so on, because Marni had done that research and she opened her files to me. Also in this book, I should add in the Sondheim book that there were, you know, Elaine Stritch's, biographer Alexandra Jacobs. Gave me transcripts of her interviews with Sondheim for her book about Stritch. Adam Moss gave me his original interview transcripts from his book about the creation of art and the art of work. And the work of art. And Mark Harris, the biography of Mike Nichols. , He too gave me raw transcripts of his interviews with Sondheim. I mean, the cooperation that exists when you're not head to head competitors is, is pretty wonderful.

Barry Joseph: You talked about intentionally mentioning the book in your review of Shy to kind of let the world know the Sondheim heads, the Sond-heads, you said, know and get ready to take their shots. But what we both wrote about in our book was not just Sondheim, but the people around them. And what a remarkable crowd they were. How would you characterize this community, especially in contrast with people you've spoken with for your earlier books and, and what ways are they different as a community, would you say?

Dan Okrent: As a community, there's the song in Merrily We Roll Along called "The Blob" about all these people, who are the people who write the books and write the plays and design the clothes, and who are the red hot center of New York. That was the world that Sondheim lived in. In the sense of the Creative Center of New York. The Blob was a group that in real life gathered around Leonard and Felicia Bernstein. And it was a glittering cast. I mean, if you want to write about, who were the most influential, important, or popular creative figures in the arts in the early middle 1960s? It's the blob. The way that I write it is it would take a much too long paragraph to list the original blobs' many members. You could construct a representative sampling with Mike Nichols, Lauren Bacal, Lillian Hellman, William Styron, Isaac Stern, Richard Avedon, and their various wives, husbands, and lovers. I mean, and that was just a fraction. That list could be quintupled and there would be names of equal familiarity from an equal range of artistic endeavors.

Barry Joseph: What are you hoping for for your baby as it now goes out into the world?

Dan Okrent: I'm hoping for it to be well regarded. That's the most important thing to me. That, that the people who read it say, that's good, or I learned something from this, or that was fun to read. And not expecting much in the way of sales. I mean, I would rather sell more than fewer, but that's okay if I don't. I'm not doing a lot of publicity, doing things like this for people I care for and who know my subject well. I'll be doing Terry Gross's radio show, which will be, that's the one big thing that I'm gonna be doing. Yeah, I want five years, 20 years from now and also next week people to say, yeah, that's really good. And that would be sufficient.

Barry Joseph: Dan, I wish that for you, and I think from my perspective, I think it's fair to expect it as well.

Dan Okrent: Thank you so much, Barry.

Barry Joseph: The last question I usually get, which is the one I hate the most, is, so what's next? And I'm not gonna ask that of you. Instead, I'm gonna ask, what will you miss the most from your time writing Art Isn't Easy.

Dan Okrent: Oh, I never enjoy the writing. And in fact, it gets harder as you get older. I'm about to turn 78 and I don't have my fastball anymore. So, like an aging pitcher, I have to use my mix of sly pitches that don't require the great muscle of fastball. I will miss the research I love. I think the great gift is given to people who write history or biography is the opportunity to find out everything about something you're interested in. I've been interested in Stephen Sondheim for more than half a century since I first saw the original production of Company in 1970. And okay, let's find out more about Stephen Sondheim. I will miss the opportunity to do that. Now, will I do it on an amateur basis? 'Cause I'm done writing books. This is my final book. I'm determined that that's the case. But I suppose I could pick up a subject and say I'm interested in hmmmm. then just go to libraries and read documents. Who knows?

Barry Joseph: Nice. Thank you, Dan, for joining us today. I wish you only good things as the world discovers in your book what I've already had the good fortune to experience. If we wanna follow you or learn more about this or your previous work, where can we send people?

Dan Okrent: I, guess the place to go to is www.danielokrent.com, which my daughter has assembled for me, and I hope it'll work.

Barry Joseph: Wonderful. Thank you listeners as well for joining us for Matching Minds with Sondheim: the podcast. If you can't wait for the next episode to drop, then please pick up a copy of my book and Dan's. Hit us up on the socials, Facebook and Instagram, and please comment and like the podcast on whatever platform you use. If you've heard me say this before and you haven't yet, I'm still speaking to you. Please do. It helps us out immensely. I would also like to thank everyone who contributed behind the scenes to this episode, the musical stingers composed by Mateo Chavez Lewis. Our line, producer Dennis Caouki, and the theme song to our podcast with lyrics and music by Colm Malloy, and sung by the one and only Ann Morrison, who created the role of Mary in Merrily We Roll Along. Until next time, remember. Someone is on your side. Especially when matching minds with Sondheim.

Dan?

Dan Okrent: Barry.

Barry Joseph: Dan.

Dan Okrent: Barry.

Barry Joseph: Dan.

Dan Okrent: Barry.