Interview by Jon Burlingame
Recorded February 7, 2026
Composer and lyricist Marc Shaiman traces a career that began at the piano in New Jersey community theater, where he was playing for productions at 12, and took him to New York at 16. There he met his longtime partner and co-lyricist, Scott Wittman, and soon became Bette Midler’s music director and arranger, a collaboration that later brought “The Wind Beneath My Wings” to Beaches.
Shaiman recalls writing for Saturday Night Live and Billy Crystal’s Academy Awards medleys, and his long partnership with Rob Reiner, from When Harry Met Sally… and his first film score, Misery, to The American President. He also discusses Sister Act, The Addams Family, Sleepless in Seattle, The First Wives Club, and writing “Blame Canada” with Trey Parker for South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.
On the stage side, he describes creating Hairspray with Wittman, which won the Tony Award for Best Score, along with Catch Me If You Can, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Smash, and Some Like It Hot, and the full-circle moment of writing songs for Mary Poppins Returns, the sequel to the film that first made him fall in love with music.
He closes with reflections on the craft (music as “a tool in the director’s palette,” there to support “the motion and the emotion”) and his advice to young musicians: “Show up, say yes, and just collaborate.”