To the Americans

No, I'm not awestruck by Hollywood. If it was 1948, maybe. 2025 is just a bunch of corporate suits beating the dead horses of once-profitable IP. - Merrily wasn't even profitable, and still isn't. The only reason that the Americans are so obsessed with making that film is that Sondheim's estate clearly banned them from making any type of autobiographical film, and that's all they're interested in. Sondheim's value as a cult figure is seen as more valid than Company or Follies. Assassins is another potentially great film that Richard could adapt instead. To me, he's not a cult figure. I wasn't part of the cult, and that's why I didn't go to study in New York. Not to mention that my films prove that I'm as expert about Broadway as virtually anyone still alive. My view is that Don tried to keep me separate from all that cult stuff. - I told the studios that I won't star in any films, but they could pay me to consult. Believe me: even the high-class singers in my films reckon I pull something out of them. - However, there's more than one way to approach a veiled autobiography. The best option is to simply accept that he had a massive collection of films, including a bunch of experimental shorts that he made in the 1950's and 1960's. Remastering those with talking heads as some type of Bluray or VOD package is likely to be far more revealing of Sondheim's life than a show that fails in part because audiences dislike the quasi-autobiography of it. One could include an entire documentary on his obsessive collecting, including all those Victorian games and his thousands of old records. That's presumably been donated to the New York Public Library.