Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
Suicide Is Painless. I always wondered what sort of royalties the songwriters got off of that one.
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There's
an amazing history about that.
Robert Altman wanted the lyrics to the song to be the "stupidest song ever written." But he was apparently too "smart" to write the lyrics. So he told composer Johnny Mandel "All is not lost. I’ve got a 15-year-old kid who’s a total idiot." Yes, he spoke about his own son that way.
So he asked his teenage son Michael Altman to write the lyrics. His son must not have been that stupid because he wrote the lyrics in 5 minutes. (Also,
some sources say his son was 14, so maybe Robert Altman was not good at math.)
All Michael Altman wanted in return was a new guitar. (OK, maybe he wasn't that smart.) But instead, the producer gave him a standard songwriter’s contract. This meant royalties. (The rules about royalties are why many TV shows themes have lyrics written for them even if they are never used.)
And then his father liked the song and made it the theme song, and of course, it became the theme song of the TV show.
Robert Altman later griped that he got $70,000 for directing the movie, but the theme song earned his "stupid" son a million dollars.
And according to one source, that was even before the TV show and the reruns.
