American screenwriter and director
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2 episodes with Marshall Brickman
2 episodes with Marshall Brickman
6 episodes with Marshall Brickman
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In 2019 fire destroyed the much of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. As the restoration is completed, Agnes Poirier describes the work of skilled artisans that she has watched over the past five years. Her documentary series for the World Service In the Studio programmes can be heard on BBC Sounds. Jacob Collier discusses and plays from his new Grammy nominated album, Djesse, Volume 4. The novelist Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz was interned as an "enemy alien" on the Isle of Man during World War Two, where he wrote a children's story recently unearthed in archive 80 years later. Writer Jonathan Freedland and illustrator Emily Sutton discuss breathing new life into King Winter's Birthday. And we remember the late screenwriter, Marshall Brickman, who worked with Woody Allen on Annie Hall. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Ruth Watts
Gay homosexuals Nick and Joseph discuss Christmas in Compton - a 2012 Christmas comedy film directed by David Raynr, starring Keith David and Omar Gooding. Additional topics include: -Nick Cannon's narcissistic personality disorder -Breakfast in Acapulco -Drag Race Down Under -The deaths of Jim Abrahams, Marshall Brickman, and Niels Arestrup Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FishJellyFilmReviews Want to send them stuff? Fish Jelly PO Box 461752 Los Angeles, CA 90046 Find merch here: https://fishjellyfilmreviews.myspreadshop.com/all Venmo @fishjelly Visit their website at www.fishjellyfilms.com Find their podcast at the following: Anchor: https://anchor.fm/fish-jelly Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/388hcJA50qkMsrTfu04peH Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fish-jelly/id1564138767 Find them on Instagram: Nick (@ragingbells) Joseph (@joroyolo) Fish Jelly (@fishjellyfilms) Find them on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/ragingbells/ https://letterboxd.com/joroyolo/ Nick and Joseph are both Tomatometer-approved critics at Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/critics/nicholas-bell https://www.rottentomatoes.com/critics/joseph-robinson --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fish-jelly/support
Entre François Fillon, les kinks étrange d'Agathe et le racisme Suédois on a clairement tout vu et tout compris du second pilote de The Muppet Show "Sex & Violence" écrit par Jim Henson, Jon Stone, Marshall Brickman et Norman Stiles, réalisé par Dave Wilson et diffusé le 19 mars 1975 sur ABC.Nous soutenir : patreon.com/OnaToutVuNous suivre : twitter.com/onatoutvu | instagram.com/onatoutvu_podcast | nileane.fr/@onatoutvuUn podcast Drama Queerz & Le Moment, présenté par Agathe Mametz, Morgann Gicquel et Niléane Dorffer. Photo du podcast Morgann Gicquel. Mixage et compositions sonores assurée par Arnold Savary.
So Woody Allen, huh? One of the most controversial men in show business wasn't always that way...at least not publicly. He made many funny classics back in his salad days. Manhattan is certainly one of them. Woody and Marshall Brickman wrote plenty of great lines and hilarious scenes, plus Gordon Willis' cinematography is fantastic. The story and themes in this complicated love rhombus, however, are at least partially ruined by the director's real-life issues. Ryan's solo show addresses the controversies about Woody's dating life, his marriage to his step-daughter and what he may have done to another step-daughter when she was a child. Yeah, Manhattan wasn't an easy one to review. In any case, this 568th episode in the Have You Ever Seen series has one man trying to figure out how to feel about another man's oddball love life. There's nothing complicated about Sparkplug Coffee. Buy some. You can take advantage of a 20% discount by using our "HYES" promo code. Go to "sparkplug.coffee", then add "/ hyes" to the address. This review might inspire you to agree or to strongly disagree. Fire off a Twi-x to Ryan (@moviefiend51) or even throw out an email (haveyoueverseenpodcast@gmail.com). Bev is contactable too, via a Twi-x (@bevellisellis) and her handle is the same on Threads. Rate our podcast, review it, like it, subscribe to it either in your app or find us on YouTube (@hyesellis) and do those same things there.
Oh, what an ep! We're singing in beautiful harmony about Clint's 2014 Broadway adaptation JERSEY BOYS with returning guest Marie Bardi-Salinas (now with extra last name)! Join us as we talk directly to the camera about jukebox musicals, New Jersey's cultural dominance in the 2000s, falsetto masculinity, and why exactly Clint was the one to make this movie. Plus, Ian gets mad at Jake for liking this movie despite claiming that he doesn't like musicals only for Marie to mostly talk him out of liking it that much. A real fun one, gang - listen to it or you aren't from Jersey. Topics include: our high school bands, late December 1963, The Sopranos, the Philadelphia-Jersey connection, Marshall Brickman, a bunch of real-life mob guys, a humiliating relitigation of Jake's pronunication of "Pulitzer," the Beach Boys, and a good chunk of Jersey Shore talk. Follow Marie Bardi-Salinas: https://twitter.com/mariebardi https://www.podcastyforme.com/ Follow Pod Casty For Me: https://twitter.com/podcastyforme https://www.instagram.com/podcastyforme/ https://www.youtube.com/@podcastyforme Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PodCastyForMe Artwork by Jeremy Allison: https://www.instagram.com/jeremyallisonart
I've dug into the bottom shelf of my old LP's to come up with some tracks that haven't been played on this show previously – Delia Bell & Bill Grant, Jim & Jesse, John Hartford, Buck White & the Down Home Folks, Eric Weissberg & Marshall Brickman. I'll also be playing some lesser-known Flatt & Scruggs, Raymond McLain, the Gibson Brothers, and newer friends like Balsam Range, Starlett & Big John Talley, and even some HCBB.
Rick Elice co-wrote Jersey Boys (winner 2006 Tony Award, 2007 Grammy Award and 2009 Olivier Award for Best Musical) with the great Marshall Brickman; The Addams Family; Peter and the Starcatcher (winner of five 2012 Tony Awards); and The Cher Show (currently on tour in the UK). In the pipeline: The Princess Bride for Disney; Smash for Robert Greenblatt, Neil Meron and Steven Spielberg, music and lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, directed by Susan Stroman. Rick is also adapting Sara Gruen's novel Water for Elephants; the popular film, Silver Linings Playbook; and writing an original musical, Treasure, with 2021 Ed Kleban Award-winner Benjamin Scheuer. Rick's book, Finding Roger, An Improbably Theatrical Love Story, is published by Kingswell. Heartfelt thanks to those whose theatre work makes him grateful for the day he was born: Sondheim, Stoppard, Bennett, Prince, Fosse, Robbins, Nichols, Nunn, Laurents, Stone, Taymor, Papp, Schumacher, Schneider, David, Strong, Gaudio, Valli, McAnuff, Trujillo, Timbers, Coyne, Brickman, and, eternally, Roger Rees. Rick thinks about them a lot. He never thought about Jersey much. He does now.
Rick Elice co-wrote Jersey Boys (winner 2006 Tony Award, 2007 Grammy Award and 2009 Olivier Award for Best Musical) with the great Marshall Brickman; The Addams Family; Peter and the Starcatcher (winner of five 2012 Tony Awards); and The Cher Show (currently on tour in the UK). In the pipeline: The Princess Bride for Disney; Smash for Robert Greenblatt, Neil Meron and Steven Spielberg, music and lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, directed by Susan Stroman. Rick is also adapting Sara Gruen's novel Water for Elephants; the popular film, Silver Linings Playbook; and writing an original musical, Treasure, with 2021 Ed Kleban Award-winner Benjamin Scheuer. Rick's book, Finding Roger, An Improbably Theatrical Love Story, is published by Kingswell. Heartfelt thanks to those whose theatre work makes him grateful for the day he was born: Sondheim, Stoppard, Bennett, Prince, Fosse, Robbins, Nichols, Nunn, Laurents, Stone, Taymor, Papp, Schumacher, Schneider, David, Strong, Gaudio, Valli, McAnuff, Trujillo, Timbers, Coyne, Brickman, and, eternally, Roger Rees. Rick thinks about them a lot. He never thought about Jersey much. He does now.
In this episode we discuss the fiftieth Best Picture winner, Annie Hall, Vanessa Redgrave's infamous acceptance speech, Margaret Booth's Honorary Award, the writing partnership of Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman, and Diane Keaton's big win as the iconic rom-com leading lady, Annie Hall! -- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thanktheacademypodcast Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/thankacademypod Email us your thoughts: thanktheacademypod@gmail.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thank-the-academy/support
This very special five-part series celebrating Lucy Simon kicks off with a fascinating conversation about Lucy's early years with Grammy winner Lucy Simon, Academy Award-winning screenwriter and book writer for Broadway's JERSEY BOYS and THE ADDAMS FAMILY, Marshall Brickman, legendary singer and songwriter Jody Collins and moderator, former Rolling Stone writer, editor and Broadway producer, Loraine Alterman Boyle. Featured Song: WYNKEN, BLYNKEN & NOD Written by Lucy Simon. Performed by The Simon Sisters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We start season four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs with an extra-long look at "San Francisco" by Scott McKenzie, and at the Monterey Pop Festival, and the careers of the Mamas and the Papas and P.F. Sloan. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Up, Up, and Away" by the 5th Dimension. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. Scott McKenzie's first album is available here. There are many compilations of the Mamas and the Papas' music, but sadly none that are in print in the UK have the original mono mixes. This set is about as good as you're going to find, though, for the stereo versions. Information on the Mamas and the Papas came from Go Where You Wanna Go: The Oral History of The Mamas and the Papas by Matthew Greenwald, California Dreamin': The True Story Of The Mamas and Papas by Michelle Phillips, and Papa John by John Phillips and Jim Jerome. Information on P.F. Sloan came from PF - TRAVELLING BAREFOOT ON A ROCKY ROAD by Stephen McParland and What's Exactly the Matter With Me? by P.F. Sloan and S.E. Feinberg. The film of the Monterey Pop Festival is available on this Criterion Blu-Ray set. Sadly the CD of the performances seems to be deleted. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to season four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. It's good to be back. Before we start this episode, I just want to say one thing. I get a lot of credit at times for the way I don't shy away from dealing with the more unsavoury elements of the people being covered in my podcast -- particularly the more awful men. But as I said very early on, I only cover those aspects of their life when they're relevant to the music, because this is a music podcast and not a true crime podcast. But also I worry that in some cases this might mean I'm giving a false impression of some people. In the case of this episode, one of the central figures is John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. Now, Phillips has posthumously been accused of some truly monstrous acts, the kind of thing that is truly unforgivable, and I believe those accusations. But those acts didn't take place during the time period covered by most of this episode, so I won't be covering them here -- but they're easily googlable if you want to know. I thought it best to get that out of the way at the start, so no-one's either anxiously waiting for the penny to drop or upset that I didn't acknowledge the elephant in the room. Separately, this episode will have some discussion of fatphobia and diet culture, and of a death that is at least in part attributable to those things. Those of you affected by that may want to skip this one or read the transcript. There are also some mentions of drug addiction and alcoholism. Anyway, on with the show. One of the things that causes problems with rock history is the tendency of people to have selective memories, and that's never more true than when it comes to the Summer of Love, summer of 1967. In the mythology that's built up around it, that was a golden time, the greatest time ever, a period of peace and love where everything was possible, and the world looked like it was going to just keep on getting better. But what that means, of course, is that the people remembering it that way do so because it was the best time of their lives. And what happens when the best time of your life is over in one summer? When you have one hit and never have a second, or when your band splits up after only eighteen months, and you have to cope with the reality that your best years are not only behind you, but they weren't even best years, but just best months? What stories would you tell about that time? Would you remember it as the eve of destruction, the last great moment before everything went to hell, or would you remember it as a golden summer, full of people with flowers in their hair? And would either really be true? [Excerpt: Scott McKenzie, "San Francisco"] Other than the city in which they worked, there are a few things that seem to characterise almost all the important figures on the LA music scene in the middle part of the 1960s. They almost all seem to be incredibly ambitious, as one might imagine. There seem to be a huge number of fantasists among them -- people who will not only choose the legend over reality when it suits them, but who will choose the legend over reality even when it doesn't suit them. And they almost all seem to have a story about being turned down in a rude and arrogant manner by Lou Adler, usually more or less the same story. To give an example, I'm going to read out a bit of Ray Manzarek's autobiography here. Now, Manzarek uses a few words that I can't use on this podcast and keep a clean rating, so I'm just going to do slight pauses when I get to them, but I'll leave the words in the transcript for those who aren't offended by them: "Sometimes Jim and Dorothy and I went alone. The three of us tried Dunhill Records. Lou Adler was the head man. He was shrewd and he was hip. He had the Mamas and the Papas and a big single with Barry McGuire's 'Eve of Destruction.' He was flush. We were ushered into his office. He looked cool. He was California casually disheveled and had the look of a stoner, but his eyes were as cold as a shark's. He took the twelve-inch acetate demo from me and we all sat down. He put the disc on his turntable and played each cut…for ten seconds. Ten seconds! You can't tell jack [shit] from ten seconds. At least listen to one of the songs all the way through. I wanted to rage at him. 'How dare you! We're the Doors! This is [fucking] Jim Morrison! He's going to be a [fucking] star! Can't you see that? Can't you see how [fucking] handsome he is? Can't you hear how groovy the music is? Don't you [fucking] get it? Listen to the words, man!' My brain was a boiling, lava-filled Jell-O mold of rage. I wanted to eviscerate that shark. The songs he so casually dismissed were 'Moonlight Drive,' 'Hello, I Love You,' 'Summer's Almost Gone,' 'End of the Night,' 'I Looked at You,' 'Go Insane.' He rejected the whole demo. Ten seconds on each song—maybe twenty seconds on 'Hello, I Love You' (I took that as an omen of potential airplay)—and we were dismissed out of hand. Just like that. He took the demo off the turntable and handed it back to me with an obsequious smile and said, 'Nothing here I can use.' We were shocked. We stood up, the three of us, and Jim, with a wry and knowing smile on his lips, cuttingly and coolly shot back at him, 'That's okay, man. We don't want to be *used*, anyway.'" Now, as you may have gathered from the episode on the Doors, Ray Manzarek was one of those print-the-legend types, and that's true of everyone who tells similar stories about Lou Alder. But... there are a *lot* of people who tell similar stories about Lou Adler. One of those was Phil Sloan. You can get an idea of Sloan's attitude to storytelling from a story he always used to tell. Shortly after he and his family moved to LA from New York, he got a job selling newspapers on a street corner on Hollywood Boulevard, just across from Schwab's Drug Store. One day James Dean drove up in his Porsche and made an unusual request. He wanted to buy every copy of the newspaper that Sloan had -- around a hundred and fifty copies in total. But he only wanted one article, something in the entertainment section. Sloan didn't remember what the article was, but he did remember that one of the headlines was on the final illness of Oliver Hardy, who died shortly afterwards, and thought it might have been something to do with that. Dean was going to just clip that article from every copy he bought, and then he was going to give all the newspapers back to Sloan to sell again, so Sloan ended up making a lot of extra money that day. There is one rather big problem with that story. Oliver Hardy died in August 1957, just after the Sloan family moved to LA. But James Dean died in September 1955, two years earlier. Sloan admitted that, and said he couldn't explain it, but he was insistent. He sold a hundred and fifty newspapers to James Dean two years after Dean's death. When not selling newspapers to dead celebrities, Sloan went to Fairfax High School, and developed an interest in music which was mostly oriented around the kind of white pop vocal groups that were popular at the time, groups like the Kingston Trio, the Four Lads, and the Four Aces. But the record that made Sloan decide he wanted to make music himself was "Just Goofed" by the Teen Queens: [Excerpt: The Teen Queens, "Just Goofed"] In 1959, when he was fourteen, he saw an advert for an open audition with Aladdin Records, a label he liked because of Thurston Harris. He went along to the audition, and was successful. His first single, released as by Flip Sloan -- Flip was a nickname, a corruption of "Philip" -- was produced by Bumps Blackwell and featured several of the musicians who played with Sam Cooke, plus Larry Knechtel on piano and Mike Deasey on guitar, but Aladdin shut down shortly after releasing it, and it may not even have had a general release, just promo copies. I've not been able to find a copy online anywhere. After that, he tried Arwin Records, the label that Jan and Arnie recorded for, which was owned by Marty Melcher (Doris Day's husband and Terry Melcher's stepfather). Melcher signed him, and put out a single, "She's My Girl", on Mart Records, a subsidiary of Arwin, on which Sloan was backed by a group of session players including Sandy Nelson and Bruce Johnston: [Excerpt: Philip Sloan, "She's My Girl"] That record didn't have any success, and Sloan was soon dropped by Mart Records. He went on to sign with Blue Bird Records, which was as far as can be ascertained essentially a scam organisation that would record demos for songwriters, but tell the performers that they were making a real record, so that they would record it for the royalties they would never get, rather than for a decent fee as a professional demo singer would get. But Steve Venet -- the brother of Nik Venet, and occasional songwriting collaborator with Tommy Boyce -- happened to come to Blue Bird one day, and hear one of Sloan's original songs. He thought Sloan would make a good songwriter, and took him to see Lou Adler at Columbia-Screen Gems music publishing. This was shortly after the merger between Columbia-Screen Gems and Aldon Music, and Adler was at this point the West Coast head of operations, subservient to Don Kirshner and Al Nevins, but largely left to do what he wanted. The way Sloan always told the story, Venet tried to get Adler to sign Sloan, but Adler said his songs stunk and had no commercial potential. But Sloan persisted in trying to get a contract there, and eventually Al Nevins happened to be in the office and overruled Adler, much to Adler's disgust. Sloan was signed to Columbia-Screen Gems as a songwriter, though he wasn't put on a salary like the Brill Building songwriters, just told that he could bring in songs and they would publish them. Shortly after this, Adler suggested to Sloan that he might want to form a writing team with another songwriter, Steve Barri, who had had a similar non-career non-trajectory, but was very slightly further ahead in his career, having done some work with Carol Connors, the former lead singer of the Teddy Bears. Barri had co-written a couple of flop singles for Connors, before the two of them had formed a vocal group, the Storytellers, with Connors' sister. The Storytellers had released a single, "When Two People (Are in Love)" , which was put out on a local independent label and which Adler had licensed to be released on Dimension Records, the label associated with Aldon Music: [Excerpt: The Storytellers "When Two People (Are in Love)"] That record didn't sell, but it was enough to get Barri into the Columbia-Screen Gems circle, and Adler set him and Sloan up as a songwriting team -- although the way Sloan told it, it wasn't so much a songwriting team as Sloan writing songs while Barri was also there. Sloan would later claim "it was mostly a collaboration of spirit, and it seemed that I was writing most of the music and the lyric, but it couldn't possibly have ever happened unless both of us were present at the same time". One suspects that Barri might have a different recollection of how it went... Sloan and Barri's first collaboration was a song that Sloan had half-written before they met, called "Kick That Little Foot Sally Ann", which was recorded by a West Coast Chubby Checker knockoff who went under the name Round Robin, and who had his own dance craze, the Slauson, which was much less successful than the Twist: [Excerpt: Round Robin, "Kick that Little Foot Sally Ann"] That track was produced and arranged by Jack Nitzsche, and Nitzsche asked Sloan to be one of the rhythm guitarists on the track, apparently liking Sloan's feel. Sloan would end up playing rhythm guitar or singing backing vocals on many of the records made of songs he and Barri wrote together. "Kick That Little Foot Sally Ann" only made number sixty-one nationally, but it was a regional hit, and it meant that Sloan and Barri soon became what Sloan later described as "the Goffin and King of the West Coast follow-ups." According to Sloan "We'd be given a list on Monday morning by Lou Adler with thirty names on it of the groups who needed follow-ups to their hit." They'd then write the songs to order, and they started to specialise in dance craze songs. For example, when the Swim looked like it might be the next big dance, they wrote "Swim Swim Swim", "She Only Wants to Swim", "Let's Swim Baby", "Big Boss Swimmer", "Swim Party" and "My Swimmin' Girl" (the last a collaboration with Jan Berry and Roger Christian). These songs were exactly as good as they needed to be, in order to provide album filler for mid-tier artists, and while Sloan and Barri weren't writing any massive hits, they were doing very well as mid-tier writers. According to Sloan's biographer Stephen McParland, there was a three-year period in the mid-sixties where at least one song written or co-written by Sloan was on the national charts at any given time. Most of these songs weren't for Columbia-Screen Gems though. In early 1964 Lou Adler had a falling out with Don Kirshner, and decided to start up his own company, Dunhill, which was equal parts production company, music publishers, and management -- doing for West Coast pop singers what Motown was doing for Detroit soul singers, and putting everything into one basket. Dunhill's early clients included Jan and Dean and the rockabilly singer Johnny Rivers, and Dunhill also signed Sloan and Barri as songwriters. Because of this connection, Sloan and Barri soon became an important part of Jan and Dean's hit-making process. The Matadors, the vocal group that had provided most of the backing vocals on the duo's hits, had started asking for more money than Jan Berry was willing to pay, and Jan and Dean couldn't do the vocals themselves -- as Bones Howe put it "As a singer, Dean is a wonderful graphic artist" -- and so Sloan and Barri stepped in, doing session vocals without payment in the hope that Jan and Dean would record a few of their songs. For example, on the big hit "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena", Dean Torrence is not present at all on the record -- Jan Berry sings the lead vocal, with Sloan doubling him for much of it, Sloan sings "Dean"'s falsetto, with the engineer Bones Howe helping out, and the rest of the backing vocals are sung by Sloan, Barri, and Howe: [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena"] For these recordings, Sloan and Barri were known as The Fantastic Baggys, a name which came from the Rolling Stones' manager Andrew Oldham and Mick Jagger, when the two were visiting California. Oldham had been commenting on baggys, the kind of shorts worn by surfers, and had asked Jagger what he thought of The Baggys as a group name. Jagger had replied "Fantastic!" and so the Fantastic Baggys had been born. As part of this, Sloan and Barri moved hard into surf and hot-rod music from the dance songs they had been writing previously. The Fantastic Baggys recorded their own album, Tell 'Em I'm Surfin', as a quickie album suggested by Adler: [Excerpt: The Fantastic Baggys, "Tell 'Em I'm Surfin'"] And under the name The Rally Packs they recorded a version of Jan and Dean's "Move Out Little Mustang" which featured Berry's girlfriend Jill Gibson doing a spoken section: [Excerpt: The Rally Packs, "Move Out Little Mustang"] They also wrote several album tracks for Jan and Dean, and wrote "Summer Means Fun" for Bruce and Terry -- Bruce Johnston, later of the Beach Boys, and Terry Melcher: [Excerpt: Bruce and Terry, "Summer Means Fun"] And they wrote the very surf-flavoured "Secret Agent Man" for fellow Dunhill artist Johnny Rivers: [Excerpt: Johnny Rivers, "Secret Agent Man"] But of course, when you're chasing trends, you're chasing trends, and soon the craze for twangy guitars and falsetto harmonies had ended, replaced by a craze for jangly twelve-string guitars and closer harmonies. According to Sloan, he was in at the very beginning of the folk-rock trend -- the way he told the story, he was involved in the mastering of the Byrds' version of "Mr. Tambourine Man". He later talked about Terry Melcher getting him to help out, saying "He had produced a record called 'Mr. Tambourine Man', and had sent it into the head office, and it had been rejected. He called me up and said 'I've got three more hours in the studio before I'm being kicked out of Columbia. Can you come over and help me with this new record?' I did. I went over there. It was under lock and key. There were two guards outside the door. Terry asked me something about 'Summer Means Fun'. "He said 'Do you remember the guitar that we worked on with that? How we put in that double reverb?' "And I said 'yes' "And he said 'What do you think if we did something like that with the Byrds?' "And I said 'That sounds good. Let's see what it sounds like.' So we patched into all the reverb centres in Columbia Music, and mastered the record in three hours." Whether Sloan really was there at the birth of folk rock, he and Barri jumped on the folk-rock craze just as they had the surf and hot-rod craze, and wrote a string of jangly hits including "You Baby" for the Turtles: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "You Baby"] and "I Found a Girl" for Jan and Dean: [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "I Found a Girl"] That song was later included on Jan and Dean's Folk 'n' Roll album, which also included... a song I'm not even going to name, but long-time listeners will know the one I mean. It was also notable in that "I Found a Girl" was the first song on which Sloan was credited not as Phil Sloan, but as P.F. Sloan -- he didn't have a middle name beginning with F, but rather the F stood for his nickname "Flip". Sloan would later talk of Phil Sloan and P.F. Sloan as almost being two different people, with P.F. being a far more serious, intense, songwriter. Folk 'n' Roll also contained another Sloan song, this one credited solely to Sloan. And that song is the one for which he became best known. There are two very different stories about how "Eve of Destruction" came to be written. To tell Sloan's version, I'm going to read a few paragraphs from his autobiography: "By late 1964, I had already written ‘Eve Of Destruction,' ‘The Sins Of A Family,' ‘This Mornin',' ‘Ain't No Way I'm Gonna Change My Mind,' and ‘What's Exactly The Matter With Me?' They all arrived on one cataclysmic evening, and nearly at the same time, as I worked on the lyrics almost simultaneously. ‘Eve Of Destruction' came about from hearing a voice, perhaps an angel's. The voice instructed me to place five pieces of paper and spread them out on my bed. I obeyed the voice. The voice told me that the first song would be called ‘Eve Of Destruction,' so I wrote the title at the top of the page. For the next few hours, the voice came and went as I was writing the lyric, as if this spirit—or whatever it was—stood over me like a teacher: ‘No, no … not think of all the hate there is in Red Russia … Red China!' I didn't understand. I thought the Soviet Union was the mortal threat to America, but the voice went on to reveal to me the future of the world until 2024. I was told the Soviet Union would fall, and that Red China would continue to be communist far into the future, but that communism was not going to be allowed to take over this Divine Planet—therefore, think of all the hate there is in Red China. I argued and wrestled with the voice for hours, until I was exhausted but satisfied inside with my plea to God to either take me out of the world, as I could not live in such a hypocritical society, or to show me a way to make things better. When I was writing ‘Eve,' I was on my hands and knees, pleading for an answer." Lou Adler's story is that he gave Phil Sloan a copy of Bob Dylan's Bringing it All Back Home album and told him to write a bunch of songs that sounded like that, and Sloan came back a week later as instructed with ten Dylan knock-offs. Adler said "It was a natural feel for him. He's a great mimic." As one other data point, both Steve Barri and Bones Howe, the engineer who worked on most of the sessions we're looking at today, have often talked in interviews about "Eve of Destruction" as being a Sloan/Barri collaboration, as if to them it's common knowledge that it wasn't written alone, although Sloan's is the only name on the credits. The song was given to a new signing to Dunhill Records, Barry McGuire. McGuire was someone who had been part of the folk scene for years, He'd been playing folk clubs in LA while also acting in a TV show from 1961. When the TV show had finished, he'd formed a duo, Barry and Barry, with Barry Kane, and they performed much the same repertoire as all the other early-sixties folkies: [Excerpt: Barry and Barry, "If I Had a Hammer"] After recording their one album, both Barrys joined the New Christy Minstrels. We've talked about the Christys before, but they were -- and are to this day -- an ultra-commercial folk group, led by Randy Sparks, with a revolving membership of usually eight or nine singers which included several other people who've come up in this podcast, like Gene Clark and Jerry Yester. McGuire became one of the principal lead singers of the Christys, singing lead on their version of the novelty cowboy song "Three Wheels on My Wagon", which was later released as a single in the UK and became a perennial children's favourite (though it has a problematic attitude towards Native Americans): [Excerpt: The New Christy Minstrels, "Three Wheels on My Wagon"] And he also sang lead on their big hit "Green Green", which he co-wrote with Randy Sparks: [Excerpt: The New Christy Minstrels, "Green Green"] But by 1965 McGuire had left the New Christy Minstrels. As he said later "I'd sung 'Green Green' a thousand times and I didn't want to sing it again. This is January of 1965. I went back to LA to meet some producers, and I was broke. Nobody had the time of day for me. I was walking down street one time to see Dr. Strangelove and I walked by the music store, and I heard "Green Green" comin' out of the store, ya know, on Hollywood Boulevard. And I heard my voice, and I thought, 'I got four dollars in my pocket!' I couldn't believe it, my voice is comin' out on Hollywood Boulevard, and I'm broke. And right at that moment, a car pulls up, and the radio is playing 'Chim Chim Cherie" also by the Minstrels. So I got my voice comin' at me in stereo, standin' on the sidewalk there, and I'm broke, and I can't get anyone to sign me!" But McGuire had a lot of friends who he'd met on the folk scene, some of whom were now in the new folk-rock scene that was just starting to spring up. One of them was Roger McGuinn, who told him that his band, the Byrds, were just about to put out a new single, "Mr. Tambourine Man", and that they were about to start a residency at Ciro's on Sunset Strip. McGuinn invited McGuire to the opening night of that residency, where a lot of other people from the scene were there to see the new group. Bob Dylan was there, as was Phil Sloan, and the actor Jack Nicholson, who was still at the time a minor bit-part player in low-budget films made by people like American International Pictures (the cinematographer on many of Nicholson's early films was Floyd Crosby, David Crosby's father, which may be why he was there). Someone else who was there was Lou Adler, who according to McGuire recognised him instantly. According to Adler, he actually asked Terry Melcher who the long-haired dancer wearing furs was, because "he looked like the leader of a movement", and Melcher told him that he was the former lead singer of the New Christy Minstrels. Either way, Adler approached McGuire and asked if he was currently signed -- Dunhill Records was just starting up, and getting someone like McGuire, who had a proven ability to sing lead on hit records, would be a good start for the label. As McGuire didn't have a contract, he was signed to Dunhill, and he was given some of Sloan's new songs to pick from, and chose "What's Exactly the Matter With Me?" as his single: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "What's Exactly the Matter With Me?"] McGuire described what happened next: "It was like, a three-hour session. We did two songs, and then the third one wasn't turning out. We only had about a half hour left in the session, so I said 'Let's do this tune', and I pulled 'Eve of Destruction' out of my pocket, and it just had Phil's words scrawled on a piece of paper, all wrinkled up. Phil worked the chords out with the musicians, who were Hal Blaine on drums and Larry Knechtel on bass." There were actually more musicians than that at the session -- apparently both Knechtel and Joe Osborn were there, so I'm not entirely sure who's playing bass -- Knechtel was a keyboard player as well as a bass player, but I don't hear any keyboards on the track. And Tommy Tedesco was playing lead guitar, and Steve Barri added percussion, along with Sloan on rhythm guitar and harmonica. The chords were apparently scribbled down for the musicians on bits of greasy paper that had been used to wrap some takeaway chicken, and they got through the track in a single take. According to McGuire "I'm reading the words off this piece of wrinkled paper, and I'm singing 'My blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin'", that part that goes 'Ahhh you can't twist the truth', and the reason I'm going 'Ahhh' is because I lost my place on the page. People said 'Man, you really sounded frustrated when you were singing.' I was. I couldn't see the words!" [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "Eve of Destruction"] With a few overdubs -- the female backing singers in the chorus, and possibly the kettledrums, which I've seen differing claims about, with some saying that Hal Blaine played them during the basic track and others saying that Lou Adler suggested them as an overdub, the track was complete. McGuire wasn't happy with his vocal, and a session was scheduled for him to redo it, but then a record promoter working with Adler was DJing a birthday party for the head of programming at KFWB, the big top forty radio station in LA at the time, and he played a few acetates he'd picked up from Adler. Most went down OK with the crowd, but when he played "Eve of Destruction", the crowd went wild and insisted he play it three times in a row. The head of programming called Adler up and told him that "Eve of Destruction" was going to be put into rotation on the station from Monday, so he'd better get the record out. As McGuire was away for the weekend, Adler just released the track as it was, and what had been intended to be a B-side became Barry McGuire's first and only number one record: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "Eve of Destruction"] Sloan would later claim that that song was a major reason why the twenty-sixth amendment to the US Constitution was passed six years later, because the line "you're old enough to kill but not for votin'" shamed Congress into changing the constitution to allow eighteen-year-olds to vote. If so, that would make "Eve of Destruction" arguably the single most impactful rock record in history, though Sloan is the only person I've ever seen saying that As well as going to number one in McGuire's version, the song was also covered by the other artists who regularly performed Sloan and Barri songs, like the Turtles: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Eve of Destruction"] And Jan and Dean, whose version on Folk & Roll used the same backing track as McGuire, but had a few lyrical changes to make it fit with Jan Berry's right-wing politics, most notably changing "Selma, Alabama" to "Watts, California", thus changing a reference to peaceful civil rights protestors being brutally attacked and murdered by white supremacist state troopers to a reference to what was seen, in the popular imaginary, as Black people rioting for no reason: [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "Eve of Destruction"] According to Sloan, he worked on the Folk & Roll album as a favour to Berry, even though he thought Berry was being cynical and exploitative in making the record, but those changes caused a rift in their friendship. Sloan said in his autobiography "Where I was completely wrong was in helping him capitalize on something in which he didn't believe. Jan wanted the public to perceive him as a person who was deeply concerned and who embraced the values of the progressive politics of the day. But he wasn't that person. That's how I was being pulled. It was when he recorded my actual song ‘Eve Of Destruction' and changed a number of lines to reflect his own ideals that my principles demanded that I leave Folk City and never return." It's true that Sloan gave no more songs to Jan and Dean after that point -- but it's also true that the duo would record only one more album, the comedy concept album Jan and Dean Meet Batman, before Jan's accident. Incidentally, the reference to Selma, Alabama in the lyric might help people decide on which story about the writing of "Eve of Destruction" they think is more plausible. Remember that Lou Adler said that it was written after Adler gave Sloan a copy of Bringing it All Back Home and told him to write a bunch of knock-offs, while Sloan said it was written after a supernatural force gave him access to all the events that would happen in the world for the next sixty years. Sloan claimed the song was written in late 1964. Selma, Alabama, became national news in late February and early March 1965. Bringing it All Back Home was released in late March 1965. So either Adler was telling the truth, or Sloan really *was* given a supernatural insight into the events of the future. Now, as it turned out, while "Eve of Destruction" went to number one, that would be McGuire's only hit as a solo artist. His next couple of singles would reach the very low end of the Hot One Hundred, and that would be it -- he'd release several more albums, before appearing in the Broadway musical Hair, most famous for its nude scenes, and getting a small part in the cinematic masterpiece Werewolves on Wheels: [Excerpt: Werewolves on Wheels trailer] P.F. Sloan would later tell various stories about why McGuire never had another hit. Sometimes he would say that Dunhill Records had received death threats because of "Eve of Destruction" and so deliberately tried to bury McGuire's career, other times he would say that Lou Adler had told him that Billboard had said they were never going to put McGuire's records on the charts no matter how well they sold, because "Eve of Destruction" had just been too powerful and upset the advertisers. But of course at this time Dunhill were still trying for a follow-up to "Eve of Destruction", and they thought they might have one when Barry McGuire brought in a few friends of his to sing backing vocals on his second album. Now, we've covered some of the history of the Mamas and the Papas already, because they were intimately tied up with other groups like the Byrds and the Lovin' Spoonful, and with the folk scene that led to songs like "Hey Joe", so some of this will be more like a recap than a totally new story, but I'm going to recap those parts of the story anyway, so it's fresh in everyone's heads. John Phillips, Scott McKenzie, and Cass Elliot all grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, just a few miles south of Washington DC. Elliot was a few years younger than Phillips and McKenzie, and so as is the way with young men they never really noticed her, and as McKenzie later said "She lived like a quarter of a mile from me and I never met her until New York". While they didn't know who Elliot was, though, she was aware who they were, as Phillips and McKenzie sang together in a vocal group called The Smoothies. The Smoothies were a modern jazz harmony group, influenced by groups like the Modernaires, the Hi-Los, and the Four Freshmen. John Phillips later said "We were drawn to jazz, because we were sort of beatniks, really, rather than hippies, or whatever, flower children. So we used to sing modern harmonies, like Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross. Dave Lambert did a lot of our arrangements for us as a matter of fact." Now, I've not seen any evidence other than Phillips' claim that Dave Lambert ever arranged for the Smoothies, but that does tell you a lot about the kind of music that they were doing. Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross were a vocalese trio whose main star was Annie Ross, who had a career worthy of an episode in itself -- she sang with Paul Whiteman, appeared in a Little Rascals film when she was seven, had an affair with Lenny Bruce, dubbed Britt Ekland's voice in The Wicker Man, played the villain's sister in Superman III, and much more. Vocalese, you'll remember, was a style of jazz vocal where a singer would take a jazz instrumental, often an improvised one, and add lyrics which they would sing, like Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross' version of "Cloudburst": [Excerpt: Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, "Cloudburst"] Whether Dave Lambert ever really did arrange for the Smoothies or not, it's very clear that the trio had a huge influence on John Phillips' ideas about vocal arrangement, as you can hear on Mamas and Papas records like "Once Was a Time I Thought": [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "Once Was a Time I Thought"] While the Smoothies thought of themselves as a jazz group, when they signed to Decca they started out making the standard teen pop of the era, with songs like "Softly": [Excerpt, The Smoothies, "Softly"] When the folk boom started, Phillips realised that this was music that he could do easily, because the level of musicianship among the pop-folk musicians was so much lower than in the jazz world. The Smoothies made some recordings in the style of the Kingston Trio, like "Ride Ride Ride": [Excerpt: The Smoothies, "Ride Ride Ride"] Then when the Smoothies split, Phillips and McKenzie formed a trio with a banjo player, Dick Weissman, who they met through Izzy Young's Folklore Centre in Greenwich Village after Phillips asked Young to name some musicians who could make a folk record with him. Weissman was often considered the best banjo player on the scene, and was a friend of Pete Seeger's, to whom Seeger sometimes turned for banjo tips. The trio, who called themselves the Journeymen, quickly established themselves on the folk scene. Weissman later said "we had this interesting balance. John had all of this charisma -- they didn't know about the writing thing yet -- John had the personality, Scott had the voice, and I could play. If you think about it, all of those bands like the Kingston Trio, the Brothers Four, nobody could really *sing* and nobody could really *play*, relatively speaking." This is the take that most people seemed to have about John Phillips, in any band he was ever in. Nobody thought he was a particularly good singer or instrumentalist -- he could sing on key and play adequate rhythm guitar, but nobody would actually pay money to listen to him do those things. Mark Volman of the Turtles, for example, said of him "John wasn't the kind of guy who was going to be able to go up on stage and sing his songs as a singer-songwriter. He had to put himself in the context of a group." But he was charismatic, he had presence, and he also had a great musical mind. He would surround himself with the best players and best singers he could, and then he would organise and arrange them in ways that made the most of their talents. He would work out the arrangements, in a manner that was far more professional than the quick head arrangements that other folk groups used, and he instigated a level of professionalism in his groups that was not at all common on the scene. Phillips' friend Jim Mason talked about the first time he saw the Journeymen -- "They were warming up backstage, and John had all of them doing vocal exercises; one thing in particular that's pretty famous called 'Seiber Syllables' -- it's a series of vocal exercises where you enunciate different vowel and consonant sounds. It had the effect of clearing your head, and it's something that really good operetta singers do." The group were soon signed by Frank Werber, the manager of the Kingston Trio, who signed them as an insurance policy. Dave Guard, the Kingston Trio's banjo player, was increasingly having trouble with the other members, and Werber knew it was only a matter of time before he left the group. Werber wanted the Journeymen as a sort of farm team -- he had the idea that when Guard left, Phillips would join the Kingston Trio in his place as the third singer. Weissman would become the Trio's accompanist on banjo, and Scott McKenzie, who everyone agreed had a remarkable voice, would be spun off as a solo artist. But until that happened, they might as well make records by themselves. The Journeymen signed to MGM records, but were dropped before they recorded anything. They instead signed to Capitol, for whom they recorded their first album: [Excerpt: The Journeymen, "500 Miles"] After recording that album, the Journeymen moved out to California, with Phillips' wife and children. But soon Phillips' marriage was to collapse, as he met and fell in love with Michelle Gilliam. Gilliam was nine years younger than him -- he was twenty-six and she was seventeen -- and she had the kind of appearance which meant that in every interview with an older heterosexual man who knew her, that man will spend half the interview talking about how attractive he found her. Phillips soon left his wife and children, but before he did, the group had a turntable hit with "River Come Down", the B-side to "500 Miles": [Excerpt: The Journeymen, "River Come Down"] Around the same time, Dave Guard *did* leave the Kingston Trio, but the plan to split the Journeymen never happened. Instead Phillips' friend John Stewart replaced Guard -- and this soon became a new source of income for Phillips. Both Phillips and Stewart were aspiring songwriters, and they collaborated together on several songs for the Trio, including "Chilly Winds": [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "Chilly Winds"] Phillips became particularly good at writing songs that sounded like they could be old traditional folk songs, sometimes taking odd lines from older songs to jump-start new ones, as in "Oh Miss Mary", which he and Stewart wrote after hearing someone sing the first line of a song she couldn't remember the rest of: [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "Oh Miss Mary"] Phillips and Stewart became so close that Phillips actually suggested to Stewart that he quit the Kingston Trio and replace Dick Weissman in the Journeymen. Stewart did quit the Trio -- but then the next day Phillips suggested that maybe it was a bad idea and he should stay where he was. Stewart went back to the Trio, claimed he had only pretended to quit because he wanted a pay-rise, and got his raise, so everyone ended up happy. The Journeymen moved back to New York with Michelle in place of Phillips' first wife (and Michelle's sister Russell also coming along, as she was dating Scott McKenzie) and on New Year's Eve 1962 John and Michelle married -- so from this point on I will refer to them by their first names, because they both had the surname Phillips. The group continued having success through 1963, including making appearances on "Hootenanny": [Excerpt: The Journeymen, "Stack O'Lee (live on Hootenanny)"] By the time of the Journeymen's third album, though, John and Scott McKenzie were on bad terms. Weissman said "They had been the closest of friends and now they were the worst of enemies. They talked through me like I was a medium. It got to the point where we'd be standing in the dressing room and John would say to me 'Tell Scott that his right sock doesn't match his left sock...' Things like that, when they were standing five feet away from each other." Eventually, the group split up. Weissman was always going to be able to find employment given his banjo ability, and he was about to get married and didn't need the hassle of dealing with the other two. McKenzie was planning on a solo career -- everyone was agreed that he had the vocal ability. But John was another matter. He needed to be in a group. And not only that, the Journeymen had bookings they needed to complete. He quickly pulled together a group he called the New Journeymen. The core of the lineup was himself, Michelle on vocals, and banjo player Marshall Brickman. Brickman had previously been a member of a folk group called the Tarriers, who had had a revolving lineup, and had played on most of their early-sixties recordings: [Excerpt: The Tarriers, "Quinto (My Little Pony)"] We've met the Tarriers before in the podcast -- they had been formed by Erik Darling, who later replaced Pete Seeger in the Weavers after Seeger's socialist principles wouldn't let him do advertising, and Alan Arkin, later to go on to be a film star, and had had hits with "Cindy, O Cindy", with lead vocals from Vince Martin, who would later go on to be a major performer in the Greenwich Village scene, and with "The Banana Boat Song". By the time Brickman had joined, though, Darling, Arkin, and Martin had all left the group to go on to bigger things, and while he played with them for several years, it was after their commercial peak. Brickman would, though, also go on to a surprising amount of success, but as a writer rather than a musician -- he had a successful collaboration with Woody Allen in the 1970s, co-writing four of Allen's most highly regarded films -- Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Manhattan Murder Mystery -- and with another collaborator he later co-wrote the books for the stage musicals Jersey Boys and The Addams Family. Both John and Michelle were decent singers, and both have their admirers as vocalists -- P.F. Sloan always said that Michelle was the best singer in the group they eventually formed, and that it was her voice that gave the group its sound -- but for the most part they were not considered as particularly astonishing lead vocalists. Certainly, neither had a voice that stood out the way that Scott McKenzie's had. They needed a strong lead singer, and they found one in Denny Doherty. Now, we covered Denny Doherty's early career in the episode on the Lovin' Spoonful, because he was intimately involved in the formation of that group, so I won't go into too much detail here, but I'll give a very abbreviated version of what I said there. Doherty was a Canadian performer who had been a member of the Halifax Three with Zal Yanovsky: [Excerpt: The Halifax Three, "When I First Came to This Land"] After the Halifax Three had split up, Doherty and Yanovsky had performed as a duo for a while, before joining up with Cass Elliot and her husband Jim Hendricks, who both had previously been in the Big Three with Tim Rose: [Excerpt: Cass Elliot and the Big 3, "The Banjo Song"] Elliot, Hendricks, Yanovsky, and Doherty had formed The Mugwumps, sometimes joined by John Sebastian, and had tried to go in more of a rock direction after seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. They recorded one album together before splitting up: [Excerpt: The Mugwumps, "Searchin'"] Part of the reason they split up was that interpersonal relationships within the group were put under some strain -- Elliot and Hendricks split up, though they would remain friends and remain married for several years even though they were living apart, and Elliot had an unrequited crush on Doherty. But since they'd split up, and Yanovsky and Sebastian had gone off to form the Lovin' Spoonful, that meant that Doherty was free, and he was regarded as possibly the best male lead vocalist on the circuit, so the group snapped him up. The only problem was that the Journeymen still had gigs booked that needed to be played, one of them was in just three days, and Doherty didn't know the repertoire. This was a problem with an easy solution for people in their twenties though -- they took a huge amount of amphetamines, and stayed awake for three days straight rehearsing. They made the gig, and Doherty was now the lead singer of the New Journeymen: [Excerpt: The New Journeymen, "The Last Thing on My Mind"] But the New Journeymen didn't last in that form for very long, because even before joining the group, Denny Doherty had been going in a more folk-rock direction with the Mugwumps. At the time, John Phillips thought rock and roll was kids' music, and he was far more interested in folk and jazz, but he was also very interested in making money, and he soon decided it was an idea to start listening to the Beatles. There's some dispute as to who first played the Beatles for John in early 1965 -- some claim it was Doherty, others claim it was Cass Elliot, but everyone agrees it was after Denny Doherty had introduced Phillips to something else -- he brought round some LSD for John and Michelle, and Michelle's sister Rusty, to try. And then he told them he'd invited round a friend. Michelle Phillips later remembered, "I remember saying to the guys "I don't know about you guys, but this drug does nothing for me." At that point there was a knock on the door, and as I opened the door and saw Cass, the acid hit me *over the head*. I saw her standing there in a pleated skirt, a pink Angora sweater with great big eyelashes on and her hair in a flip. And all of a sudden I thought 'This is really *quite* a drug!' It was an image I will have securely fixed in my brain for the rest of my life. I said 'Hi, I'm Michelle. We just took some LSD-25, do you wanna join us?' And she said 'Sure...'" Rusty Gilliam's description matches this -- "It was mind-boggling. She had on a white pleated skirt, false eyelashes. These were the kind of eyelashes that when you put them on you were supposed to trim them to an appropriate length, which she didn't, and when she blinked she looked like a cow, or those dolls you get when you're little and the eyes open and close. And we're on acid. Oh my God! It was a sight! And everything she was wearing were things that you weren't supposed to be wearing if you were heavy -- white pleated skirt, mohair sweater. You know, until she became famous, she suffered so much, and was poked fun at." This gets to an important point about Elliot, and one which sadly affected everything about her life. Elliot was *very* fat -- I've seen her weight listed at about three hundred pounds, and she was only five foot five tall -- and she also didn't have the kind of face that gets thought of as conventionally attractive. Her appearance would be cruelly mocked by pretty much everyone for the rest of her life, in ways that it's genuinely hurtful to read about, and which I will avoid discussing in detail in order to avoid hurting fat listeners. But the two *other* things that defined Elliot in the minds of those who knew her were her voice -- every single person who knew her talks about what a wonderful singer she was -- and her personality. I've read a lot of things about Cass Elliot, and I have never read a single negative word about her as a person, but have read many people going into raptures about what a charming, loving, friendly, understanding person she was. Michelle later said of her "From the time I left Los Angeles, I hadn't had a friend, a buddy. I was married, and John and I did not hang out with women, we just hung out with men, and especially not with women my age. John was nine years older than I was. And here was a fun-loving, intelligent woman. She captivated me. I was as close to in love with Cass as I could be to any woman in my life at that point. She also represented something to me: freedom. Everything she did was because she wanted to do it. She was completely independent and I admired her and was in awe of her. And later on, Cass would be the one to tell me not to let John run my life. And John hated her for that." Either Elliot had brought round Meet The Beatles, the Beatles' first Capitol album, for everyone to listen to, or Denny Doherty already had it, but either way Elliot and Doherty were by this time already Beatles fans. Michelle, being younger than the rest and not part of the folk scene until she met John, was much more interested in rock and roll than any of them, but because she'd been married to John for a couple of years and been part of his musical world she hadn't really encountered the Beatles music, though she had a vague memory that she might have heard a track or two on the radio. John was hesitant -- he didn't want to listen to any rock and roll, but eventually he was persuaded, and the record was put on while he was on his first acid trip: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand"] Within a month, John Phillips had written thirty songs that he thought of as inspired by the Beatles. The New Journeymen were going to go rock and roll. By this time Marshall Brickman was out of the band, and instead John, Michelle, and Denny recruited a new lead guitarist, Eric Hord. Denny started playing bass, with John on rhythm guitar, and a violinist friend of theirs, Peter Pilafian, knew a bit of drums and took on that role. The new lineup of the group used the Journeymen's credit card, which hadn't been stopped even though the Journeymen were no more, to go down to St. Thomas in the Caribbean, along with Michelle's sister, John's daughter Mackenzie (from whose name Scott McKenzie had taken his stage name, as he was born Philip Blondheim), a pet dog, and sundry band members' girlfriends. They stayed there for several months, living in tents on the beach, taking acid, and rehearsing. While they were there, Michelle and Denny started an affair which would have important ramifications for the group later. They got a gig playing at a club called Duffy's, whose address was on Creeque Alley, and soon after they started playing there Cass Elliot travelled down as well -- she was in love with Denny, and wanted to be around him. She wasn't in the group, but she got a job working at Duffy's as a waitress, and she would often sing harmony with the group while waiting at tables. Depending on who was telling the story, either she didn't want to be in the group because she didn't want her appearance to be compared to Michelle's, or John wouldn't *let* her be in the group because she was so fat. Later a story would be made up to cover for this, saying that she hadn't been in the group at first because she couldn't sing the highest notes that were needed, until she got hit on the head with a metal pipe and discovered that it had increased her range by three notes, but that seems to be a lie. One of the songs the New Journeymen were performing at this time was "Mr. Tambourine Man". They'd heard that their old friend Roger McGuinn had recorded it with his new band, but they hadn't yet heard his version, and they'd come up with their own arrangement: [Excerpt: The New Journeymen, "Mr. Tambourine Man"] Denny later said "We were doing three-part harmony on 'Mr Tambourine Man', but a lot slower... like a polka or something! And I tell John, 'No John, we gotta slow it down and give it a backbeat.' Finally we get the Byrds 45 down here, and we put it on and turn it up to ten, and John says 'Oh, like that?' Well, as you can tell, it had already been done. So John goes 'Oh, ah... that's it...' a light went on. So we started doing Beatles stuff. We dropped 'Mr Tambourine Man' after hearing the Byrds version, because there was no point." Eventually they had to leave the island -- they had completely run out of money, and were down to fifty dollars. The credit card had been cut up, and the governor of the island had a personal vendetta against them because they gave his son acid, and they were likely to get arrested if they didn't leave the island. Elliot and her then-partner had round-trip tickets, so they just left, but the rest of them were in trouble. By this point they were unwashed, they were homeless, and they'd spent their last money on stage costumes. They got to the airport, and John Phillips tried to write a cheque for eight air fares back to the mainland, which the person at the check-in desk just laughed at. So they took their last fifty dollars and went to a casino. There Michelle played craps, and she rolled seventeen straight passes, something which should be statistically impossible. She turned their fifty dollars into six thousand dollars, which they scooped up, took to the airport, and paid for their flights out in cash. The New Journeymen arrived back in New York, but quickly decided that they were going to try their luck in California. They rented a car, using Scott McKenzie's credit card, and drove out to LA. There they met up with Hoyt Axton, who you may remember as the son of Mae Axton, the writer of "Heartbreak Hotel", and as the performer who had inspired Michael Nesmith to go into folk music: [Excerpt: Hoyt Axton, "Greenback Dollar"] Axton knew the group, and fed them and put them up for a night, but they needed somewhere else to stay. They went to stay with one of Michelle's friends, but after one night their rented car was stolen, with all their possessions in it. They needed somewhere else to stay, so they went to ask Jim Hendricks if they could crash at his place -- and they were surprised to find that Cass Elliot was there already. Hendricks had another partner -- though he and Elliot wouldn't have their marriage annulled until 1968 and were still technically married -- but he'd happily invited her to stay with them. And now all her friends had turned up, he invited them to stay as well, taking apart the beds in his one-bedroom apartment so he could put down a load of mattresses in the space for everyone to sleep on. The next part becomes difficult, because pretty much everyone in the LA music scene of the sixties was a liar who liked to embellish their own roles in things, so it's quite difficult to unpick what actually happened. What seems to have happened though is that first this new rock-oriented version of the New Journeymen went to see Frank Werber, on the recommendation of John Stewart. Werber was the manager of the Kingston Trio, and had also managed the Journeymen. He, however, was not interested -- not because he didn't think they had talent, but because he had experience of working with John Phillips previously. When Phillips came into his office Werber picked up a tape that he'd been given of the group, and said "I have not had a chance to listen to this tape. I believe that you are a most talented individual, and that's why we took you on in the first place. But I also believe that you're also a drag to work with. A pain in the ass. So I'll tell you what, before whatever you have on here sways me, I'm gonna give it back to you and say that we're not interested." Meanwhile -- and this part of the story comes from Kim Fowley, who was never one to let the truth get in the way of him taking claim for everything, but parts of it at least are corroborated by other people -- Cass Elliot had called Fowley, and told him that her friends' new group sounded pretty good and he should sign them. Fowley was at that time working as a talent scout for a label, but according to him the label wouldn't give the group the money they wanted. So instead, Fowley got in touch with Nik Venet, who had just produced the Leaves' hit version of "Hey Joe" on Mira Records: [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe"] Fowley suggested to Venet that Venet should sign the group to Mira Records, and Fowley would sign them to a publishing contract, and they could both get rich. The trio went to audition for Venet, and Elliot drove them over -- and Venet thought the group had a great look as a quartet. He wanted to sign them to a record contract, but only if Elliot was in the group as well. They agreed, he gave them a one hundred and fifty dollar advance, and told them to come back the next day to see his boss at Mira. But Barry McGuire was also hanging round with Elliot and Hendricks, and decided that he wanted to have Lou Adler hear the four of them. He thought they might be useful both as backing vocalists on his second album and as a source of new songs. He got them to go and see Lou Adler, and according to McGuire Phillips didn't want Elliot to go with them, but as Elliot was the one who was friends with McGuire, Phillips worried that they'd lose the chance with Adler if she didn't. Adler was amazed, and decided to sign the group right then and there -- both Bones Howe and P.F. Sloan claimed to have been there when the group auditioned for him and have said "if you won't sign them, I will", though exactly what Sloan would have signed them to I'm not sure. Adler paid them three thousand dollars in cash and told them not to bother with Nik Venet, so they just didn't turn up for the Mira Records audition the next day. Instead, they went into the studio with McGuire and cut backing vocals on about half of his new album: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire with the Mamas and the Papas, "Hide Your Love Away"] While the group were excellent vocalists, there were two main reasons that Adler wanted to sign them. The first was that he found Michelle Phillips extremely attractive, and the second is a song that John and Michelle had written which he thought might be very suitable for McGuire's album. Most people who knew John Phillips think of "California Dreamin'" as a solo composition, and he would later claim that he gave Michelle fifty percent just for transcribing his lyric, saying he got inspired in the middle of the night, woke her up, and got her to write the song down as he came up with it. But Michelle, who is a credited co-writer on the song, has been very insistent that she wrote the lyrics to the second verse, and that it's about her own real experiences, saying that she would often go into churches and light candles even though she was "at best an agnostic, and possibly an atheist" in her words, and this would annoy John, who had also been raised Catholic, but who had become aggressively opposed to expressions of religion, rather than still having nostalgia for the aesthetics of the church as Michelle did. They were out walking on a particularly cold winter's day in 1963, and Michelle wanted to go into St Patrick's Cathedral and John very much did not want to. A couple of nights later, John woke her up, having written the first verse of the song, starting "All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey/I went for a walk on a winter's day", and insisting she collaborate with him. She liked the song, and came up with the lines "Stopped into a church, I passed along the way/I got down on my knees and I pretend to pray/The preacher likes the cold, he knows I'm going to stay", which John would later apparently dislike, but which stayed in the song. Most sources I've seen for the recording of "California Dreamin'" say that the lineup of musicians was the standard set of players who had played on McGuire's other records, with the addition of John Phillips on twelve-string guitar -- P.F. Sloan on guitar and harmonica, Joe Osborn on bass, Larry Knechtel on keyboards, and Hal Blaine on drums, but for some reason Stephen McParland's book on Sloan has Bones Howe down as playing drums on the track while engineering -- a detail so weird, and from such a respectable researcher, that I have to wonder if it might be true. In his autobiography, Sloan claims to have rewritten the chord sequence to "California Dreamin'". He says "Barry Mann had unintentionally showed me a suspended chord back at Screen Gems. I was so impressed by this beautiful, simple chord that I called Brian Wilson and played it for him over the phone. The next thing I knew, Brian had written ‘Don't Worry Baby,' which had within it a number suspended chords. And then the chord heard 'round the world, two months later, was the opening suspended chord of ‘A Hard Day's Night.' I used these chords throughout ‘California Dreamin',' and more specifically as a bridge to get back and forth from the verse to the chorus." Now, nobody else corroborates this story, and both Brian Wilson and John Phillips had the kind of background in modern harmony that means they would have been very aware of suspended chords before either ever encountered Sloan, but I thought I should mention it. Rather more plausible is Sloan's other claim, that he came up with the intro to the song. According to Sloan, he was inspired by "Walk Don't Run" by the Ventures: [Excerpt: The Ventures, "Walk Don't Run"] And you can easily see how this: [plays "Walk Don't Run"] Can lead to this: [plays "California Dreamin'"] And I'm fairly certain that if that was the inspiration, it was Sloan who was the one who thought it up. John Phillips had been paying no attention to the world of surf music when "Walk Don't Run" had been a hit -- that had been at the point when he was very firmly in the folk world, while Sloan of course had been recording "Tell 'Em I'm Surfin'", and it had been his job to know surf music intimately. So Sloan's intro became the start of what was intended to be Barry McGuire's next single: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "California Dreamin'"] Sloan also provided the harmonica solo on the track: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "California Dreamin'"] The Mamas and the Papas -- the new name that was now given to the former New Journeymen, now they were a quartet -- were also signed to Dunhill as an act on their own, and recorded their own first single, "Go Where You Wanna Go", a song apparently written by John about Michelle, in late 1963, after she had briefly left him to have an affair with Russ Titelman, the record producer and songwriter, before coming back to him: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "Go Where You Wanna Go"] But while that was put out, they quickly decided to scrap it and go with another song. The "Go Where You Wanna Go" single was pulled after only selling a handful of copies, though its commercial potential was later proved when in 1967 a new vocal group, the 5th Dimension, released a soundalike version as their second single. The track was produced by Lou Adler's client Johnny Rivers, and used the exact same musicians as the Mamas and the Papas version, with the exception of Phillips. It became their first hit, reaching number sixteen on the charts: [Excerpt: The 5th Dimension, "Go Where You Wanna Go"] The reason the Mamas and the Papas version of "Go Where You Wanna Go" was pulled was because everyone became convinced that their first single should instead be their own version of "California Dreamin'". This is the exact same track as McGuire's track, with just two changes. The first is that McGuire's lead vocal was replaced with Denny Doherty: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "California Dreamin'"] Though if you listen to the stereo mix of the song and isolate the left channel, you can hear McGuire singing the lead on the first line, and occasional leakage from him elsewhere on the backing vocal track: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "California Dreamin'"] The other change made was to replace Sloan's harmonica solo with an alto flute solo by Bud Shank, a jazz musician who we heard about in the episode on "Light My Fire", when he collaborated with Ravi Shankar on "Improvisations on the Theme From Pather Panchali": [Excerpt: Ravi Shankar, "Improvisation on the Theme From Pather Panchali"] Shank was working on another session in Western Studios, where they were recording the Mamas and Papas track, and Bones Howe approached him while he was packing his instrument and asked if he'd be interested in doing another session. Shank agreed, though the track caused problems for him. According to Shank "What had happened was that whe
JERSEY BOYS COMPOSER: Bob Gaudio LYRICIST: Bob Crewe BOOK: Marshall Brickman, Rick Elice DIRECTOR: Des McAnuff CHOREOGRAPHER: Sergio Trujillo PRINCIPLE CAST: Christian Hoff (Tommy), Daniel Reichard (Bob), John Lloyd Young (Frankie) OPENING DATE: Nov 06, 2005 CLOSING DATE: Jan 15, 2017 PERFORMANCES: 4,642 SYNOPSIS: The rise and fall of The Four Seasons, a real-life band that dominated the 1960s music scene, is told through rotating narrators, who all offer their own theories as to why the band succeeded and subsequently dissolved. The early 2000s saw an onslaught of failed jukebox musicals which aimed to capitalize on the disposable income of former rock fans by luring them to the theatre with familiar songs. Jersey Boys was successful because it tells the true, engrossing story of the Four Seasons and juxtaposes the violence of the narrative against the sterile, cherry tunes for which the band was known. Rick Elice examines how contradicting stories from the three living band members lent the show a multi-perspective narrative frame. The show set the standard for jukebox musicals which tell the story of the artists behind the music and led a fleet of such shows to Broadway for decades such as Beautiful and Tina. Rick Elice co-wrote Jersey Boys (winner 2006 Tony Award, 2007 Grammy Award and 2009 Olivier Award for Best Musical) with Marshall Brickman. His play, Peter and the Starcatcher, received nine 2012 Tony Award nominations (including two for Rick) and won five, more than any play of the season. It's currently playing in New York and on tour across North America. Also on Broadway, Elice wrote The Addams Family (with Marshall Brickman, music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa), currently touring North America, with productions in Europe and South America. In 2014, the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego presented the world premiere of his new musical, Dog and Pony (music and lyrics by Michael Patrick Walker). Rick is currently writing a musical for Disney Theatricals with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, based on the film Make Believe, and Super Fly (co-written with Seth Zvi Rosenfeld), directed and choreographed by modern dance legend, Bill T. Jones. Heartfelt thanks to those whose work in the theatre makes him grateful for the day he was born: Sondheim, Stoppard, Bennett, Prince, Fosse, Robbins, Nichols, Tune, Nunn, Laurents, Stone, Kushner, Taymor, Papp, Schumacher, Schneider, Coyne, Brickman, Timbers and Rees. Rick thinks about them a lot. He never thought about Jersey much. He does now. SOURCES Jersey Boys, Original Cast Recording. Decca Records (2005) Jersey Boys starring Erich Bergen and John Lloyd Young, directed by Clint Eastwood. Warner Brothers (2014) Jersey Boys: The Story of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons by David Cote, published by Broadway (2007) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
For the final episode of this series, we're chatting to the amazing Cameron Blakely! Cameron originated the role of Gomez when The Addams Family made its UK premiere in 2017. He is currently reprising his performance for the musical's latest UK tour.Directed by Matthew White, with choreography by Alistair David, The Addams Family has book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa. Cameron is well known for his long association with Les Miserables. He has played Thenardier countless times in the West End and on tour. He recently played Bamatabois/Babet in the concert version of the show at the Sondheim Theatre, having played the role for the 25th Anniversary Concert at the O2 Arena.Just a few of Cameron's other credits include: Dennis Dupree in Rock of Ages (UK Tour), W T Steadi in Calon Lan (Swansea Grand Theatre), Lex Hogan in Eugenius (The Other Palace), Narrator/Mysterious Man in Into the Woods (Royal Exchange Theatre), Fagin in Oliver! (Watermill Theatre), Gatch/Twimble in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Concert), Lazar Wolf in Fiddler on the Roof (Grange Park Opera), Mr Lucas/Mr Scruton in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (Leicester Curve) and Sam in Mamma Mia! (international tour), Cameron has worked extensively at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, where his roles have included: Charley in Where's Charley?, Badger in The Wind in the Willows, Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Rosencrantz in Hamlet, Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Nathaniel in The Taming of the Shrew.The Addams Family resumes its UK tour on 11th January in Milton Keynes and is booking through to June 2022. Visit www.theaddamsfamily.co.uk for info and tour dates.Hosted by Andrew Tomlins. @Andrew_Tomlins Thanks for listening! We're taking a little break in January, but will be back next year with lots more incredible guests. Email: andrew@westendframe.co.ukVisit westendframe.co.uk for more info about our podcasts.
Manhattan is a 1979 American romantic comedy film directed by Woody Allen and produced by Charles H. Joffe. The screenplay was written by Allen and Marshall Brickman. Allen co-stars as a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl but falls in love with his best friend's mistress. Meryl Streep and Anne Byrne also star.
Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 92, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: 1: Title of a 1985 Bruce Springsteen hit, or a book about him by Dave Marsh. "Glory Days". 2: They had 2 No. 1 hits in 1980: "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "Another One Bites The Dust". Queen. 3: This leader of Brasil '66 resurfaced in 1983 with "Never Gonna Let You Go". Sergio Mendes. 4: After going "Roundabout" this group returned to the charts in 1983 with "Owner Of A Lonely Heart". Yes. 5: In 1984 this group of all-stars tried to make things better with "Do They Know It's Christmas?". Band Aid. Round 2. Category: Hey, "Good" Looking! 1: The liturgy of this day includes a reading of the Passion according to St. John. Good Friday. 2: He's the hero of the parable in Luke 10. the Good Samaritan. 3: False Bay lies between Cape Hangklip and this promontory. the Cape of Good Hope. 4: 1994 Savannah-set John Berendt bestseller. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. 5: Spoiler alert: The title schoolmaster of this 1934 novel dies at the end. Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Round 3. Category: Beavers 1: The 2 countries which have the most beavers in the world. USA and Canada. 2: In the '50s, he told us to "Brusha, Brusha, Brusha" with Ipana toothpaste, and he should know. Bucky Beaver. 3: These must be used continuously as they keep growing throughout a beaver's life. teeth. 4: Term usually applied derisively to someone who seems overly ambitious. eager beaver. 5: TV's last "Beulah", the show left the air because she left the part. Louise Beavers. Round 4. Category: If It's Tuesday 1: His bestseller "Tuesdays With Morrie" chronicled his weekly visits to his dying professor. Mitch Albom. 2: In England these breakfast items are traditionally eaten on Shrove Tuesday. pancakes. 3: Tuesday is named for the warrior god Tiu, whose father was this other god. Odin. 4: In the comics, this character's famous line is "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today". Wimpy. 5: An act of Congress fixed this as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Election Day. Round 5. Category: The Wga's Top 101 Screenplays 1: James Agee and John Huston wrote the script for this 1951 film with a continent in its title. The African Queen. 2: The highest-ranked comedy was this 1977 film co-written by Marshall Brickman. Annie Hall. 3: In the No. 1 spot is this 1942 movie's script. Casablanca. 4: 1 of the 2 scripts that got Billy Wilder into the Top 10. Some Like It Hot (or Sunset Boulevard). 5: Graham Greene made the list at No. 33 with this ordinal Cold War thriller. The Third Man. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!
"Sai che cosa ti fotte? Quello che sei." Marshall Brickman
Season two premiere! #JerseyBoys co-writer #RickElice tells us how he put Jersey on the page with Marshall Brickman. You’re in for a a mini masterclass on how to make the whole world explode through dialogue. Learn about the -Timeline of JB before La Jolla. It’s earlier than you think! -Historical present tense in each season’s monologues -Creation of the JB character “Lorraine” -History of the jukebox musical 1 hour -Distinction between jokes and laughs 1:42 -ORIGINAL dialogue in pizza scene at La Jolla -Sit-down scene reactions from Tommy DeVito and Frankie Valli’s reactions before La Jolla And more! A’ Salud
This week, nuclear war meets teen comedy as we take on 1986’s ill-conceived THE MANHATTAN PROJECT, directed by Marshall Brickman. Christopher Collet stars as a high school genius who steals some plutonium from John Lithgow and uses it to create an atomic bomb for the science fair. Yes, you read all of that correctly, a … Continue reading Ep. #116-The Manhattan Project →
My first stop on this journey was reaching out to an old colleague, Rick Elice. Along with Marshall Brickman, Rick wrote the book for the musical adaptation of The Addams Family. Rick and I’s path crossed a handful of times during my tenure with the original Broadway production: he was in the room when I had my final audition, he was in the building to put in new leads or when the show closed on New Year’s Eve 2011. But I mostly knew Rick from being the husband of our leading man, Roger Rees, who took over the role of Gomez Addams two months into my run. Last month, I sent an email to Rick for the first time in more than nine years. Imagine when he replied within 24 hours, excited about the opportunity to discuss the show. In the years since, Rick wrote the script for Peter and the Starcatcher, The Cher Show, and has maintained the multiple companies of his show Jersey Boys, currently the 12th longest running show in Broadway history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this very spooky (and slightly belated) episode of Adapt or Perish we're celebrating Halloween with a look at the creepiest and kookiest family of them all—The Addams Family. In this episode we discuss: Charles Addams' original New Yorker cartoon. The Addams Family (ABC, 1964–1966), created by David Levy, starring John Astin, Carolyn Jones, Jackie Coogan, and Ted Cassidy. The Addams Family (Paramount, 1991), directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, written by Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson, and starring Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, and Christina Ricci. Addams Family Values (Paramount, 1993), directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, written by Paul Rudnick, and starring Julia, Huston, Lloyd, Ricci, Joan Cusack, David Krumholtz, Peter MacNicol, and Christine Baranski. Addams Family Reunion (Saban, 1998), directed by Dave Payne, written by Rob Kerchner and Scott Sandin, and starring Tim Curry, Daryl Hannah, Kevin McCarthy, Estelle Harris, and Ed Begley, Jr. The New Addams Family (Saban, 1998–1999), starring Glenn Taranto and Ellie Harvie. The Addams Family (2010), music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, original Broadway cast including Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth. The Addams Family (MGM, 2019), directed by Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan, written by Matt Lieberman, and starring Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, Nick Kroll, and Allison Janney. Footnotes: The 1973 and 1992–1993 Hanna-Barbera cartoons The Addams Family pinball machine (1992) A short taste of Rip Taylor The Craft (Columbia, 1996) Return to Oz (Disney, 1985) Roger Rees singing "Happy/Sad" from The Addams Family on Broadway Dark Shadows the show vs. Dark Shadows the movie Nick Kroll: Coach Steve vs. Fester You can follow Adapt or Perish on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and you can find us and all of our show notes online at adaptorperishcast.com. We're also on Patreon! You can find us at patreon.com/adaptcast. We have multiple reward levels, which include access to a patron-only community and a patron-only, biweekly bonus show! We hope to see you there. If you want to send us a question or comment, you can always email us at adaptorperishcast@gmail.com.
This special Take 2 episode features brand new exclusive interviews we landed with alumni from the 1986 film "The Manhattan Project." Writer & Director Marshall Brickman, Co-Writer Tom Baum, and Special Effects Supervisor Bran Ferren!
The tenth episode of our season on the awesome movie year of 1977 features the Best Picture Oscar winner, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Directed and co-written (with Marshall Brickman) by Woody Allen and starring Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane and Paul Simon, Annie Hall was nominated for five Oscars and won four, including Best Picture. The post Annie Hall (1977 Best Picture) appeared first on Awesome Movie Year.
When you're searching for something new to watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu or even Shudder, search no further: subscribe to Man Bites Film. We bring you a comedic conversation about movies streaming on the main services. Our twisted humor is brought to you by William Phoenix, the man that taps his way into your heart one pun at a time, with his obsession of Harry Potter and Marvel; then the film snob of the group, Luis Lacau, that will bleed his film heart out for Kubrick and Lord of the Rings, but nothing else; finally our host with not the most, Branden Lacau. He's the ringmaster to our circus or the driver of the dumpster fire, keeping us on track, but will always stop to weeb out on AnimeAnnie Hall is a 1977 American romantic comedy film directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay he co-wrote with Marshall Brickman. Produced by Allen's manager, Charles H. Joffe, the film stars the director as Alvy Singer, who tries to figure out the reasons for the failure of his relationship with the film's eponymous female lead, played by Diane Keaton in a role written specifically for her.Principal photography for the film began on May 19, 1976, on the South Fork of Long Island, and continued periodically for the next ten months. Allen has described the result, which marked his first collaboration with cinematographer Gordon Willis, as "a major turning point",[2] in that unlike the farces and comedies that were his work to that point, it introduced a new level of seriousness. Academics have noted the contrast in the settings of New York City and Los Angeles, the stereotype of gender differences in sexuality, the presentation of Jewish identity, and the elements of psychoanalysis and modernism.Annie Hall was screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in March 1977, before its official release on April 20, 1977. The film was highly praised, and along with winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, received Oscars in three other categories: two for Allen (Best Director and, with Brickman, Best Original Screenplay), and Best Actress for Keaton. The film additionally won four BAFTA awards and a Golden Globe, the latter being awarded to Keaton. The film's North American box office receipts of $38,251,425 are fourth-best of Allen's works when not adjusted for inflation.Considered to be one of the best films ever made, it ranks 31st on AFI's List of the greatest films in American cinema, 4th on their list of greatest comedy films and 28th on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies". Film critic Roger Ebert called it "just about everyone's favorite Woody Allen movie".[3] The film's screenplay was also named the funniest ever written by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the "101 Funniest Screenplays".[4] In 1992, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."Movie Trivia GamePops Corner: Entertainment NewsMain Review: Annie HallBranden's Joystick: Comics, Anime and Video GamesBaldBox: Redbox movie pick "Max Reload and the Nether Blasters"Join our Man Bites Media Family every Friday as we bring you 5 films each week and the latest movie news.www.ManBitesFilm.com#Comedy #Horror #Netflixmovies #Amazonprime #Hulumovies #Luislacau #Manbitesmedia #Manbitesfilm #Brandenlacau #williamphoenix #Hulu #Shudder #Netflixoriginal #Hulu #Scifi #Comedies #Dramaseries #mbm #podcast #fandom #nerds #geeks #Rushhour
When you're searching for something new to watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu or even Shudder, search no further: subscribe to Man Bites Film. We bring you a comedic conversation about movies streaming on the main services. Our twisted humor is brought to you by William Phoenix, the man that taps his way into your heart one pun at a time, with his obsession of Harry Potter and Marvel; then the film snob of the group, Luis Lacau, that will bleed his film heart out for Kubrick and Lord of the Rings, but nothing else; finally our host with not the most, Branden Lacau. He's the ringmaster to our circus or the driver of the dumpster fire, keeping us on track, but will always stop to weeb out on AnimeAnnie Hall is a 1977 American romantic comedy film directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay he co-wrote with Marshall Brickman. Produced by Allen's manager, Charles H. Joffe, the film stars the director as Alvy Singer, who tries to figure out the reasons for the failure of his relationship with the film's eponymous female lead, played by Diane Keaton in a role written specifically for her.Principal photography for the film began on May 19, 1976, on the South Fork of Long Island, and continued periodically for the next ten months. Allen has described the result, which marked his first collaboration with cinematographer Gordon Willis, as "a major turning point",[2] in that unlike the farces and comedies that were his work to that point, it introduced a new level of seriousness. Academics have noted the contrast in the settings of New York City and Los Angeles, the stereotype of gender differences in sexuality, the presentation of Jewish identity, and the elements of psychoanalysis and modernism.Annie Hall was screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in March 1977, before its official release on April 20, 1977. The film was highly praised, and along with winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, received Oscars in three other categories: two for Allen (Best Director and, with Brickman, Best Original Screenplay), and Best Actress for Keaton. The film additionally won four BAFTA awards and a Golden Globe, the latter being awarded to Keaton. The film's North American box office receipts of $38,251,425 are fourth-best of Allen's works when not adjusted for inflation.Considered to be one of the best films ever made, it ranks 31st on AFI's List of the greatest films in American cinema, 4th on their list of greatest comedy films and 28th on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies". Film critic Roger Ebert called it "just about everyone's favorite Woody Allen movie".[3] The film's screenplay was also named the funniest ever written by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the "101 Funniest Screenplays".[4] In 1992, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."Movie Trivia GamePops Corner: Entertainment NewsMain Review: Annie HallBranden's Joystick: Comics, Anime and Video GamesBaldBox: Redbox movie pick "Max Reload and the Nether Blasters"Join our Man Bites Media Family every Friday as we bring you 5 films each week and the latest movie news.www.ManBitesFilm.com#Comedy #Horror #Netflixmovies #Amazonprime #Hulumovies #Luislacau #Manbitesmedia #Manbitesfilm #Brandenlacau #williamphoenix #Hulu #Shudder #Netflixoriginal #Hulu #Scifi #Comedies #Dramaseries #mbm #podcast #fandom #nerds #geeks #Rushhour
WRITER: Elice with Marshall Brickman wrote the book for the Broadway musical Jersey Boys.
Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 18: Annie Hall (1977) recorded live at the London Podcast Festival. Released 26 September 2018. For this episode, we watched Annie Hall, written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman and directed by Allen, who also starred alongside Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane and Paul Simon. The film won four Academy Awards including Best Actress for Diane Keaton and Best Screenplay for Allen and Brickman. Star Wars Despecialized https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGrXO2RDzLg&vl=en Kathy Griffin's Woody Allen story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i62GcGDgI4 Christopher Wlaken http://i.imgur.com/NM0hWpt.png Thanks to Zoe, Sally and everyone at the London Podcast Festival for making this happen. Next time we will be discussing The Sound of Music. If you want to watch it before listening to the episode you can buy the DVD or Blu-Ray on Amazon.co.uk, or Amazon.com, or you can download it via iTunes (UK) or iTunes (USA). To send in your questions, comments, thoughts and ideas, you can join our Facebook group, Tweet us on @bestpickpod or email us on bestpickpod@gmail.com. You can also Tweet us individually, @MrJohnDorney, @ItsJessRegan or @TomSalinsky. You should also sign up to our mailing list to get notified as soon as a new episode is released. Just follow this link: http://eepurl.com/dbHO3n
The credits for the Spreckels Theater Company production of The Addams Family, running now through October 28, notes that the musical is “based on characters created by Charles Addams.” It is not a recreation of the beloved 1960’s sitcom. It is not an adaptation of the visually inventive films of the ‘90’s. At the insistence of the Charles Addams Foundation, who retain control of all things Addams, the source material for the musical had to be the cartoons Addams published for fifty years in the New Yorker. The 2010 Broadway musical by Marshall Brickman, Rick Elice and Andrew Lippa had a moderately successful run before becoming a theatrical Halloween season staple. It banks on the goodwill and fond memories of the generations raised with the reruns or the films and then goes in a very different direction. Uncle Fester (Erik Weiss) narrates the show and lets the audience know it’s gonna be a story about love. A teenage Wednesday Addams (Emma LaFever) is worried about bringing her “normal” boyfriend/fiancée Lucas (Cooper Bennett) and his straight-laced, midwestern parents (Larry Williams, Morgan Harrington) home to meet her unconventional family. Wednesday lets her father Gomez (Peter Downey) in on her marriage plans but gets him to agree to not reveal her intentions to her mother Morticia (Serena Elize Flores) till an announcement is made at dinner. Things don’t go as planned. It’s a stock plot dressed up with the Addams characters though the characters bear little resemblance to their previous incarnations. Downey comes closest with a very nice paternal take on Gomez while Flores’ voluptuous Morticia lacks the character’s dark, funereal tone. The score is bouncy yet unmemorable, but there are a lot of good voices delivering it. Prepare to be knocked out when Pugsley (Mario Herrera) sings about the potential loss of a playmate sister with “What If.” Ignore the trick the show’s creators play with The Addams Family characters and you’ll enjoy a family-friendly Halloween treat. ‘The Addams Family’ runs through Oct. 28 at Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park. Fri. & Sat @ 8 pm; Sun @ 2 pm, Thurs, Oct. 25 @ 7 pm. For more information, go to spreckelsonline.com. Now, in order for a show like Count Dracula - running now in Monte Rio through October 27 - to work, it has to be either played straight or as total camp. Playwright Ted Tiller’s 1971 version of the Bram Stoker novel under the direction of Nadja Masura tries to do both and the mix just doesn’t work. Tiller also seems to have worked under the assumption that no one had ever heard vampire lore before and inserted reams of lengthy, dull exposition that makes the show run an hour longer than it should. A good set, some nice effects, and a game cast can’t mask the un-dead weight of a leaden script. ‘Count Dracula’ runs through Oct. 27 at the Russian River Hall in Monte Rio. Fri. & Sat. @ 8pm; Sun @ 3pm. For more information, go to curtaincallrussianriver.com.
Best Pick with John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky Episode 18: Annie Hall (1977) recorded live at the London Podcast Festival. Released 26 September 2018. For this episode, we watched Annie Hall, written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman and directed by Allen, who also starred alongside Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane and Paul Simon. The film won four Academy Awards including Best Actress for Diane Keaton and Best Screenplay for Allen and Brickman. Star Wars Despecialized https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGrXO2RDzLg&vl=en Kathy Griffin’s Woody Allen story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i62GcGDgI4 Christopher Wlaken http://i.imgur.com/NM0hWpt.png Thanks to Zoe, Sally and everyone at the London Podcast Festival for making this happen. Next time we will be discussing The Sound of Music. If you want to watch it before listening to the episode you can buy the DVD or Blu-Ray on Amazon.co.uk, or Amazon.com, or you can download it via iTunes (UK) or iTunes (USA). To send in your questions, comments, thoughts and ideas, you can join our Facebook group, Tweet us on @bestpickpod or email us on bestpickpod@gmail.com. You can also Tweet us individually, @MrJohnDorney, @ItsJessRegan or @TomSalinsky. You should also sign up to our mailing list to get notified as soon as a new episode is released. Just follow this link: http://eepurl.com/dbHO3n
Jersey Boys is by far my favorite Broadway musical. For those who are unfamiliar with Jersey Boys, you must be living under a rock! Jersey Boys was a 2005 jukebox musical with music by Bob Gaudio, and book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. It is presented in a documentary-style format that dramatizes the formation, success and eventual break-up of the 1960s rock 'n' roll group The Four Seasons. The musical is structured as four "seasons", each narrated by a different member of the band who gives his own perspective on its history and music. Songs include "Big Girls Don't Cry", "Sherry", "December 1963 (Oh, What A Night)", "My Eyes Adored You", "Stay", "Can't Take My Eyes Off You", "Working My Way Back to You" and "Rag Doll", among others. The title refers to the fact that the members of The Four Seasons are from New Jersey and are men. The musical ran on Broadway from 2005 to 2017, and since its debut has seen two North American national tours and productions in London's Wes --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mike36/support
Jersey Boys is by far my favorite Broadway musical. For those who are unfamiliar with Jersey Boys, you must be living under a rock! Jersey Boys was a 2005 jukebox musical with music by Bob Gaudio, and book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. It is presented in a documentary-style format that dramatizes the formation, success and eventual break-up of the 1960s rock 'n' roll group The Four Seasons. The musical is structured as four "seasons", each narrated by a different member of the band who gives his own perspective on its history and music. Songs include "Big Girls Don't Cry", "Sherry", "December 1963 (Oh, What A Night)", "My Eyes Adored You", "Stay", "Can't Take My Eyes Off You", "Working My Way Back to You" and "Rag Doll", among others. The title refers to the fact that the members of The Four Seasons are from New Jersey and are men. The musical ran on Broadway from 2005 to 2017, and since its debut has seen two North American national tours and productions in London's West End, Las Vegas, Chicago, Toronto, Singapore, South Africa, The Netherlands and elsewhere. Jersey Boys won four 2006 Tony Awards including Best Musical, and the 2009 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical. Jersey Boys was the behind the scenes story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. From the streets of New Jersey to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, this was the musical that rocked the world. Let’s talk about some legal issues that surfaced during the running of the musical. Specifically, there are two cases that grew out of copyright infringement claims and shook the foundation of the Jersey Boys empire. They are SOFA Ent., Inc. v. Dodger Prod. and Corbello v. DeVito. In this episode, I'll discuss each case. For those who are die-hard fans of "Jersey Boys," you will love the new musical, "A Bronx Tale" that has taken Broadway by storm.
Marshall Brickman returns to discuss being Johnny's head writer in NYC. Also Rick Traum, commercial producer for The Tonight Show in NYC, joins Mark to talk about the famous live Alpo Dog Food commercial.
Hosts Briana Phipps, Jeff Graham and Mark J Freeman discuss The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Jersey Boys is a 2005 jukebox musical with music by Bob Gaudio, lyrics by Bob Crewe, and book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. It is presented in a documentary-style format that dramatizes the formation, success and eventual break-up of the 1960s rock 'n roll group The Four Seasons. The musical is structured as four "seasons", each narrated by a different member of the band who gives his own perspective on its history and music. Songs include "Big Girls Don't Cry", "Sherry", "December 1963 (Oh, What A Night)", "My Eyes Adored You", "Stay", "Can't Take My Eyes Off You", "Working My Way Back to You" and "Rag Doll", among others. The title refers to the fact that the members of The Four Seasons are from New Jersey. The musical opened on Broadway in 2005 and has since had two North American National Tours and productions in London's West End, Las Vegas, Chicago, Toronto,
Rick Elice is a writer and former stage actor. Along with Marshall Brickman, he wrote the book for the Broadway musical Jersey Boys, which received a Tony Award nomination and a Drama Desk nomination for best book for a musical in 2006. He collaborated with Brickman once again, this time writing the book for the musical, The Addams Family, which opened on Broadway on April 8, 2010. He wrote Peter and the Starcatcher, which opened in California in 2009, played off-Broadway in 2011, and moved to Broadway in 2012. Peter and the Starcatcher won five of the nine Tony nominations it received in 2012. He also wrote Leonardo’s Ring, Dog and Pony, and Turn of the Century. He was creative director at Serino Coyne, Inc. (1982–2000), where he produced advertising campaigns for more than 300 Broadway shows including A Chorus Line and The Lion King. He has been a creative consultant for Walt Disney Studios from 1999–2009. Tune into this podcast and hear Rick talk about his unique path and . . . How he wrote his first project because of a blizzard and an egg timer. (Writers, you gotta try this!) The show that changed his life, and why. How understanding the marketing of Broadway helps him write for Broadway. The unbelievable and jaw dropping advice he got from Tom Stoppard. How the business reacted when he went from marketing guy to writer . . . and how you can transition too. Keep up with me: @KenDavenportBway www.theproducersperspective.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On Thursday I went to see The Addams Family Musical, a performance by Federation University’s 2016 graduating Musical Theatre class. The musical comedy was written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa and based on Charles Addams’ iconic characters in his comic strip The Addams Family. It was performed at Theatre Works on Acland St in St Kilda and its closing night was on Saturday. As soon as the orchestra began playing the overture you knew this play would be a crowd pleaser. Rainer Pollard conducted a talented group of musicians, who were both expressive and controlled, and their performance suggested a strong connection between the conductor and musicians. The play then began with the Addams family gathered around the family tree in the graveyard, a yearly ritual to celebrate life and death, and honour their ancestors. The ensemble of ancestors, portraying figures like Marie Antoinette, a WW1 soldier and a suffragette, were summoned out of their graves for the first number; When You’re an Addams. What a spectacular start to the show. The entire cast were charismatic and the blocking of the dancing was inspired and well planned. Adrienne Chisholm’s set and costume design was fantastic, notably the ancestors looked like spooky spectres as they swanned across the stage. As the family return to the house, Uncle Fester (Liam Dodds) stayed behind and closed off the gates to the underworld, enlisting the help of his ancestors to ensure a dinner scheduled for that night went smoothly. Wednesday Addams, (Tess Walsh) had suddenly fallen in love with a preppy young man from Ohio, Lucas Beineke (Jack Saunders) and invited him around for dinner so their two families could meet. Two worlds were about to collide, and the couple needed all the help they could get for One Normal Night, the name of another musical number which was spellbinding. Many of the family members struggled to understand Wednesday’s new found feelings, as she began to favour bursting into song over torturing her brother Pugsley (Mackenzie Pinder). Her parents, Gomez and Morticia Addams (Andrew Thomas, Bridget Mylecharane) are gravely concerned by her new attitude but try to set aside their differences for the sake of their daughter’s happiness. However, Pugsley fears he will lose his sister to the light side and plots to break up her relationship during the dinner. The prim parents of Lucas, Mal and Alice Beineke (Shaune Davis, Cathryn McDonald) arrive and are seated for supper. They end the meal with a game called Full Disclosure, where you slip from a chalice and tell the absolute truth. Pugsley pours a potion into the cup, a concoction which is designed to bring out one’s dark side, and it is intended for Wednesday but is instead intercepted by Alice and she transforms into her less inhibited self. A special mention goes to Patrick Schnur, who played the butler, Lurch, and to Emma Austin who played Grandma Addams. They were delightful to watch for their comedic timing in particular. A highlight of the night was when the Beineke’s had arrived and the family was trying to be as ordinary as possible. Grandma, returning from the cemetery of ancestors, suddenly bursts through the front door, and seeing them exclaims, “Boy, is it normal out there!” Another highlight was the expressions on all performers faces during the scene where Alice asks whether they have a little girls room, and Gomez replies “We used to but we let them all out.” Liam Dodds should be commended for his convincing and expressive performance of Uncle Fester, a character who is in love with the moon. My only criticism would be concerning the Tango De Amor towards the end of the Act Two, which felt a bit underwhelming on the technique side in comparison to the other dance numbers. However, it was an extremely strong performance by all cast and crew. The director, David Wynen, Musical Director, Rainer Pollard and Production Manager, Jim Austin, should be pleased with their show. Review written by Erin ConnellanSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On Thursday I went to see The Addams Family Musical, a performance by Federation University’s 2016 graduating Musical Theatre class. The musical comedy was written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa and based on Charles Addams’ iconic characters in his comic strip The Addams Family. It was performed at Theatre Works on Acland St in St Kilda and its closing night was on Saturday. As soon as the orchestra began playing the overture you knew this play would be a crowd pleaser. Rainer Pollard conducted a talented group of musicians, who were both expressive and controlled, and their performance suggested a strong connection between the conductor and musicians. The play then began with the Addams family gathered around the family tree in the graveyard, a yearly ritual to celebrate life and death, and honour their ancestors. The ensemble of ancestors, portraying figures like Marie Antoinette, a WW1 soldier and a suffragette, were summoned out of their graves for the first number; When You’re an Addams. What a spectacular start to the show. The entire cast were charismatic and the blocking of the dancing was inspired and well planned. Adrienne Chisholm’s set and costume design was fantastic, notably the ancestors looked like spooky spectres as they swanned across the stage. As the family return to the house, Uncle Fester (Liam Dodds) stayed behind and closed off the gates to the underworld, enlisting the help of his ancestors to ensure a dinner scheduled for that night went smoothly. Wednesday Addams, (Tess Walsh) had suddenly fallen in love with a preppy young man from Ohio, Lucas Beineke (Jack Saunders) and invited him around for dinner so their two families could meet. Two worlds were about to collide, and the couple needed all the help they could get for One Normal Night, the name of another musical number which was spellbinding. Many of the family members struggled to understand Wednesday’s new found feelings, as she began to favour bursting into song over torturing her brother Pugsley (Mackenzie Pinder). Her parents, Gomez and Morticia Addams (Andrew Thomas, Bridget Mylecharane) are gravely concerned by her new attitude but try to set aside their differences for the sake of their daughter’s happiness. However, Pugsley fears he will lose his sister to the light side and plots to break up her relationship during the dinner. The prim parents of Lucas, Mal and Alice Beineke (Shaune Davis, Cathryn McDonald) arrive and are seated for supper. They end the meal with a game called Full Disclosure, where you slip from a chalice and tell the absolute truth. Pugsley pours a potion into the cup, a concoction which is designed to bring out one’s dark side, and it is intended for Wednesday but is instead intercepted by Alice and she transforms into her less inhibited self. A special mention goes to Patrick Schnur, who played the butler, Lurch, and to Emma Austin who played Grandma Addams. They were delightful to watch for their comedic timing in particular. A highlight of the night was when the Beineke’s had arrived and the family was trying to be as ordinary as possible. Grandma, returning from the cemetery of ancestors, suddenly bursts through the front door, and seeing them exclaims, “Boy, is it normal out there!” Another highlight was the expressions on all performers faces during the scene where Alice asks whether they have a little girls room, and Gomez replies “We used to but we let them all out.” Liam Dodds should be commended for his convincing and expressive performance of Uncle Fester, a character who is in love with the moon. My only criticism would be concerning the Tango De Amor towards the end of the Act Two, which felt a bit underwhelming on the technique side in comparison to the other dance numbers. However, it was an extremely strong performance by all cast and crew. The director, David Wynen, Musical Director, Rainer Pollard and Production Manager, Jim Austin, should be pleased with their show. Review written by Erin Connellan
Reviews of ((1) YENTL, by Leah Napolin, at the New Jewish Theatre; (2) LA BOHEME, by Giacomo Puccini, at Opera Theatre of St. Louis; (3) THE TWO-CHARACTER PLAY, by Tennessee Williams, at the Midnight Company; (4) A PERFECT ANALYSIS GIVEN BY A PARROT, by Tennessee Williams, at the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis; (5) THE ST. LOUIS ROOMING HOUSE PLAYS, by Tennessee Williams, at the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis; (6) JERSEY BOYS, by Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice and Bob Gaudio & Bob Crewe, at the Fox Theatre; (7) DEARLY DEPARTED, by David Bottrell & Jessie Jones, at the Alpha Players; and (8) MITZI’S ABORTION, by Elizabeth Heffron, at Tesseract Theatre.
Reviews of (1) THE GLASS MENAGERIE, by Tennessee Williams, at Upstream Theater, (2) THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL, by Horton Foote, at The Theatre Guild of Webster Groves, (3) KISS ME, KATE, by Cole Porter and Samuel & Bella Spewack, at Family Musical Theater, (4) THE ADDAMS FAMILY, by Marshall Brickman & Rick Elise and Andrew Lippa, at the Kirkwood Theatre Guild, (5) BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, by Woody Allen and Glen Kelly, at the Peabody Opera House, and (6) LAUGHING STOCK, by Charles Morey, at KTK Productions.
Meghan faces her greatest fear; a Woody Allen movie that might be funny. Annie Hall (1977) Written by Marshall Brickman and Woody Allen. Directed by Woody Allen. Music by Michael Kramer http://michaelkramermusic.com Logo by Garret Ross http://garrettross.net Send comments and suggestions on Twitter @later2theparty and on Facebook at Facebook.com/Later2TheParty
Bob Wilcox and Gerry Kowarsky review (1) ANGEL STREET, by Patrick Hamilton, at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis; (2) MATILDA THE MUSICAL, by Dennis Kelly & Tim Minchin, at the Fox Theatre; (3) MARY POPPINS, by Julian Fellowes, Richard M. & Robert B. Sherman, George Stiles & Anthony Drewe, at Variety Children's Theatre; (4) SPRING AWAKENING, by Steven Sater & Duncan Sheik, at Take Two Productions; (5) THE PIANO LESSON, by August Wilson, at the Clayton Community Theatre; (6) SCOTLAND ROAD, by Jeffrey Hatcher, at Saint Louis Univ.; (7) MEDEA, by Euripides, at Univ. of Missouri–St. Louis; and (8) THE ADDAMS FAMILY, by Andrew Lippa, Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice, at Over Due Theatre Company.
Bob Wilcox and Gerry Kowarsky review ((1) SUESSICAL, by Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty, and Dr. Suess, at The Muny, (2) LITTLE WOMEN, adapted by Marian DeForest from Louisa May Alcott, at Clayton Community Theatre, (3) SWEENEY TODD, by Stephen Sondheim & Hugh Wheeler, at Family Musical Theater, (4) LA TRAVIATA, by Giuseppe Verdi, at Union Avenue Opera, (5) THE ADDAMS FAMILY, by Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice and Andrew Lippa, at The Muny, (6) HAMLET, by William Shakespeare, at St. Louis Shakespeare, (7) LABUTE NEW THEATRE FESTIVAL, by Neil LaBute et al., at St. Louis Actors' Studio, (8) OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WOODS, by Joe DiPietro, at Insight Theatre Co., and (9) SCUTTER MURPHY'S WAKE, by Patrick Conroy, at First Run Theatre.
Marshall Brickman talks to Mark about being Johnny Carson's head writer, being promoted to head writer because no other writer wanted the job, and inventing the Carnac The Magnificent “saver”. Brickman also discusses his work with both Dick Cavett and Woody Allen.
Bob Wilcox and Gerry Kowarsky interview Bobby Miller and Wayne Salomon after reviewing (1) SHIRLEY VALENTINE, by Willy Russell, at Dramatic License Productions; (2) THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS, adapted from Isabel Allende by Caridad Svich, at Webster Univ. Conservatory; (3) JERSEY BOYS, by Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice, Bob Gaudio & Bob Crewe, at the Fox Theatre; (4) MIDDLETOWN, by Will Eno, at Saint Louis Univ.; and (5) YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, by George S. Kaufman & Moss, at Washington Univ.
Alan Arkin stars as Simon, a blowhard scientist who gets recruited by a brain trust that secretly runs the world. They convince him that he's an alien in order to see how the world will react.
Bob Wilcox and Gerry Kowarsky review (1) THE ADDAMS FAMILY, by Marshall Brickman, Rick Elice, & Andrew Lippa, at the Fox Theatre, (2) HENRY V, by William Shakespeare, at St. Louis Shakespeare, (3) PASSING STRANGE, by Stew & Heidi Rodewald, at New Line Theatre, (4) TOP GIRLS, by Caryl Churchill, at Webster University Conservatory, (5) REASONS TO BE PRETTY, by Neil LaBute, at The NonProphet Theater Co., (6) THE VIOLINIST, by Susan Berardi, at Inspired Productions, (7) RABBIT HOLE, by David Lindsey-Abaire, at Insight Theatre Co., (8) SOUTH PACIFIC, by Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II, & Joshua Logan, at The Alpha Players, and (9) THE HOT L BALTIMORE, by Lanford Wilson, at Soundstage Productions.
After one show stopping year in the West End, revisit the cast of the Jersey Boys as they celebrate their recent Olivier Award. Exclusive interviews with the legendary Bob Gaudio of the Four Seasons and the Academy Award winning writer Marshall Brickman. Book now! Visit www.jerseyboyslondon.com
The Jersey Boys Podcast #070 (recorded Friday, December 4, 2009) includes our much anticipated and long over due interview with Rick Elice who co-wrote the Jersey Boys Book with Marshall Brickman. Listen! (Size: 31.6-MBs, Time: 45m36s) Support the podcast via...
The witty and humorous Jersey Boys' librettists Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice bring us up to date on their recent activities and discuss the devoted fan base of their Tony Award-Winning musical.
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