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Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman: Inside Their Broadway Hits
By Staff
December 28, 2023
When Disney decided to make a sequel to its 1964 film Mary Poppins, they turned to Shaiman and Wittman to write a score as memorable as the Sherman Brothers’ original songs. Included in their mix was “The Place Where Lost Things Go,” a beautiful ballad sung by Mary (Emily Blunt) that earned Shaiman and Wittman their first Oscar nomination as a pair for best original song.
WITTMAN: I had read every Mary Poppins book that existed. And P.L. Travers was an aficionado of Eastern religion, and a deep believer in this sense of the hereafter. And so in one of the books, Mary takes the kids to see her uncle who is the man on the moon. And he says, “Oh, you’ve lost some trinkets over the year, and here they are.” And they’re like, “Wow.” He says, “Oh yeah, I keep all the loss things here on the dark side of the moon…”
SHAIMAN: ...Which is long before Pink Floyd thought of it. So we were trying to think, “How does Mary Poppins sing to the kids about loss and grief in a way a kid could understand?” And Scott — in another moment where his background as a director comes in handy — had this idea of using this story as a way for us to get into the song, even though that story is not mentioned in the movie.
WITTMAN: But we do mention the moon and the other side of the moon, so that’s where that comes from.
SHAIMAN: You know, that was one song where no one ever gave us any notes; the one time where we submitted a song and everyone just was like, “Yeah, okay.”
WITTMAN: Emily Blunt was making The Girl on the Train, and she would would come over between filming and we would craft these songs on her. I have very fond memories of doing that with her.
SHAIMAN: Although somewhere in the vaults of my iPad, I have a demo of it sung by Christine Ebersole, which was something special.
WITTMAN: It’s a very meaningful song to us. And Marc had been nominated before, but that was my first Oscar nomination.
SHAIMAN: And then to get Bette Midler to sing it at the Oscars was mind-blowing. Mary Poppins ruled my life from the time I was four years old until Bette Midler came around when I was 13 years old. And then I took the Mary Poppins soundtrack off my record and put on Bette Midler records. And if you had ever told that child that one day, Bette Midler would sing the song that we wrote for Mary Poppins at the Academy Awards, I’d never believe it.
WITTMAN: We also would befriend Richard Sherman doing the movie, and he became a godfather for us on this. So it was a lovely experience, all of Mary Poppins was.
SHAIMAN: It was our love letter to the Sherman Brothers. The whole movie was about not forgetting the things that we love as children. And so for all of us, making the movie was our way to honor this thing we loved as children.
