Episode Details

Marc Shaiman has spent nearly five decades at the center of American entertainment, composing and arranging for Bette Midler, scoring films like When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, and winning a Tony Award for Hairspray. Now the seven-time Oscar nominee has written a memoir, Never Mind the Happy, and he sits down with Patrick Pacheco to hold almost nothing back. Shaiman traces his unlikely origin story from underage piano player at Marie's Crisis to musical director for Midler, recounts the downtown creative explosion of Club 57 where he and longtime collaborator Scott Wittman first found their voice, and reflects on the Hollywood years that made him famous while Broadway waited. Along the way, he shares candid stories about Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep, Martin Short, Trey Parker, and Stephen Sondheim, including one story Sondheim himself asked him to sit on for twenty years. Shaiman also speaks openly about fear as a creative force, the complicated legacy of Smash on both television and Broadway, and what it means to call yourself a pessimist while living a life that keeps exceeding your wildest expectations.

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