The same day faded-romance drama “A Love Song” screened for the Sundance Film Festival, I caught an interview with Marilyn Bergman on NPR in which the late lyricist described the time director Richard Brooks came to her and partner Alan with a request: “I want you to write me a song that is to appear twice in [“The Happy Ending”].
Early in the film, I want it to function perhaps as a proposal of marriage between these two young lovers,” he said to them.
“l don’t want you to change a note or a word, but I want the song to mean something very different when you hear it a second time,” Brooks told the couple, who answered the assignment with the ballad “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?”There’s a love song in “A Love Song” that functions in much the same way.
It
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