'Six by Sondheim' review: Must-Steve TV

But Lapine has located rare archival footage from Broadway originals. He directed a delightful new video in what looks like Technicolor with Darren Criss, Jeremy Jordan and America Ferrera as the hopeful young artists in "Merrily." Indie movie director Todd Haynes has staged a daring new version of "I'm Still Here," growled by rocker Jarvis Cocker (the Pulp) in an old-time supper-club.

Best of all, Lapine has meticulously spliced and edited lines from Sondheim interviews, back and forth through the years, so he seems to be telling the same stories as his looks change but his delivery remains the same. There are the familiar biographical details about his troubled relationship with his divorced mother, how he "osmosed" himself into the life of his mentor Oscar Hammerstein II. But this famously unsentimental, complicated man talks about falling in love for the first time at 60 and he tears up about the importance of teachers. And, most important, he talks about the making of art.

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