PLAY Blog

A Song for Primary Season

2012-02-01T02:10+00:00

Here's another test scene from my political satire-in-progress, "Liberty's Secret: The National Security Musical."

http://www.libertysecretmovie.com/2012/01/26/music/opening-sequence-demo/

Hope you enjoy it. I'm going to be reshooting the crowd scenes the first week of March, so if anybody would like to be an extra (in exchange for whole wheat pizza), please let me know. You'll get to dress up as a political delegate and make lots of noise.

Bureaucrats dance! First Sample Scene from “Liberty’s Secret”

2011-01-11T15:49+00:00

In the spirit of eating less cholesterol, exercising regularly, and calling my in-laws more often, I am endeavoring to update my blog more frequently in this New Year.

Last summer, I worked with ten actors to shoot a sample musical number from my movie-in-progress. The cast included many UM faculty (including A&D A-list actors Malcolm Tulip, Nick Tobier, and Melanie Manos), while the crew was ably (wo)man-ed by recent A&D grads Adrianne Finelli and Laura Pazuchowski. We shot 5 scenes, one of which I've finished editing and have posted on the movie website. Here's a link:

"Connect the Dots"

The Obligatory Gospel Number

2010-04-15T14:05+00:00

One of the fun things about writing a musical, as opposed to say, an experimental multimedia work, is that there is a long tradition of conventions and precedents to draw on. I guess it's more like being a painter, or a sculptor: there are a million opportunities for wry commentary on previous works, or for tweaking an established tradition (think of all the revisionist takes on the Last Supper for example.) Or as my colleagues in the Humanities might say, "you get to go inter-textual."

The American musical comedy has been around for about a hundred years now, and because of its ubiquity in high school auditoriums all across America, its a genre that is familiar to just about every one. What may be less obvious to the casual observer, however, is that there are certain kinds of songs that come up again and again in the "canon." The "charm song," the "I want" song, the "eleven o'clock" number, and the one that concerns me most here, the "fake gospel number."

Think "Blow Gabriel Blow," in Cole Porter's Anything Goes, or "Sit Down, Your Rockin' the Boat," in Loesser's Guys and Dolls, or even "Trouble," in Meredith Wilson's The Music Man.

And what's interesting to me about these numbers is that because they are so charming and full of energy, they can really be quite subversive, even within a socially conservative a form like musical comedy. After all, they are satirizing religion.

So as I set out to write my musical about the gay daughter of a fundamentalist who discovers a dark national security secret (more on that later), I knew that there was a great opportunity for a gospel number, and for a little sugar-coated satire of my own. Conveniently, a lot of your more rabid fundamentalists tend also to be singers (Jimmy Swaggert, John Hagee), so I had plenty of YouTube church services to draw on.

Here's what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

A Little Revival Music.

A National Security Musical

2010-03-24T21:39+00:00

For many years now, I've been interested in the subject of political propaganda. As someone who makes large spectacles and media works that are intended to evoke strong feelings in an audience, I realize that with a little more moxie, and a few less scruples, I could be doing the same job that Karl Rove does. (Or that Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin used to do, for that matter.)

And there is a particular kind of propaganda that interests me the most: musical propaganda. I'm interested in the way that homespun contemporary Nashville sound encourages us to yearn for that mythical small town that Opie and Gomer used to live in. I'm interested in the kinds of songs that are played at national political conventions, and to what effect. (I got a big kick out of seeing which entrance music was played for which public figures at the most recent RNC and DNC conventions. Michelle Obama got "Isn't She Lovely," Ted Kennedy got "Still the One," and Sarah Palin got "Redneck Woman.") I'm interested in that fine line between opening the listeners heart and jerking him around.

So in the feature film I am currently developing, "Liberty's Secret: The National Security Musical" I am exploring, among other things, that intimate link between rhythm, harmony, melody and political/cultural manipulation.

In the coming weeks, I'll be offering samples from the musical as it develops -- storyboards, music, script pages, images -- so I hope you will follow along and let me know what you think.

Here's a little number to get things started. A tango to be sung and danced by the National Secruity Council in the White House Bunker. Hope you enjoy it.

Connect the Dots: A Tango