Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Playwright whose elegant plots, scorching one-liners, and sympathetic characters made him one of the most successful writers in American theatrical history.
On the island
Eight records
Original Broadway Cast of Guys and Dolls
The first piece of music I thought was such an intricate and new sound in Broadway music.
Columbia Jazz Band conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas
It reminds me so much of New York.
A Foggy Day in London TownFavourite
I picked this song and this particular rendition because there are three of my very favourites, my loves, in this life. One is Fred Astaire, the other is London, and the other is Gershwin.
I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face
I thought it was a magical piece of writing on the part of Alan J. Lerner to take Shaw's play, Pygmalion, and put it to music.
Bob Thiele and George David Weiss
I had heard the song a number of years ago. And it didn't hit home until I saw Good Morning Vietnam with Robin Williams.
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
I love Mozart and there is so much to pick from... this is as great as any because I don't think he's written anything that was less than great.
One Fine Day (Un bel dì, vedremo)
Mirella Freni, Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan
I love Puccini. I don't listen to a lot of opera, but every once in a while something comes along that stays with you forever.
I'm not quite sure why I picked this one. Except that it surprised me when I heard it... I thought it was very Brechtian, very extremely pessimistic.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:38Is your humour because you always see the funny side of life, or does it just come out in the writing?
It's both. Uh it comes out in the writing by itself. Uh I'm not always looking for where it's going to be funny. It just seems to do that. Uh but I do have sort of an oblique Look at life I see things askew And the comedy comes out.
Presenter asks
2:58When did you first realize that you could make people laugh? How early on in your life?
Very young, in my early teens, and the one I made laugh most was my brother. and after my brother came some of my friends. The humor changed over the years, but I had a very good friend who also had a good sense of humor and it made us outsiders. We would go to a dance, for example, we were like fifteen years old, and just make jokes about the whole the whole evening, commenting on that girl or that fella. The trouble with it was we never got to dance with anyone. We didn't have as good a time as the other people had while we were making ourselves laugh.
Presenter asks
6:52How did your brother Danny know you could be a comedy writer, and why was he so confident?
He just knew it. He said to me at the age of I was probably 15 or 16, he said, One day you will be one of the, or not the, best comedy writer in America. Now, that's a pretty extraordinary statement to make to a 15-year-old boy who achieved a great deal of success. I think his encouragement helped me, but ... Um well, I'm not so sure if I would have done it on my own. I didn't know what I was headed for.
The keepsakes
The book
Because I said I'm not very pragmatic or very practical about things, I would need something that would not make me happier there, but would help get me off the island. So I would need a book called Uh How to Build a Boat. But since I don't think I could build the boat, I think my preference would be How to Swim Great Distances, except since I can't do that either, I would need a book called How to Swim, because I can't swim at all.
The luxury
Well, uh I was going to pick uh an ice pick to help open the coconuts, but I can't use that. I I say now. So I think I would pick um A musical instrument that I could learn, because I can't play anything, and I'd probably pick the harmonica, a large one, and that I could play any number of kinds of music.
Presenter asks
10:54At what stage did you think you could write a play, or did you always think that?
It was after about 10 years of writing for radio and then television when I said, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. I think I can do better. But I was very much afraid to make that first attempt because I had so many friends who wrote their first play that closed in two nights and never went back to it. I fought, fought myself night and day to make sure that this wouldn't fail.
Presenter asks
13:30Can we turn to your personal life? Your wife Joan died of cancer at 39. That laid you pretty low, didn't it?
Enormously. I had not known what grief was until that happened because it was so unexpected and she was such an extraordinary girl. I think one may tend to idealize the life of someone who dies young, but I never idealize her when I think about her. She just was an extraordinary woman. And when she died, um I was left in charge of my two children. One was both girls, one ten, the other fourteen and a half. And that really helped me get through my own personal grief. Um I think we helped each other, so it was uh an extraordinary time in in the three of our lives. It brought us even closer than we ever were.
Presenter asks
21:45You haven't enjoyed the same success in the UK as in the US. Why do you think that is? Is it frustrating?
Not really. It may have been in the beginning, but in the beginning I had a few plays that did that were successes. Baffle in the Park was fairly successful. The Odd Couple was enormously successful. But the musicals seem to have been more successful. They're playing our song, Promises, Promises, Sweet Charity, were all big hits in London. The plays weren't. I think one of the reasons may be I mean there may be some other more obvious reason, but I can't think of it is that I write in a sort of New York idiomatic way. But I think there is a a great distance In the humour. I mean, distance isn't the right word. It just doesn't get translated as well. We laugh at different things, I think.
“I think when I'm funniest is when I'm in trouble. ... I was pretty funny in that elevator. It was a way to get over uh the horror of being in there.”
“I think humor was the best way for Danny and myself to deal with all of this. It kept us from really falling apart and going astray.”
“What I try to do is write a hopeful ending. And I think people misconstrue the word happy ending... I don't believe in endings. I believe there's the end to that piece of work, but not to their lives.”
“It starts with the characters. If you don't have characters, you're building a play on sand and it'll inevitably sink.”
“What I would miss most, life.”