How Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim came to be in 'Glass Onion'
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Tuesday, November 26, 2024


How Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim came to be in 'Glass Onion'
Stephen Sondheim, at home in Roxbury, Conn., Nov. 21, 2021. Sondheim and Angela Lansbury make cameos early on in “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” (Daniel Dorsa/The New York Times)

by Dave Itzkoff



NEW YORK, NY.- When “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” isn’t setting up its actors to look like the possible perpetrators of a devious crime, the comic caper is reveling in its star-studded ensemble.

There are of course the A-listers who populate the principal cast, including Daniel Craig, Janelle Monaé and Edward Norton. And there are the fleeting, unheralded appearances from famous faces like Ethan Hawke, Serena Williams and Yo-Yo Ma that function as rapid-fire visual gags.

But a couple of these cameos now carry an unexpected poignancy. In the prologue of the film, which was released Friday on Netflix, sleuth Benoit Blanc (Craig) is in a funk and looking for ways to keep his brain engaged at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

We see Blanc relaxing in his bathtub, playing the multiplayer video game Among Us with a squad of online celebrities that includes Natasha Lyonne and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The other two members of Blanc’s eclectic gaming group are Stephen Sondheim, renowned composer of musicals like “Company,” “Into the Woods” and “A Little Night Music,” and Angela Lansbury, decorated stage and screen actor from “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Murder, She Wrote.”

Both stars have died since work was completed on “Glass Onion” — Sondheim in November 2021 at age 91 and Lansbury this past October at age 96 — and the film might well be the final screen appearance for each of them.

It’s a bittersweet occasion for their fans, a group that includes Rian Johnson, writer and director of “Glass Onion” and creator of the “Knives Out” series. As Johnson explained in a recent video interview, he wanted the Sondheim and Lansbury cameos to stand as tributes to two of his favorite artists — and to give him an excuse to interact with these cultural greats whose paths he might not otherwise have crossed.

Now, Johnson said, his experience in securing the involvement of his personal heroes has taught him never to take such opportunities for granted.

“One thing I’ve learned is that every moment you get with somebody that you respect, savor that time,” he said, “and put yourself in that situation as often as possible.”

While Johnson’s affection for Sondheim might not be immediately evident from his résumé — the filmmaker’s credits include “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and the time-travel thriller “Looper” — Johnson grew up a fan of musical theater, and included a shout-out to Sondheim in the original “Knives Out”: a scene of Craig lost in thought as he sings along with “Losing My Mind,” from the Sondheim musical “Follies.”

Sondheim was also a lover of wordplay, games and crossword puzzles, and he enjoyed orchestrating murder-mystery parties with his friend Anthony Perkins. He and Perkins wrote the screenplay for the 1973 whodunit “The Last of Sheila,” which starred James Coburn, Dyan Cannon, Raquel Welch and Ian McShane, and which Johnson cited as an inspiration for his “Knives Out” films.

Sondheim’s ties to the mystery genre go deeper still: His only nonmusical Broadway production was “Getting Away With Murder,” a play he wrote with George Furth and which ran for just over a month in 1996. In an interview with The New York Times that year, he recounted how Laurence Olivier had told him he’d used Sondheim as his model for the game-loving mystery author he played in the 1972 movie “Sleuth.” (In the same interview, Anthony Shaffer, the author of “Sleuth,” denied a longstanding rumor that he had originally titled it “Who’s Afraid of Stephen Sondheim?”)

Through his love of Sondheim’s musicals, Johnson was introduced to Lansbury, who played Mrs. Lovett in the original Broadway production of “Sweeney Todd,” as well as a filmed version that played frequently on Johnson’s television. That is, when Johnson wasn’t glued to “Murder, She Wrote,” the cozy CBS series that cast Lansbury as crime-solving author Jessica Fletcher.




For children of the 1980s, that show “was actually pretty pivotal in installing a love of whodunits and murder mysteries into all of our brains,” said Johnson, who slipped a few seconds of a Spanish-dubbed “Murder, She Wrote” episode into the original “Knives Out.”

Ram Bergman, Johnson’s producing partner, said Sondheim’s and Lansbury’s cameos were recorded during the editing of “Glass Onion,” as he and Johnson tried to reach them, working every connection they had.

In Sondheim’s case, Bergman said, “I wasn’t really sure how to get to him. But then I was on a call with Bryan Lourd, our agent, and it somehow came up. I said, we really would love Stephen to do this. And I swear, five minutes later, he emailed me: He’s going to do it.”

Bergman added, “Rian was in heaven, and I was in heaven because I knew how much he meant for Rian.”

Sondheim performed his contribution on a recorded Zoom call. In that conversation, Johnson said, “I mentioned to him that we were trying to get Angela Lansbury. And he said, ‘Oh, Angie — I’m friends with her. Tell her I’m doing it. She’ll do it.’”

Later on, Johnson went to Lansbury’s home in Los Angeles and recorded her portion on his laptop computer.

“She couldn’t have been lovelier and more generous,” Johnson said, adding that Lansbury was perfect for the scene in every way except one: “Not a gamer. And so she was very patient in letting me describe the rules of Among Us, up to a point. At which point she just said, ‘You know what? Just tell me what the lines are. I’ll trust you.’”

Those were Johnson’s only interactions with Sondheim and Lansbury before they died. In each of his conversations, Johnson said, he wasn’t ashamed of sharing his admiration for them.

“I allowed myself to have that little awkward moment of saying to them what I’m sure every person who meets them says,” he said. “But still, it felt really nice to tell them that I wouldn’t be here doing this if it weren’t for them.”

Getting to pay this kind of posthumous homage to his idols is a bittersweet distinction, Johnson said: “It’s sad, because as a fan I wish they were still around and making stuff,” he said. “I hope they would have enjoyed the little scene and gotten a laugh out of it.”

Lyonne did not get to interact directly with Lansbury or Sondheim but is no less proud to be a part of it.

Asked what it was like to have played even a minor role in their curtain calls, Lyonne replied in the arch spirit of a “Knives Out” movie: “Honey, I know what you’re getting at, and it wasn’t me,” she said. “I have alibis for both.”

Then, with more sincerity, she continued, “It goes without saying that they were giant losses of two incredible lives well lived. I guess we’ll only know if I make it to 90 if I was actually worthy of being up there with them.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

December 26, 2022

A French Modernist Masterpiece, Lost and Found

Maya Ruiz-Picasso, artist's daughter and inspiration, dies at 87

Fernando Zóbel's work and his unique gaze on the art of the great masters now presented at the Museo del Prado

'The new pictures of Augustus: Power and Media in Ancient Rome' explored in new exhibition

A Christmas tree brings life to a destroyed Palestinian village

Stephenson's Jan. 1 auction features estate treasures from Philadelphia and beyond

Mimi Kilgore, arts patron and de Kooning muse, dies at 87

Featured exhibition: "Uta Barth: Peripheral Vision" on view at the Getty Center

Hamiltons Gallery presents a new series by the renowned Australian photographer Murray Fredericks

The Love of Print: Glasgow Print Studio celebrates 50 years with new exhibition at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

Making skate films into art

Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber acquire world rights to the films of Yvonne Ranier

Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome presenting "Rome is still falling", works by Robert Smithson

'Resource & Ruin: Wisconsin's Enduring Landscape' explores nature's beauty and an environment in crisis

Mauritshuis open call: Everybody can be The Girl with a Pearl Earring

Major new art prize, established by the Beckett Foundation with Copenhagen Contemporary, goes to Cathrine Raben Davidsen

Arcade gaming platform Polycade teams up with Atari to launch Polycade Limiteds

America needs its own comic opera company

Statues Also Breath: Obafemi-Awolowo University and Prune Nourry

Rubenstein Commons opens at the Institute for Advanced Study

Salon 94 Design opens Thomas Barger's second solo show at the gallery's Freeman Alley location

Ekin Kee Charles wins the Han Nefkens Foundation - Loop Barcelona Video Art Production Grant 2022

A humble sanctuary reborn in grandeur

How Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim came to be in 'Glass Onion'




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Houston Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง
Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful