 As always, I am planning many events for the fall and next spring. If you have ideas of other people that you would like to see, contracts that you need to explain to you, anything that we can help you with, please feel free to email me. My email is on the back of the program that you have. I also left some space for notes, so all of the wisdom that comes from these three, you can write it all down. We'll all have a happy American musical here. Let me remind you please to turn off your cell phones. And also, no pictures or anything during the event. We are on the internet, so if we could keep it down to a dull roar in the house until the question and answer, which will be at the end, we'll do all of them at the end, I'll come up and run that. If you have a question, raise your hand. I'm going to ask you to stand up to make sure not only we can hear you, but it's on the audio tape and on the internet feed. So without any further ado, I am so pleased to introduce Brian Yorkie. Wow, there's no segue here. No, no, no. That's how we like to work, no segues. Conversation just arises organically in situations like this all the time. Exactly. Well, this is great because we don't get a chance to be in the same room that often, so we just like to catch up. So maybe we'll just catch up on other things, preferably. But some of you may know or may not know, we all met in the BMI musical theater workshop. We were in the same class and some other people that were in that class, Jeff Marks and Amanda Green, Curtis Moore and Tom Meiser. So it was a tremendous room. Write those names down if you haven't heard them before. Meiser and Moore. You'll hear them soon. And it was pretty apparent, certainly, for me, hearing Brian and I were working together and it was such a thrill to discover Bobby's material. What was the first thing that you brought in? Because you were solo, right? Yeah, I came in. They came in as a team and I came in just as a composer and lyricist. The first thing they did was the happy goodbye, right? The sad hello or happy goodbye. I think the exercise was to write a 32-bar song, A-B-A. The first year at BMI is all assignments. Everyone's given basically the same assignment. Which is actually really fun. I thought I loved that year because I got a lot out of seeing what everybody brought to the same project as opposed to when everyone goes off and works on their own shows. Yeah, and I didn't love my first year just because I didn't feel I was part of the class until I started writing with Jeff. Just socially, I didn't really hook in. I didn't get that there was a big, like, social fun thing going on. Wait, there was a social thing going on? Well, I guess you guys were sort of the old big planets, too. But yeah, we'd go out after class every week to Cancun, at the Mexican restaurant. We still exist, right? We're just still there. But BMI has moved. BMI has moved. They moved down to World Trade Center. Yeah, that'd be a schlep. We don't go to Cancun anymore. Are we taking notes? Is the wisdom pouring forth? I remember the first year being, I'm embarrassed to admit this on the internet, but I remember just being competitive. Yes. Like, how I knew you were good is every time you present I'd be like, Really? Oh, yeah. I remember. You and Tom and Curtis, anything you guys would do, I would just sit back there and scribble in my notebook. You're remembering it wrong because I know I didn't get very good in the second year. The first song I brought in was OK. And then we did the Blanche song next. The second song you have to write is this song for Blanche Dubois on her mad scene in Streetcar Named Desire. And it's just a suicide mission. You're set up to fail. I mean, some people somehow write good songs, but I'm not sure they would really work in the show, but they turn out to be good songs. But you try and write something that'll work, but you don't write to Streetcar Named Desire. It's not a music. Yeah, we wrote a song for Streetcar Named Desire. At the end of the year, we wrote one for Death of a Salesman. Yeah. Remember that? Death of a Salesman. Because that needs to be a musical. Yeah, no, I didn't finish my Blanche song. I wrote half a Blanche song. It was some kind of Habanera, which didn't really make sense for New Orleans. I got halfway through it, and I was like, I didn't finish it. And they were like, Bobby, you have to finish your song. How do you finish it? No, I will not finish it. I think ours was like 10 minutes long, so we made up for everything that you didn't get finished. We were so excited, and then we really got raked over the coals with our song, I remember, a little bit. We were really upset. You've blocked it out, but I remember being really disappointed. It's blocked. Did you write in college? I did. Thank you. I wrote a little bit. I've been writing since I was little. I don't know about you. I've been writing music since I was 11, and I started writing songs for my little drama group, and I got to write basically a show a year. They weren't any good, but they were like, I got to do it every year, and I got to feel like I was that. And then at Yale, I started writing shows, but they wouldn't do them. Why? They just, I would kind of pitch them, and they'd be like, well, let's do a workshop. And I got all these workshops. I thought, jeez, if I can't even get a show at Yale, how am I going to do it in the real world? How did you get together with Jeff? That was through BMI. Because at BMI, if you're not attached to anybody, you get to experiment and work with different people week to week, and then you hope something sticks, and you guys stuck pretty quickly. Yeah. Well, I wasn't scheduled to work with anyone, but I was feeling very competitive and also very paranoid that like, I know I'm good, but I'm not getting the feedback I want. Because they make a cut at the end of first year. They do? Yeah, they make a cut. Yeah, they'd say, not everybody gets into something. Right. You remember that. Yeah, that looms very large of you once you realize like, oh, they cut two people. You don't know that going into it. You know what I mean? Everybody go down. No, so I... Yeah, so Jeff, I was... You were both composer lyricists, weren't you? No, Jeff was a lyricist. Oh, so you're just a lyricist? And then his main collaborator, the guy who was supposed to write his 10-minute show with, dropped out of the program. So he was kind of left on his own and ended up... And so he needed a partner for the end of the year. You have to tell them what your 10-minute musical was. Yeah, so it was called Hansel and Gradle in Disneyland. And it was something about... It was like about these two little kids, these two kids that ran away from home, to go live at Disneyland forever. And they ran into Mickey Mouse, who in our version, who our satirical version was sort of the Walt Disney... the anti-Semitic cryogenically frozen Walt Disney personality. And he had this machine. It was a little bit like Little Chapa Hars, he had a machine that was basically this box with knobs and antennae and this cord that attached itself to a little masquiteer hat that he put on the kids to suck their innocence and soul so he could stay young. And it ended with a song called Don't Give Disney Your Brain. Probably the best song he wrote that year. I don't remember thinking ours will not be the weirdest this year. But tell them what yours was. It was Feeling Electric. It was about a woman who gets shock therapy. Which was later... Much, much later. Much, much later. Yeah. It was very, very different. It was very, very different. Very different. It was different from what it became. Yeah. BMI was, I felt like it was an up-and-down experience. Yeah. You know, all the way around. I mean, I think it was a brilliant experience for me. When you get negative feedback on something that could work and it's hard for anyone who's sensitive to take negative feedback and know what to do with it. I also found that, I don't know if you've felt this way, but sometimes in a workshop environment, the music doesn't necessarily get the attention that the lyrics do. So I found myself at times just starving for someone to say something about the music. Although I thought Skip Cannon was brilliant. Then it would come back to our teachers who would be wonderful. But in terms of the around the room... The workshop critique tended to be all about the words for the most part. But Skip, our first year, Skip was brilliant with music. He could sometimes sit down at a piano and fix your song for you in 15 seconds. I don't worry. Yes, and he could do that as well. More than that as well. More than that as well. It was amazing. And then Richard Enquist, his second year, was also brilliant lyricist. Yeah. But that's actually, that's the case in theater criticism. You never hear much about the music. You certainly, the music doesn't get as much attention. What was interesting is I remember, was it Anthony Tomassini who wrote an article about the play scores a summer ago? It was two summers ago. Yeah, yeah. It was interesting sort of seeing your music reviewed by a music reviewer. I learned things I didn't know about Tom's music because I think that so often people who critique theater don't. That's the thing they know least about. Well, I think that it's a gray area. And with music, it's really a visceral response. You either like it or you don't. And there are moments where I feel like if people don't like it, they go to a place of, I heard this before, words like generic are used a lot. It all sounds the same. It's forgettable. It's not hummable. You hear a lot of that stuff. And for me, there's a real detailed reaction. And I can go on about why something, again, it's visceral and a melody either resonates with you or not. But it's nice when people actually talk about it and why in an educated way, especially when you're in a workshop. I also think that everyone writes words. I mean, we compose words every day, all of us do. So we all sort of feel that we have... Everyone feels they're an expert on that. ...latitude to critique how words are put together. And most of us know that we couldn't actually put very many notes together if we tried. It's really not on paper. So it's a little bit harder for... But I think it's why in a lot of ways the lyricist... But now with the iPad, everyone can... But it's such an underrated skill to be a lyricist. It's something that I think people feel like they can do because they understand rhyme and there's such a skill to it that... Because I write lyrics. I had a band that I would write pop songs for, but I would never want to write show lyrics because I'm working with someone like Brian. And Brian's just so skilled and brilliant at it. I think the part of musical theater, music, writing that you can really help someone with, because you can't, in the end, you can't give someone the gift of melody or give someone the gift of being able to put their feeling into a song. But what you can do is, for example, there would always be a song every week that would start with a vamp, like a rhythmic vamp, or boom chick, boom chick, boom chick, boom chick. And the song would kind of go on and go on and go on. And for a song like that, very often, the key thing was, and it's a very easy trick, was, okay, don't play what you wrote at the beginning of that. Sing the verse, but sing it at a time, and, pianists, you just play whole notes, but play it up the octave. And that would be a way to get into the song that started the character from a place of discovery as opposed to, this is just a song and it's starting up right now. Here's the next song. Instead of like, this is just a song and it's starting up right now. I thought, that's true for lyrics too, I think BMI was very good with that craft stuff. I think every week, it's certainly the first three years, every week I learned something that I didn't know before, that I still use. Because I think that that's, I don't know, I feel a little bit like being the one non-composer here. I feel a little bit like writing lyrics is the smallest of the three arts, just because I think it's a craft more than an art. Do you know what I mean? I think there are lyricists who's lyrics achieve the levels of art, but I think that for the most part it's craft. Do you know what I mean? It's like building a cabinet like, you know what you need to do, you know, to me. Well, I think that, I mean, depends on who's coming up with the idea for the song and the placement. Totally, yeah, absolutely. And I think that, I mean, I think you guys, you guys elevate that to an art form. We're gonna actually come up for a place for the song. So then keep the ones that are good. And then you have a show. I think the other great thing about something like BMI, though, is especially for me, who's pretty much out of school, was creating a kind of deadline atmosphere and to take more ownership over the songs that you were creating, the fact that they really made us write down a piano vocal you couldn't just write. I mean, I think we each were okay. I remember, I remember slaving, you know, at the, writing the songs on it was something that, because in college when Brian and I wrote, Brian would give me a lyric sheet and I would just write little notes on top of the words and then I would just play it. That's why no one else could ever play it. So I would never write it down. But I think we're all learning the skill of writing to deadline, of creating something in the moment. Writing when you don't want to write. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I was a sort of, you know, those years of BMI certainly helped prepare for, you know, even writing, you know, with whatever team you're collaborating with on a show, it's like you have to, everyone has to tell you the truth. If you're not telling each other the truth, then you're not going to get there. Absolutely, communication. Truth can be painful sometimes. The reason I started collaborating with someone is I was interning for Ira Weitzman at Playwrights Horizons to make him listen to my tape. And he said, you're in BMI, right? I said, yeah. He said, well, your stuff sounds very Sondheimish, you know, it seems like you're trying to be Sondheim because that's what a lot of people were doing back then. Still today, still today. So he said, you know, just find, why don't you try collaborating? Being in the theater is about working with other people. Even if you end up doing and have to work with designers and producers, and if you really want this for a career, you have to learn how to do that. So that's why I reached out to Jeff and learned to write. And that was, for me, that was the hugest thing. Not just learning to write with Jeff and learning how to be with people, but talking, having an audience there every week to be able to connect with that audience and realizing that it's not about showing off your stuff. It's not about, you know, about connecting with people. It doesn't matter who those people are. It's just connecting with that audience. And that's what Jeff and I, you know, enjoyed about our experience at BMI was just like cracking up the class. That was the fun part about it. And also, you learn, I think, a little bit not very precious as well. You know what I mean? One of my favorite Richard Enquist who unfortunately passed away recently was a real hero of mine in that class. He would sit in the back together when he wasn't moderating. He'd sit in the back and do the crossword. And sometimes people would get up and give literally 20 minute explanations about their song before they sang the song. It's like, you know what? In the show, you don't get to stand and explain it. And he would sit in the back and do his crossword and go, just play the fucking song. And I just remembered, like, there was nothing, you know, you learn not to be precious. But in the moment, you put it out there, like you said, the people are there. It works or it doesn't work, and that's the bottom line. Well, if it takes 20 minutes to explain the song moment, it might be somewhat... Well, because I remember also when we... When we did Next to Normal Off-Broadway and people weren't totally getting what we were doing, you know, I said, well, you know, at first, you're like, well, people aren't getting it. It's their fault. It's my fault. But then he said, okay, well, we have two options. A, we can rewrite the show so that people get what we're trying to say. Or B, we can stand outside the theater every night and stop people on the way out and explain about what we were trying to do. And we realized that A was the more tenable of the two options. The great thing about Second Stage is that there's a little... I guess you called a mezzanine along the side of the seats. Everyone's sitting, and then there's a... So you can actually watch the audience reaction. And there were a few moments... They're not kicked out by that at all? There was one moment in Next to Normal at Second Stage where you could just sense that you lost them and this look on their face collectively all around. So it was both helpful and terrifying to have that. What is it like for you, Bobby, writing now? Do you know what I mean? Now that, A, you have to. But also, B, you don't have to. I mean, you have to, but you don't have to. You don't have to. It's a job now. Which is a glorious place to find yourself. That's a good problem. But it's a good problem to have. But it's a challenge, right? Well, it's a challenge because you do... At first, you write from an amateur love of writing. And from competition to be better than Bobby and Jeff. Exactly. No, but now it's... There's still stuff... I mean, it has to come from inside you. But it's the same thing that happens with you guys. There's some empty piece inside that still has something to say that still is really hungry to connect in another way. And somehow, in the long drudgery of writing a show, you can't help but wish you were writing other shows. And those other shows become your next show. Do you ever phone it in? Have you ever phoned it in? I try. After Avenue Q, Jeff and I had a bunch of projects that we were trying to do. And they seemed like good ideas at the time. And I think in the end, we just didn't connect with them or we didn't both connect with them so that we were sort of trying to write, trying to... But in the end, I think what had to happen was we had to kind of break up as a collaboration because it just wasn't working anymore. Going your own way. How about you, Tom? Have you ever phoned it in? No, I... I always... Especially when I'm writing with you, Brian, I would never phone you. Just don't bring up the bit about the kid. I was just thinking that the thing that I still can't get used to or can't quite fathom is I feel like I bring the same desire to every piece of music that I write and then people sometimes put them in terms of children. Some of your songs are like Billy Joel talk about that in there. Some of them that I just look back and think, where did that come from? Why didn't I not know at the time that it didn't work? But going back to when I was at the piano it felt very natural and exciting. So that's the thing. It's just why does one song suddenly become this staple of your show? And then another song doesn't age very well pretty quickly. That's the most frustrating. That's where the children metaphor sort of breaks down. Killing your babies. Some you keep forever some you sort of... We don't speak of her, I guess. The ugly ones, you kind of forget they ever existed. Well, it doesn't exactly break down. It becomes far-fetched, maybe. But don't you find that having kids kind of spurs you on to use your time a little bit better? Well, I have no choice. I'm working on an orchestration for a symphony orchestra and I just know that last night I'm going to be up till 3 in the morning starting my work at around 10 after the kids are asleep. So it's that world. And it's not every day. There are days that I get to go. Brian and I have taken an office space which has changed my life and it's interesting to think about a life where you were just kind of coming and going if you feel like writing, you write. I have to really be productive at a certain time and that's a little bit more pressure. What do you do when it doesn't come? I don't want to use the D word but when it's not happening... What do you do? Yeah, fuck you. You're asking such good questions Oh, I'm asking the tough questions. Freak out? Well, I actually read, not to throw it back on you but I read something that you were talking about that Trey and Matt do which is called the Tuesday Draft. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that what it's called? Yes, actually, you know it's funny because Jeff and I used to be horribly critical and hard and editorial as we wrote. We would write a line again and Jeff would go like, but that's not quite right, is it? And we'd have to rewrite the line and then we'd write another line and we'd have to rewrite the first line again and we'd just head of each other to death and we'd end up with good stuff for a while and it was really working but I think by the end of Avenue Q we had evolved this process that was extremely fraught with hitting each other over the head with criticism and when I started working with Matt and Trey they had this process with South Park that every week they do an episode and it goes from Tuesday they start on Thursday because South Park airs Wednesday then the next day they start meet again, come up with an idea start writing it, writing it and then by Tuesday is their last day so their ethic is don't edit anything just let the garden grow just let all the ideas come out and don't say now it won't work no one gets to say no until Tuesday and by then they kind of have the episode they want but they polish, polish, polish that's when they're called perfectionism Tuesdays and so that's like that's not one of those notes that you can just take and do you have to practice that that's really where practicing is the idea that we're just going to get something out and get something down Tom and I just did a reading of our new show and there were just a ton of what we call dummy lyrics when you just put something in there so that the composer can write a tune and it was very painful sitting in a room of 50 people hearing those things sung but it was good because it's like oh look the world didn't end tell the funny story about the script about the yellow the highlights well in my document on my computer I highlighted all the dummy lyrics in yellow so that I would remember if I had time I would go back and fix them and I did not have time to go back and fix them and some of them literally made no sense at all like I'll lead you in a lead of silver water and shit like that because you just put something in that's the right rhythm so I highlighted them all in yellow and then it turned out that printed and copied so everyone had a yellow and their scripts had to color yellow well the yellow printed and then copied so all the worst lyrics were highlighted people were like what does this mean these are the important ones and I just sort of you know I was pretty toasted so I was like well that's great what are you going to do that's what you want the audience to know did you explain to them like those are just the ones I'm going to change yeah I did I did I didn't try that that's awesome it did preempt a little bit of criticism because I'm in their core well you saw that I explained it to the cast so one of them when Brian and I first met we met at Columbia University we wrote the varsity show together which is a book musical got this wonderful history and we were put together as a team and then Brian wasn't sure he was going to be able to do it so I was going to take a crack this is by the way when I learned that I shouldn't be writing show lyrics so I created the first song and I brought it in and taught it to everybody with the schedule so we came back rewrote those lyrics and people were coming up to be like oh we get it now as if I was just I knew I was a stopgap and all of my lyrics were dummy and I was like yeah yeah just something to get us going well we waited for Brian inside I was like oh god that's really hating but you did keep one joke which is good out of all of the better ones well I'm always like stealing songs from your band the songs that you've written and someone will be like I'll leave some of the lines when you rewrite it for the show and someone will be like that's the most brilliant lyric and I'm like thanks it's Tom's but thanks there was one day we were doing a workshop of Book of Mormon and the scripts were passed out and we were doing the read through on the first day and there was this one scene where I turned the page and it said Elder Cutting M right in the middle of the scene like Elder Cutting M here I am typing some shit just to look like I'm working that's great when you're in a workshop you don't always have time for that last edit so what are you must be Bobby doing a lot of film now and TV and of course the stuff that you've done in the last couple of years the Winnie the Pooh Kristen my wife and I did the songs for Disney animations Winnie the Pooh which came out last summer and if you don't have young kids you probably didn't notice even if you do you probably didn't notice because it wasn't a big movie but it was like an hour long it was a very cute movie I bought the songs out of it we actually have a little lyrical homage to next normal in there, Tigger sings we had this Tigger had the character exactly there's a duet between Tigger and Eor they've never done before and why not because Tigger is manic and Eor is depressive so we wrote a song called Tigger is trying to Tigger eyes Eor and get him to bounce so it's called it's gonna be great your favorite song excellent yes I tried for years to get that song cut for next normal really who's stopping you? everybody I love that song it's one of the stupidest songs ever written in the history of music, sorry, I mean the music is great no you're not telling me anything I haven't heard you say before that's true it all worked out fine at the end and so and both of you because Brian and I you also have film work on your own do you guys find that what are the major challenges I wanted to ask you guys we're doing, Chris and I are now doing we're doing an animated musical the next Disney princess one and we're doing a live action comedy for Disney as well and I was I'm very curious about the process of creating a live action original story original miracle done as a movie for the first time it's hell there is no are there any historical precedents for it besides the Bjork one well newsies, right, I mean newsies was a movie first yes that's right I mean there's definitely precedent once I guess once is an interesting case because in the movie it's all diagetic music like it's all people actually performing music so it's not you know news boys live action the thing about animation is that it's very akin to the theater in that they're always doing these storyboards it's a rough very easy to draft pictures in comic book form that you can then turn into a little rough animated movie like by flashing these it's like a slide show almost and by doing that you put temp dialogue in, temp you know put your song demos in and you can very quickly rough draft your workshop basically it's the same thing as doing the workshop you see it you see it on its feet but with a live action movie how do you do that we're working on one right now for Robert Downey Jr. and there's also another one that I've been working on for years and years and in all those cases we did things much like much like we do in theater like Tom and I are writing songs for they're doing a movie version of Sweet Valley High that the album of Cody is writing and Universal decided Mark Platt and Universal decided this should be a musical and they called us and they said the album of Cody and we were like yes, absolutely we don't know what it is, yes so we wrote some songs for it and Is that the one with Robert Downey Jr.? No this is a different one No he's not but wouldn't Robert Downey Jr. Sweet Valley High be something else? A dark new feature comes to town with a secret so with that one we did a Tom and I we did a reading out in Los Angeles just like you do here and the funny thing is you sort of do these readings and everyone's like this is amazing it's really not amazing we do them every week in New York but you should come visit us sometime it's great so it's the process of sort of workshopping ultimately I think we'll probably do the same thing with the Downey movie we're currently sort of in the middle of the second draft of the script So you're workshopping everything you're doing two week workshops and that kind of thing I think that's what ultimately we'll do the very least of reading with everyone learning the music and we had a cast 25-30 people for the Sweet Valley reading I just don't know any other way to do it No I don't know any other way either but it seems like I've just been working on this one it's not Greenlit yet so we've not kind of gotten into that stage yet the script development is very strange like how do you get to the draft that Greenlight's the film when you can't do the workshops you know it's challenging weird I think certainly we're with the movie we're writing for Team Downey it's been a challenge to figure out the role that the songs are going to play especially because the development structure in Hollywood is set up around a very specific for live action I don't know anything about animation but for live action it's set up around a very specific paradigm which I'm sure we all sort of know and that paradigm is not the same as a musical paradigm you know what I mean the big thing I keep sort of having to put across you don't want to write it so like I actually had someone say to me in the process of one of these musicals I won't say who or which one I'll lift out I was like no actually it's kind of the opposite you want to write it so the songs are the most important part and you're like well but what if we have to change songs like well then you change songs but you know it's like you're writing a musical it's been in the process of education a little bit I imagine that's less so at Disney though well with animation they're all you know I think Disney animation re-influence I mean musical theater influenced Disney animation and Ellen Minkin and Howard Ashman came aboard but then their work turned around and re-influenced Broadway so I mean I feel like there's a lot of wisdom in the I don't know about you but I mean those movies those Ashman Minkin movies are a big part of why I write musicals you know certainly I mean Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin that was like I want to do that I think the other interesting thing about musicals on film is the glee effect and I think the fact that that show has been such a boon but it's also not necessarily helpful to when you want to write a book driven musical because the songs feel very presentational and very fun and that's why I think there's an attitude of well you can just substitute songs and they can lift out and so in one instance it's great because you get the conversation started but in another case on a wonderful level that not every musical is going to exist on I feel like True, true although I would say that we wouldn't have sold our movies to Team Downey if it hadn't been for for Glacier I'm saying it opens the door and gets a conversation The big thing is because there was this other movie called Time After Time which I've been working on for quite a few years that we set up years ago actually in 2005 and at the time we had to convince executives that you could sing in movies because this was before high school musical and we had to sort of convince them as we got 10 really good looking 22 year old singers and brought them into the room and had them sing which worked like oh well I guess it does work but the great thing about high school musical and Glee is that they've sort of broken the live action barrier for they make it I mean it's geniusly done it's very marketable and that comes from Rob Marshall obviously the Chicago movie because basically Chicago and 9 all those movies it seems like they do all their musical shooting on a stage basically on a specific stage and it must be cheaper to film it that way without doing sets and lots of different so interesting because I do think you still have to sort of find out I mean with the movie that we're doing for Team Downey I mean our goal is to try to have most of the songs be in situations where characters might sing in real life right it's mostly set at the theater camp so there are many such situations that's great which is helpful I saw this amazing Disney it was in like a Disney lunch lecture with Howard Ashman have you ever seen this no it's amazing the way he taught he talking about this very problem of people resisting characters breaking into song in the movies which especially when it's live action he says that animation is it's one of those things that allow you to believe that a character might break into song and that idea was part of what brought Avenue Q into the idea that it's not a person you just go with it but he also said that I mean the reason why there's so many source songs in Little Mermaid is because he was worried about that about finding excuses like he made Sebastian the the court composer and have to be the place pay the base exactly yeah they the fluke is the Duke of Soul I thought that the Muppet movie was pretty great the would you call that live action or would you I mean yes it is but it's both it also wasn't really a musical it was sort of a movie it was but they did have like four character driven stuff I've watched them many times my kids love it I loved it too absolutely well there's a film in TV so what else oh so so maybe we should maybe we should talk about our our working relationship yes yes about how you fired me oh boy well during the development of Avenue Q Jeff and I decided that we shouldn't just have puppets we wanted to have puppets and people and we were wondering what sort of people should be in this neighborhood you know if Sesame Street had Gordon and Maria like who would we want to to live alongside our puppets and we both kind of like agreed on Brian Yorkie and we thought Brian Yorkie would be the guy who lived on the block and I remember you guys because you had worked on this before Avenue Q they had worked on this project called Kermit Prince of Denmark which is and they ultimately weren't able to get the rights to it right or to do it or we pitched it to Henson and they no one wants to see the Muppets sing and because anyway so Kermit Prince of Denmark the story was that Kermit's going on a vacation to Denver and he actually gets on a plane and goes to Denmark instead and he ends up in the Hamlet story and like Miss Piggy was Ophelia and Gertrude and Gertrude both of course brilliant but then after that came Avenue Q and Bobby and Jeff came to me and said you know we're could we make you a character in Avenue Q and I thought they were going to make me a Muppet surely but then I found out I got to be like Bob McGrath so it was brilliant I actually did the first like two or three two or three or four four workshops I probably told you this but it always been my dream to work with Muppets and Stephanie and Johnny and Rick the people who did the original cast were all Muppeteers and Brian was awesome and after we let him go which was not our doing it would be hard to keep him on board but well in fairness it was a musical so they needed someone who could sing Brian kept offering to quit and we kept making him stay and then the producers came it was sort of an odd experience to sit there at the vineyard and watch Brian make his first entrance well but we had a lot of trouble casting it and finding out what that character was about and it was only when we got I think Jordan Gelber we finally put him in the shoes he wore these like red Converse shoes did you have red Converse shoes I did I actually did one reading at the York because the first reading we did you guys were like well just where would Brian wear it so I wore my orange shorts and my green shirt and my high tops you had the Seattle kind of yeah it was the early 90s Grunge was happening in the mid 90s and then the next reading I showed up in something else and Jeff Marks was like I'm like they're at home he's like well can you go get them I guess at dinner he's like you've got to get the shoes I took the note and every time they're after I wore the shoes and then wasn't there the day was it Chelsea Studios that you walked in and you saw a bunch of Brian's in line waiting to audition we were doing Feeling Electric at Nymph at Chelsea Studios and I'm walking down the hallway at Chelsea Studios and there are like eight nice looking fat guys you know really like friendly fat guys in a row like really nervous I'm like this is I'm like walking along going what's that and I get to the door that says Avenue Q auditions and I was like yeah it was it was a you know story I tell anytime I find out someone who's an Avenue Q fan who might be able to help me out in some way and how's it going is it New World stages right? I think it's going good I saw it a little while ago and it was in really good shape how often do you see Q now probably not as often as I ought to but probably just as often as I mean you know I months go by but but it's in such good shape and we have such good people taking care of it and very good actors kind of the whole set fits yeah at least it looks like it does oh yeah oh yeah it was amazing it was a set that was built for the Vineyard Theatre which was originally right yeah and that set moved in perfectly to the golden Annelisa's right yeah Annelisa's yeah such a great set are there any other productions of it there are now it's been released so it's um it's it's all over them I was researching this movie this down in movie which I said at the theater camp and I was looking at pictures of I think it was Stage Door Manor's production of Avenue Q Avenue Q Junior Avenue Q Junior Avenue G as we called it I've heard Avenue G I've heard about a film adaptation yeah is it still happening we keep talking about that but but I don't think it's gonna happen I think we're just gonna just let it be what it is yeah but it would be nice I mean what we always wanted was for it to be a television show well I remember the very first reading we did it was a pilot for television right cause Kate was done at the York Theatre and Kate Monster sang Taylor the Latte Boy which I think is the best Taylor the Latte Boy my favorite amazing yeah heard me hear Taylor the way she flipped her hair I saw Kristen Chenle did it on the Rosie show and it was nothing compared to Stephanie um but uh and the word of the day was irony that was the best part cause I got to come out and tell everyone that the word of the day was irony everybody say it with me oh come on yeah I remember those they all suddenly be you and Jeff in like a deli we did a little video that had me and Jeff in it and it was called how much do the people in your neighborhood make that's right and some of that pieces of that stayed in the show like the one night stand we tried to put it but we tried to do that song in a couple of readings didn't we I missed most tear it up and throw it away yeah tear it up and throw it away most painful cut it was about jury duty but this is an official notice oh why didn't you say so an official notice tear it up and throw it away and that was one of the first songs you brought in wasn't it yeah that was like the second one that was early that was the thing they bring in these songs they were just everyone was a home run and everything was you know it was so creative and imaginative those were the electric sort of moments of that workshop when you like when you guys would bring in those songs you'd be like oh okay alright you're like oh that could work on oh you know it was something it was like oh that's what that's supposed to be oh you know we get it now we would when we got our first actual job which was writing for theater works we thought we were you know we thought we had such you know we were such hot shots from BMI we told Barbara Pasternak okay so we you know we worked so hard on these songs we really kind of get them right the first time oh wow you know you'll find that we won't need to rewrite a whole lot how old were you and she was like 24 25 something like that and then we brought in our first song for Ferdinand the Bull and it was called Stupido which I didn't even know basically it's like much worse than stupid it's like fucking asshole in Spanish I didn't even know that at the time I didn't even know that that would be for Ferdinand the Bull senior Ferdinand the Robert Downey version yeah exactly Robert Downey jr. in Ferdinand the Bull how do you talk that how do you talk that how do you talk that that's the that's the thing that I think though that I mean I think I was like that because certainly when Tom and I were writing university shows we just you know we pulled the shit out we stuck it up there we gave it to people they sang it we did it it was over you know and I think that that's the that's the learning curve for me from you know I've gotten marginally better at writing songs I've gotten much much better at rewriting songs you know and recognizing that you know because when you're the you know you know when you're like 18 in your bedroom and you're like I love you so don't let me go you're like this is perfect poetic you know and then you're like yeah well we're going to change that moment so he's actually now going to be a priest and you're like oh all right I'll just rewrite the whole song where he talks about being a baker that's cool do that but we you know we had some we had songs where the whole sort of purpose and meaning of the song change but the actual sort of hook and sense of it ended up being very important they always say I mean the general wisdom is you know you write the the book you come up with the outline and you write the songs to fit the outline when the outline changes you have to fit the songs you have to write new songs and it's just not so is it it's very much like in a lot of cases the songs are the reason you're doing it and you're kind of fitting the book around that's solely one doing this thing with with sting you know and it's like really I'm going to tell you what to write you're sting you write what you write and I'll make the book work around it you know and it's that's it's actually been a great give and take but certainly you know if the great song comes in and it's true with with the stuff we do together too when the great song comes in that wasn't planned all right let's figure out how to use this which is not how the I think that's not what they say in the textbooks but you know it's like I don't remember who said this I think it might have been Skip you say it's not called a book a goal I imagine that you did that for Next to Normal because those songs are so good you can't cut I'm alive you can't you can't I mean I guess there would be no reason to ever cut that one but super boring and invisible I mean like those songs those songs would be the reason we did a lot of time around and figuring out where they went how they would accomplish what they would accomplish and then rewriting you know rewriting lyrics I think the greatest one of the greatest lessons I learned on Next to Normal was going from you can't cut that to okay what does that mean what is the problem you know because because and and you see it there are there are writers who just they put their foot down and they say I'm not going to rewrite that or I think that song works and like like you said you know the audience doesn't lie and if something in your show you have to be big about it and be willing to really look at it and it may be painful and there are there are great songs that songs I'm proud of that aren't in shows but I think you have to be willing to look at it it's true I mean it's like and believe me when someone told me this you know 15 years ago I would just not I wasn't hearing it but it works or doesn't work the audience doesn't lie you know by the time you get in front of the audience you want to change it you'll know you want to change it and you keep going until it works and the other thing that David Stone always said with next to normal and we were we gave David and Michael Greif and Carol Rothman some kinds of hell I'm sure because there were things we wouldn't cut for the longest time that we ended up cutting and that's a big part of what made it work but David would always tell us you know the audience doesn't know what's not there right yeah you know which which you know it took me a while to learn that lesson but it's like it's like you will miss it you know and then eventually you'll get over it you know and there's still only phantom limb there's yeah there's one little phantom limb for me and next to normal and that's it you know out of 50 some songs but there's nothing like watching a good cut work I mean it's the greatest feeling rather than rather than trying so hard to yeah when we cut that Costco song you know we'd written a song where she has her first nervous breakdown we're like well that she has a breakdown we can't get rid of the breakdown and Michael Reifer you might find a way and for weeks we'd be like no we can't get rid of it there's no other way and Michael would be like you might find a way and we had a meeting with them he's like well let's talk about some ways and so we like we're like all right well we'll try it and the first day we did it we were like uh huh and Michael was like yeah we found a way isn't it funny they always seem to be in that spot in the show it's like right like the third or fourth song in um you need to get to the story in act one but you have this song that you always wanted to write for Avenue Q is uh tear it up and throw it away your guys shows Costco and for Mormon it was there was a song called family home evening um that was about um elder prices family uh kind of you know this tradition that is in Mormon uh households where they all have they all no one can turn on the TV you have to spend whole hands and and um drink um you know drink caffeine free soda and play board games and read scripture um and it was this great little song and and it just didn't and it was it was like the only song with Mormon jokes in it in the whole show um because most of them are about Africa and about the characters but there was like the one the one song we put in there for kind of general interest about Mormons had to come out the song you want to write the song you kind of write the show for how long in the process did it uh did you cut it like the last the last version no it's never got to her probably it was uh it was it was cutting for us that was probably also feeling electric yeah which was the number at the end of the act because the song that was in it from the from the beginning it was from the yeah it was from the very first and that the show was called that for the yeah well yeah rocking it out um and we we had that off Broadway that was the moment Tom was talking about we would go it was the last number of the first act you could go watch the audience and they were at this point sort of like this like this and she like went off to get her treatment and then you know feeling electric happened and the doctor ripped off his scrubs and became a heavy metal god you know like they do and um and you see the whole audience go and that was the end of the first act maybe y'all like you know and it's finally why we were like yeah maybe we should maybe we should change that I only ever had sort of a passing familiarity with feeling electric because for some reason we were always scheduled right before you guys and um we'd come in and and we you know we'd do our big presentation and then we'd you know they'd be clapping and we'd be outside going all through your show we had to follow you guys at the end of the second year I think didn't we or at some point and the first year and the second year it sucked were there a lot of songs in Mormon that you guys there were a couple they were there were all the actually you know we were we would always be we wrote a lot of our songs in the beginning of the process and then towards the end a lot of the songs that we ended up cutting were these like abortions they were terrible songs like there were a lot of songs in Mormon that that you know you always hear about these songs that you loved and and cut because they didn't fit the show or made it too long or the wrong you know not didn't fit the moment but like a lot of the songs we cut from Mormon were just bad they were cut because they were not our best work there was a song we just did it at a at a little party for the drama skill actually and it was called to get a long song and it was happened really late in the show in the scene where elder price is drinking coffee and elder Cunningham comes in and says what's what's happened to you and it was this very catty song about like if you say something arrogant I'll just smile well if you say something stupid I'll back you up or you know it was it was like that and if you start talking about hobbits when the conversation has nothing to do with hobbits I'll just say oh wow hobbits how cool and it had this it had the generic vamp of bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum and if you I think you just stop when you start playing that vamp you just cut the song then you'll save yourself so all three of you collaborated on lyrics uh yeah I mean it was um it was yeah it was it was like that it was it sort of shifting like someone would bring in something and everyone would work on it or how they work um we would kind of hash it around we'd talk it over we'd come up with all the jokes together and then one person would synthesize it into lyrics and then we'd all edit it and that's how would that's the part that would kind of shift around but um but yeah it was we'd sit there and discuss and plan out everything in the song was it hard for you coming into that like long established collaboration it was it was weird at first I guess because it was like because they're like every once in a while they have all sorts of inside jokes and shorthand and they're really good they're such good like communicators and they're good at collaborating because they always work with other people and they have to manage staff on the show right and it's really just a couple of you know it's a few other people in the room with them it was a lot like what we did um and they made me feel really you know down you know really at ease so it was good they're good at that um but uh but every once in a while I would freak myself out and be like I can't work with them but I love what they do and you know if they wrote uncle fucker and now are you guys talking about a new show um yeah I think maybe we'll see I mean we have to we we haven't sat down and really done it yet because they've been off doing South Park and it's a lot of work just having a show running I mean you guys are going to have to cast some replacements I'm sure yeah we just we just cast uh I don't know if we've we've completely cast but we have we are having to look for replacements for Josh and Andrew because they're all going to um to work in television they're going to Hollywood and leaving us so it's very sad but uh but it's very exciting for them and uh and then we have to cast these tours and London too so it's all it's all happening it's all happening that was a preview of bring it on which is coming to St. Peter it was so excited about bring it on I I haven't seen it I've been hearing about it it involves like everybody I know vaguely paranoid that they're all having fun you know somewhere without it is kind of it's the sort of the dream team it is yeah yeah yeah do you ever feel like oh that's everybody I know well I came to that I came to one of their previews in LA and I was like oh hey guys how's it going it's like they're writing this high school musical and I'm all can I sit over here to you but luckily Amanda Green is always very nice to me because we were original Amanda Green's Amanda Green was Gary Coleman for us for time after time after time I what I wish I'd seen her do it it's hilarious she's great um it isn't but it's actually also all very nice people too Amanda, Jeff, Lynn, Tom Tom but but so what was it like to win the Pulitzer it was still it's it's it's unbelievable it's that's it's I don't know it's it's all the things that you would say you know it's a tremendous honor it's it's one of those things it doesn't it doesn't really seem as connected as you know it's a bad thing to say but but you know um you win a Tony and you're like oh I used to watch these when I was six years old and be like maybe someday I'll win a Tony I don't know what for but maybe I can find something um and and that's an amazing experience and Pulitzer it's a bit more sort of like wait a minute that's I learned about this in school yeah I learned about this in school like this is this is like people that make history when they and then you go to the luncheon and there are all these journalists who like exposed corruption and saved a town from poison wells and things like that and it's like we wrote a musical and that's the thing that I remember the most being at that luncheon and because when else would we be at a sort of function where we'd be so outside of the theatrical world and get to just be sitting with people like that I found that really thrilling because I want to be a reporter growing up so it was really cool sort of meeting all of them and also sort of realizing you know I said this and it always sounds like false modesty when you say this but it's really not because everyone knows I'm not modest in any way but um you know the Tony felt like something that was certainly tremendous fortune involved in everything you know the Tony feels very connected to the world of theater and what we do the Pulitzer felt like you know it wasn't so much that Tom and I wanted but that the show in its moment in this world right now was recognized in that way you know what I mean I'm not being very articulate but it was more in a way it was more sort of David stones and Barbara and Patrick and our producers who said okay we'll give this a shot we'll bring this to the world and we'll take a chance with it you guys are taking a chance too it's not easy yeah but it wasn't our money but you know what I mean like it felt like it was it was having a big initial hit about shock therapy and bipolar disorder that is not heard of like that is something that everybody would give their left and the cool thing about I guess the coolest thing I don't want to speak for you but I think the coolest thing about the Pulitzer was that it was a really that show was it's a cliche but it was a labor of love for everybody nobody went into that show David, Alice Ripley, Michael Greif no one went into that show and well this show is going to Broadway it's going to be a big big hit you know it's going to recruit with the vestment and when a Pulitzer I can tell everyone went in going this thing's really weird but it's really compelling somehow so let's see what we can do with it and that was the spirit everybody took and so that having that spirit on everyone's part rewarded was really cool we all know the stories that have inspired us and this had to happen and this had to happen and it's had a long history and somehow it made it through and I think we all romantically hope that we can be on one of those shows that we can in some way contribute to something that feels like it has a moment in time and against against odds and it's just something that you hope will will spur on other people to take chances and I think looking back and next to normal you know even besides something as gargantuan as the the Pulitzer Prize but just the fact that I think people can look to it and say like you're talking about David and Barbara that people took a chance on something they believed in something they saw it through and and we hope it will inspire other people to take to take chances and that's the best thing and you look at the little Pulitzer black and you're like we will never write a show that well I was I was having lunch, Kristen and I were having lunch with Maury and he said well and those guys they just made us all look bad I love Maury I saw him I think at MTC a couple months after the Pulitzers and he just I saw him like hey Maury has been like you did it you did it I was like that's all like Broadway to me having Maury Eston go you did it I haven't taken it to lunch it feels very much like being in a show business he is show business Maury Eston Q&A unless you have more stories to share this has been fantastic how has it been for you guys to tell a story at some point at the Complementary I think they are one of the most brilliant musicals ever written any time period and so forth but what I want to know both of them was it something in your personal life was it something you thought of because it's moving because it's a very honest prediction of a bipolar woman and the fact that the score is a mix of rock, Broadway and all that I have to compliment you because I think it's the best scores to share in my opinion in terms of the rock stuff so I'd like to know where it started from before you got to the venue or wherever you did it I would like to know how you got to the idea how long it took you to write it how you present it I'm sorry this may take 40 minutes but I would like to hear the story I'll tell you a short version there's two things there's two where it comes from answers the first one is a little bit embarrassing which is we needed something for a 10 minute musical we wanted to do we knew Bobby and Jeff were going to cook up something and we knew Tom and Curtis were going to cook up something so we knew we had to up our game a little bit that's actually perfect I don't know if you felt that way but that's actually perfectly honest on my part so competition was part of it but I was at home watching Dayline NBC and I saw a report on shock therapy which I didn't know at the time was still practiced and so I called up Tom and I said and I told this story before but I called up Tom and I said how about a 10 minute musical bipolar and you know struggled with it all her life and has to go through shock therapy and Tom said alright and he was like I don't really get it dude but I'm sure that if you feel passionate about which is sort of like that's how our relationship is one of the other of us will do something and if the other one doesn't quite get it we'll go I don't really get it but let's go with it let's see what happens and we go both ways and it's been worked out very well for us and then we were like we thought that everyone would go you can't do that Bobby and Jeff are better get the hell out you're awful and there was a little bit of that but what we found is people would stop even after we did the first seven musical people stopped us to tell us a story from their life about someone in their life who struggled with mental illness or it had ECT or had been institutionalized and we realized that there were people in our lives and people close to us who had been touched by mental illness or bipolar in some way and we realized two things one was that there was actually might be a show there there might be a story we're telling and two that we better do a lot of research to get it as right as we could so that's where it came from and it sort of every point along the way we thought would be the end of the line and every point along the way someone literally after we do readings people would come up to us and tell us stories they seemed almost compelled to tell us to tell us their story and that I think told us that it was worth working on even if people would also come up to us and go it's just brilliant I don't know who the hell the audience is but it's great good luck to you again I don't really thanks for coming you're the audience aren't you and from that first ten minute musical Tom and I worked on it off and on for six or seven years and we would go away and do other things because we were both trying to get careers started and Tom wrote a Broadway show to LA to start writing screenplays because we wanted to find some way of making a living but this material kept coming back and people kept being interested in it and again sort of really short version a director by the name of Peter Askin got on board with it and we did it at the New York musical theater festival with Peter where a producer named David Stone saw it and David had recently produced this little thing called Wicked I think about which is I guess I don't know apparently it did well but it was a little money to spend on unlikely projects and he took us under his wing and brought us to second stage where Carol Rothman and her staff gave us this sort of off Broadway birth which was I don't know those of you who followed reviews the reviews were not great they were mixed they were the definition of mixed I mean there were some very good reviews there were some very very awful reviews and I think at the time we sort of thought we were running screenplays because clearly my career is over and David Stone said no no no let's keep working on this and he helped us hook us up with the arena stage and he took us down to Washington DC and we kept working on it and brought it back to Broadway How much different is the show from second stage What were the changes basically made was it just tone or cuts or it was all of that certainly there's a lot of material that's consistent between the two productions but the things that we lost and the things that we added I think make a world difference in the tone we lost things like feeling electric and Costco which we talked about which we're pulling the audience out of the story the end of act one had a new softer ending which just it's all about following the story and staying in the proper tone with the piece and I think we were losing people so we just really were clear about the story we wanted to tell but you would recognize a lot of the material from second stage Broadway people come up and say it's a whole new show it's actually not a whole new show I would say probably a half dozen songs were swapped out for other songs two songs were cut and two songs were added this is a show with about 35 songs in it it wasn't a huge difference but every difference made a difference if that makes sense I have a couple of questions one is what inspires you and how do you answer that unanswered question which was what do you do when you don't feel like writing and you're not inspired what gets you going and the second one is in the early early days how do you find producers and what kind of presentations did you make so first question I think what inspires me is always looking for new ways to use music in storytelling and new the moment when you break into song has to be a surprise and what excites me is the idea of writing songs that people haven't heard it's not necessarily music that people haven't heard before because I'm not sure if that's even really possible but in the theater it is possible to give people experiences they've never had before and that's what excites me about writing and as far as how to write when you're not into it it's good to have a routine it's good to be writing every day so when you stop for long periods of time that's quite often we did it recently we were working on this Disney movie and the whole thing kind of got shaken up in a big way we had written that we loved and the whole story got shifted around and the characters changed and our big opening number didn't work anymore and our other song didn't work anymore we had to throw it all out and we hadn't been writing for a while and then we were looking at this like well the next thing we write is going to be worse and we haven't even written in a month and a half so that's when it's really hard and then it's just a matter of forcing yourself to do it and I think therapy kind of thing it's more of a quieting learning to identify those voices in your head I mean just listen to the song Die Vampire Die like that'll do it hear those voices in your head you'll learn to recognize those voices as not you and not real and you don't write from your dark side you write from your connection to the universe it's your talent doesn't go away ever it's always there it's just you getting in your own way with these thoughts so I think it's all about it's all therapy stuff it's all learning to identify those voices pointing like calling them out and you know Die Vampire Die that's what that's about you guys well I'll take on the producer question because I think that you actually nailed the first question I actually was like that's really good I think that's all really true you know I think that the producer thing is a very very hard one the thing that I think I learned was helpful to keep in mind about producers is that they're all human beings and they respond to material or they don't and if they don't respond to your material it's no reflection on you it's no reflection on them you respond to something or you don't and that's I think always helpful to keep in mind the second thing is I think it's always helpful to do a reading of some sort even if it's just getting your actor friends together inviting whoever you know who might know someone it's very very hard especially if you're writing musicals but I think plays too are very very hard to judge on the page even people who are at very high levels I think I bet even Andre Bishop would tell you it's hard to judge a musical on the page or Ira Weitzman so if you can put together a reading and then get it seen and that's number three well how do you get it seen well it's it's hard you know I mean certainly you I think entry into something like the New York musical theater festival or the fringe or I don't I guess we're not doing SPF anymore oh no NAMPS too bad NAMPS entrance into NAMPS I think entrance into any of those festivals is very very helpful because they help you with publicity and many logistical things but I think you can also do your own reading and invite people on the subject don't you know Tom and I spent many I mean Tom was a little bit more connected than I was so actually you should be answering this question but but I think that you know don't expect David Stone and Jeffrey Seller and Margo Lyon at your first reading but maybe you can get David Stone's assistant and Margo Lyon's associate producer and do you know what I mean so the other thing to do is just be sounds really basic and stupid be friendly with everyone you come across and get to know who they are and what they're into do you know what I mean because I certainly know that for instance in our case second stage the associate artistic director Chris Burney saw the show before the artistic director Carol Rothman did and Chris went to Carol and said I think you should come see this I really do and she came and so she agreed to co-produce it with David blah blah blah that's how those things happen and so even if you know the person who you're showing it to or the person you know isn't necessarily a person of influence they might very well have the ear of someone who does so I think those are the big pieces of advice and the other one is persistence I had just two other things about the producers one is I'm a shy person by nature and I don't like to go out and meet a lot of people in network and I think just instinctually I gravitated towards Jeff who is the opposite of that he was nobody when we met but he knew everybody somehow and he would always say oh from around about he just and he had this friendliness and this magnetism that got Jeffrey Seller to our first reading so if you are in a position to pick a collaborator and you're choosing between someone who has your same faults or someone who compliments your faults the one that complements them and the other thing I didn't do that on purpose with Tom it's the same with us I can't remember the other one sorry that's alright I'll tweet it later my question is whenever you're asked to critique either student work or the work of a young writer what are some of the most common pitfalls you see particularly in regards to the actual songwriting and what advice do you offer to them like us that's a great question hmm you know everyone is so specific in their writing but I think that one thing that I will notice sometimes is something that especially in these kinds of environments that I think we were talking a little bit about which is writing for the room as opposed to writing for the moment and being truthful you can tell sometimes that sometimes a moment will be filled with imagery and music that doesn't seem to match the moment and so I sense that the writers are trying to expand themselves and create something that seems impressive and hearkens to material that they are very influenced by but it doesn't work as well for the moment so I just always try to encourage the writers to really be truthful don't overwrite it don't overthink it take into account what you need to get across and sometimes simplicity is better and make sure that it's a true song moment because there are moments where there's a lot of dialogue or there's a lot of setup and it doesn't quite feel organic, it doesn't quite feel like you're getting the true moment across and in those instances I just asked the writers to really investigate what they're writing and make sure that it truly wants to be a song moment maybe it's not the right song, maybe it's not the right moment I'm going to give a real quick couple pieces of conflicting advice but one of the first one is I think what Ira said to you which is find your own voice because I think so often I read and listen to young writers who want to be Steven Sondheim, which by the way no one will ever be you know, they want to be Michael John Le Cueser they want to be Jason Robert Brown Bobby Lopez or Tom Kitt and not only are you never going to be those people but be yourself find your own voice because that's the only thing you can be sure is unique because there are, I mean there's already Tom Kitt and Bobby Lopez in the world, there's not a you so find your own voice first and foremost and then the flip side which may sound like it's contradictory to that but isn't which is pay attention to craft because as you said I think earlier you can't give someone the gift of melody but you can learn the craft and you can learn the craft from a workshop it could be a my workshop from ASCAP you can learn it in grad school you can learn it by coming to things like this you can learn it from reading books I learned so much songwriting craft from reading Sondheim and Company it's an amazing book you can learn that craft and so take care of the things you know you can take care of and put yourself in a position to let your own voice sort of flow out of that and please, sorry please pay attention to your presentation what theaters or festivals ask for and send them that don't send them something sort of like that make sure your punctuation is correct all that sort of stuff that reminds me of the second thing I was going to say in a Harkinsbeck sling we were saying in the office before that you have to learn to be someone that people want to work with you can't be sort of giving people this impression that you think you're better than them or whatever it's all this people person stuff I mean at least I kind of need to learn it and but I did and I can do it it's hard to get your head out of your ass when you're worried about your work when you try to do a good job but if you get into a festival or if a theater invites you to do a reading keep in mind that those people have a chance to invite you back and they talk to everybody else every festival talks to every other festival every artistic director knows every other artistic director and given a choice between a decent musical written by an asshole and a decent musical written by some really great people who are really great to have around and great collaborators that one wins almost every time the other thing is I think that there's I was saying this before and I'm not sure if it's right but it seems right to me that there's been a cultural shift in this country from a time in which being sarcastic and cutting was friendly and fun and now it is super aggressive and awful and so I think if you read Sondheim and Company and Arthur Lawrence is like cutting Sondheim down and Sondheim is cutting his friends down and everyone's you get the impression or if you read Norman Mailer and all those people that that's and societies of writers there's a line in other desert cities Stocker Channing's character has a line about bitchiness doesn't see your bitchy sarcasm it's a great line where she basically says it's passe you think it's so charming and it's not it can be the most I mean if people take it the wrong way they don't know you're friendly people take sarcasm as a real as a real attack there's only one agent now there's three three agents there's the king of Broadway and everybody else we all have the same agent who is watching now hi John I think I first heard of John because you and Jeff signed with him and I also heard his name from Kurt Deutch who runs Chicago whom I met pretty soon out of college and it's one of those things so many of the really life changing moments in your career happen through circumstance and connections and you can't really predict them it's not like there's a real rhyme or reason to a lot of it I know for me for example I went about trying to work with John through the normal sending my material to him and he liked it but he didn't sign me from that and it wasn't until high fidelity when he saw our material out there and I think Amanda had already been signed with him I remember being on the phone with him one day talking through high fidelity so I was like you know you should just come over here and we've not only he's my agent he's my great friend and so it was interesting the way that all happened but for me it was a combination I think of being visible of having material that he actually could see and have a sense as to how he could my career and what that career will start to look like and also just having connections and people fight for me and keep bringing myself up to him and having something like feeling electric out there in the world that people are talking about so you just I think you just have to attack it from every instance you know getting your material out there and just trying to network and don't take you know obviously don't be aggressive but I think you just have to really you have to I'm going to be a little bit of a cynic here just because my experience of getting an agent was very different than Bobby and Tom's because there is the experience where the agent comes and sees your readings like oh my god come and see me Monday morning or talk to anyone else that does happen it's very infrequent but for the most part I'm afraid it's as true on Broadway as it is on Hollywood agents will sign you when there's a deal pending that was our experience agents won't sign you before that agents will sign you when there's a deal pending they're not there to get you work that's part B exactly and please do not mean this to be discouraging in any way this is just this is just being honest they will sign you when there's a deal pending when they can make money off of you and B they don't get you work even after you sign with them they don't get you work they can negotiate the deal once work comes your way they can certainly suggest your name for things but with very few exceptions if the producer or the rights holder fall with your name in mind the agent's not going to get you the job they might get you a meeting but they're not going to get you a job so I would say keep that in mind that they they're not likely to sign you until there's something happening and even after they sign you and certainly before finding work making things happen is not their job that's your job and certainly again like I said doing those readings having things that they can see that's certainly helpful and by all means send things around it does happen that agents hear things and sign you but it's relatively rare and they're very very busy people and they're very very good at what we do I think all three of us would agree that we're incredibly blessed to have the agent that we have because he's fiercely protective and he's an amazing negotiator and he's universally beloved everybody loves him he's one of those nice guys but he would even I would even not be embarrassed to say this it's not his job to get me work that's my job and we also got him when he was sort of young and up and coming too sometimes these agents when they get big their client rosters get fall and that's kind of the end of that for new clients but there's always somebody and again it's another thing there's always someone up and coming again it's one of those things where if you don't have an agent and you don't sort of buttonhole the Joe Machodas and George Lanes and John Bazzetti at the party look for the junior agents who could use someone to buy them a drink because again the Scott Chaloffs exactly before John I worked with Brett Adams for a little while and Brett actually it was feeling electric I didn't have anything I ended up working on Debbie does Dallas so he actually did but that was an instance where I really did feel like Brett saw something the problem was that when it came time for high fidelity and Amanda Green and I went in and talked with Brett he didn't see it and so it took a John Bazzetti who did and things took off he didn't see how good it was or he didn't see it we didn't have any material he just didn't the wanting to pursue this and the rights because that's what we had to do what's the other thing is you want to make sure they're a match with you yeah I'm just going to ask I'm working at this in Baltimore but I'm also a producer have any of you had to wear both hats because I find it really frustrating producing you mean I don't know about you guys but I would love to leave that to the producers I don't have it's enough to just keep things afloat in my departments I just like to get producer credit but I start to get people saying would you produce my stuff and suddenly my stuff gets put somewhere else that's hard I worked at a theater out in Washington state for seven years as a social artistic director and I produced a lot of new musicals out there and I ultimately had to leave that job because I had no time to write if you're a writer and that's the thing you love and I would do that first it's hard but getting sidetracked and producing other people's things unless that's another joy for you makes you just the other thing is like find that fiercely protect that writing time that's a big thing yeah I think Jerry Mitchell said that writing a book for musical is relentless storytelling and I've had a little experience at that theater in Washington and bringing the director in and getting that third point of view and actually moving the project toward production was completely a mind blowing thing and it occurred to me that getting the director in earlier on a project is a way to really fast track it in an accurate way in an efficient way do you guys work with the director when do you bring the director in where in your process you are when you do that I think it varies sort of depends on the project but I know that for the projects I've worked on it feels like the director has come on board at the right moment and it's nice certainly to have the director early to help with dramaturgy and especially if it's you know Brian and I knew that for this next show Michael Greif was going to direct it and that he was the person we had a vision and he we loved our next normal collaboration and love him so that was a no brainer but I'm sure there are some things that Brian and I will work on where we still need to figure out what it is I think it can be too early but I do think that as soon as you have something that's beginning to take a shape that it's going to be ultimately put on stage then it's worthwhile having a director who know how things are put on stage I know that's a simple way to put it but Jerry Mitchell for instance or Michael Greif or Casey Nicholos someone who is like okay great here's what I'm getting from you guys is this what you're trying to tell me no okay how do we make that also okay here's some realities here's some physical realities for you to be aware of in terms of how this is going to work say well that's not what we meant okay but I think this is what the audience is going to get it's actually my job to have a good sense of that so let's work on that all those things are hugely, hugely valuable we actually had three directors in the history of next to normal on our long path and each one of them was revolutionized the show in their way yeah that's been my experience too I've been lucky to work with really good people from pretty early on in the process but not before my idea that wasn't some form you know they're always like five or six songs and an outline or a script or something at Avenue Q we had we had a director friend that helped us put it up and often director friends have to go don't ever sign something that a director friend wants you to sign because then it makes your project hard to produce a director needs to have some experience yeah that's the other caveat is that the challenge is that a lot of times you want to hook up with the director it's sort of where you are in your career and sometimes that's not the person who can ultimately bring the thing as far as it wants to go so that's a reality all three of us have faced at various times but it's a symbiotic relationship you know just like girls and boys don't date the same age in high school it's the same thing with writers and directors yeah that's absolutely true okay that's a question hi I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about writing music for Peter and sort of balancing your stuff as sort of influences from Pop Rock and classical music balancing those influences and the second part is I was a big fan of your band's album and it was from the album in that context then it ended up I guess in the show that process of taking a pop rock song into a music sure you know again and it was so great to hear what Brian was saying about his advice to writers because I feel like that's the advice I try to live with is who am I as a writer, what kind of music do I want to create because you know I want to and I don't mean this in a conceited way but I want to be a fan of my music I want to enjoy it and I want to listen to it and create pleasure out of listening to a piece of music that I've written and say wow I'm really proud of that that's something that I if I hadn't written it I would be excited about and that's the kind of music that I try to create no matter what the style is and then when it comes to you know the band into musical theater again I found that my voice has been consistent and the material that I wrote for my band were melodic melodic pop songs based certainly in influences but you know it's funny Brian would sometimes joke about the period I would write some of these songs you know it's a 24 year old searching for you know making fun of the actual things that were going on in my life and I think that Brian was a big part of those songs even though I wrote them myself at the time because he was experiencing who I was and what was bringing out those songs and I think some of the because they were about they were very personal songs and next normal was a personal project in a few instances it wasn't so much a relief to say well the hook of that actually lends itself to our story and that was thrilling because especially when I realized that how much I love working with Brian's lyrics watching those songs and two specific songs I am the one and I've been seeing those songs suddenly reach a whole new level because of the storytelling that was going on in next normal that was just thrilling so you know I think that for both of us I'm sure you're the same way Bobby we create things together and we're together but sometimes we'll steal Brian will have something or I'll have something we should use that for so I think those songs were written to be theatrical even though they were written as pop songs they had a story they had a lot of content that could lend itself well and luckily it did what do you I'm not sure what was the question about the meteor influences how do you balance your influences oh yeah yeah sorry no I mean I always feel like I'm like I'm working from a model of some sort I like to work from models but I also there's another part of me that knows that's not really what I do and something from here and I think that I don't think that I'd be able to have had success if I was just kind of ripping stuff off I feel like there's something that comes out anyway but I definitely start with a lot of I look at other songs I look at like every single song that's like this that's been written how can I bring in something that people know but haven't seen before in a certain way and how can I surprise people with the kind of music that I'm using it's almost like a film director you know would think of using music you know to score a scene and I always feel like you know even the greats even the golden age of musicals like a song like I could have danced all night that that song is no different from a Cole Porter song but it's the placement in the story when she's just you know she hasn't said I love you or anything like that there's nothing spoken but she's just so excited and she can't her head can't hit the pillow and there's something about that that charges that music with something completely other and that's what you're going for I think when you're writing a song you're going for that with that surprise and that the electricity that the situation and the characters give the music and the music doesn't have to be doesn't have to you don't have to go out of your way to write something that someone hasn't said before because the true innovation lies in the mashup thank you guys