Extremely readable story of how Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt came to write "The Fantasticks," the longest-running musical in history. Full of interesting back-stage stories and details on how the famous songs and lines came to be written. It's about the show, but it's also about the people who made it happen. It's a little portrait of life among theatre people and beatniks in late 1950s Greenwich Village.

There are many reasons America has fallen in love with this play. The most obvious being the story. It is a play bringing simple innocence into a seemingly scandelous love affair. It is a heart-warming musical not quickly to be forgotten. Yet, what i love most about the play is who Luisa is and can be made to be. Her monologue preceeding "Much More" has served me well in audition after audition and this play will go on as a classic in musical theatres everywhere. A must-read for play lovers.

There are so many film programs in the country but hardly any that provide the insight into the finance and legalities of the industry. Being a fresh graduate, I my self faced this problem. This book however, is a problem solver. Baumgarten's, Farber's and Fleischer's approach towards the business aspects of filmmaking is an insightful one and it provides vital information, especially for those who are just about to get their feet wet. I highly recommend this book to all the film students and especially to those who are concentrating in producing and directing.

I am the Business Development Manager for a large electronics company, and always looking to improve my business skills. I found the book was written without a market in mind. It is some how written for a person with no experience, or education in business, who is dealing with mutli-million dollar contract in the play business. I think that rules out pretty much every person. It goes in to the basics of negotiations like "you might need a contract", or "some things might be important", and then addresses these issues in terms of a person who would need to be the best in their field to approach such situation. Badly written, no focus market, probably paid to get it published.

This book is a clear example of where business both American and world wide is going in its short-term employment and flexible contracts. As a company director it is my experience that the regular business world likes clean, rather aggressive and litigious contracts in an inextricably linear logic. These negotiations and contracts often leave residues of anger, some fear and the overriding sense that the product wasn't invented that couldn't be abandoned by its producer, especially if it has a flaw.

Responsibility, pride in product and a willingness to see a project through seems naive and out of date. Art both mirrors and projects the implications of societal forms and attitudes. Just as the movie "All That Jazz" exposed producers who considered the life blood of a great choreographer a simple product to be discarded when they could make more money from the company's insurance, so does the intelligent practice of Entertainment law promise a rescue from such a loss of values. Especially if the lawyer has, like Donald C. Farber, the long view.

In the third most populous nation on the earth, with 75% of the population of European origin, America sits firmly astride an artistic economic depression that has lasted since the last "great" depression of the 1930s. Graduates of America's professional arts schools subsist on part time employment, poor family lives and a gross failure to make a living. It's clear that America's arts business more resembles the poorest third world country or Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota than it does even the local dry cleaning business.

In the Arts the big winners are very big and the losers represent anywhere from 80 to 98% of the total college graduates in the field. Rather than lay this at the foot of education, we blame it on God (talent). Rather than blame the government for not economically stimulating a consciousness raising, educational, non-polluting, self-renewing, pleasurable, team developing profession, we blame it on consumer demand although the arts are regularly used to stimulate consumer demand through advertisement on television. Frankly this logic doesn't compute. Only the law and men like Donald C. Farber stand between this flawed format and total artistic cultural collapse.

Donald C. Farber's "Common Sense Negotiation, The Art of Winning Gracefully" belies a "Tiger" of a book. Complexity expert John N. Warfield states that "Nothing is complex to those who know how to solve the problem." Farber writes with a deft light touch walking amongst the mine fields and the failed careers of America's brightest talents with respect, humanity, compassion and toughness. I'm reminded of Deming's lectures or Senge's five disciplines. Farber has been dealing with and protecting free lance individual entrepreneurs since before the local corporations knew how to spell the word. Farber's sections on who the expert is, the importance of understanding the system, teamwork with your negotiator, clarity of intent, gracefulness under fire, the meaning of the deal and the mastery of it with an awareness of how to work right up until the final curtain, are well written and cleverly expressed. Unlike Senge who speaks more holistically than he writes, Farber writes as he speaks. That can be confusing to some who demand a more linear projection of reality. Such a view is not artistic and Farber has made his living from the beginning with artists. I would also recommend his "From Option to Opening, a Guide to Producing Plays Off-Broadway" as a practical companion to "Common Sense Negotiation."

He makes it clear from the beginning that even existing in the current climate is a success but his goals are higher than mere existence. He has a clear sense of the necessity for flexibility and an attitude that creates serious theatrical work rather than lost time in useless conflict. Like all lawyers Farber is no stranger to conflict but like the late Arthur Goldberg, he keeps things low key and points out that an agreement is only as good as the success of the product it produces. The goal is the project's success but all parties must survive to collaborate another day and that means that the project must be economically successful as well. The system of agreements is "Common Sense" or what anthropologist Clifford Geertz calls "local knowledge" i.e. cultural language that forms the basis for all agreements and is implied but not necessarily written. Farber explains these sub-texts in such a way that the actual document is clear across cultures.

This book is a clear example of where American and world business is going in its short term employment and flexible contracts. The business world likes clear linear lines to their contracts. Don Farber does as well but with a clear sense of the necessity for flexibility and an attitude that creates serious theatrical work rather than lost time in useless conflict. Hard feelings in the theater and film world simply cost money. Intrigue is not productive given the high levels of expertise and labor costs as well as the rental costs of shooting a movie. Humanity and a downplayed aggressiveness, leaving that for the product, is essential when the product is based upon human attitude. I have worked cross culturally on many occassions and have experienced the loss of a great deal of money based upon beliefs about the product not consonant with the market. Happily for myself and sadly for those who wouldn't listen to people like Don Farber, I wasn't the one losing the money.