Never Mind the Happy
Showbiz Stories from a Sore Winner
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jan 27, 2026
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From the award-winning composer/co-lyricist behind such iconic projects as Hairspray, Sister Act, Mary Poppins Returns, and Smash comes a wickedly funny, no-holds-barred memoir.
In Never Mind the Happy, musical dynamo Marc Shaiman looks back on five decades of Broadway triumphs, Hollywood hijinks, and unforgettable collaborations. Along the way, he charts the personal highs and heartbreaks that have shaped him—spending his teenage years in community theater, starting a decades-long collaboration with Bette Midler in the ’70s, surviving the AIDS crisis of the ’80s, his award-winning film music career in the Hollywood of the ’90s, right up to the peaks (and valleys) of creating Broadway musicals from 2000 on.
Candid, hilarious, and deeply human, Shaiman’s story is a tribute to the power of music, the pull of the spotlight, and the beat that never stops.
Part showbiz tell-all, part love letter to the melancholy that fuels creativity, told with perfect comic timing—along with a few wrong notes, and plenty of standing ovations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Film and theater composer Shaiman delivers a rollicking debut memoir about his decades-long career in entertainment. From his days as a 13-year-old piano prodigy sight-reading Funny Girl for a New Jersey community theater in the early 1970s to collaborations with luminaries including Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Harvey Fierstein, and Bradley Cooper, Shaiman recounts his career highs with exuberance and his misfires with humble wit. He shares behind-the-scenes accounts of collaborating with Lorne Michaels on Saturday Night Live sketches and composing music for the short-lived TV show Smash, infusing his anecdotes with the humor that has long defined his songwriting. (In a characteristic quip, he recalls Streisand's rendition of "Ave Maria" as "the greatest Jewish Christmas miracle since Irving Berlin wrote ‘White Christmas.' ") Amid the laughter, Shaiman movingly recalls the loss and fear of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, writing somberly of scanning the newspaper for young men's obituaries. Throughout, Shaiman's narrative sparkles with personality and affection for the performers and collaborators who shaped his life. The result is a lively, heartfelt chronicle of creativity, survival, and the enduring pull of the spotlight. Agents: Cait Hoyt and Julie Flanagan, CAA.
