Daniel Okrent

And I believe that that would be a very short version of much of Stephen Sondheim's life.

Even though it is not necessarily a beloved song by Sondheim fans, I think they...

We admire it and treasure it because it was so important to him.

His collaborator, John Weidman, who had never written a Broadway show before, Pacific Overtures, and then collaborated with him on two other shows.

He said to me when I interviewed him that Steve cried at the time he wrote it.

But he was still crying about it 40 years later.

There's something in that that you need to pay attention to.

And I think that what I pay attention to is the outsider trying to be in.

I guess they are.

I may have overcomplicated them because I do so much research.

I go so deep and I find things that inevitably lead to complication.

But it is true that in the theater community, that emotions are on the surface.

And even if you're trying to hide the emotions, the fact that you're trying to hide them are on the surface.

It's a very volatile world.

And so the people I'm writing about in this book, not just Sondheim, but also Prince and Bernstein and so many others, not a lot of easy personalities.

You love Sondheim's music as much as I do.

So it's great to share this with you, Terry.

I'm very happy to be here.

Well, Epiphany, this horrifying and overwhelming song near the end of Sweeney Todd, I had listened to and been impressed by, I don't know how many scores of times, but when I was doing the research and listening carefully, that's when I realized that everything we've heard before in that show comes back in very brief snatches in that one song.

It's all tied together.