"I'm Still Here" is a song about survival and abrupt transformations. It's a song about Sally and Phyllis, though it mentions neither woman, and it's sung by a third party. As Carlotta, the speaker, endures reversals of fortune, so Sally and Phyllis make it through a roller-coaster ride in the course of "Follies." They are married; they are single; they are desolate; they are mid-fling; they are abandoned; they are married again. "I got through all of last year--and I'm here."
God is in the details. Sondheim announces his theme: "Good times and bum times--I've seen them all and, my dear, I'm still here." Then: he wonders, what might good times look like? "Plush velvet." And bum times (and notice "bum," in place of "bad"; a little local color; God is in the details)--? Bum times are "pretzels and beer." To earn money, and stardom, young Carlotta "stuffed the dailies in my shoes." I assume this means she carried her casting-call ads with her in her shoes; she didn't have a chauffeur, or even a purse, so why not stick your copy of "Backstage" deep within your ballet flats? (A great image, because it gets at the scrappiness and ingenuity of young actors; necessity is the mother of invention; a shoe can become a purse.) Act Two: Broadway didn't work out, so I'll strum a ukulele. Act Three: Gloominess sets in, and I sing the blues. "Seen all my dreams disappear, but I'm here." The arc of the song captured in three short lines: This will happen over and over again.
Sondheim celebrates startling plot twists. Carlotta is "dancing in her scanties" when the Great Depression hits. Is this the end? Quite the opposite. "Was I depressed? Nowhere near. I met a big financier, and I'm here." (So much economy; we are left to infer the entire story of this marriage; we get to wonder where the financier is now, and to laugh that that's not the thing that is important; what is important is "I'm here." Life is boiled down to bits of fable, with an occasional deus ex machina; like the Fairy Godmother in "Cinderella," the big financier saves the day. I think of Nora Ephron's short, aphoristic account of her own life right before she died, in which five-year marriages became terse, two-sentence asides.)
Entire decades are summoned via short bursts of concrete nouns. (Economy! Also, this is a trick called "metonymy"--when a small part stands in for the whole. "Give my compliments to the crown." "Big Tits is sitting over at the bar.") One era is "Gandhi; Windsor-and-Wally's affair." Another is: "Reefers and vino, rest cures, religion and pills." An epic unfolds alongside a very small, personal story; as America lurches along and loses its footing, so does the speaker. Sometimes, there isn't even a transition from America's story to Carlotta's story: "Been called a Pinko, commie tool. Got through it stinko by my pool. I shoulda gone to an acting school: That seems clear. Still, someone said, 'She's sincere.' So I'm here." (Self-mockery and self-love together in one verse--a hallmark of Sondheim's. Sondheim, who loves ambivalence and shades of grey.)
The song builds to a climax with a few additional "short three-act plays." "First you're another sloe-eyed vamp, then someone's mother, then you're camp; then you career from career to career." (Contrast this with: "Stuffed all the dailies in my shoes; strummed ukuleles; sung the blues.") And then: "I've gotten through, Hey, lady, aren't you whoozis? Wow, what a looker you were. Or better yet: Sorry, I thought you were whoozis. Whatever happened to her?" The speaker is fabulous; the speaker is the ghost of someone who once was fabulous; the speaker is so far from her former self, she is written off as an entirely separate, and undistinguished, entity. "I'm still here."
The other thing: Who was writing musicals about protagonists in their fifties and sixties? Who--except Sondheim? Just to take someone adrift in middle age, and decide to put that someone front and center--? That's not the story of Tony and Maria. It's not the story of Anastasia, or Curly, or Ms. Forbush, or Elphaba. It's a small, radical choice. A musical about grown-ups, for grown-ups. Compromise and failure become themes for Broadway. Wry, cynical humor becomes a viable "tone" for a big show-stopper. Sondheim makes an anthem out of a thing that is, simply, staying alive.
(P.S. "The producers thought it was a sad song. They said, make it sadder. And I did. And 1800 people laughed their asses off.")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0aed46yuyA
***
The great penultimate scene of "The Godfather II": Michael must come home for a family dinner. ("I go on a journey." Isn't it interesting that this sweeping epic ends with a family scene?) Connie has brought a new boyfriend--and we get the "Mad Men"-ish thrill of dramatic irony, because we know this courtship will end with the boyfriend dead, and with Sonny dead, as a result of the boyfriend's bad behavior. (Connie's journey is almost as stunning as Carlo's. She begins "Godfather II" as a self-absorbed nightmare and, in the course of the story, she'll mellow until she is her own mother. It's so fun to watch her with Kay, in the later scenes, when she's torn between Kay and Michael, and when she's fully invested in keeping the fiction of "a functional family" viable. How she has changed!)
When tensions get high at the dinner table, someone--Sonny--commands Connie: "Go take Carlo to look at the tree." (Dysfunction is swept under the rug. This is like miming reconciliation--Fredo/Michael reconciliation--at Mama Corleone's funeral. Or like Michael's famous commandment: "I don't want anything to happen to Fredo while my mother is still alive.") And then the big fight of the dinner scene: Michael reveals that he has enlisted in the Marines. Why would he do this? Isn't his loyalty to his family tribe greater than his loyalty to his national tribe? Pop had big plans for Michael; Michael is "the college boy"! Violence erupts; Sonny can't take Michael's self-indulgence, which, of course, is the opposite of self-indulgence. (It's also notable that Sonny, who does not "look Italian," is the one resisting assimilation. Michael, "the Sicilian son," is the one trying on college and the Marines.)
Coppola twists a dagger in your side: The one brother to welcome Michael's choice, and to congratulate Michael, is Fredo. (Oh, Fredo! "When I want to catch a fish, I say a little *Hail Mary*-- and it works every time." Fredo, who does not for a moment think his own brother will plot his murder. Fredo is linked with women and children--Mama, Connie, the Madonna, Michael, Jr. He makes us think of Jesus' interest in tiny kids. He has the heart of a child.)
As if this scene can get any greater, Coppola next takes a lemon and makes lemonade. Brando was meant to arrive on set, and, at the last minute, he just didn't show up. The absence of Brando makes for something legendary. It's like not showing Rosemary's baby in "Rosemary's Baby": Because you have to imagine the baby, your investment in the story actually grows. The family gathers around an un-filmed door; their choice of song is bitterly ironic. ("For he's a jolly good fellow! For he's a jolly good fellow!" And we never see Brando, though he seems to creep closer and closer to the stage, as the suspense mounts.) Michael doesn't leave his chair; he is resisting Vito's pull, but of course he has Vito's song in both of his ears. He cannot really get away.
And then we cut to Michael post-fratricide--sitting, like a reptile, by the lake. His eyes are cold. His soul is dead; a transformation is complete. (Why didn't "Breaking Bad" use a flashback for its penultimate scene? It seems Vince Gilligan missed an important lesson.) Coppola--in interviews--talks about Goethe and early Polish cinema. That's not a shock. He's a thinker. He made something with universal relevance--out of an odd, sad family saga.
God is in the details. Sondheim announces his theme: "Good times and bum times--I've seen them all and, my dear, I'm still here." Then: he wonders, what might good times look like? "Plush velvet." And bum times (and notice "bum," in place of "bad"; a little local color; God is in the details)--? Bum times are "pretzels and beer." To earn money, and stardom, young Carlotta "stuffed the dailies in my shoes." I assume this means she carried her casting-call ads with her in her shoes; she didn't have a chauffeur, or even a purse, so why not stick your copy of "Backstage" deep within your ballet flats? (A great image, because it gets at the scrappiness and ingenuity of young actors; necessity is the mother of invention; a shoe can become a purse.) Act Two: Broadway didn't work out, so I'll strum a ukulele. Act Three: Gloominess sets in, and I sing the blues. "Seen all my dreams disappear, but I'm here." The arc of the song captured in three short lines: This will happen over and over again.
Sondheim celebrates startling plot twists. Carlotta is "dancing in her scanties" when the Great Depression hits. Is this the end? Quite the opposite. "Was I depressed? Nowhere near. I met a big financier, and I'm here." (So much economy; we are left to infer the entire story of this marriage; we get to wonder where the financier is now, and to laugh that that's not the thing that is important; what is important is "I'm here." Life is boiled down to bits of fable, with an occasional deus ex machina; like the Fairy Godmother in "Cinderella," the big financier saves the day. I think of Nora Ephron's short, aphoristic account of her own life right before she died, in which five-year marriages became terse, two-sentence asides.)
Entire decades are summoned via short bursts of concrete nouns. (Economy! Also, this is a trick called "metonymy"--when a small part stands in for the whole. "Give my compliments to the crown." "Big Tits is sitting over at the bar.") One era is "Gandhi; Windsor-and-Wally's affair." Another is: "Reefers and vino, rest cures, religion and pills." An epic unfolds alongside a very small, personal story; as America lurches along and loses its footing, so does the speaker. Sometimes, there isn't even a transition from America's story to Carlotta's story: "Been called a Pinko, commie tool. Got through it stinko by my pool. I shoulda gone to an acting school: That seems clear. Still, someone said, 'She's sincere.' So I'm here." (Self-mockery and self-love together in one verse--a hallmark of Sondheim's. Sondheim, who loves ambivalence and shades of grey.)
The song builds to a climax with a few additional "short three-act plays." "First you're another sloe-eyed vamp, then someone's mother, then you're camp; then you career from career to career." (Contrast this with: "Stuffed all the dailies in my shoes; strummed ukuleles; sung the blues.") And then: "I've gotten through, Hey, lady, aren't you whoozis? Wow, what a looker you were. Or better yet: Sorry, I thought you were whoozis. Whatever happened to her?" The speaker is fabulous; the speaker is the ghost of someone who once was fabulous; the speaker is so far from her former self, she is written off as an entirely separate, and undistinguished, entity. "I'm still here."
The other thing: Who was writing musicals about protagonists in their fifties and sixties? Who--except Sondheim? Just to take someone adrift in middle age, and decide to put that someone front and center--? That's not the story of Tony and Maria. It's not the story of Anastasia, or Curly, or Ms. Forbush, or Elphaba. It's a small, radical choice. A musical about grown-ups, for grown-ups. Compromise and failure become themes for Broadway. Wry, cynical humor becomes a viable "tone" for a big show-stopper. Sondheim makes an anthem out of a thing that is, simply, staying alive.
(P.S. "The producers thought it was a sad song. They said, make it sadder. And I did. And 1800 people laughed their asses off.")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0aed46yuyA
***
The great penultimate scene of "The Godfather II": Michael must come home for a family dinner. ("I go on a journey." Isn't it interesting that this sweeping epic ends with a family scene?) Connie has brought a new boyfriend--and we get the "Mad Men"-ish thrill of dramatic irony, because we know this courtship will end with the boyfriend dead, and with Sonny dead, as a result of the boyfriend's bad behavior. (Connie's journey is almost as stunning as Carlo's. She begins "Godfather II" as a self-absorbed nightmare and, in the course of the story, she'll mellow until she is her own mother. It's so fun to watch her with Kay, in the later scenes, when she's torn between Kay and Michael, and when she's fully invested in keeping the fiction of "a functional family" viable. How she has changed!)
When tensions get high at the dinner table, someone--Sonny--commands Connie: "Go take Carlo to look at the tree." (Dysfunction is swept under the rug. This is like miming reconciliation--Fredo/Michael reconciliation--at Mama Corleone's funeral. Or like Michael's famous commandment: "I don't want anything to happen to Fredo while my mother is still alive.") And then the big fight of the dinner scene: Michael reveals that he has enlisted in the Marines. Why would he do this? Isn't his loyalty to his family tribe greater than his loyalty to his national tribe? Pop had big plans for Michael; Michael is "the college boy"! Violence erupts; Sonny can't take Michael's self-indulgence, which, of course, is the opposite of self-indulgence. (It's also notable that Sonny, who does not "look Italian," is the one resisting assimilation. Michael, "the Sicilian son," is the one trying on college and the Marines.)
Coppola twists a dagger in your side: The one brother to welcome Michael's choice, and to congratulate Michael, is Fredo. (Oh, Fredo! "When I want to catch a fish, I say a little *Hail Mary*-- and it works every time." Fredo, who does not for a moment think his own brother will plot his murder. Fredo is linked with women and children--Mama, Connie, the Madonna, Michael, Jr. He makes us think of Jesus' interest in tiny kids. He has the heart of a child.)
As if this scene can get any greater, Coppola next takes a lemon and makes lemonade. Brando was meant to arrive on set, and, at the last minute, he just didn't show up. The absence of Brando makes for something legendary. It's like not showing Rosemary's baby in "Rosemary's Baby": Because you have to imagine the baby, your investment in the story actually grows. The family gathers around an un-filmed door; their choice of song is bitterly ironic. ("For he's a jolly good fellow! For he's a jolly good fellow!" And we never see Brando, though he seems to creep closer and closer to the stage, as the suspense mounts.) Michael doesn't leave his chair; he is resisting Vito's pull, but of course he has Vito's song in both of his ears. He cannot really get away.
And then we cut to Michael post-fratricide--sitting, like a reptile, by the lake. His eyes are cold. His soul is dead; a transformation is complete. (Why didn't "Breaking Bad" use a flashback for its penultimate scene? It seems Vince Gilligan missed an important lesson.) Coppola--in interviews--talks about Goethe and early Polish cinema. That's not a shock. He's a thinker. He made something with universal relevance--out of an odd, sad family saga.
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