The Couple Behind Some Of Hollywood's Classic Tunes
Marilyn and Alan Bergman have been writing irresistible songs together for 50 years, putting words in the mouths of singers like Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney and Barbra Streisand. Here, the Bergmans discuss some of their favorite tunes and their many years making music together.
Other segments from the episode on September 2, 2011
Transcript
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Fresh Air
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The Couple Behind Some Of Hollywood's Classic Tunes
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli of tvworthwatching.com, sitting
in for Terry Gross.
Barbra Streisand has just released a new album, a double-CD set of songs
with lyrics by today's guests, Alan and Marilyn Bergman. One disc
collects Bergman songs Streisand has released in the past, including
"The Way We Were," "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?," "You
Don't Bring Me Flowers," and songs from "Yentl." The other disc is of
new recordings of their compositions, including this one, "Nice and
Easy."
(Soundbite of song, "Nice and Easy")
Ms. BARBRA STREISAND (Singer): (Singing) Let's take it nice and easy.
It's gonna be so easy for us to fall in love. Hey baby, what's your
hurry? Relax, don't you worry. We're gonna fall in love. We're on the
road to romance, that's safe to say, but let's make all the stops along
the way. The problem now, of course, is to simply hold your horses. To
rush would be a crime 'cuz nice and easy does it every time.
BIANCULLI: The Bergmans are married and have collaborated on songs for
over 50 years. Terry spoke with them in 2007. The songs of Alan and
Marilyn Bergman have won Oscars, Golden Globes and Grammys and have been
covered not only by Barbra Streisand but by Tony Bennett and Frank
Sinatra. Sinatra recorded his version of "Nice and Easy" in 1960 and
liked it enough to feature it as the title track of his album.
(Soundbite of song, "Nice and Easy")
Mr. FRANK SINATRA (Singer): (Singing) The problem now, of course, is to
simply hold your horses. To rush would be a crime 'cuz nice and easy
does it, nice and easy does it, nice and easy does it every time. Like
the man says, one more time: Nice and easy does it, nice and easy does
it, nice and easy does it every time.
TERRY GROSS, host:
Marilyn and Alan Bergman, welcome to FRESH AIR.
Mr. ALAN BERGMAN (Songwriter): Thank you so much.
GROSS: How did you come up with the phrase nice and easy, which became
the title of the song and Sinatra's album?
Mr. BERGMAN: Well, when you write for somebody like Frank Sinatra, who
has a definite personality, you try to write - it's easy to write a
custom-made suit for him. You know, he's very theatrical. He has a
definite character, and we felt because they wanted something that was
easy, swinging, that nice and easy, the phrase, nice and easy does it
every time, would be good for him.
Ms. MARILYN BERGMAN (Songwriter): It also had a kind of subtext of to be
a little sexy, which certainly also was part of Sinatra.
GROSS: Is this one of those many songs about sex that isn't literally
about sex but is absolutely about sex, right?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BERGMAN: Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
GROSS: So when Sinatra says on his version of the record, toward the
end, like the man said, which isn't in the lyric, did it bother you? Did
you think, hey...
Ms. BERGMAN: Not at all. Not at all.
Mr. BERGMAN: And in fact he had - we were lucky enough to be there at
Capital Records when he did record this, and he had several different
endings.
GROSS: Oh.
Mr. BERGMAN: He would ad-lib something each time he got to the tag line,
and this is the one that they decided to use.
GROSS: Did he ever ask - did Sinatra ever ask you to write for him after
having such success with the song?
Mr. BERGMAN: Yes, yes, he did, several times. There was one time when we
received a call from him. He said I want you to write me a 10-minute
number. And we said, about what? He said, well, you know, boy meets
girl, boy gets girl, boy lose(ph) girl. And we said to him, well, that's
really been written, he said, you'll figure it out.
He used to call us the kids, and he said you kids, you'll figure it out.
And he said, he said get the frog, which means get Michel Legrand to be
the composer. And Michel's father was very sick at the time, and Michel
couldn't do it. So we called him and said, is John Williams okay?
It was Johnny Williams. He was not the, you know, well-known conductor-
composer then. And we said, John, would you like to do this? And he
said, yeah, let's do it.
Ms. BERGMAN: So we wrote a 10-minute piece, which incidentally he wanted
for his nightclub act. So we wrote a piece that talked about the fact
that the protagonist of the piece, in this case the singer, fell in love
with the same woman over and over and over. I don't mean literally the
same woman, but, you know, the same woman.
And each love affair ended badly, and I think I remember the phrase the
same hello, the same goodbye. And when we finished it, we called him and
told him that we had finished it, and he asked us if we would come down
to Palm Springs, where he had a home, and play it for him.
So the three of us drove down to Palm Springs, and we got to his - I
started to say house but sort of more like a compound, actually. And he
opened the door himself when we finally made our way to the house. And
Alan sang the song for him. Alan, what was that experience? You tell it.
Mr. BERGMAN: Well, he was sitting on an ottoman in front of me, and I
sang for 10 minutes, you know, that's a long time.
Ms. BERGMAN: You were not sitting on an ottoman at the Paramount Theater
in Brooklyn.
Mr. BERGMAN: No.
Ms. BERGMAN: (Unintelligible) kid.
Mr. BERGMAN: That's right. When I was finished, he was crying, and he
said to Marilyn: How do you know so much about me? As if his life was
such...
Ms. BERGMAN: Such a closed book.
Mr. BERGMAN: Such a closed book, you know. But it must have hit some
nerve. And he said, I have to learn this. This is terrific. I love it.
And - but he never learned it.
Ms. BERGMAN: Every time we would see him, he would say, I'm going to do
that.
Mr. BERGMAN: Kids, I'm going to do that, you know.
Ms. BERGMAN: But he never did. But it was a very nice experience, I must
say.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah.
GROSS: Well, Alan Bergman, you've released this new album, "Lyrically,"
of songs that you wrote with your wife Marilyn. Why did you want to make
an album of you singing your songs? Is this - I think it's the first
time you've done that.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yes, this is the first time. Well, it's not exactly that I
wanted - you know, we did a concert that is a series in New York in the
92nd Street Y called "Lyrics and Lyricists," and we did that, there was
a 25th anniversary, and they asked us to do it again for them, and we
did.
And a man came up to me after the concert and - from Germany, and he
said: I have a record company in Germany, and I think you're a great
singer. I want to make an album with you. And I said I'm not so sure.
And he kept after me for two or three years, and finally I said, okay,
I'll do it. And he flew Marilyn and I to Berlin, and he organized a big
orchestra and a young arranger who did a wonderful job, Jorg Keller(ph),
his name is. And I sang live with this orchestra, which was a wonderful
experience. I had a wonderful time. I love to sing, so...
Ms. BERGMAN: Alan has always sung, actually. When we write, we sing as
we write because lyrics, unlike poetry, are meant to be sung. So he's
always sung, and most of the time it's Alan who would demonstrate the
song for the artist or the producer, director, whoever it was, you know,
on the receiving end of the song.
GROSS: Can you diagnose problems in the lyric by singing it?
Mr. BERGMAN: Oh yes, oh yes. You know, sometimes the choice of a word,
you try that word, and it may be the perfect word, but it doesn't sing
on those notes.
GROSS: Can you give me an example of a lyric you changed because singing
it, you knew it didn't work?
Ms. BERGMAN: I can't give you a lyrics of ours. It's an interesting
question. But Oscar Hammerstein, probably one of the greatest lyric
writers, always felt that a song that he and Richard Rodgers wrote for
"Oklahoma," a wonderful song called "What's the Use of Wondering," never
found its way into the repertoire of singers as much as some of the
other songs in that show did because the last line is: And all the rest
is talk.
And ending a song on the word talk, which you can hear, cuts off on that
hard K sound, didn't allow a singer to really, what...
Mr. BERGMAN: Sing it beautifully at the end. You know, there's no...
(Singing) And all the rest is talk.
(Speaking) I mean, it's so difficult. And that's why it's not part of
the repertoire.
BIANCULLI: Alan and Marilyn Berman, talking to Terry Gross in 2007. More
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(Soundbite of music)
BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's 2007 conversation with Alan and
Marilyn Bergman. Barbra Streisand has just released a two-CD set of her
versions of their songs called "What Matters Most: Barbra Streisand
sings the lyrics of Alan and Marilyn Bergman." Terry spoke with them
after the release of Alan Bergman's album of their songs, called
"Lyrically."
Let's listen to Alan Bergman sing from his album "Lyrically." This is
"What Are You Doing The Rest of Your Life?," which was written for the
1969 film "The Happy Ending." The composer was Michel Legrand. Why don't
you tell us the story behind the song before we hear it.
Ms. BERGMAN: Richard Brooks(ph), who was a wonderful writer and
director, directed and wrote this film, called "The Happy Ending," which
I think was well ahead of its time and occasionally will appear on very,
very late-night television but really didn't find an audience.
Anyway, he came to us one day and said: I want you to write me a song
that is to appear twice in the film. Early in the film I want it to be -
I want it to function as perhaps a proposal of marriage between these
two young lovers.
But I want to hear the song again at the end of the film, at which time
the wife, they were since married, 16 years later the wife has become
alcoholic and has left her husband and is in a bar and goes to a jukebox
and selects a song and then sits down with a lineup of martinis in front
of her. And he shot this beautiful montage of Jean Simmons, who played
the wife, during which time she drifts into kind of a reverie while
listening to the same song.
And he said: I don't want you to change a note or a word, but I want the
song to mean something very different when you hear it the second time.
So that was a very interesting, challenging assignment.
And Michel Legrand, who wrote perhaps, I don't know, six or eight tunes,
as is his wont, for this spot, and they were all beautiful, but none
really struck the three of us as being right. And we said to him -
because while he was writing music, we were sitting trying to solve the
dramatic question of what the song should be about.
We said to him: What happens if the first line of the song is - what are
you doing for the rest of your life? And he said: Oh, I like that. And
he put his hands on the keys, and as long as it takes to play that song,
that's what he played from beginning to end.
And he said: You mean something like that? And we said: No, we mean
exactly like that.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. BERGMAN: And Alan said to him, Alan said to him: Play it again. And
he said: Oh, I don't remember quite what I played. Luckily, we had the
tape machine going, so we had the music. And then we...
GROSS: So the first line of the song inspired the melody.
Ms. BERGMAN: Exactly.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yes.
Ms. BERGMAN: Exactly.
Mr. BERGMAN: That happens sometimes. With Michel, we can't write lyrics
first. We prefer not to write lyrics first. We prefer to have the
melody. We feel that when we have the melody that there are words on the
tips of those notes, and we have to find them.
GROSS: Well, let's hear Alan Bergman singing "What Are You Doing The
Rest Of Your Life?" from his new album "Lyrically," featuring songs with
lyrics that he and Marilyn Bergman co-wrote.
(Soundbite of song, "What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?")
Mr. BERGMAN: (Singing) What are you doing the rest of your life, north
and south and east and west of your life? I have only one request of
your life, that you spend it all with me. All the seasons and the times
of your days, all the nickels and the dimes of your days, let the
reasons and the rhymes of your days all begin and end with me.
I want to see your face in every kind of light, in fields of dawn and
forests of the night, and when you stand before the candles on a cake,
oh, let me be the one to hear the silent wish you make.
Those tomorrows waiting deep in your eyes...
GROSS: That's Alan Bergman, from his album "Lyrically," which features
him singing songs that he co-wrote with Marilyn Bergman. They're married
and long-time lyricist collaborators.
Now, that song was recently used on a commercial for diamonds. So did
you have to give your permission for that?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BERGMAN: This is odd. You know, when you â when you write for hire,
as we did - "What Are You Doing The Rest of Your Life?," we were hired
by the studio to write it - they own the copyright, and they can, they
can ask you. They don't have to ask you for permission.
Most of the time, when they're not changing a word of the lyric, they
really don't bother. When there's a change in the lyric, then they do.
Then they notify you and ask you if...
Ms. BERGMAN: This was using the Dusty Springfield record of this song.
So nothing was changed, and it was a record that had been - you know, is
out, and so I guess they felt there was no need to ask us.
GROSS: So when you say that the studio owns the copyright, you still get
composer credits, right, composer royalties?
Mr. BERGMAN: Oh yes, we get credit, and we get royalties.
Ms. BERGMAN: Credits and royalties, but they in fact - they meaning the
publishing company arm of the studio - owns the rights to the song.
GROSS: Now, you've written a lot of songs, or a fair number of songs,
for movies. Some of your best-known songs are songs you wrote for
movies. You haven't written that much for theater. How did you gravitate
to writing songs for movies?
Ms. BERGMAN: I think maybe movies made a deeper impression growing up.
And we always knew that we wanted to write in a dramatic context. We
were more interested in that than we were in just writing songs in
limbo.
Writing for - in a narrative or dramatic context when we were honing
craft, you can't write for a picture unless somebody hires you, you
know? So it's like an actor not being able to act unless he gets a job,
or she gets a job. So we would do exercises.
We would find either short stories or scenes from plays or articles in
the newspaper and pretend that they were assignments. And we wrote many,
many, many songs that never saw the light of day, but were exercises
that we gave ourselves. So I like to think that when the first job came,
we were ready.
BIANCULLI: Marilyn and Alan Bergman, speaking to Terry Gross in 2007.
We'll continue their conversation in the second half of the show. Here's
Abbey Lincoln singing one of their songs, "Summer Wishes, Winter
Dreams." I'm David Bianculli and this is FRESH AIR.
(Soundbite of song, "Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams")
Ms. ABBEY LINCOLN (Singer): (Singing) Summer wishes, winter dreams,
drifting down forgotten streams, sunken faces, smiles and whispers, come
from far away to visit me this day, yesterday has come (unintelligible)
sitting here across...
(Soundbite of music)
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli in for Terry Gross,
back with back with lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman. They visited
FRESH AIR in 2007 when Alan Bergman's album "Lyrically" had come out. A
new Barbra Streisand collection of their songs has just been released.
It's called "What Matters Most: Barbra Streisand Sings the Lyrics of
Alan and Marilyn Bergman."
GROSS: You were both writing lyrics for the composer Lew Spence...
Mr. BERGMAN: Yes.
GROSS: ...who wrote the melody for "Nice & Easy"...
Mr. BERGMAN: Yes. Mm-hmm.
GROSS: ...which was one of your first hits. And Marilyn, the way you
described it, one of you was his morning lyricist and the other was his
afternoon lyricist.
Ms. BERGMAN: Mm-hmm.
GROSS: How did he end up having two different lyricists?
Ms. BERGMAN: Because I like to sleep late.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BERGMAN: It was early in our careers and, you know, we were feeling,
trying to find out who we are and what we're saying that he was writing
and...
Ms. BERGMAN: And he was talented.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah.
Ms. BERGMAN: I tell you too...
GROSS: But did you know each â he introduced you. Did you know each
other yet when you were both writing lyrics separately for him?
Ms. BERGMAN: No.
Mr. BERGMAN: No.
Ms. BERGMAN: No.
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
Mr. BERGMAN: No.
Ms. BERGMAN: No. I was introduced to him by Bob Russell, a wonderful
lyric writer who was a mentor of mine, who, when I started to write,
introduced me to this composer. And Alan must have met him around the
music business in LA.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah.
Ms. BERGMAN: But there were not teams of writers so much then. You know,
we were all just writing songs and we worked with him for quite a while.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah.
Ms. BERGMAN: And that was the most successful of the songs that we wrote
together.
Mr. BERGMAN: That's for sure.
GROSS: Okay. So you are writing, you were both independently writing
lyrics for Lew Spence. You met through him.
Ms. BERGMAN: With Lew Spence.
Mr. BERGMAN: With, yes.
GROSS: Oh, with Lew Spence.
Ms. BERGMAN: With Lew Spence.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yes.
GROSS: Okay. You met through him and then you decided that you should be
writing lyrics with each other.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah.
GROSS: So...
Mr. BERGMAN: And we wrote a song that day.
GROSS: Yeah.
Mr. BERGMAN: That we just, the first day we were introduced to each
other we wrote a song. It was a terrible song but we love the process.
We enjoy the process. And we, from that day on we've been writing
together.
GROSS: Can you share a few bars of the awful song?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. BERGMAN: Oh my God, it was great...
Mr. BERGMAN: I only know the title.
GROSS: Which was?
Mr. BERGMAN: "I Never Knew What Hit Me."
Ms. BERGMAN: Ouch.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BERGMAN: Something like that. Ouch is right.
GROSS: Alan Bergman, one of the songs you sing on your new album
"Lyrically," is a song that you say was an engagement gift to Marilyn
Bergman.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yes.
GROSS: And the song is "That Face," which was first recorded by Fred
Astaire.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah.
GROSS: So before we hear you sing it, what's the story behind this song?
Mr. BERGMAN: Well, Lew Spence, who wrote the music, he was going out
with a girl, and Marilyn and I were going out together. And I wanted to
ask her to marry me and have some kind of engagement, but I didn't have
any money. So we wrote this song and we, to get it - we got an
appointment with Fred Astaire. Fred Astaire was Marilyn's favorite
singer. She loved the way he sang. And...
Ms. BERGMAN: Still do.
GROSS: Me too.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BERGMAN: Oh yes. Well, you know, just to digress for a second. You
know the literature of the popular music in this country would be much
poorer without a Fred Astaire, because all those great writers, Berlin,
the Gershwins, Cole Porter, and so they all wrote for him, and Johnny
Mercer.
And so we wrangled an appointment with Fred Astaire and sang him the
song. He said, before I listen, he said, I - he owned the record
company, he said, I only record what I sing in movies, but I'll listen.
And he was very sweet. And so we played and sang him the song, and he
said, I'm going to record this next week. And he did. And I handed
Marilyn this record and I said...
Ms. BERGMAN: And I married him.
Mr. BERGMAN: And she married me.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah.
GROSS: Let's hear you sing it from the new Alan Bergman CD "Lyrically."
(Soundbite of song, "That Face")
Mr. BERGMAN: (Singing) That face, that face, that wonderful face. It
shines. It glows all over the place. And how I love to watch it change
expressions. Each look becomes the prize of my possessions.
I love that face, that face, it just isn't fair. You must forgive the
way that I stare. But never will these eyes behold a sight that could
replace that face, that face, that face, that face. I see that face,
that face...
GROSS: Alan Bergman from his album "Lyrically," in which he sings lyrics
that were co-written by with his wife Marilyn Bergman, with the
exception of the song we just heard. That's the only one in which he
wrote the lyric himself.
Mr. BERGMAN: Right.
GROSS: So Alan Bergman, Johnny Mercer was your mentor.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yes.
GROSS: How were you lucky enough to get to know him?
Mr. BERGMAN: Well, I met him when I was in graduate school at UCLA, and
he heard some things I had written and he took a liking to me. And we
spent, you know, over a period of two or three years and he would call
me and say I know all you're doing is working - and this is before the
Marilyn. And we would go down with his family to Newport, where he had a
place, where he had a house and we would spend the weekend. He would sit
at the piano and listen to me play and sing. He liked the way I sang and
he was just terrific. I mean I wouldn't be talking to you without him.
He was just marvelous to me. Yeah.
GROSS: So what was some of the best advice that Johnny Mercer ever gave
you about songwriting?
Mr. BERGMAN: Well, you know, he just outlined the craft about singing
and you're writing for an instrument and you have to respect that and
about a lot about imagery. More it would be more you could do better
than that. He wouldn't be specific really...
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
Mr. BERGMAN: ...which was great because that helped. The more specific
he would - I think teaches you the less you feel free to express
yourself. And some of the early songs of mine you can hear Johnny Mercer
in them - trying to emulate him until I found and we found our own
voice.
Ms. BERGMAN: Also I think which is what we each learned from mentors
that we had was that songs, probably like anything else that one writes
is not, are not written, they're rewritten.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yes.
Ms. BERGMAN: And you can't really get too passionate about any one word
or one phrase and you just have to be free enough and ruthless enough
with your work to really keep writing until somebody wrests it away from
you.
BIANCULLI: Lyricists Marilyn and Alan Bergman speaking to Terry gross
2007. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(Soundbite of music)
BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's 2007 interview with Alan and
Marilyn Bergman. Barbra Streisand has just released a two CD set of her
versions of their songs called "What Matters Most: Barbra Streisand
Sings the Lyrics of Alan and Marilyn Bergman."
GROSS: Marilyn, when you decided that you really wanted to become a
lyricist, did you think, well, this is going to be really hard to do?
Because there are so - first of all, it's hard to be a lyricist under
the best of circumstances, but second of all there were so few women who
were lyricists at the time that you started writing. Did you think this
is going to be impossible?
Ms. BERGMAN: As a woman you mean?
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
Ms. BERGMAN: Well, I didn't think it was going to be impossible. I knew
that I would be, you know, the odd woman out. I would go to ASCAP
meetings, membership meetings, and it would be me and a lot of the
widows of songwriters who were there representing their husband's
estates, you know. So in New York there was Betty Comden and Dorothy
Fields and there were, you know, a couple of famous women writers.
GROSS: Carolyn Leigh.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah, Carolyn.
Ms. BERGMAN: Carolyn Leigh for sure. But she was about the same time. By
the time I met Carolyn I was already a professional writer and she was
certainly.
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
Ms. BERGMAN: She was wonderful.
Mr. BERGMAN: Oh absolutely. Terrific writer.
Ms. BERGMAN: Yup.
Mr. BERGMAN: Mm. Yeah.
GROSS: Marilyn, did you have a mentor in the way that Alan had a mentor
in Johnny Mercer?
Ms. BERGMAN: Yes I did. When I was in high school in New York, I went to
the High School of Music and Art - I was a music major â and I was lucky
enough to become friendly with a girl named Marilyn Jackson, very good
singer who unfortunately is no longer with us. But she introduced me to
her aunt and uncle and her uncle was a very successful songwriter -
lyric writer - named Bob Russell. He wrote a lot of the Duke Ellington
songs, "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," "Do Nothing Til You Hear From
Me."
He wrote lyrics to "Brazil" and "Ballerina." A lot of songs. Very, very
gifted. And I used to play the piano for him in the afternoon after
school. This was the olden days before tape recorders and stuff like
that. So a lyric writer who didn't play the piano used to have somebody
sit and play tunes for them. And I became very interested in what he was
doing, though I never dreamed that someday that's what I would do. This
was just an afternoon exercise for me.
And then - well, if you want the story I'll give it to you quickly. I
fell down a flight of steps...
GROSS: Oh.
Ms. BERGMAN: ...and I broke my shoulder and I dislocated the other.
GROSS: Oy.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. BERGMAN: And so I could no longer live in New York and I had to come
out to California where my parents had moved while I was in high school,
college - I don't remember. And the only person I knew here was Bob
Russell, who with his family had moved here in the years since my high
school days. I was in college when this happened. And I came out here in
practically a body cast and looked him up and we were visiting. And I
said what am I going to do out here for all these months? I don't know
anybody and I can't do anything. And he said well, why don't you write
songs? And I said I can't play the piano. I can't even turn the pages in
a book. He said so write lyrics. You can dictate them into the now
invented cassette player or reel-to-reel, whatever it was. So I said oh.
And I wrote a lyric and he introduced me to a young composer named Lew
Spence. Now we've come a little circle here, right? And that's how I
became Lew Spence's morning lyric writer.
Mr. BERGMAN: No afternoon.
Ms. BERGMAN: Afternoon lyric writer. Forgive me. And Bob...
Mr. BERGMAN: p.m.
Ms. BERGMAN: ...functioned very much the same way that Johnny did with
Alan. Bob used to critique what I'd written and he was a taskmaster, I'm
delighted to say. And so I was - I don't think - there's no question
that - I was studying political psychology at NYU. Why would I write
songs if I hadn't fallen down a flight of steps?
GROSS: Well, I love stories about catastrophes that have happy endings,
so...
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. BERGMAN: That's right.
GROSS: I'm glad to hear how it worked out. Now, you know, we've been
talking about songs you've written, songs you've written for movies. Now
one of your famous songs that hasn't been recorded either by Tony
Bennett or Frank Sinatra or Barbra Streisand is the theme from "Maude."
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BERGMAN: Yes.
Ms. BERGMAN: Oh, yes.
GROSS: And I just have to ask you about that. You know, the lyrics are
Lady Godiva was a freedom writer. She didn't care if the whole world
looked. Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her, she was a sister who
really cooked.
(Soundbite of laughter)
GROSS: Do you look back at that and think oh, was that dated?
Ms. BERGMAN: No, I don't know, it fit Bea Arthur's...
Mr. BERGMAN: Character.
Ms. BERGMAN: ...character.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah.
Ms. BERGMAN: Norman Lear asked us to write a piece for her. Norman Lear
and Bud Yorkin, who were Tandem Productions then, asked us to write a
theme song for the show. And...
Mr. BERGMAN: With a wonderful composer, Dave Grusin.
Ms. BERGMAN: Yeah. And so this is what we wrote and it was because she
was this ardent feminist creature.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. BERGMAN: So that was fun.
Mr. BERGMAN: And that's fun because, you know, you have 45 seconds to
write something that will capture the audience and tell them a little
bit about what they're going to see.
Ms. BERGMAN: And don't touch that dial.
(Soundbite of laughter)
GROSS: Right.
Mr. BERGMAN: So that's how we approach it, you know. Like "Good Times,"
same thing, you know.
GROSS: What's the lyric you would wish you had written? Like...
(Soundbite of laughter)
GROSS: ...the lyric that to you is the lyric that all songs should be
measured against.
Ms. BERGMAN: Oh, god.
Mr. BERGMAN: Oh boy, we have a lot of those.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. BERGMAN: "Skylark" is one.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah. "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face."
Ms. BERGMAN: That's another one.
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
Mr. BERGMAN: Another one.
Ms. BERGMAN: "All the Things You Were" is another one.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah. "They Can't Take That Away From Me."
Ms. BERGMAN: Yes.
GROSS: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mr. BERGMAN: "Too Late Now."
GROSS: Oh yeah.
Mr. BERGMAN: I mean there's...
Ms. BERGMAN: "Send in the Clowns."
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah.
Ms. BERGMAN: Almost anything that's Steve...
Mr. BERGMAN: Anything that Sondheim writes. Yes. He's...
Ms. BERGMAN: He's the measure right now.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah.
GROSS: Well, a pleasure to talk with you both. Let's close with another
song. I thought we'd close with "Where Do You Start," which was not
written for a movie.
Mr. BERGMAN: No.
Ms. BERGMAN: It's a good way to close. It closes the relationship.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah. The - well, and "Where Do You Start" - we have, you
know, in our process, we have a lot of wonderful composer friends. Yeah,
Dave Grusin is one, you know, besides Michel. And Johnny Mandel is a
wonderful composer. Sometimes Dave or Johnny will come over to the house
and say, what you think of this melody? And they play it and if we - and
usually love it, we say leave it here, you know. And we take it off the
shelf and listen to them play and hopefully get an idea. There were two
songs like that in the album, one is "Where Do You Start" and the other
is "Love Like Ours," which just - they're wonderful melodies which we
feel we have to write.
Ms. BERGMAN: And they'll be in a drawer on a cassette or in the shelf
and from time to time when we're not working on something in particular
will take it out and play it and see if the muse is in the room. And
"Where Do You Start" is a melody of Johnny Mandel's we really liked and
it took us a long time before we found an idea for it that we liked. And
people have told us...
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. BERGMAN: ...that they were married to "What Are You Doing the Rest
of Your Life," broke up to "Where Do You Start," and were divorced to
"The Way We Were."
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. BERGMAN: So - so much...
GROSS: That's really funny.
(Soundbite of laughter)
GROSS: So how does it make you feel knowing that like you're the
soundtrack in some way to the ups and downs...
(Soundbite of laughter)
GROSS: ...of so many romantic relationships?
Ms. BERGMAN: Very humbling. It's very humbling.
GROSS: It's kind of amazing, you know, that you've stay together as a
couple and as partners for so long. It sometimes - for so many people
it's so hard to work with a spouse, and to work as closely as you have
to as lyricists and to have kept a marriage up for so many years. It's
pretty incredible.
Mr. BERGMAN: Yeah, we've been writing together for 51 years.
GROSS: Well, congratulations on not had having to sing "The Way We Were"
in your own lives.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BERGMAN: Hardly.
Ms. BERGMAN: I can't imagine it any other way.
GROSS: Thank you both so much.
Ms. BERGMAN: Pleasure.
Mr. BERGMAN: Thank you, Terry.
Ms. BERGMAN: Big pleasure, Terry.
BIANCULLI: Lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman speaking to Terry Gross in
2007.
A new Barbra Streisand collection of their songs has just been released.
It's called "What Matters Most: Barbra Streisand Sings the Lyrics of
Alan and Marilyn Bergman."
We'll end this segment with Alan Bergman singing their song "Where Do
You Start."
(Soundbite of song, "Where Do You Start")
Mr. BERGMAN: (Singing) Where do you start? How do you separate the
present from the past? How do you deal with all the things you thought
would last, that didn't last? With bits of memories scattered here and
there, I look around and don't know where to start.
Which books are yours? Which tapes and dreams belong to you and which
are mine? Our lives are tangled like the branches of a vine that
intertwine. So many habits that we'll have to break and yesterdays we'll
have to take apart. One day there'll be a song or something in the air
again...
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A Graceful Search For 'Higher Ground'
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:
A Graceful Search For 'Higher Ground'
The actress Vera Farmiga is now director too. She makes her directorial
debut with the new film "Higher Ground," in which she also stars - as a
woman first enchanted by, then disillusioned by evangelical
Christianity.
As an actress, she won acclaim as a drug addicted mom in the 2004 drama
"Down to the Bone." She went on to appear in such films as "The
Departed" and "Up in the Air," for which she received an Oscar
nomination.
Film critic David Edelstein reviews her first effort behind the camera .
DAVID EDELSTEIN: "Higher Ground" centers on a woman who joins and, after
a decade, flees a fundamentalist religious order, but the tone isn't
irreverent. The film is flushed with wonder, hope, and finally
heartbreak. In the memoir on which it's based, "This Dark World," writer
Carolyn S. Briggs never stops longing for a connection to God. And
Farmiga, who also plays the protagonist, Corinne, frames the film as a
kind of love story, starting the movie with Corinne opening her eyes
underwater, at the moment of her baptism, seeing men smiling down like
heaven's welcoming committee. Corinne doesn't want to come up for air.
That's when Farmiga cuts to Corinne decades earlier, also holding her
breath underwater, but as a child in a bathtub, where she escapes the
fighting of her flirty mom, played by Donna Murphy, and angry alcoholic
dad, played by John Hawkes. Farmiga doesn't appear again for more than
half an hour, but the two girls playing Corinne in flashback are
uncanny. The first, McKenzie Turner, combines a sly intelligence, an
impishness, with a seemingly irreconcilable craving to surrender to a
higher authority, raising her hand when a choir teacher asks who's
willing to pledge his or her life to Christ. As a teenager, Corinne is
played by Farmiga's real-life sister, Taissa, who has similarly sky-blue
eyes and a presence that's airy but alert.
A budding writer, Corinne falls hard for the high school celebrity, a
dreamboat rock musician named Ethan, played by Boyd Holbrook. She gets
pregnant, they marry, and become fundamentalists after an accident that
almost takes the life of their baby. They join an evangelical church of
scruffy folk-music types - it's the '70s - who believe the Lord also,
quote, "writes his gospel in the rocks and trees." Coming back to the
baptism scene that opened the film, Corinne sings atop a hill, long hair
swaying, and the rapturous vibe is like the musical "Godspell," with
better music. Who wouldn't think, I want what she's having?
Farmiga and cinematographer Michael McDonough know how to frame the
actors loosely yet catch all the emotions that count, both the harmony
and the creeping dissonance. Though Corinne is taken aback by the male
hierarchy and the women who help enforce it, Farmiga doesn't turn them
into caricatures. They caricature themselves by being so doctrinaire.
When her best friend speaks in tongues, an increasingly alienated
Corinne is envious. She stands before the mirror replaying Robert
DeNiro's you talkin' to me as please talk to me.
(Soundbite of movie, "Higher Ground")
Ms. VERA FARMIGA (Actor, Director): (as Corinne) (Unintelligible). Come
on. Come on. How I love your father, God. Oh, Holy Spirit. Thank you,
Lord. Come on.
(Soundbite of speaking in tongues)
Ms. FARMIGA: (as Corinne) Come on, Lord. Come on, Holy Spirit. Just wash
down on me, Lord. Just...
(Singing) ...come in thy strength and thy power.
(Speaking) Get thee behind me.
(Singing) Come in mine own gentle way. (Unintelligible)...
EDELSTEIN: That scene is the high point of "Higher Ground." You see both
Farmiga's satiric brilliance and her deeply sympathetic imagination.
Corinne tries to explore her feelings before the congregation, which
bridles at her preaching - women aren't supposed to preach â and her
questioning spirit. But she doesn't slam the door on the way out, like
the self-righteous Nora of Ibsen's "A Doll's House." She wishes she
could stick around. And Farmiga and co-screenwriter Briggs depict her
life outside the faith as full of its own perils.
On the debit side, Farmiga hasn't found the right style for Corinne's
surreal visions, which seem silly. And there's a casting glitch. Joshua
Leonard plays the older Ethan, and while he's a good actor, he doesn't
suggest an ex-teen heartthrob. His whininess makes it too easy for
Corinne to fall out of love.
"Higher Ground" would play like an angry anti-conversion melodrama if
there weren't a trace of petulance in Corinne's anger at the Holy Spirit
for not speaking to her. It's called faith, after all, because
reinforcement can be a long time coming. So the film is complicated,
unresolved, in the best kind of way. Farmiga's directing debut is
amazingly graceful.
BIANCULLI: David Edelstein is film critic for New York magazine.
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