The Always Sunny Podcast - The Nightman Cometh (with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Cormac Bluestone!)
Episode Date: November 28, 2022Trying to get it right in that skull where it stays forever....
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assaulted
See, you know, I too love, like, musical cedar re-sounding, like, phrasings, like, that's
very, like, song-like, I think.
What?
Which is?
Like, this little chord.
I don't know.
I mean, I don't know enough about music to know, but I feel like this is, like, I saw
him in the woods.
Standing alone in the woods.
Did he see you, Carol?
No.
I tried to look his way, but he turned and said goodbye.
I'm sure we'll meet again one day.
But how?
Maybe I will pass him on the subway, and he'll look my way, but he's blind.
Maybe he can smell me or he'll sense me, but he also lost his nose in the war.
Then he'll rub up and he'll feel me.
But he lost his sense of feel.
See, it ain't that hard.
Come on.
Come on.
Some other stuff, some other musical stuff.
Now, who are you?
Who am I?
Have we started?
We have a guy here.
We have a guy here.
There's a guy here.
We have a guy here.
That's Jimmy Doyle.
It's season one.
That's right.
And season eight.
Oh, yeah.
Eight for the high school reunion.
Was that what it was?
Seven.
It was seven.
It was seven.
French little beauties.
Because Mac was fat.
Can we see Cormac's face or is his mic too high?
I want to make sure we're getting all that beautiful look.
Yeah, there you go.
There we go.
You got it.
I'm Cormac Bluestone.
Yeah.
Resident composer of the guitarist side of Philadelphia.
Yes.
Long time pal.
I'm so excited to be here.
I just got to say that I'm so excited to finally meet you.
Me?
Yeah.
You.
And I just, I, you know, it's just, I never thought I'd be in the room with like the
three of you again, just like with the pandemic and everything.
And so much has changed.
So.
You never thought we'd be in a room together again?
I think one of us has got power.
One of us has got power.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't want to say you, but the odds were late.
We've established it wouldn't be Charlie because he's the, the healthiest of all.
Did we?
We did.
We did.
I won.
We did.
We did.
I won in the sense that you win the competition and get all the points.
We are here today to talk about the night man cometh, which I had forgotten to watch
until this morning.
I was like, oh right.
I should watch it.
Me too.
I did the same thing.
I forgot.
And I was like, oh shit.
I need to.
And I have to say, I thought I just knew it all.
I was like, well, I know it so well, but there are lots of surprises in there.
Again, I think one of the best episodes we've done, I think fans have reacted to it in that
way.
Let me give just a little information about it.
So we know, of course, everybody knows.
There is structure.
We do have a tiny bit of structure.
We forget about it, but there is structure to the podcast.
Yeah.
Now, Megan has insisted.
You do such a good job on this thing, but I don't know what the story is.
Don't come on here and get her head.
Thank you.
Don't.
I really appreciate that.
It's already hard to get her head through the door.
Nightmare and Cometh is season four, episode 13.
It aired on November 20th, 2008, which means next year around this time, it'll be 15 years
since it aired.
It was written by Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton, and Rob McElhaney, and directed by Matt Shackman.
And music composed by Cormac Bluestone.
And Charlie.
In so many ways, it feels like it was yesterday.
I feel like we just shot that.
I have so many memories of shooting that episode, and it was 15 years ago.
But I want to talk about how that thing begins, unless you guys have got something else you
want to put on the table.
How the episode begins, or how we conceived of it?
Both, because they're connected.
Yes.
Yes, they are.
The way the episode begins, you know, I'm in the back room and you hear me start singing
a song like, come one, come all for a...
To a beautiful show.
To a beautiful show.
It's going to be awesome.
It's going to be awesome.
And all that stuff.
Some other musical stuff.
And then you guys are icing me out.
And it's a whole conversation of, why would you write a musical just to write a musical?
Who is it against?
What's the...
Who's the mark?
And of course, ultimately, there is a ulterior motive in the episode.
But that came out of the fact.
Do you guys remember when we were trying to break this episode?
Oh yeah.
We had a whole...
There's a whole other storyline that got broken that we decided to exercise.
Yeah.
At one point, we were kicking around like they were trying to break into a bank or something
for a specific reason.
And the musical was a distraction while they were jumping back and forth doing this other
thing.
The other version of it was that there was a rival bar.
There was a bar that we had some kind of a prank war thing going with.
And they had pulled some kind of a prank on us and we were going to pull the ultimate
prank by...
But we needed them out of their bar.
And in order to do that, we created a musical and that we were all in the musical because
that would prove that we couldn't have done what they're saying we did because we were
all on stage.
And then we were going to do a whole thing where like whenever someone was off stage,
they'd be going over to the rival bar to like...
So that was the ulterior motive.
And then...
And we were sort of obsessed with this idea of like, well, we can't just do a musical
for no reason.
Like there's got to be some other reason why we're doing it.
So then we just decided, well, let's just write that in.
I never knew that about what that other story, but just like as I've been thinking about
this episode, so many things like fold in on itself, because I don't know if you guys
remember when we did the tour of Nightman Cometh, we showed an episode during that tour.
And it was the gang reignites the rivalry, which sounds like that storyline.
Yeah, you're right.
I never put that together.
I never thought about that because I do think that we had always had this thing in mind
of like, we should have some kind of a rivalry with like a younger bar, you know?
And yeah, I never put that together that...
No storyline gets wasted.
No.
They all get done eventually.
It gets finished one season.
It goes on a card and then it comes out eventually.
It gets recycled.
We'll get around to it eventually.
I was delighted with all the rehearsal scenes before the play, so I think what I really
remembered from the episode was the play and the performance, but the rehearsals was like...
Yeah.
Because we changed a lot of it.
I think what's probably seared into our memories more than anything is the live shows, because
that's the most recent stuff that we did, even though it wasn't that far removed from
shooting the episode.
We had, there was a whole song, there's a whole Nightman song that we had to cut from
the episode because the episode was just too long.
We had to lose some stuff that made its way into the live show.
It's Nature Shit Happens.
It's Nature Shit Happens.
It's Nature Shit Happens.
Got cut as well.
My song.
Troll in my hole.
Oh, right.
There was it, right, right, right.
There was a whole thing at the end where I made the transformation.
We wrote that song for the tour because we just felt we were short when we first had
to perform at the Trugador.
But you also had that song.
It's the opening song.
The opening song.
Right.
Where I'm like, where I'm, he's like spinning me around.
You like find your voice in it, like you jump up this, I got a troll in my hole.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right, right, right, right, right, right, right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, right.
There was it.
That was it.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
There was a whole thing at the end where I made the transformation.
It was the opening song.
It's the opening song.
Right.
Right.
Up.
Up.
My whole of an apartment.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I control your soul.
That's my department.
Everywhere there's trolls.
A whole of an apartment
Like a troll in his home
That's my department
Everywhere there's trolls, yeah
Living in your shit home
Where they can shit all their balls
Make you rub their fat rolls
Make it scrub their balls
This and more
He's got a troll in his home
I would love to hear from your perspective what your journey was
What was the first time we contacted you?
What was the first piece of information you were given?
Did we give you a script first?
Had you written music before our show before this episode?
Never had written music
I'd never watched TV before
But yeah, I'd never written music before Sunny
I'd never picked up a guitar
Yeah, I'd never written for Sunny
It was my first thing
I was totally writing musical theater
And Charlie came to a show
I'd been doing a show for years in New York
And wanted to move to LA
I brought kind of the best of it
And Charlie saw the show and he was like
It was, you know, bar hoppers
Is that before you knew each other?
No, this is, we knew each other
This was in LA, like at the St. Nick's Pub
Oh my god, St. Nick's
And Charlie after the show was like
Oh, that was really good, you know
We're about to do this musical episode
You did not mean it this way
But you're like, we were going to hire a professional
But we should hire you
That sounds like something Charlie would do
You would say it in a different way
You don't think I would have said
You know, like you
I think you would word it differently
But it's one of those things
You know, because I knew you
I think you guys written the script
You were in pre-production for it
And you talked to these two
And sent me a script
And you're like, come in tomorrow
Come into Fox
And we'll sit down and go through everything
And I was like, okay, I got to take my shot
I wrote drafts of all the music
And then I came in and I recorded it on a CD
And then
You and me sat in a room
For, I don't know, four or five hours
And kind of took all our ideas
And mashed them together
I think I had like
Loose versions of some of the songs
You had really strong ideas
Like, I listened to them
And I'm like, this was all
Like, little boy, tiny boy, little boy
You were like, oh, it's got to be song timing
I was like, it needs a little form
Well, how do you guys know each other?
William Stone, summer of 1997
Where all of your friends come from
Where all my friends come from, yeah
Two of friends, it says
And Hornsby would say that same summer
Hornsby, yeah
And then right after
When I first moved to the city
I had an apartment on my own for a year
And then with another buddy
And then the year after I lived on Cormac's floor
For
As long as they possibly could until they got rid of me
I was like, get out
There was a lot of that with you too
Well, it was a studio apartment too
It was like a room and a bathroom
And so this dude in a sleeping bag
On a wood floor
We did a lot of jamming out
A lot of writing funny songs together
We've played a lot of music together
Yeah, we've played a lot of music together
So when we were doing it
I'm sure in my mind
I was like, yeah, if Cormac wants to come on
And help sort of arrange these
In a way that
I have a limitation
I can do some chords and be like, here's a melody
Now, what are the nine other parts doing?
Do you remember
In terms of the songs
And what they were about and some of the lyrics
I mean, we were involved
In some of that, right?
Because we were writing the episode together
But I don't remember
How involved
Rob and I were
In the conceiving
Of the lyrics of the songs
I don't remember any of that because
I would imagine a lot because it's all
Tied in, right? I mean, there's the dialogue
Backstage about
You're going for gasp and that's all
I think that was all scripted
I remember talking about the
Subjects of the songs
And then they would go off and
I remember
Coming up with and talking about just to be clear
We were trying to figure out what would be a fun song
For Dee
She would just write
Which I definitely remember also
A few years later
That's how the Birds of War
Is the same idea
Which is do a song and then
Make the song about clarifying what the song
Is actually about
Clarifying what you mean by the song
That song I love
And also in a similar vein
The very first song that Charlie was referring to
That he comes out singing
Come One, Come All to a Beautiful Show
Was that scripted?
Or was that just you making that song?
I don't think that was scripted
Come One, Come All to a Beautiful Show
I think the script was
You came out and said I wrote a musical
Yeah, I think so
I think that was like
We need something more
What can we do here?
A couple things
Wait, I'm eating because
I'm uncomfortable
That was an improv, right?
Or was that scripted? That's
My favorite line
There's a lot of Baby Snickers stuff
In there
Baby Snickers run
Just in the live show
Or there was a Baby Snickers run in the episode
There was a lot in the episode I was watching last night
That I thought
There was more in the episode
Than it actually is
And a lot of it we cut out and put into
Gagriels
A lot of it was just in the live show
And so we have this hazy memory of what
The episode was and it wasn't
One of the things I love is just how straight
All those rehearsal scenes are played
I'm obviously bouncing off the walls
But not in a comedic way
And it's all very natural
And very small
I like that too
We're not playing it for lives
There's a genuine confusion about
The Boy Soul thing
Whether the scene is about a rape
It's all
Yeah, it's all played very grounded
Dennis, can you take a five?
Just a little detail of how you're holding
Your hand when you're doing that feels so specific
I'd like you to take a five
I don't know why, but I remember
Working on that, there were so many different versions
Of that where we just kept going back and forth
With a five
And it would be a five
A five only?
All five
Please be gone for five
There's so many specifics there
In those rehearsal scenes that feel like they're taken
From
The kind of people that you meet
In small town theater
Artemis, please do not speak to the talent
Also, I love a little detail about Artemis
When you say, I could have Artemis do the song
In her head pop song
And she is so ready to do it
Look, she's dying to be in the play
That was a big impetus
Behind wanting to do this episode
Was wanting to mess around with the dynamics
Of community theater, like having all come
From theater, we were like
Let's do a thing where we get to insert
Some of the things that we remember
From sort of the corniness of like
I remember that's where the gum bit came from
Are you chewing gum?
He said no gum
The teacher's pet was always like
He said no gum
Also
Those were often done with
Just someone playing a piano
Like there was no like orchestra
And the woman that we got
Gladys
Who then Dennis recruited to play
His grandmother in the Dennis system
The same actress
But she came on and just started
Improving and just talking about
Whatever she was saying
It's in the bloopers
I have those bloopers
Those are always just fun
I've been sniffing at me all morning
I've told a cool story like a hundred times
Play it, Dennis
I get down
Come on
I can't do this
Trying to stand it
I've been through the Coolidge
Administration, but I never thought
At my 99 years of age
I would be with such beautiful people
Gladys, we don't have time
For like disco
Don't sniff at me
You've been sniffing at me all morning
Look how much fun she's had
What a delight
What an absolute delight she was
May LeBord
The play Gladys
She was born on May 13th, 1909
And she started her acting career
At the age of 93
And the absolute pinnacle is her
Flipping through the pages when Dee sings her own song
And saying what is happening
Best delivery
Of one of our most iconic lines
That we've written into a thousand episodes
What is happening?
No one has ever delivered it
Better than she did
She was amazing
Descending on a sun
I stole that from
Sweet and Low Down
Where Sean Penn descends on a moon
And there's a great sequence where
He wants to
He's making this big deal about
He's down on this moon
And then he gets like
He's really proud of it
And then the stagehand comes by
And he's like that's a hell of a drop
Man can break his neck
And then he gets like nervous
And his descent is so like
I was watching that because I couldn't remember
If I did drop down or if I didn't
We cut away, but we like cut away
We cut away so quick
I know that we do
I'm coming down on it and you see it for like half a shot
I think you're strapped to it so you had to
Cut to get unstrapped
You get unstrapped and then come off
A technical thing
So remember there was a big debate
About whether we would sing this
Live while recording it
Or we would lip sync to pre-recorded versions of the song
Right
That was one of my first things I think I said
When I came on because I had so much experience
And stuff. I was like we got to do it live
And it was so funny
When we did it
It's just so much harder to do it live
No one ever does it. Our playback guy
On the episode
You got to have a click track
You got to make sure that the rhythm is the same
Those two pieces are really expensive too
It's tough editing wise
The playback guy, he had a couple Emmys
He did like the Scrubs musical
The Drew Carey musical and he kept saying to me
What are you guys doing? You do the pre-records
And you lip sync. This is
Ridiculous. During editing I was getting calls
Like they don't know what to do with any of this
How does this all go together, blah blah blah
What we cut together was a mixture
Of us singing live
When we were filming and
The pre-recorded stuff. As I recall
We spent a tremendous amount of time
While the mixer
Spent a tremendous amount of time
Like, yeah
But the live performance
Aspect of it is what makes it so funny
Like if it was polished, it wouldn't be funny
It's the fact that it's unpolished
And people are singing off key
And those musicals that you're talking about
The episode itself
Becomes a musical
So the Scrubs for example
And you'd need that to be polished
And we've done versions of that on this particular show
But this where you're putting on a performance
You have to do it live
I think these were the exact conversations
We were having
See, this is why we don't hire a professional
That's right
Have you figured out that first Christmas present yet?
Well, look no further than
Down, that's right
Down there at your underwear
Are you telling us to give people our underwear
As a gift? Cause that seems...
No, I'm saying get them a new pair
From me undies
Could I give some of my current undies if they are me undies?
Why would you even ask that?
Well, because of my experience
Me undies are the absolute snuggliest
Most comfortable undies in the game
Maybe I'm sporting a pair
The recipient doesn't have yet, right?
I don't think that they'll want your old undies
Once they get their new undies
Plus me undies holiday collection
Also has bralets and PJ sets
Holiday sweater prints
Classic plaids for dads
And the softest loungewear ever
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What if I am the recipient?
Me undies is encouraging you to do holiday
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Is gifting yourself a bunch of underwear
More power to you, just dispose of your old
Underwear responsibly
What does that mean?
Sell it on eBay
To get 20% off your first order
Free shipping and 100% satisfaction guarantee
Go to meundies.com
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That's meundies.com
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My little black sailors cap that I wear
Is a homage to
When I was in college
And I decided I want to start doing plays
There was a theater club
Not a program, there was like a club
And they did plays in like a church basement
And the guy who ran it
Was a guy named Tom Kirkman
He used to be a priest
But he wasn't a priest anymore
Or maybe he still was, I don't know
But a lovely guy
I really appreciate him
Putting me in plays
But he always wore
A little sailor's cap
And his thing and he wore boots
And he would go
He would breathe through his teeth
Like after rehearsal and he would go
That was
Awesome
Magic
That was his style, anyways
The story fizzles out but
A little tipped old Tom Kirkman
So I owe him a debt of gratitude
What about Trotol?
Where did that come from?
Tiny Baby Boy
Came
A little bit from the musical I used to do
With Hornsby Paperboy
So up at Williamstown
Hornsby and I used to improv this musical
About a Paperboy Music City
And Tiny Boy
Was loosely based on a song called
Happy Thoughts
Or kind of funny thoughts
He gets a girlfriend and he's having kind of funny thoughts
And then the song gets darker and darker
Where they're like
I'm asking Robert Bank
And kind of funny thoughts
We'll shoot the clerk and they're like
Yeah, let's shoot the clerk
Is playing against a sweet song
And then Trotol was the same
Where Jimmy the Paperboy
Wines up in a bad part of town
And he's just like, oh, it's homeless people
Who was the first one who realized
That hole and soul
When boys hole and boys
Soul, who put that together first?
That's soul and hole sound
I remember us talking about that
In the writer's room for sure
That was definitely something that
Was like a big laugh in the writer's room
Seems like a martyr's room rose out there
That is such a funny one
You watch this episode
It's like one of those episodes
You're like, this is from that episode
This is from that episode
It's just like wall to wall
The jokes, the songs and musical
It's great, but there's just so much
From this episode
That we had in there
I believe we discussed this before
Who was that audience?
An audience of people who had never heard of the show
Seen the show, they thought maybe they were there
To watch a play
I don't think we warned them, we just did it
And I think there was a lot of confusion
A lot of confusion
Nobody found it funny
They were being forced to laugh
Imagine if you had no context
For what it was that you were about to watch
And then all of a sudden
It was sent to you
I think we did run it
From start to finish
We just performed the play
And then it is what it is
And then we did pickups later
And we shot it like a live show
And then we went in for coverage
And shot each moment and each scene
Like we would in a normal episode
As I recall
Those cat eyes, you can't see a goddamn thing
In the live show you just painted your eyelids
Because you can't see with those cat eyes
You can't see anything
And they're just scratching your eyes
You couldn't see through them
They give you just a tiny little eye hole
So you can kind of get this out
But really it just feels like there's something
It moves around
And it feels like it's just scratching your eye the whole time
So I remember when we did TrollToll
I had written this little baseline
That you came in with
And you had to talk
And snap at the same time
And I remember
You were struggling with that
I remember
Also you wanted him to snap
But don't
And I was like in between
But what's so great about Cormac is
He's so patient
So for an hour
I'm trying to do this thing and he's like
You're doing great, there's no way I'm doing great
After an hour
Well that's so funny because I remember
Every time I saw him at the start
I'd be off stage going really big
But you're stage moming him
Well here I am 14 years later
I realized you couldn't see me
I'm just like
But just knowing you were there made me feel bad
Also you had to write
That's so funny
I remember you writing that whole bomb
And then you had to do a very specific thing
Just to get Danny into the song
Which was like
Like here is coming
Your time to start singing
I do remember that
I knew when to come in
I'd written a draft of Troll Toll
It was this loungey thing
And you're like no no no
And I was like
Yeah we're doing this for Danny
And I was like oh it's like a little blues thing
Of course it just put all the onus on Danny
Like so many of the songs
Are just lyric lyric
Lyric lyric
Lyric lyric
It's just like jam packed wall to wall
But yeah
Every night on the tour
Every night he would hit that
But we had the whole band
Like just guys four
And everyone just go one two three
You got it
Well I want to get into all the music
As you pointed out Cormac
There's so much in this episode to get to
And to that end
I was really nervous that I wouldn't ask all the questions
Like a big fan of this episode
Would ask
So are you guys ready for the super fan
After singing the song
Alright we'll just bring out
Our super fan
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Hi
Hey man
Nice to meet you
Oh man
Wow
Holy shit
Ah
A treat
Are you familiar
With musicals
Do you have any sort of sense
Long time first time
Yes
I love this episode
And I have so many questions
I'm so glad we have the composer here too
Wait we have to talk about you for a minute
I have to talk about you for a minute
So I saw Hamilton
We were talking about Hamilton yesterday
It was so exciting we were talking about it yesterday
And I was looking over at Megan and was like
Ah this is going to be so good
I had no idea you were going to be here
I was saying like
If you didn't see it without Lin-Manuel playing
You didn't see the musical playing
And so I'm there
We're in New York and we're watching the play
And I'm looking at you and you're like
Performing I'm like
I feel like this dude is looking right at me
But I'm like he can't
He can't see me
I took my cat eye lenses out
And then when
It came time for the bow
You were doing the bow and the whole place was going nuts
Of course
And you point at me and Mary Elizabeth and you go
Holy shit Charlie in the waitress
Yeah and you said it during
I said it in the bow was like on stage
From everybody else
There's 1,400 other people
There on my way and I was like
Charlie in the waitress
And then we went backstage and we saw you
And you were amazing
And you love John Bon Jovi waiting
That guy in the wait
Bob Bon Jovi
I think that's who it was
We should turn bovine
Everyone had to wait
If I had more presence of mind
I would have turned to you and said
I was that baby boy
That little baby boy was me
Well
So you're saying that we inspired you
I think is where we're getting to
This is a snake eating its tail
I came to thank you for all of it
All the inspiration
Well
The nice thing about you being here
Is that you can answer once and for all
Does anyone write a musical for no reason
Or is it always verses
Yeah it's always verses
What's the con? The long con
For Hamilton and it was a 6 year grift
No
Who were you writing that verses
I guess
Jefferson
I wanted to ask you guys about your
History with theater
Musical theater because I know for me
That was the place where I found
Any crust of cool in high school
And it was the place where
I could exist outside my grade
And I could exist
You could collaborate on something
That was not just the drudgery
And horror of high school
So I was wondering
You guys have chops
I was watching the live episode
On the way here and the hole inside
My apartment bonus song where you're just
Wailing like Freddie Mercury
You guys have to have done musicals
In school
I did a lot of musicals
I want to hear the entire
Biologist
I did a bunch of really random musicals
That most people have never heard of
I did a musical called
Star Mites
Do you know this musical?
That's like a very cult flop musical
I don't know it
I did a musical called Celebration
It was a team that wrote The Fantastics
Henrik and A Little Night Music
Oh shit
That was by far the hardest
Because I had to
I had to play the cello
While singing an extraordinarily
Difficult song
I was playing the cello
And I was like oh my god
It was crushingly difficult
Harder than The Nightman Cometh
Much harder than The Nightman Cometh
And Charlie what's your musical background
Because to me your musical background
These things just make sense to me
Which is one of the best
Both my parents are music teachers
My mom taught kindergarten through eighth grade
And my dad was a college professor
And growing up
I remember my mom
Doing some
Productions of
She put on like HMS Pinafore
And the Mikado
And
And the Wiz
And I was too young to be in these things
But I remember the eighth grade kids were doing these plays
And I would see them
So I was introduced to it
Then in second grade
We did a James
Sorry when you say she put on
She was the musical director of the school
She was a music teacher
You're going to Mrs. Day's class for kindergarten through eighth grade
So then
I did
James the Giant Peach
And I sang that song like
Smile though your heart is breaking
Or whatever
So the first time I had to sit and do a song
And then I had to do shit
Until high school
My senior year which I did South Pacific
But you were playing music
Oh yeah I started
I kind of rebelled against it
And then once I got into high school
I picked up the guitar and started writing little things
But you started that wasn't your first instrument
Were you playing trumpet or something?
I played trombone
And then I did trombone
And then I picked up the guitar
And I sort of half learned that
And then back to the piano
But then I get to college
And I do
Sonheim's Into the Woods
And I'm just like the guy who goes
Like the slotted spoon can catch the potato
Were you the narrator?
Nope just like a guy
Just a guy
But then I started like
Do you remember the Bravo Channel
Of course
Before it was all this reality show
They would play plays
They had Into the Woods on there
It was like on a lot
And I would like get home
After like hanging out with my buddies
And I'd make myself like a gin and tonic
Into the woods
This is so good
I didn't think I liked this before
And I really like it now
And so I don't know
The relationship with musicals
But also never really been a part of them
Like never done one professionally
Yeah
Don't have a huge desire to
Kind of like like and don't like them
Yeah
Most people's relationship
Can we talk about Steven Sonheim for a second
Because he's been referenced so many times
On this podcast
We talked about him yesterday
I know he was a friend of yours
A mentor of yours
He just passed this past year
Past November, yeah
And I think our audience would probably
I don't know how
How big a fans of musicals
Our audience is, but I know
Steven Sonheim only from what I've heard
About him from you guys
And I've watched musicals my whole life
But I never realized what a
Like
Massive
Piece of musical theater
Steven Sonheim has like given to
This culture, correct? He was like
Yeah
I don't know what the analog would be
In another, it would be like
Scorsese for film
Or it would be Spielberg for film
Like he just redefined it on his terms
And
The crazy thing about
One of the most remarkable things I think about
Steven Sonheim's career is that his mentor
Was Oscar Hammerstein in the second
Like adopt, not like only mentor
But adopted dad
He dropped him off at Oscar Hammerstein's house
They were neighbors and he was just like
I don't want to leave, don't make me go back to my mom
Can I hang out with you? And he always said
If Hammerstein were a butcher, I'd be a butcher
So he's mentored by like half of
Rogers and Hammerstein
But his shows are totally different
You know
Rogers and Hammerstein wrote like Oklahoma
And South Pacific and these
Sound of music, like these very like
Wholesome
It kind of defined what musical theater was
But they were also these very naturalistic
Musicals and Sonheim took that
And wrote Sweeney Todd about a homicidal
Barber or a presidential
Assassin musical and he just
You know, I think the lesson
Of Sonheim's career is one
First of all, it's like variety
Like he never repeated himself
And two, he just
Never, he always just kind of
Took what you would say
Is like, that can't be a musical
And he would turn that into like the best musical
Which of course
Brings us back to the nightmare
Coincides with like the 70s
Just in general, like what film is doing
You know, where you have like the movies of the 50s
And you have a lot of happy endings
Or you know, a much more kind of big
Polish thing and then the 70s people start
Being like, actually the guy's just going
A motorcycle ride across the country and then
They're shot to death, you know what I mean?
I think it really was a reflection of who he was
One of the things Oscar
Told him in one of his early musicals
He started showing Oscar stuff when he was like 15 years old
Was you're trying to write like me
Don't write like me, if you write what interests you
Like you'll be ahead of everybody else
That was his big advice to
Young Steven Sonheim
How do you feel about that? I mean do you
Probably agree with that sentiment
Clearly, I mean I know that that for us
Was always our guiding principle
Was, you know, let's just do what we think
Is funny and hope that other people like it
You know, because it's our best shot at
Making something original
There's only us, you know
We're the only people that could conceive of
Something that only we can conceive of, so let's do that
To bring it back to the
Nightman cometh, you're talking about pursuing
Just kind of what you love
And making that to keep things original
What's interesting to me about this
Is it's a musical that you guys made
And you, usually I imagine
You workshop musicals in front of audience
So you have some idea of how they're going to hit
Once you get to like the big venues
But you guys made and recorded
A musical and released it to the world
In its fully finished form
The only way that it will ever exist
And I have a follow up question about this
Because it also emerged on what looks
Like the most insane chicken scratch
Pile of paper
And then gets translated
By Artemis
Into English
So I'm curious how you guys
Worked out the musical among yourselves
Like how do you find
Boys' hole, boys' hole
I mean, the beauty of what we're doing
Is like
You have an absolute
Bailout parachute with the joke
Right, which means we don't have to do anything
In earnest, which means that we can
Fall right flat on our face
Like, yeah, sure, there's a piece of me that's always like
Yeah, I'd like to write a musical, that'd be fun
I don't have the guts
And balls to actually write a musical
And put it in front of the world, but if I write a musical
That's a joke about musicals, then I'm safe
Right, and kind of like
Our show is such a good
Sort of
Like
Play box for
Sandbox, like playground for
Kind of trying things, which is like
I'd like to write a David Bowie-esque rock song
I can do it on our show, or like
I want to try an English accent, but it can be bad
Yeah, yeah, yeah
I do have a question about the English accent
Which is your accent as the Night Man
It's a very David Bowie
To me
Here's your Toe Troll
Yeah, I have no idea
I'm just trying to keep up
I'm just trying to keep up
There's something quiet about it
That's very like
David Bowie as Gareth
Well, love is your Toe Troll
That's what I was going for
That's going for Bowie and Labyrinth
Thank you
Do you want to write another musical?
Yeah, he's always writing
You're never going to not write musicals
Yeah, that's, I've worked really hard
To get good at it
And so I want to keep doing it
But the thing is always like finding the idea
That pursues you
Like it can't just be
You know, I've written ideas where I've
Written my way and I go, I think I'm done
Like I'm not interested in pursuing
This anymore
That's what's so kind of beautiful about
This episode is you can tell
I mean, just in the context of the story
Charlie was possessed
By an idea and he saw it
Like he actually did something
Very impressive and the
Side of Charlie that this unlocks in the episode
Like when he is screaming
At D
I mean, we have never seen Charlie like that
Full theater tyrant
So explain to me
Where the full theater tyrant came from
Well, I think that's just a funny concept
But he's just so powerful
And Charlie's never really
Powerful
That's a dynamic that happens in the theater
Like I'm sure Glenn, you've seen it
In the Juilliard days where it's this
Extreme tension about this ridiculous thing
That people are doing
But also underneath it
He's trying to get this girl to marry him
And he's got everything riding on him
He's like, I need this play to be good
Because it's my last shot
I'm gonna propose to this one
There's moments where your IQ goes up 100 points
Like when he goes turn the page over
Nothing
That's when you'll sing
That is brutal
This I want to play
This section
Charlie, this is my big song
Yeah
Everybody else has a big song, I deserve to have one
Don't screw me like this
Don't screw you
Oh, I'm sorry D
Let me try to remember something
Did D write a musical and come to Charlie with it?
No
Charlie wrote a musical and came to D with it
And the gang
And the gang likes to screw it up
And make it about themselves
And take it away from Charlie
So let me tell you something D
Let me break down a scenario for you
I could cut the song
Because I wrote it
I could have Artemis do the song
Or I could strap out a wig
And I could do the song myself
So you tell me
What to do? A song?
Or no song?
I could find a thing happens when you're doing a scene like that
Where I'm just screaming at Caitlin
Right?
And I feel her feeling screamed at
Like I can feel her starting to be like
Well, he is, whether it's the actor
Or the character
This man is fucking screaming at me
And I can't like
Soften that blow, I can't be like
Alright, let me back it off a little bit
Because she's getting upset, like I gotta stick in it
And turn the nice side of my brain off
That's funny
Because you're giving her exactly what she needs
As an actor by doing it
I know, I know
You're like, I'm upsetting her
This is abusive in a way
Yeah, but of course in Caitlin's mind
She's like, oh, this is great
I am getting screamed at
That's how I'm supposed to be reacting
She plays it great
There's nothing more abusive than the level of stalking
That goes on in this particular episode
Of stalking the waitress
And even in the end
When you're like, well, I'm coming
I didn't sign anything, so I'm coming back tomorrow
That is sinister
Completely wrong
And yet people have really used that song
As a proposal song
I've seen YouTube videos of people
Literally proposing in real life
We gotta put that in the podcast
Here
Will you marry me?
Won't you come on stage and join me?
In this game called
Will you come on stage and join me?
As you were saying
You wrote it with this out
Which is, it's supposed to be funny
It's not supposed to be that good
And yet everybody loves it
They love the songs
But isn't a joke
It's the power of music
I'm sure you have experienced this
That it reaches people beyond
What
Now I'm doing George Bush thing
It's raging to your soul
I don't know
It can just tap it like that
I didn't know anything about Hamilton
When I went to go see it
I just heard it was a hit
I didn't know anything about you
I went to go see it
After the play I'm like
We're rapping
10 minutes to get to a rap
And then by the end
It was a completely
It's primal
That hit me in a way
That very few pieces of art
Actually have
Something about the power of combining music
To whatever
If you nail it right
I know it hits you in a totally different way
Even in our goofy
We're doing a silly bad musical
The songs stick with people
I'm so allergic to
Meta musicals
Their own genre
We're commenting on the fact we're doing a musical
Isn't it so hilarious that we are breaking into song
I kind of generally
Hate that shit
Stop apologizing for the thing you clearly love
To do
That doesn't come across in this episode
What comes across is that Charlie
Earnestly
Came out of him
And he's using it
Of course for sinister ends
But it doesn't ever feel like
You guys are commenting that musicals are bad
It feels like
Charlie is inept
At making what he wants to have happen
And the vanity
Of your characters
Is always going to offend you
Stage freeze
The joke isn't that musicals are bad
The joke is that we're bad at doing them
And you sabotage yourself
We're not making fun of
Of the show
When the nightman comes out
And he's finally doing his
Ernest awesome karate
And they're laughing
It's such a dejected little
Side
I also love the little moment where Dennis is backing up
To grab the gun
And you don't want to turn around and grab it
Because you want it to be subtle
So what you do is you flail around behind you
For someone holding it
Just through the door for you
That's a little detail. I think that
It brings up like it invokes
Such high school productions
And it's so nostalgic to watch
Even the sets and the way that the couch
Is painted onto the wall
It just has and then
Contrasting that with the subject matter
That you're talking about
It's so dark
Do you write on piano?
Yeah, I can't play trombone
I don't write on trombone
No, I only ever learned piano
I took piano lessons as a kid
I have my keyboard hooked up to my computer
And I wrote in
Heights like on GarageBand
Like used that to arrange it and then
Graduated to logic
For the subsequent shows
Can we talk about your process for a little bit?
Because I found it fascinating when we were
In New York, we went out to dinner
And we went to see a comedy show
And then I got to get home
And it was fascinating, he said this to me at dinner
Said I can't stay out too late tonight
Because I got to get home
Because my boss is expecting me to deliver
A song by the end of the day tomorrow
And I thought he was joking and I laughed
And he was very serious and I was like
Who's your boss?
He's my boss!
You were earnest and so far as you had
To deliver this to your boss and I was like
Who's your boss?
And it's the head of music at Disney
What's his name?
Disney and I was writing a song
For an assignment for him
And I just found that fascinating
Because to me if there's any artist
In the world living right now
Who doesn't have a boss
However
But I found it interesting
Obviously you're respectful of somebody who's paying you
You're a professional
And they have an expectation of delivery
But beyond that
It almost felt like you enjoyed the constraint
Of knowing that you had to get something done
Is that a part of your process?
I think this says more
Equal amount about you that it does about me
That you are fixated on my having a boss
Because you're like
I'm instantly resentful of anyone
Who would call themselves my boss
Yes
We're Rob's boss, aren't you?
We just don't
You don't have to say it
I love a deadline
That's what I love
And when I'm working on something
We're going to meet about what I write every week
That's the best way for me to get anything done
That was how
And the heights got written, how Hamilton got written
When I started writing Hamilton
It took me a few months to write the opening song
It took me a year to write the second song
Which was half just not writing the song
And half just me
Not committing to finishing it
And it wasn't until
Tommy Cale got involved and was like
Let's just put a date
Where you're going to perform as many songs from Hamilton
As you can
And we'll just commit to that
Seven months from now and I wrote 11 songs
That tells me that I need a deadline
To get anything done
Because then you can just keep chipping away
At something at a certain point and you're like
Okay, I have to move on
And only when you've moved on from it
Can you go back to it and be like
It's not as bad as I thought it was
Or it's even better
And also I'm sure you guys are familiar with this
My favorite part of the process
Like here it is, like guts out
Like what do we think, what's confusing
What could be better, what did you like
What didn't make sense
And I'm sure that's how you guys work too
In terms of like...
I think this is a great lesson for young artists
And people who are trying to get into creating
Anything is the idea of iteration
We talk about this quite a bit
Which is oftentimes
People are afraid to put out
To show people what it is that they're working on
At early stages because they want to perfect it
Not realizing that there is no perfection
And like so much a part of any collaborative art
Is to get other people's opinions
And if you don't put that
If you don't have either an external
Party who's putting on that limitation
Or those guardrails of saying
We need it by this date
Then you have to do it internally and just say
Look, by this date I'm going to show it to people
And there's no, that's not a failure
If someone says, oh that's pretty good
But what if you try this or what if you try that
That's all a part of the process
Or the greatest in the world at it
Like to hear that, I think, like an audience member
To hear that, that you also fear that
And also will sit down
Yet at an early stage
And show it to somebody and take notes
I think is really inspiring, yeah
You say
Price of my war
Now that one, that fucking number
Which is so fucking, all that, the king's
Numbers are so good
Did those come quickly, writing wise?
Those came away from the piano
The tune in my head
I was actually on my honeymoon when I wrote King George's song
Really? Yeah, I was on an island
In the South Pacific with my wife
There was not a piano anywhere
How do you do that? It's just in your head?
Well, I think the reason it's so catchy
And again, like your own
Bullshit becomes a part of your process
Like, for me
I don't have very good piano chops
So a melody has to survive my chops
You know, and so like
That song was so catchy, it had to survive
So two weeks I was on vacation
And stay in my head
And I wrote down the words as like
I put words to the melody once it was in my head
And they were pretty close to what the final words would be
But I just sang it to myself
And it had to survive
No, no, it just had to survive
And I think that's why it's the catchy song
It was just stuck in my head for two weeks
But it's an interesting song to write on your honeymoon
Because it's about a very dysfunctional relationship
Yeah, well, but it's also a breakup song
That's true
It's actually a breakup song
It's like, no, you'll be back
You're stuck with me
So maybe
Let's not look too deeply into that
Yeah, it's my perfect song
Every now and then, it won't even be on
I'll just like start singing it
I don't know why
It's just in there for life now, I think
That's how a lot of us feel about the Nightman cover
Yeah, yeah, yeah
It really is
Trying to get it right in that skull where it stays forever
Charlie does have an act for writing very catchy
Melodies
Or catchy things that just grab you right away
It could have been a good commercial jingle
Yeah, yeah, for sure
The lyrics, too, I think
Are so catchy
And almost because they're so not specific
I'm thinking specifically of the last
Song
If you want to marry men
Will you marry me?
Like the little things that are added in
It's not even man, it's man
If you want to marry man
If you want to marry man
Those things
When you wrote that, did you mean
Were you calling her man?
If you want to marry man
Or was it like, if you want to marry man
I knew it would be funny as both
It's also like a bad lyric
But it's calling her man, which is also weird
Please say yes, but do not bone me
Do not bone me
What I love is that it's
The beginning has the rigorousness of
Akantana, there's like a chord for every note
It's like dun dun dun dun dun
It just gets, it's like very like
Fuged like almost, and then it goes
To the like craziest
Hard rock plays, like
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These things just make sense to him
Yeah, it just makes sense to him
It makes no sense to me
It sounds like a James Taylor song
Like it's so beautiful
Without the lyrics on top
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
But, uh, the Tiny Boy Baby Boy
Is a total song I rip off
With those kind of chords?
Right, because it's a two-chord jam
But the chord on top is very major seven
Major seven, yeah
Well, I don't know these words you're saying
That's the thing that, this is why I never pursued music.
Cause all that shit, I can't, I can't get that shit.
Oh yeah, that's perfect.
You could.
It's just names for what you're doing.
Right, right, right.
That's really all it is.
Yeah.
Right, isn't that it?
Yeah.
It goes.
It goes.
Wait, can I ask you something again?
Cause this name keeps coming up.
What is it about that that makes it sound like Sondheim?
Because it sounds like, no, it's,
it's Sondheim would never use like a major chord
when he could do like a weird seventh chord
or a second or a fourth.
Like he just did interesting voicings.
At the end of the woods is why that kind of like,
or like, you know, you know, those kind of chords.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know.
You would know, but.
Yeah.
Or maybe this is what I was doing before.
Yeah, it's that.
We're in the woods.
I wish.
I'm going walking, I'm in the woods.
I'm looking for a little pulter now.
Like it's like, it's all that kind of shit.
What was his take on the boy's whole life?
I'm looking for a hole.
A hole in the hole.
Any hole is for a rabbit.
I don't need rabbit.
So wait, but take me from you finding that very
Sondheimian right hand to the call and response of, ooh.
Well, that was Cormac.
Tiny boy, little boy, baby boy, I need you.
Tiny boy, little boy, I want to touch you boy.
If you only knew what I'd do to you.
If I was that boy that's inside of you.
It's also in Walt's time.
And it's a Walt.
Yeah, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three.
I think if I knew all the things you're supposed to know,
I wouldn't be able to do it.
And that's like where your dynamic comes in great.
So I can be like, okay, here's some, boom, boom, boom, boom.
You know?
I was like, what is Glenn doing on stage at this point?
So we added these little oo's and those,
and he did the helicopter.
If you only knew.
There's a new discovery.
There's a new discovery.
Even though you're singing them in high voice,
they're deadly earnest lyrics.
If you only knew what I'd do to you.
If I was that boy that's inside of you.
It's inside of you, baby boy, I need you.
That's like 80s, like metal lyrics.
Like that is so earned, that's journey.
If you only knew what I'd do to you.
But setting up this is insane.
Yes, yeah.
If you've come for insane, you've come to the right place.
Also, so much of what I love about this episode is,
you know, those rehearsal scenes before the music will begin
sets up so many jokes that pay off,
like Dennis and Mack switching.
And then that paying off in like the hug that they do
that's very awkward.
It's a sexually charged hug.
It's a sexually charged embrace.
But setting up those things and the D
wanting to throw in a song and then having those things all
like pay off during the musical.
I have a question about, did you guys write D's solo
or is that?
Gormick did write that, yeah.
Which is that we knew it should have some kind of melody.
I think we wrote the lyrics and then.
We wrote the lyrics.
I know we came up with the idea of just to be clear,
like clarifying, you know, the previous song.
And I think it's written it more like a song like,
just to be clear, I did not write that song
and would never have sex with a child.
Just to be clear, just to be clear.
It sounds like a Taylor Swift song.
No, over the map.
I was thinking about when we were writing this,
one of my concerns when we were kind of writing it was,
I hope we're not, our goal here is not,
we're trying to write a bad musical, bad.
I think we're trying to write a bad musical
as well as we can.
As well as try.
No, no, the muse has visited Charlie.
Well, yeah, I mean, that's because there's the piece of me
that is dying to be in musicals, sing songs, write songs.
And then there's the piece of me that's too insecure
to ever like really pursue it.
So it's that sweet spot of like, well,
if I just earnestly do it and then we make it funny,
then you can get away with it.
But like.
Can we talk about the troll toll song?
And what that is sort of modeled after.
And is there like anything special about coming up with that?
I mean, obviously, soul and boy's soul and.
Yeah, boy's soul.
It is a two lyric song and yet devastatingly effective.
Yes, yeah.
Got to pay the troll toll to get into the boy's soul.
And then they say, what's that name?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know what you said.
What you said.
So I have to find the form of this thing.
I just was just playing the chords I knew.
And so I was like, okay, the, you know,
the major chords are the love songs
and the minor chords are the bad guy, you know?
So it was, yeah, it was like as simple as like.
A bluesy kind of like.
I heard that.
I was like, oh, this is a blues.
Right.
It's, it's St. James infirmary, right?
Don't let me in the troll to me.
Ah.
Yeah.
Don't.
Don't.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What you said.
Yeah.
Hey, hey, hey.
Hey, hey, hey.
Hey, hey, hey.
Hey, hey, hey.
Hey, hey, hey.
To like, fat over.
That's a good thing to, that can work in any musical really.
Just saying, what'd you say?
What you saying?
Hey, hey, hey.
Hey, hey, hey.
Yeah.
Every green.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then what was, what was Danny's reaction to this?
How was, what was his level of?
Danny was gung ho to do it, but he, to the little.
I, I, it's the craziest story.
And I'll say it as quickly as possible because I'd met Danny
a few times, but so we show up at the high school
because we did this whole thing at one location.
And the night before I was nervous, I was like,
what else can I give these guys to really make it click?
And I thought, lyric sheets, we have the script,
we have the music, lyric sheets, just the song,
a page with lyrics.
Right.
So I sent that off to the second AD and they printed them out
and I meet Danny and we run the song once or twice
and I turn around to my piano player and I said,
but Danny, let's do it one more time.
This time, and I turn back and he's halfway out the door
and on his way out, he grabs some papers off my music stand
and just takes everything and disappeared
for the rest of the day.
And of course, and I thought, I, I thought you were all
messing with me because I swear to God, every single cast
member and every single crew member all day were asking me,
hey, any more of those lyric sheets around?
And Danny had just taken them out the door.
So of course Danny like slays at the next day.
Slays at the next day when we record.
Cut to a year later when we did the tour
or when we were rehearsing for the troubadour.
I go, we all went over to his house
to do this first rehearsal.
I bring my piano player in, Rhea like brings us
into his, to their piano and she's like, oh,
you can just clear some stuff off and work here.
And I remember picking up a book
and there were all the lyric sheets and music marked up.
He brought it home.
He'd worked on it, which is like,
why do you have to take everybody's case?
Obviously, why don't you be just a little quirks, you know?
This is a nice little, one of us to fail.
Yeah, one of us to fail, yeah.
He's the goat, man.
I mean, he like, he worked on that stuff
and he's so amazing.
He like, just killed that stuff.
And seeing that stuff at his home, like a year later,
I was like, oh, this is a guy, like,
he wanted to rehearse it nude in the 70s.
That's what you do.
That's what you do.
You know, he was also, you know, one of the most delightful
things about Danny is he still continues to approach things
like with a youthful exuberance, you know what I mean?
Like, he's okay to not be necessarily the best
at something as long as he's having fun.
Like, he just has this like childlike exploration.
You see that in the scene where he gets assigned to the troll
and he's so excited.
Yeah.
One of our comedy tricks is always like trying
to subvert the expectation.
So you're expecting him to be pissed that he's going to be
the troll and like offended.
Yeah, right, right.
The second he's excited, you're like, well, there's Jeff, right.
His entire social media presence is based on him taking
pictures of his feet in different locations
and calling a troll foot in New York, troll foot in Paris.
And it's just that, that's how much he's embraced it.
Did that come before or after the musical?
That came after the musical.
That was that.
Yeah, well after.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
David becomes Night Man.
Danny DeVito became troll.
He became a troll.
Troll man, troll.
I mean, this episode was truly the first,
this was our way to understand how the audience at large
was experiencing the show.
Because there was no social media at the time.
There was no, we were making a television show.
So we did nothing live.
We had no indicators as to whether or not people
were watching the show or enjoying it.
We had no interaction with fans other than out on the street
or like Nielsen ratings.
Yeah, yeah.
So the very first time we performed this
was at the Troubadour and it was mind blowing.
We had people who knew every lyric to every song.
They knew every line in the episode
and they were laughing before we were delivering them
to work in television and to be able to go out
and to perform live.
What a gift.
What a gift that you get to see on a nightly basis
how things are being received.
It's fun.
Although I guess when you're doing a play,
obviously people aren't singing along.
Have you played some concerts or some venues
where people have had the opportunity to sing along?
I went to a show in London of Hamilton six months ago.
The entire theater sang every single song.
Oh really?
Everybody knows about it.
Well, that's awesome.
Hamilton was a really interesting case
because I remember when no one knew the words,
when we started previews and people were going out
and sort of talking about the show
and watching that front row slowly become
like the live teleprompters over the course of the first year
because we didn't release the cast album till like a month
after we opened on Broadway.
And that was our ambassador more than the show was.
You know, you can only serve 1,400 people at a time
on a given night.
But then the way that album went out into the world
was really like totally unexpected.
And then it went from like, we're showing you our new show
to reading on Twitter like whatever line I fucked up
that night.
They're like, we saw tonight and he fucked up this line.
That's the downside of audience feedback.
Well, that's both sides, right?
Is there another example, and forgive me for not knowing,
but like of the person who's writing the musicals,
starring in them, like has that been,
I mean, I'm sure it's been done a few times, but like, what?
Do, I'm not sure.
But you're talking about in a theater setting.
Yeah, like Broadway setting.
Big Broadway hits where the person is also the writer.
There, it was very much the case in the beginning
of musical theory, like George M. Cohen famously did that.
Like he wrote Yankee Doodle Dandy and starred in Yankee Doodle
Dandy.
And then there were, and now it's more of a thing,
like again, like Sara Bareilles, like when it wrote Waitress
then went into Waitress, she's amazing in it.
There's a young theater writer named Shayna Taub,
who's like incredible in starring in her own shows.
So, yes, but it's rare.
It's part of what's so electric
about seeing the performance, right?
It's like, yeah, but I mean, for me,
the hope is always that it lives beyond me.
Like, you know, that's the hope is you just
write something really good that lasts.
I love In the Heights, and I remember seeing that.
I remember thinking, what's gonna happen
when this guy leaves the show?
And I mean, it's a terrific show.
It lives on, the movie's awesome.
But I remember seeing you and thinking,
what happens when Lin-Manuel leaves the show?
He becomes the Piragua guy, right?
Yeah, I just get older and get a guy
and I play the Piragua guy.
And then when you were at a drive-in,
about to get into a fight,
the words of the Piragua guy will calm you down.
That is what we're listening to.
You heard that story?
I did.
Yeah, I did.
We were listening to In the Heights,
but we listened to it, and it was Piragua was the song.
Okay, that's right.
Yeah, yeah.
But he heard Piragua and it brought him back.
Yeah, just calmed me down for a second.
Yeah, like, it centered me again.
And that was the power.
I just said, you thought, keep scraping by.
And that is the power of your music.
Yeah.
So, okay, troll toll.
I want to hit every song in this, I'm sorry.
No, no, we have to be thorough.
So thank you.
So we've done Little Baby Boy and Just to Be Clear.
So I think Dayman is next to talk about.
Right, which was in a previous episode.
It was in a previous episode.
This was a reprise for Italian Sony fans.
The whole show was built around this particular song,
which is really just a chorus twice, which is smart, right?
But wait a minute, but when you watch the episode,
there's also like, like you're saying other stuff,
like it builds to...
That was Cormac, so...
Like you've got some counterpoint going on.
I don't know what Danny exactly is doing,
but like you're doing like day-man-day-man-day-man-day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like you did add stuff to it.
We, I just, again, it was like,
what is everyone doing during this?
And I really like harmonic music
when everyone's doing stuff.
And so I just arranged it and got there on the day.
And I think we cut half of it.
Just, I overwrote it and we cut some of it.
We added...
Cut that, cut that, cut that.
I am the ruler of night and darkness
and master of bird and song.
A master of bird and song, right?
Master of bird.
And then D's go on.
You are the teacher of bird and man,
a winner of contests near and far.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Winner of contests near and far.
Master of bird and song.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that was kind of how we like wrapped up the...
I also like, it's not part of the song,
but the lead-in to that I really love
because it's, that song starts the third act.
And D gets us up to speed by saying,
you once were a boy and now you are a man
and I am in love with you.
And that just gets us like past.
That's right.
It's like, that's the resolution.
Now let's get to like the finals.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Your expression also reminds me of,
from the original one, it was,
they hate you, night man, and you don't belong to them.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yes.
Which was me just riffing on the day.
When I miss your coat.
That was so bad.
So bad, so bad, so bad.
So bad, so bad, so bad, so bad.
That voice comes back about,
oh, well that, at the end where I come down
and I sing the final song where,
Explain the tongue in the back of your throat
thing you're doing there.
It's Christopher Gass.
I stole it from Christopher Gass.
It's from, from waiting for Goughman,
from a scene that I think was cut
from waiting for Goughman.
So it's in like one of the songs he sings in the outtakes.
It might have been for your thoughts, is it that one?
It might have been a penny for your thoughts.
Oh God, that's so good.
Yeah, one point, or maybe it's in the,
a penny for your thoughts, a dime for your dreams.
The cut stuff in Goughman is better than most musicals.
Well, Goughman is a big Goughman influence
in this episode too, right?
Oh yeah, for sure.
It's just like the seriousness of a play,
that's not good, it's very funny.
Right, right, yeah.
It's, well that transitions into the last song really,
which is your proposal song where you descend,
and quite a piece of stagecraft too,
where you're descending, like it doesn't seem
like that big of a production,
and then you somehow have a son that does that.
And it's secret, no one else knows.
No one else knows, it's a son.
And then Mary Elizabeth's flipping through the pamphlet
to be like, wait, there's another song I gotta say through.
I thought it was done, yeah, that was done.
Now we made a very, very, very big mistake
when we did the live version of this show.
We thought we had to stick to the truth of the canon,
and in the episode, she says no, of course, and storms out.
But when you pack a room full of 3,000 people,
and Charlie comes down, and he's singing the song,
Will You Marry Me, Will You Marry Me?
We put Mary Elizabeth out in the crowd,
and we put a spotlight on her,
and we had her say, no, huge mistake.
The audience turned on her, the booze were.
The booze were angry, didn't get ripped apart, like booze.
They were married in real life.
Fuck you, yeah, they're already married in real life.
She can't marry him, she's married in real life.
And then we didn't learn our lesson.
Even that, I remember the first time Mary Elizabeth was like,
hey, guys, they're like really vicious.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're the safe out here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All we had to do was just have her say yes.
Just have her say yes, it doesn't matter, yeah.
In the theater, things can happen.
In the theater, things can happen in real life.
Well, they would've gone crazy.
But I do love, in the episode, after she says no,
there's a really sweet moment where Frank says to Charlie,
like, she's not worth it, man.
Yeah, I like it.
He's comforting you.
I thought the rave seemed really well.
I thought the rave seemed really well.
I'm not too sure.
That was a great musical, Charlie.
You did a great job.
It's game worth it.
APPLAUSE
Especially nobody just writes a musical for no reason.
I am here.
I am past here.
And by the way, I thought the rave seemed really well.
I am here.
I am here with it.
And that was awful for me.
And if you bring this up back to the apartment tonight,
I'm going to smack you.
I swear to God.
Well, we got to do another season of this show.
We're going into season 16.
If you ever want to write a musical for us,
I would not possibly presume to improve
on this incredible series.
It is Disney.
It is a Disney show now, so it's all in the family.
We could call your boss.
That's what I'm calling my boss.
We could call your boss Tommy.
Is Tommy his name?
Tommy.
Tommy.
Tommy.
When you've known him as long as.
Give us Lin-Manuel.
We only need him for a week now.
Get him off the stage, Tom.
Get him back at Hollywood.
Come on, let's write a song right now.
These things just make sense to you.
No, a rap or something.
You may.
It's like, yeah.
Look, you'll make one-twenty-fifth of what you make now
for a week, but it'll be a lot of fun for us.
Yeah.
I think it'll be less than that, actually.
Less fun.
Yeah, we'll talk about it.
Less money.
He doesn't need the money.
We'll work it out with Tom, and Tommy will let him know.
Yes.
Your boss will let you know.
You don't have a boss.
I cannot tell you how mad he got when I said,
you don't have a boss.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's no one in the world.
You don't have a boss?
I was frustrated for him.
You're a Hamilton.
You're a boss.
You don't have a boss, man.
Can I just break this down for you?
You don't have a boss.
And then somebody told me when I was at the drive.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Lin-Manuel doesn't have a boss?
I'm going to tell you about his father's debts.
But I think you're right.
You did rightfully say, like, I think you're talking
to yourself, man.
Like, you're getting very worked up about this,
and I was like, maybe I am.
Yeah, it was like sort of just, you're
ready to meet out with Justice.
There was no way to meet out with Justice, too.
Rob Justice was there.
There's no one adult.
Rob Justice showed up at our dinner.
He ever shows up when you want him.
Who told you you have a boss?
You want to write Rob Justice real quick?
Come on.
I know you can do it.
I think it's very telling that somebody else who
reached out about Night Man and then became a fan of the show
is Bobby Lopez.
Is a big fan of Sunny, which is really cool.
Like, to hear that too, I mean, Bobby
is one of the other giant pillars of musical theater.
Yeah, he wrote Book of Mormon, wrote Frozen.
And the fact that he really enjoys what you guys do
is awesome.
He said, didn't he also do Avenue Q without his first?
He said he'd watch Night Man cometh every night.
He was in rehearsals for Avenue Q.
Oh, my god.
Yeah, that's crazy.
It's wild.
Yeah.
You guys, it's about putting on a show.
Like, it hits the same sort of, like, pleasure centers
in your brain that Guffman does that, like, yes,
they may not be great at it, but they
are doing their damnedest to put on a show.
Just even down to the costumes, like the ill-fitting
costumes, and she's going to rip the pits,
but they can't because they're expensive,
and they have to return them.
The rentals do not rip that.
The cognitive dissonance of D dressed
as, like, Princess Peach while holding a coffee thing,
like, it doesn't make any sense.
She was dressed like Princess Peach.
That was always the idea, right?
That was a lot.
She was dressed like, yeah.
That's the Mario Brothers to Princess.
And then the day man being symbolized with a silver,
like, onesie and the cod piece.
Which is the original day man, the day man, night man.
Yeah, that obsession with the.
But just your little improv of taking the thing off him,
and you're like, now I'm a man.
See?
See?
I don't have a little see-in.
Because it takes a minute to get the reveal.
Well, Lynn, this has been an honor to have you here.
Cormac, you as well.
Cormac, you're wanting to have you.
Could we play us out with some day man?
Just a little.
Day man?
Yeah, play us out.
Yeah.
See?
See ya.
Well, who's going to sing it?
Champion of the sun.
You're a master of karate and friendship for everyone.
Day man.
Oh, fighter of the night man.
Oh, champion of the sun.
Oh, you're a master of karate and friendship for everyone.
Day man.
Stage freeze.
Stage freeze.
Say stage freeze.
Just do it.
Do it.
Do it.
Yeah.
Day man.
Oh, fighter of the night man.
Oh, champion of the sun.
Oh, you're a master of karate and friendship for everyone.
Day man.
Oh, fighter of the night man.
Oh, champion of the sun.
Oh, you're a master of karate and friendship for everyone.
Day man.
Oh, fighter of the night man.
Oh, champion of the sun.
Oh, you're a master of karate and friendship for everyone.
Day man.
Stage freeze.
Don't say stage freeze.
Just do it.