Original Cast Album: Company

D. A. Pennebaker's documentary records the making of the original cast album for Stephen Sondheim's groundbreaking concept musical Company, taped at a Columbia Records studio in Manhattan roughly two months after the show's Broadway premiere. Sondheim, director Hal Prince, the cast and a full pit orchestra work through a session that runs about nineteen hours, stretching until morning. The legendary passage comes well past midnight, when The Ladies Who Lunch is the only song left to record: exhaustion catches up with Elaine Stritch, who repeatedly fails to land a satisfying take, at one point dropping the key slightly, and the decision is made just before dawn to end the session, with Stritch returning to cut her vocal at a separate one. Pennebaker had originally intended the film as a pilot for a television series about different cast album recordings, but the series never happened and this stood alone. The clearest proof of its cult status is the 2019 Documentary Now! episode that parodies it outright, alongside its restoration and release by the Criterion Collection. Who it's for: Lovers of Broadway musicals, of Sondheim, and of observational documentaries that catch the creative process at its most strained. Who it's not for: Not for anyone indifferent to musical theater, since the film takes place almost entirely inside a recording studio.