Sondheim Fuckin’ Rules
He wrote songs that were witty and sad and beautiful and, most of all, honest
When I was 14 years old my little brother got sick and we didn’t know if he was going to get better. He did, but for a few weeks, I wasn’t sure of anything. My parents whispered in the kitchen after they made sure I was distracted, either playing video games or watching TV and one Sunday, as they prepared to visit their youngest in the hospital, I was left with a VHS tape of a musical titled Into the Woods. A library copy. Fairy tale stuff.
It would be the first Broadway show I would ever see, a well-shot video of the legendary 1987 New York production starring Bernadette Peters. I was not what you’d call a sophisticated kid but I wasn’t expecting Into The Woods. It wasn’t what I thought it would be, which was comforting, predictable Disney bullshit. A horny wolf? Infidelity? Death by Giant? I can’t tell you how thrilling it was to learn there is no such thing as ‘happily ever after.’
Like any good American boy, I was told stories with tidy morals. For instance: America is a fairy tale about the hard little worker who grows up to have lots of money and how can anyone with eyes and ears believe that?
No one had ever told me that sometimes you go into the woods and you don’t come out. I suspected this…
