Two "Mystery" Films

Two "Mystery" Films Mar 10, 2017 4:15:54 GMT

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Post by Salzmank on Mar 10, 2017 4:15:54 GMT

Mar 10, 2017 3:34:22 GMT marshamae said:

Stephen Sondheim is very fond of games and it shows in Last of Sheila. It's the kind of cleverness that sometimes gets in the way of great art but is my cuppa tea .

As it is mine, for better or worse.

A story about Sondheim that I love is about a birthday gift he once made for Leonard Bernstein. It was a board game , the goal of which was to end up face to face with Bernstein at either his studio or his home. Bernstein was notoriously hard to pin down, always late and overbooked. He alSo had an irascible Secretary, Helen Coates , very possessive and jealous, who tended to prevent people from seeing him. The game consisted of paths made of squares leading to Bernstein , and cards with various barriers, ( Lenny has a dentist appointment, miss the next two turns. Or Lenny has taken up flamenco dancing . Go back 6 spaces in cha cha time.) in the center ,blocking all paths to Lenny was a spinning figure of Helen Coates which had to be passed . If it spun toward you you had to go back.

It's funny , sharp, a little angry , but very clever.

and then there's this

youtu.be/zRB-HP9rPGQ

The gift sounds exactly like Sondheim, from what I know of him. And the link--I'm probably looking too deeply into it, but, not only is it very delightful and clever, but it also shares aspects with the puzzle aspect that shows in The Last of Sheila: the focus on wordplay and meanings within meaning, clues that give greater significance to superficially simple works. It's a quality present in Sondheim's musicals too, of course, and it interests me as a writer: while I've never written a musical, I have written both poetry and detective fiction, and it seems to be the same part of the brain that inspires both!