Things That Should Be Made Into Musicals

It is a musical theater tradition to have composers/producers choose some pretty weird stuff as source material for their staged theatrical creations. Audiences have been treated to musicals on subjects ranging from superlative Texas brothels, a serial killing barber and his friend the cannibalistic pie-maker, anthropomorphic trains that can sing and dance and love and rollerskate, and even erm, the politics of going pee-pee?  (see: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Sweeney Todd, Starlight Express, and Urinetown: The Musical).  Not only are these shows about weird things, they are all wildly popular musicals with lots of fans.

Even Andrew Lloyd Webber’s beloved and long running musical triumph, The Phantom of the Opera, is basically the story of a disfigured terrorist who uses mind control to make his victim fall in love with him, and people have been eating that shit up for 3 decades. If you want to make a successful musical and you are not going to base it on something totally ridiculous, you might as well just write a boring dramatic play.

They literally hand you a Tony on your way into the the ceremony, just to thank you for coming.

Critics have been claiming that Broadway is dead for some time, and with no offense intended to Tony Award™ winning Broadway composer Cyndi Lauper, they may be right (I mean, you guys, KINKY BOOTS IS JUST FULL MONTY WITH DRAG QUEEN BOOT FACTORIES INSTEAD OF MALE STRIPPERS OR BILLY ELLIOT WITH BALLET DANCING FOR COAL MINERS INSTEAD OF MALE STRIPPERS). For example, if a show called Bring It On the Musical can be nominated for Best Musical, then I feel that any of my ideas below have a really good shot at the glory. And so, this is my open letter to the esteemed producers of the Broadway community: the time has come to get weirder. These are my suggestions. Please send me lots of money and let’s workshop this bitch!

“Oh my gawd, I smell an EGOT.”

THE NANNY THE MUSICAL

The classic 90s sitcom is already set in the Broadway community–Max Sheffield and his catty associate Cici are wickedly successful Broadway producers. Max, a dashing British widower, and the outlandish Fran Fine, meet cute on an accidental job interview (she was there to sell Avon or something, he thought she was the new nanny). Max and the flashy, snappy, and delightfully tacky nanny named Fran from Flushing, Queens, find that an unlikely love blossoms between them. Plus, there is a fey butler for sardonic comic relief. And Cici is at times a kind of solo CBS-censored version of AbFab. The book to this musical essentially can write itself–take the sitcom, throw in a little bit of The Sound of Music (only without the whole being on the run from Nazis), and add a little bit of My Fair Lady (except the heroine’s diction and accent sadly never improve), and boom, you have The Nanny the Musical!

SAMPLE SONG: Can’t go wrong by opening the musical with a lavish, high-production rendering of the TV show’s theme, “The Nanny Named Fran.” I am picturing a kick line of Queens salon dancers using comb brushes and hair curlers as prop microphones.

Somebody get Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenowyth on the phone, right now.

COYOTE UGLY

Is any movie more ready for adaption to the stage than Coyote Ugly? You have a story about a young headstrong girl, desperate to achieve her dreams at any cost, but who still needs to overcome self-doubt and gain that last bit of confidence she needs to make it. And where does she find said confidence? BY SINGING CATCHY SONGS WHILE DANCING HALF-NAKED ON A BAR. And through achieving sisterhood and respect from her hardass boss and such. This is a guaranteed, bonafide smash hit musical waiting to happen. It will be a hit with tweens, who can relate to the theme of using sexy dancing to get your way, and husbands will be okay being dragged to it too, because sexy dancing.

SAMPLE SONG: A huge, full-cast reprise of “Can’t Fight the Moonlight” at the curtain call, DUH.

Give me jazz paws, and give them to me now.

ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN

In the 1980s, Andrew Lloyd Webber took T.S. Elliot’s collection of nonsensical poems about cats, and turned it into the insanely catchy yet inscrutable musical juggernaut known as Cats. It played for nine lives and then some, and inspired a huge following of insanely dedicated fans. For years, dog lovers have waited with bated breath in the hopes that Broadway would finally deliver to them a musical that brought their favorite domesticated animal species to life in all their tail-wagging, paw-tapping glory. To me, the obvious way to make this happen is to adapt the revered, though oft-overlooked, 90s animated feature film All Dogs Go the Heaven, into a family-ready Broadway blockbuster. The show would basically be Guys and Dolls meets Cats divided by dogs.

SAMPLE SONG: The movie has a complete musical soundtrack full of lackluster and forgettable showtunes, but somehow I could see “You Can’t Keep a Good Dog Down” really bringing down the house at the Tony’s.

“Pussy willow.”

SERIAL MOM

Queer filmmaker/folk hero John Waters has had his films made into musicals before–the huge Broadway smash Hairspray, as well as an adaptation of Cry Baby. While the inclination might be to turn his charmingly raunchy transploitation classic, Pink Flamingos, into the his next Broadway musical foray, I would argue that producers focus on a personal Waters favorite of mine: Serial Mom. The film’s theme (how the media glamorizes the perpetrators of violence) remains as relevant as ever, plus this is a great opportunity to get Kathleen Turner to reprise her role as Mrs.Beverly Sutphin, the pathologically murderous suburbanite, on the Broadway stage. I am guessing her vocal range is now a baritone, which basically means that Serial Mom will probably be only played by men after Turner leaves her role, but that just makes the whole project that much more John Watersian.

SAMPLE SONG: “Pussy Willow,” a comical series of phone calls between Mrs. Sutphin and her housewife neighbors. It will be the most eyebrow-raising song title from a show since The Music Man’s “Shipoopi.”

And the people called it ragtime…

SPACEBALLS THE MUSICAL

Mel Brooks is another filmmaker whose work has made it to Broadway on more than one occasion–the hit adaption of his brilliant backstage musical The Producers, as well as the somewhat less spectacular adaption of Young Frankenstein. To me, the next logical step is to bring the classic Star Wars parody, Spaceballs, to the stage in all its screwball sci-fi glory. Not only would it be the perfect extension of Spaceballs’ running gag on the excessive over-merchandizing of the George Lucas franchise, it might actually thwart the long-running plans for an actual Star Wars musical. Yes, that is a really thing. And the workshops are dreadful. Click here for a snippet-if you dare.

SAMPLE SONG: “May the Schwartz Be With You,” in essence the most rousing and inspirational anthem since “Do You Hear the People Sing?”

Um, I guess we’ll just make up a story about this waitress.

BREAKFAST IN AMERICA

Supertramp are responsible for some of the catchiest, most superbly structured compositions in the classic rock’n'roll songbook. I have no idea what their songs are about, but they seem to be about stories and characters and stuff. Jukebox musicals have been pretty huge on Broadway over the last decade: most notably, Mamma Mia! the retardedly popular Abba sensation, and American Idiot, Green Day’s musical magnum opus, both proved that only the flimsiest plot imaginable is necessary to have a huge hit–so long as you have amazingly catchy songs. Rock of Ages capitalized on this formula by turning 80s rock excess into box office success, and while shows like Xanadu, Billy Joel’s Movin’ Out and Carol King’s Tapestry weren’t as lucrative, they were still a lot of fun.

SAMPLE SONG: um….the show could be about the NSA spying scandal, and “Goodbye Stranger” is Edward Snowden’s Act II opener where he says goodbye to America and shuffles off to Hong Kong, singing, “like a ship without an anchor/like a slave without a chain.” Or the waitress on the cover is trying to find out which dude is her father. Whatever, it doesn’t really matter. SUPERTRAMP, CALL ME.

INSURGENCY OF THE HEART: THE JOSEPH KONY STORY

Now, Joseph Kony might seem like an unpopular subject for a Broadway musical, given his violent rise as the leader of a militant Ugandan terrorist army. However, politically incorrect figures have proved great fodder for musicals, such as in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita, or David Byrne’s disco opera, Here Lies Love, based on the life of Imelda Marcos. However, there is undoubtedly a human element to Kony–who was young Joseph Kony? What made him tick, and what setbacks did he encounter that inspired him to work even harder to be a terrorist leader? If you think it’s okay that Peter Pan has his own children’s militia but not Kony, well that my friend, is a double standard. And I don’t recall Evita really delving all that deeply into the bloody coup that brought the Peronistas to power, nor the fact that they were hiding a bunch of Nazis within their borders. Or the fact that Juan Peron kept Eva’s body entombed in his dining room. After it had been stolen. The first time. Remember, a good piece of musical theater is about escapism, should tell a human story, and not bog the audience down with a bunch of bummer facts.

SAMPLE SONG: ”We Love You Kony,” a catchy, anthemic pledge of dedication by the adorable-but-heavily-armed Invisible Children’s Chorus, a la “We Love You Conrad” from Bye Bye Birdie.

Grease 2: The Musical, coming to a cruise ship near you!

GREASE 2 

Grease 2 is one of the absolute worst movie musicals of all time and it deserves a stage musical adaptation. I am not even talking Broadway here, please just release the licensing rights already so that I can attend a community production where I get to the see double entendre-laced, Bowl-a-Rama sexcapade “Score Tonight” live on a stage, even if it is being performed by the Bakersfield Senior Community Players.

SAMPLE SONG: While all of the songs on the soundtrack of Grease 2 are terrible, “Rock-a-Hula-Luau (Summer is Coming)” is perhaps the most dreadful recording ever committed to VHS. I take back what I said about not bringing this to Broadway. Hipsters will flock to this show in droves and make it a gazillion dollar hit.

Why stop at only 2 or 3 musicals? There is so much more domestic policy for Annie to shape!

“ANNIES”

Annie is perhaps one of the most familiar and popular musicals of all time, however many are unaware that there is in fact a sequel to this show, called Annie Warbucks, which is actually quite charming, and in my opinion, even better written and less oppressively saccharine than its predecessor. So why not go ahead make Annie a trilogy? My proposal is called Annies, in which young Annie helps out her pal FDR by volunteering at the State Department during the wartime effort, and in the process she becomes pen pals with a young Anne Frank. Concerned when she loses communication with Anne when her family goes into hiding, she and Sandy travel in vain to Europe to track down her lost pen pal. In a dramatic plot twist, just before Annie is able to save Anne and her family from arrest by the vile Gestapo, that prick Rolf from The Sound of Music shows up on the scene and blows his stupid whistle and foils Annie’s plan. It is super sad and tragic of course, but ultimately it does not dampen Annie’s resolve, and she goes on to help organize the United Nations in the show’s finale.

SAMPLE SONG: Annie’s optimistic salute to her persecuted pen pal in hiding, “You’re Never Fully Annexed Without a Smile.”

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