Ben Arthur's Songwriter Podcast
Limitations are inspiring: they lead to thinking, so I don't mind them.
—Mike Nichols
Update: Welcome to your new favorite binge. My friends, Andi & Ken have a great podcast The Good, The Pod and The Ugly and it’s all about movies! They heard I wrote a song for filmmaker Mike Nichols and asked if I would talk to them about the process and all about his movies. We went in deep on Mike Nichols, which rounded out their targeted series about his movies—and we also talked about Angels in America. Fall down the rabbit hole with us! This link takes you directly to the episode!
—xx Anna, September 2023
Song credits: Anna Kline, vocals and rhythm guitar; John Looney on lead guitar; Josh Nolan, bass, engineering, and officiating. Ben Arthur, mixed the track.
After I complete a project or poem, story or song, I find a huge sense of relief afterward. I don’t know if you ever feel like this, but especially when writing a song—it’s such a mysterious process, that I’ve often thought, Welp, I pulled it off!
Low and behold, it’s almost a surprise that songs come out of my head again and again. And, each time, I find a surer footing in the process of developing my idea, of fine-tuning my editing process line by line—and discovering what I know about myself and about music.
The development process—sometimes frustrating, sometimes exhilarating, and, ultimately and completely satisfying—always carries with it a certain negotiation with self: things come out that you didn't realize you knew—like how you view and respond to the reflected world in which you live.
It’s more fuel from a battle won, a very personal vote of confidence in ourselves that we come to rely on and use to wade further into our own experience and the experience of expressing ourselves.
A few months after we released our album last year, I got connected (through our PR agent) to Ben Arthur, a fellow songwriter who hosts his podcast, SongWriter. Ben interviews people from different walks of life and then chooses a songwriter to write a song about said story.
He asked me if I would be interested in reading a book and a few days later a box arrived on my porch. Ben sent me a biography (my favorite kind of book) about film director Mike Nichols written by Mark Harris, which is definitely. my. thing.
You may not know Mike Nichols by name, but you know his movies. Two words: The Graduate. Ever heard of it?
That was the 2nd movie Nichols ever directed and he won an Oscar for it at the age of 36. Just check out his IMDB page and I guarantee you’ve seen at least one of his films.
As a child, his parents were fortunate in that they were able to ship both him and his brother to the United States and escape from Hitler’s Germany; and, from an early age, his obsession with movies began. From watching movies as a kid he learned English and he also learned a new way to communicate through the nuances of the unsaid, the taboo, the unspoken moments we share—through drawing attention to details which most people might choose to turn a blind eye.
If you really want to nerd out on The Graduate, watch this or this rundown—or just watch it—because there’s more worth seeing than just this one scene.
Even before his work on The Graduate, he was well-known for being a talented improv comedy actor, honed at 2nd City Theater in Chicago where he met his comedic partner, Elaine May. Their act, Nichols and May, was a hit, earning them national notoriety and eventually earning the team a Grammy for best Comedy album in 1960.
He went on to direct stage plays both on and off-Broadway, like Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple. He was friends with a who’s who of celebrities. Directing on stage sparked his interest in directing a film. It was a happenstance kind of friendship with Elizabeth Taylor that secured his first gig as director for the film and adaptation of the stage play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
His story continues—there’s so much to cover but suffice it to say, in 2001, he officially achieved EGOT status—Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony.
I relied on a few things to finish the tune: I channeled my former inner-theater-kid and I was on a Midnight in Paris jag (not directed by Mike Nichols, of course, but a filmmaker who revels in the nostalgia of old movies, NYC and Paris). There is also the element of my intermittent dabbling in swing tunes for the past few years and that Beatles tune I’ve always loved: Honeypie.
After numerous pages (#paperaddiction) of scribbled thoughts, observations, and possible paths I could travel—my bouncing baby song arrived in this world.
Paste Magazine put up an early preview of the episode or you can listen to it here or anywhere you listen to your podcasts. Or just press play:
p.s. Dear Production Team, if there is ever a musical written about Mike Nichols’ life, keep me in the loop on that!
