Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love

Year: 2013

Actors: Christopher Walken, Ann-Margret, Woody Allen, John Lithgow

Duration: 85 min

They had us all at One Singular Sensation, the opening song to the documentary American Masters - Marvin Hamlisch: One Singular Sensation, a celebration of Marvin Hamlisch's life. Hamlisch's music is in us all, and the face of the man behind the music was always there in the back of our minds. But to add the story of the man behind the music in an hour and a half on film does more than honor his memory and his life, it makes the music all the richer. It really does. It reminds us as well that these documentaries - putting into history video of those that have first-generation memories of working with him, is part of the responsibility of each generation now. Hundreds of years from now, they will matter, perhaps more than they do now. I have to get this off my chest. The theater was filled with those of us over forty. One of our party was a twenty-something-year-old and she had no idea who he was? I thought it was a fluke so I texted another twenty-something-year-old and she actually answered, "Didn't he have a role in How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days?" What have we done? Created a generation that has no idea who our Mozarts are? Note to parent selves. Make your children listen to your music in the car, not their iPads. You owe it to our music.A little Hamlisch history. Accepted to Julliard at six years old, (must be one of the youngest ever right?), Marvin admits that his first-generation Jewish family, having just escaped from Nazi extinction, puts a lot of pressure on a guy to be something special. They saw he had a gift to play anything he heard, and his father marched him up the Julliard stairs where he said, "God learned to play scales." We see that Hamlisch was also nothing if not calculating because he realized that if he learned to play concert piano like they wanted him to, he could then take what it offered and apply it to the songwriting he loved.Part of what makes the movie are the interview snippets with Hamlisch about his thought process in writing the music. Memories ... in the corners of our minds .. inspired by the bells in the courtyard of the opening scene of The Way We Were and Streisand's ability to hold a note. It was his score for The Way We Were that skyrocketed him to join the pantheon of great composers. Ice Castles for the movie about skating where he heard the swing of the skates on the ice and recreated it in the melody. You hear it then, and you know that he had greatness larger than the simplicity of his music might have suggested to you.A Chorus Line. The documentary suggests it changed the course of the downward spiral of New York City, and while I think that is a bit far-reaching, I will say that twenty-one curtain calls opening night shows the new territory it took, both in storytelling on stage and innovation for song. "Marvin created a separate musical story for every character, a song that was just for them," said one of the cast members. I think it brought out that Hamlisch created the music for the story, not expecting the story to follow his music. So, he was a humble composer. And, oh so approachable. Someone says in the film that he believed all music was equal. Classical. Pop. When I line up a classical music lover next to a Broadway groupie, I assure you they do not think of themselves as equal. I like that he did.A couple of things. In the Q&A after the film, Dori Berinstein, the director and screenwriter was asked why she made it. "I loved and was obsessed by Chorus Line," she said. Her love of the man was obvious throughout the movie and while that makes her a person who recognizes talent, it doesn't give her the distance needed to show all the sides of a complicated man for a documentary. Exploring only his greatness takes something away. She admitted they just finished editing on Tuesday night. That time pressure editing shows in the last half hour of the film. I believe they will go back to the editing floor. I hope they do. This film will be important to future generations who need to understand the enormous contribution he made.And, there are some missing pieces, like why he died? What did he die of?I have to tell one of the stories just in case you don't have the opportunity to see the movie. Marvin's mother was... well, let's say she was a bit overly involved with Marvin. She didn't want him to fly because airplanes can go down and with it her son whose greatness would be lost in a towering inferno of burning engines and fuel. So, she put him on Amtrak's train to Chicago with a sack dinner, flew to Chicago (if the flight went down she would have sacrificed herself selflessly for his greater good), and met the train in Chicago where she gave him more food and flew to the next stop all the way to Los Angeles. You have to love the Jewish mother stereotype who has her kind of devotion. But, lest you think love is blind, when asked in an interview who was her favorite composer, she answered, "Gershwin. He's second," she said and pointed to her son.Postscript: Kudos to American Masters for making this possible. What would we do without you? And, then there is Judy Garland who discovered Hamlisch, Peter Allen, and Andy Williams to name a few. Way to share the wealth.

Genre: Biography   Documentary   Music   Musical