Spaceships in the Pool with Jeff (Goldblum) with guest Briana Harris

Trampolines on Broadway and alien makeovers in L.A. are all the table as Andi & Jonathon discuss Via Galactica and Earth Girls Are Easy on this super-stuffed episode of The Sci-Fi Musicals Podcast with special guest, musical theatre writer Briana Harris. 

This episode contains discussions of adult sexual behavior that might be offensive or unsuitable for children.

Show Notes:

Via Galactica

Earth Girls Are Easy

Verse Intro Cabaret

Transcript

[00:00:10] Andi: Welcome back everyone to the Sci-Fi Musical Podcast. We are your hosts. I'm Andi Lee Carter. 

[00:00:17] Jonathon: And I'm Jonathon Lynch. 

[00:00:19] Andi: And today we're gonna be talking about space and spaceships. 

[00:00:24] Jonathon: We're going to space. 

[00:00:26] Andi: So the shows that we're going to be focusing on are Via Galactica and Earth Girls Are Easy, which is actually a movie, but it's also a musical, some might say. I would say. 

[00:00:41] Jonathon: I would too, and we're very inclusive about the definition of musical here. If it has music and that is used to tell the story, then I would say that it's probably a musical, whether it's live or a movie or an anime or something that you see, like, at a guitar on a street corner 

[00:00:58] Andi: That's right.

[00:00:58] Andi: And we're also gonna [00:01:00] talk about the brief moment in time that they tried to turn it into a stage musical, which- Yes ... didn't quite work out. 

[00:01:08] Jonathon: I still hold out hope. 

[00:01:09] Andi: Of course. All right, so let's dive right in to Via Galactica. 

[00:01:17] Jonathon: Via Galactica: The Road to the Stars, originally titled Up. 

[00:01:22] Andi: That's correct. So it's a rock musical.

[00:01:25] Andi: It was sung through with a book by Christopher Gore and Judith Ross, with lyrics by Christopher Gore, and music by Galt MacDermot, who also wrote Hair, which you might have heard of, and it was written in 1972. It premiered on Broadway. It had 15 previews directed by Peter Hall, and choreographed by George Faison.

[00:01:53] Andi: Opened on November 28th at the Uris Theater, which is now the Gershwin. Was it the premiere production [00:02:00] at the Uris? Yes, it was. And then after 15 previews, it opened, and after seven performances, it closed. Sorry, that was a very short road to the stars. We talked a little bit about flops last time with the Superman musical, and this one is a certified flop, and there's really no denying that.

[00:02:22] Jonathon: We promise not every science fiction musical is a flop. 

[00:02:26] Andi: And yes, there are great sci-fi musicals that made lots of money, but this one lost more than a million dollars. It didn't lose the most money ever, but it was one of the first ones to lose that much money. 

[00:02:37] Jonathon: And that's a million dollars in 1972 money, not in today's money.

[00:02:42] Andi: And also, it sucks for Galt MacDermot because that was his second flop of the season. His show Dude, which I would also consider a little bit of a sci-fi musical, closed after 16 performances. 

[00:02:55] Jonathon: I would say in this case, both of them were difficult shows that had [00:03:00] some really thorny things to be working through and around.

[00:03:03] Jonathon: They took big swings. So I would say that, like in this case, had either of them appeared on Broadway themselves, I'm not sure if the result would've been any different. 

[00:03:11] Andi: Yeah, especially those big swings, like both were in the sort of arena of the production choices. Like for example, Via Galactica's main production choice was for the cast to be bouncing around on trampolines, and then the big choice for Dude was filling the entire theater with dirt.

[00:03:33] Jonathon: And it rained, which turned the dirt into mud, which wouldn't dry off by the time the next performance started. 

[00:03:38] Andi: Yeah, and we haven't talked a lot about when we're talking about these shows on the special effects of the show, but this show in particular is one where the special effects- One is the trampoline, but also there were a lot of pyrotechnics, and there were people flying and sometimes stuck in the air, and there were spaceships [00:04:00] and other things that were attempted to try to make the show really spectacular, but didn't really level up the whole project.

[00:04:12] Jonathon: So let's talk about the material for a second. First of all, dear listeners at home, you can't find very much about this musical right now. Galt MacDermot came out with an album of the music from the show, but it literally is just, like, instrumental backing tracks of songs from the show. 

[00:04:30] Andi: It's technically like a jazz album.

[00:04:31] Andi: I think Billy Butler plays on it, and it's really fun if you wanna listen to it like background music or something to chill to. Spoilers. Spoilers. Spoilers. 

[00:04:42] Jonathon: Spoilers. Let's see if I get all the details right on this. It's a thousand years in the future. Humans went out in the solar system, and they explored, but they're like, "Nope, we're gonna just stick to the planet Earth now."

[00:04:54] Jonathon: And everybody on Earth, they all wear these hats that moderate emotions, [00:05:00] so nothing too extreme. Nobody gives birth anymore. And when you hit 55 years old, you take a pill and you die because that's it. 

[00:05:08] Andi: On Earth, you wear the hat because of the enforcement of peace and conformity. You also don't use the pronoun I.

[00:05:16] Andi: You only use the pronoun we. 

[00:05:18] Jonathon: So the story, the main character of it, his name is Gabriel, and he's a trashman, so he takes away the trash from the planet because that's something that we never quite worked out in the future is how to get rid of our garbage. He takes off with his assistant, Hels, on the ship The Helen of Troy.

[00:05:34] Jonathon: There's a stowaway on board, right? 

[00:05:36] Andi: Hels' wife, April, who's also pregnant. 

[00:05:38] Jonathon: Yeah, and she's not wearing a hat. And it turns out that Hels is secretly a double agent for this hidden colony out on an asteroid that Earth doesn't know about, the hidden colony of Ithaca. 

[00:05:50] Andi: Yes, there are a lot of Greek references in this show, like Helen of Troy, Ithaca, things like that.

[00:05:56] Jonathon: And this feels like an evergreen kind of science fiction trope. Plus, we think about [00:06:00] the Roman road, the Via Romana, so there's also that kind of a thing going on with it, too. 

[00:06:04] Andi: Yeah, like the idea, the title Via Galactica is, sounds very Roman. Yeah, 

[00:06:09] Jonathon: we're diving into myth-building when it comes to what's going on in the story.

[00:06:15] Jonathon: Gabriel winds up on the hidden asteroid where he meets a group of people who don't wear hats and use I pronouns. And there's a cult leader. It's Dr. Isaacs, and he's never wrong about anything ever 'cause he's so good with math. 

[00:06:31] Andi: And also, he's only a head. 

[00:06:33] Jonathon: Yes. He has a wife named Omaha. April is there because she wants to give birth, and April gives birth to twins.

[00:06:41] Jonathon: It's established that because everybody is so free, lots of people just give birth to twins and triplets and things like that on the planet. They wanna produce the most perfect human, and they brought Gabriel to the planet specifically for his genes. 

[00:06:57] Andi: I think what they're going for is a [00:07:00] neo thing, like the chosen one, but they do it through an icky, cringey way with this.

[00:07:06] Andi: It gets in the eugenic ... They're trying to get at this idea of the chosen one or the Messiah or this sort of classic prophesied one, but they're doing it with this scientific twist, which makes it really cringey. 

[00:07:20] Jonathon: Yeah, Dr. Isaacs being like, "You need to sleep with my wife," who's actually gold, 'cause that's another thing.

[00:07:27] Jonathon: And Gabriel's like, "No way. Get me off this cult asteroid." 

[00:07:30] Andi: And the reason they want to create this perfect person is because they want an heir because they have built an ark that will carry them to this new colony that's within this star system called Alber, Al- Aldebaran. Am I saying that right? 

[00:07:49] Jonathon: For years I'd only ever seen this in print, and I thought it was Aldebaran, but it turns out that it's Aldebaran is how you pronounce it.

[00:07:57] Jonathon: Aldebaran, yes. And the only reason it cued me in [00:08:00] was 'cause I heard somebody from Via Galactica, the way that they sang that word, Aldebaran, which is a real star out there, by the way. It's, I think, 65 light years away. I thought it was a mythical star. 

[00:08:11] Andi: Side note, I recently learned that the Heaviside Layer is a real thing.

[00:08:15] Jonathon: Listeners at home, so my dad was in the tour of Cats back in the late '80s. He would often sit me down and be like, "Son, this is the plot of Cats." So jealous. My childhood was great. He went into detail talking about this Heaviside Layer thing, and then eventually I just started looking things up, and it is the atmospheric layer around the planet Earth that is the right density to bounce radio waves off of it.

[00:08:38] Jonathon: It's very clever of T.S. Eliot, I think, because he's basically, yeah, cat souls, they bounce off the Heaviside Layer and then they get reincarnated on Earth. So, like, cat souls are radio waves. 

[00:08:49] Andi: Radio waves, oh my gosh. Okay, so this just solidifies that we're going to talk about Cats. 

[00:08:55] Jonathon: Yes. It is science fiction.

[00:08:56] Jonathon: Not just for the talking animals. 

[00:08:58] Andi: I mean, I [00:09:00] already thought that, and it's already one of my, if not my favorite musical of all time. Okay, back to Via Galactica. 

[00:09:08] Jonathon: Gabriel is like, "No, we don't wanna be here." He doesn't say I yet. Until the storyteller of the show convinces him to take off his hat. So suddenly he's using first person pronouns.

[00:09:22] Jonathon: He's freaking out about it. 

[00:09:24] Andi: There's also a prophecy that Omaha gets that she will fall in love with Gabriel, but sh- because she just thinks she wants to use him for his manliness. 

[00:09:36] Jonathon: Gabriel won't just be a sperm donor. Gabriel will actually be the love of her life. 

[00:09:42] Andi: Once Gabriel takes off his hat, he does fall in love with Omaha, and that's why he agrees to go rescue her dad, but she doesn't love him yet.

[00:09:52] Andi: That's the end of act one. He goes off to rescue Daddy on some other random asteroid [00:10:00]that's worse off than Ithaca, 'cause the reason they wanna leave Ithaca is because it's not doing well. 

[00:10:05] Jonathon: It's a barren rock, basically. So act two. Act two, April is lonely because she's given birth to twins and everybody's busy preparing the ark, and Gabriel still hasn't come back yet from the rescue mission.

[00:10:20] Andi: It's been a while. Like, six months? It's been long enough for her to have given birth, and the babies are ... They're still babies, but they've been around. 

[00:10:30] Jonathon: Oh, and the babies came early because they just grew so healthy and strong on Ithaca because of freedom. 

[00:10:36] Andi: The freedom. So Dr. Isaac, the head, decides it's time to go without the boys.

[00:10:44] Jonathon: April sends out a message to the universe basically being like, "Hey, I gave birth on Ithaca. Now I'm gonna go to the stars with my new babies." 

[00:10:52] Andi: And so as they're about to leave, Gabe and Hels show up and brought some folks [00:11:00] along. Unfortunately, not Omaha's dad. Not the dad 'cause he is dead. 

[00:11:07] Jonathon: Yeah. But he conveniently wrote a letter saying that he lived a long, happy life, and he doesn't regret dying when he did.

[00:11:13] Jonathon: And Dr. Isaacs is mad and turns a little bit space fascist on us. And then it's time to get on the Viegalactica ark. Yeah, Gabe's like, "I don't know." And Dr. Isaacs, because April sent this transmission out, Earth is aware of us now. So Dr. Isaacs does some calculations and realizes that they have about a 13-minute window between when they can leave on the ark and when the Earth ships are gonna arrive and bomb them to oblivion.

[00:11:42] Andi: In that time, Omaha decides that she has fallen in love with Gabriel and that they should consummate their relationship. 

[00:11:50] Jonathon: Which they do. They go off in the house, and time passes. It's like a fade to black kinda thing, and then it comes up again. And they're like, "Omaha's pregnant." Yep. They [00:12:00] used up 

[00:12:01] Andi: their head start doing the dirty.

[00:12:04] Andi: And so now they have to go, or they're not gonna escape from the Earth ships that are now on their way to attack the little asteroid and the people there, the rebels. 

[00:12:18] Jonathon: And Gabriel's still conflicted. He's all like, "Ah, but man, like, I don't wanna spend a, a hundred years on a ship going to some distant star, man.

[00:12:27] Jonathon: That sucks." 

[00:12:28] Andi: But Omaha's like, "I'm not going back to Earth. Like, my kids aren't gonna wear a fricking hat." No 

[00:12:33] Jonathon: hats for my kids. And then suddenly, the Earth ship shows up, and it shows up early as- Oh ... Dr. Isaacs, who is never wrong, forgot to carry the delta. I mean, we've all made that mistake. He's been around in that head box for so long.

[00:12:49] Jonathon: Gabriel does end up staying behind, but only so that he can smash the Helen of Troy into the Earth [00:13:00] ship. 

[00:13:00] Andi: He does the switcheroo, so he sends a message to the Earth ship. He says that he's going to return to Earth to get them off. 

[00:13:10] Jonathon: Give the ark time to get away. 

[00:13:13] Andi: Yeah, so he's like, "I'm coming back," and so that buys them time to escape, and then he gets in his ship, the Helen of Troy, and goes...

[00:13:23] Andi: I think he goes into battle with the Earth ship. 

[00:13:27] Jonathon: So the Helen of Troy has a big stick on the end of it that he uses with a hook- He uses it to pick up the garbage, and he uses that hook to stab into the Earth ship and blow up all the ships 

[00:13:40] Andi: Yeah, but in the process of him smashing into the Earth ship, he sacrifices himself.

[00:13:47] Andi: Sad. And so he dies So 

[00:13:51] Jonathon: really this is hair in space 

[00:13:55] Andi: Yeah, it is. I was gonna say, we should have started with that. [00:14:00]

[00:14:00] Jonathon: Because we got like our little... Yeah, we got our hippie commune and our chosen one leader who is welcomed by the society and who ultimately accepts into it and ends up sacrificing himself for the safety and comfort of this community, this, the hippies 

[00:14:19] Andi: And then it ends with the colony making it to their new home, and they call it New Jerusalem, and they sing a song about their new Jerusalem, and that's the end of the show 

[00:14:33] Jonathon: So Andi and I are both people who write science fiction musicals together and separately for that matter, and I think that world building is something that we spend a lot of time thinking about for our works.

[00:14:46] Jonathon: We want it to be consistent. We want it to have a point in the story. We want it to be reflective of some of the broader themes and issues that we wanna be talking about. While at the same time we don't wanna just go to the audience and say, [00:15:00] "Hey, look at all the fancy world building we're doing. Let's spend a couple hours just in the world building of it."

[00:15:06] Jonathon: How quickly and when and how much information we dole out about the rest of it is something that is tricky, and I think Via Galactica ended up giving so much of the world building that I think that the actual character development and plot wasn't there as much 

[00:15:28] Andi: I think if they could have maybe focused on the love story between Gabriel and Omaha...

[00:15:36] Andi: But if freedom makes babies happen very quickly, I think if it hadn't been just about getting to that productive part of the relationship and it had been more about the emotional part of the relationship, that would have been more compelling in the story [00:16:00] a- about what it means to leave- The planet. I don't know.

[00:16:06] Andi: I do like the world. There's so many themes and there's so much going on, and there's so much plot, but what is the story? What's the point? What is at the heart 

[00:16:16] Jonathon: of this? In some ways, it feels a little bit like 1950s science fiction to me, like novels. And yes, there were some people in that era who were doing great works where they were, like, really centering around the people and the things that were going on.

[00:16:30] Jonathon: That's basically 

[00:16:31] Andi: speculative fiction, which I think we can explore that. But I think there's something dramatic missing in this story and in stories like that where we're just focusing on the sort of, for lack of a better term, like technical aspects of the science-y stuff. 

[00:16:52] Jonathon: Yeah. But really, all the science-y stuff sh- at least to me, seems most effective when it's how does the science and how does this new [00:17:00] stuff affect humans, affect our relationship to each other and the world and ourselves?

[00:17:06] Jonathon: And yeah, that kinda got a little bit lost. But wow, what a spectacle it almost was too. Yeah. Almost was. 

[00:17:15] Andi: Almost. I think it probably was. I'm sad that I didn't see it, that I wasn't alive yet. 

[00:17:24] Jonathon: So I appreciate that, like, "Hey, we're opening this new theater. Let's really show what this new theater's capable of and put this huge spectacle thing in there."

[00:17:33] Jonathon: And as we were talking about earlier, there were bouncy floors, and the makeup and the costume design were, like, everybody's painted gold or floating heads. There are these catwalks across the entire stage. Things are happening at all levels and all times. And the Helen of Troy keeps taking off, and we see people get into the ship, and then it flies away.

[00:17:49] Jonathon: And the big climactic space battle, they say that, "Oh, yeah, like the earth ship, it's this wild collection of lights and things, and it goes over the audience." It's the kind of plot description I would write in stage directions when I would [00:18:00] want a director to come in and be like, "Okay, we've got $5 and a fog machine.

[00:18:05] Jonathon: What are we gonna do?" But if they could even achieve 50% of the descriptions that are in there, wow, that'd be such a cool show to see. And 

[00:18:13] Andi: there's plenty of examples of shows where the technical elements can impede, like Spider-Man, for example, or King Kong, where they're trying to do these big things, and then it just will stop in the middle of the show, or maybe they'll have to end the performance altogether because of injuries or the actual mechanics of the show doesn't work.

[00:18:35] Andi: My favorite sort of backup for Wicked, the end of act one with a no-fly show where if the cherry picker doesn't work, then the actors have to lie down on the stage while she sings Defying Gravity. Having a backup for things when the tech goes wrong is really important because if your show is only dependent on these big production technical [00:19:00] elements, then- You know, that's gonna be an issue for a lot of reasons.

[00:19:06] Jonathon: And something will go wrong at some point, even for the long-running shows that are, like, running like a machine. Sometimes just things go wrong. 

[00:19:15] Andi: Yeah. Wicked, which is in the now Gershwin Theatre, which was yours, which I... Do you mention that the show was originally called Up, but they had to change the name because of the name of the theater.

[00:19:29] Andi: It looked really weird on the marquee. So let's talk about the music because, as we said, it is Hair in space, and i- if you do get a chance to listen to the music, you might agree. 

[00:19:41] Jonathon: It's such a vibe. For the most part, everything is just so laid back. It's nice. Yeah. I put it on, and I'm, like, cooking dinner, and I'm like, "This is a jam.

[00:19:49] Jonathon: I love it." Standout for me is probably Children of the Sun. I think they knew it, too, because they do have a reprise of it in the show. 

[00:19:55] Andi: There's a lot of weird songs in Via Galactica [00:20:00] like the Oyster Song and a lot of really fun, silly songs that don't do a lot to explore the characters. They're just like, "Let's sing about how oysters are weird."

[00:20:13] Andi: Yeah. Granted, there is some of that in Hair, too. Yeah, but that makes sense to me in Hair because they are a community of hippies explaining who they are. It's kinda like how Cats... Again, we're going back to Cats. Sorry. Like how Cats, they're all introducing themselves, and so they're all weird little songs about cats getting to know who they are.

[00:20:37] Andi: That doesn't feel weird to me. It doesn't feel out of sorts to me in that story because that's the point of Cats. But I don't know that's the point of Via Galactica, is to tell all these quirky little tidbits. I feel like it should be more about telling us a story of this one guy who's trying to [00:21:00] be something, or he's not even trying to be something.

[00:21:02] Andi: He becomes something that he wasn't planning to be. 

[00:21:05] Jonathon: So any producers out there, if you wanna redo Via Galactica, we've got some great ideas about how to fix it. 

[00:21:12] Andi: I wish... I don't know if the other writers are still around, but I wish Galt MacDermot were still around so we could talk to him about it. But I also really like the song Dance the Dark Away, which is a fun song they sing about getting on the ark.

[00:21:30] Andi: And they sing the word Tumala, which I don't know if it's just a sound they're making or if... 'Cause I tried to look up what Tumala means, or if they're actually using this word, what I found on Google, which is a Native American word which means tomorrow or afterlife. So I'm like, is that a coincidence, or w- Because there's Tumala Mountain In Oregon [00:22:00] which has that meaning, which means tomorrow or afterlife in the Chinook Wawa language.

[00:22:07] Andi: So I wonder if that's 

[00:22:09] Jonathon: intentional. Yeah. For Hair in Good Morning Starshine, the lyrics are glippy, glop, gloopy, nibby, nabby, nooby, wa wa wee wo. Right? Or is, is it... Yeah. 

[00:22:19] Andi: Which is why I wasn't sure if it was a choice. 

[00:22:25] Jonathon: Or is it like how Aldebaran is an actual star that has a name that's rooted in other things too, so.

[00:22:32] Jonathon: And I thought it was 

[00:22:32] Andi: something they made up. Yeah, so not sure. There was a concert in 2002, and a lot of the songs are different, and it gives me th- the indication that a lot of plot changes were made in a good way, that they made some better choices because there's some songs in there that really develop Gabriel's character and his relationship to the people that he's meeting, especially to Omaha, [00:23:00] seems to be fleshed out a little bit more.

[00:23:02] Andi: But definitely listening to some of those new songs was cool. You can find the original Broadway recording at the New York Public Library, and you can also read the original libretto there. So I would definitely recommend that because sometimes I think it's good to read stuff that doesn't work. You can make your own opinions or your own decisions about why it's not working.

[00:23:31] Andi: And then if you're a creator, you can then take from that something helpful maybe. Another big thing that was really cutting edge about this show, which worked against it but I think w- was made it really ahead of its time, was that it was sung through, which at that time was not a thing. The like musicals at that time were not fully sung through.

[00:23:59] Andi: [00:24:00] It wasn't until shows like the British mega musicals like Les Mis, other shows like that y- we didn't see sung-through shows. So it was just a new 

[00:24:11] Jonathon: idea. Jesus Christ Superstar was coming out right around here too, which is also a sung-through show, but it's right at the cutting edge of that development, and soon that would be the musical that would take over Broadway.

[00:24:24] Andi: And I think maybe Jesus Christ Superstar had an edge over this one because it had source material. 

[00:24:31] Jonathon: Yeah. Listeners at home, it is always easier to adapt than to come up with your new thing original. They say that a lot, and it is true. Adapt where you can, please. It's so 

[00:24:44] Andi: true. This coming from people that almost always write original musicals.

[00:24:48] Andi: But we don't learn. Also, you can do public domain, like the Bible. I think that is something that's interesting to, to think about, that it was just [00:25:00] so out there. I don't know if we did the show today, would it work? Maybe not, uh, without a lot of rewriting the plot and development to make it more focused.

[00:25:16] Andi: Before we move on to our next show, what makes this a sci-fi show? This is so obvious. 

[00:25:23] Jonathon: Well, there's no argument that this is science fiction. There are spaceships and future technology and stuff about, like, genetics and math and neurology, and it takes place 1,000 years in the future, so we're checking, like, all science fiction boxes on this one.

[00:25:40] Andi: Yeah, and I'd say the only thing that takes it away from science fiction, and we haven't talked a lot about this specifically, but, like, how the music helps tell that we're in a science fiction world. Because I think we haven't gotten into that with other shows because they've [00:26:00] been more on the cusp of what science fiction is.

[00:26:03] Andi: If we're in a science fiction world, does the music of the show tell 

[00:26:08] Jonathon: us that? It, it doesn't necessarily have to be, like, oops, all theremins in the pit. If we're dealing in a post-apocalyptic world, are people using whatever instruments they can scrounge up and around? Or is it a lot of electronic stuff going on, like synthesizers and guitars and a very electro-pop kind of a thing?

[00:26:27] Jonathon: Is that the designation of the future? Is it all weird crashes and bangs and atonality and what people in the 1920s thought would be future music? It's tricky to s- I can't blanket say this is the sound of the future, because I don't think anybody really knows that. But we can say in this future world, how is the music playing a part in the setting?

[00:26:52] Jonathon: And with this one, since we've said a lot that this is hair in space, in the sense that we're seeing this sort of commune kind of a [00:27:00] thing, and we're making that explicit connection to the hippie movement, and maybe at the time there could also be something said that rock in musical theater was future music 

[00:27:09] Andi: Yeah, I could see that.

[00:27:10] Andi: But I think this particular brand of rock doesn't feel ... And I m- I might be speaking anachronistically, but it doesn't feel that futuristic to me. It sounds like it's still stuck in the '60s. And if this is a show about the future, it sounds like the past. That would just be my one criticism about the music, 'cause I think in general I really like the music, but if we're talking about does it tell me we're in the future, I say no, it does not.

[00:27:42] Andi: Now let's dig into the movie Earth Girls Are Easy, a 1988 sci-fi musical romantic comedy directed by Julian Temple, and it was based on the song from Julie [00:28:00] Brown's 1984 EP Goddess In Progress. Julie Brown was a big pop star in the '80s, a parody pop star much like Weird Al. The film stars Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, who were married at the time, Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, Julie Brown, Charlie Rocket, and Michael McKean.

[00:28:25] Jonathon: Can I talk about how stacked this 

[00:28:26] Andi: cast is, by the way? This is early career for a, a lot of these, not Geena and Jeff, but for Jim and Damon Wayans, and Charlie Rocket too. And 

[00:28:38] Jonathon: they just lucked out in getting these amazing people who are gonna go on and do these amazing things in this cast. Regardless of what you think about this movie, regardless about what you think about the material, just the performances are totally worthwhile for this.

[00:28:56] Andi: Do you wanna talk about the plot? 

[00:28:59] Jonathon: Yeah, let's [00:29:00] talk about the plot. Spoilers. Spoilers. Spoilers. Geena Davis is playing Valerie Gayle, and Valerie is in a relationship to Dr. Ted Gallagher, being played by Charlie Rocket, and they are engaged, but Dr. Ted is having an affair with, uh, another woman, and so they are not intimate with each other despite Valerie really wanting to have that intimacy going on.

[00:29:32] Jonathon: But she doesn't know that yet. She just thinks, "Oh, no, he's must be nervous about the wedding and his libido is down." And there's a whole sequence in here about who she could transform herself into to raise his libido a bit. 

[00:29:45] Andi: Yes, I love that sequence. 

[00:29:47] Jonathon: Then there are aliens who are passing by Earth, Wiploc, Zeebo, and Mac.

[00:29:54] Jonathon: They've been flying around the galaxy for a long time. It's unclear exactly why. They [00:30:00]joined up with some galactic exploration committee. 

[00:30:02] Andi: I, I don't know why they're out there, but I know at this point they're looking for- Women. 

[00:30:08] Jonathon: And all they can do up there on their, their phallic looking spaceship is to look at furry porn because they are furry.

[00:30:18] Jonathon: They're color-coded for your convenience. 

[00:30:21] Andi: Oh, that's interesting that they are many different colors, like blue and yellow and red, and the Galactica cast was all painted different colors as well. 

[00:30:31] Jonathon: Yeah, and we see these aliens pick up a transmission from Earth and of course it is Valerie in her swimming pool, and they get so excited that they crash land the ship into the swimming pool and flood the ship and now the ship is broken.

[00:30:48] Andi: Yes, that's right, and that's why Woody has to come over to help drain the pool. 

[00:30:55] Jonathon: Because Woody is a surfer bum. He makes his living draining pools, and it [00:31:00] takes a day and so he's just drink a beer and- And no 

[00:31:02] Andi: one's really that phased by the spaceship and the random aliens landing on Earth. 

[00:31:08] Jonathon: Yeah, at one point Valerie's worried that they're gonna dissect her and remove her body parts, but that goes away very quickly and soon she, "Hey, you want to come in for a sandwich or something, you weird furry aliens?"

[00:31:19] Jonathon: So we got these three aliens and they're hanging out in the house. 

[00:31:24] Andi: And they do this funny little instrumental soundscape-y 

[00:31:29] Jonathon: piece. It is a musical and we have the diegetic sounds of them adapting to life on Earth as a part of this. And sound is very important to the aliens too because they manage to pick up our language and our culture through watching television.

[00:31:45] Andi: As all aliens learn English. Yes. 

[00:31:49] Jonathon: And they are also... They can imitate sound very well. So at one point when Dr. Ted leaves a message on the answering machine, which if you are below a certain age, [00:32:00] we didn't have voicemail back then. I know. Do people even use voicemail? There was a, a cassette tape that would record a message from somebody calling, and you could hear it out loud as they were being left.

[00:32:11] Andi: You're 

[00:32:11] Jonathon: still saying 

[00:32:11] Andi: things people n- might not know, like what is a cassette tape? Oh, God. It was a machine that was old technology that you had to hook up to your telephone, which was a landline in your home, not a cellphone. A- and that when people called it would transfer it to the machine and it would record the message of the person that called, and it would have an outgoing message that you would record too that would say, "I'm not here.

[00:32:38] Andi: Please leave a message," or you could be more creative. But yeah, so Valerie of course in the '80s had an answering machine. 

[00:32:44] Jonathon: And Dr. Ted calls and the aliens are able to exactly duplicate the sound of Dr. Ted on the answering machine to Valerie. Valerie's like, "Oh, no, maybe I should take him back or whatever, but if he comes over here he's gonna discover that we got these three weird [00:33:00] furry men in my house.

[00:33:01] Jonathon: So I know what I'm gonna do. Uh, I work as a beautician, and I'm gonna take them over to the beauty parlor where my great friend Candy Pink is working, and we can give these boys a makeover to make them look more human." 

[00:33:17] Andi: And Candy Pink is played by Julie Brown. 

[00:33:20] Jonathon: I personally had no awareness of Julie Brown before coming into my recent rewatch of this movie, but in doing the research for it I'm discovering, oh, wow, cool, Julie Brown is fricking awesome.

[00:33:33] Andi: Well, I mean, it's like her brainchild. I love that she didn't give herself the lead, that she has a sort of side character role but still dominates the screen every time. 

[00:33:45] Jonathon: So they go to the beauty parlor, and it turns out that underneath all that fur they're actually hunky guys. So Jim Carrey ended up being the surfer dude, and Damon Wayans, he was sporty, right?

[00:33:57] Jonathon: He was, like, a little athletic. [00:34:00] And Jeff Goldblum was the quiet, sensitive type. 

[00:34:02] Andi: Obviously the most hunky of 

[00:34:05] Jonathon: them all. So of course then they go out clubbing because what are you gonna do with three hunky guys on a Friday night if you're in the Valley in the 1980s is you go clubbing. Go to a go-go club.

[00:34:18] Jonathon: And they are super popular when they get there. Jim Carrey alien has this very long tongue. All the ladies are like, "I'm getting with that." And they're all very good dancers. The Damon Wayans alien ends up getting in a dance battle with this one guy over a random girl. Through the alien's powerful mimicry abilities, Damon Wayans is able to match the other guy's very cool dance moves and improve on them with his own strange alien anatomy, so he's the most popular guy at the club because of his mad dancing skills.

[00:34:55] Jonathon: Meanwhile, Valerie is all sad and mopey, but Jeff Goldblum [00:35:00] alien plays piano like he's been playing it for decades. 'Cause he's just basically Jeff Goldblum. I wonder how many aliens Jeff Goldblum has played in his career. Yeah, we should count. Off the top of my head, it's Earth Girls Are Easy, it's Thor.

[00:35:18] Jonathon: Ragnarok. The game master in that, uh, and in a short after that. And there's also the alien in Asteroid City. 

[00:35:26] Andi: Oh yeah, he was the alien in Asteroid City. So three? 

[00:35:29] Jonathon: But I'm sure there are more. She feels sad, and she ends up bringing the boys back home So then Ted shows up Valerie says, "Oh, this is just... I, I want a boy band in a competition, and so they're here at my house."

[00:35:44] Jonathon: Dr. Ted tries to arrest them, and He calls off the wedding It's looking like her, her relationship with Dr. Ted is over, and so she sleeps with Jeff Goldblum alien So the next [00:36:00] day Woody has finally finished draining the pool, and he's like, "Hey, dudes. Let's go celebrate and go to the beach." 

[00:36:06] Andi: The other two aliens, Damon Wayans alien and Jim Carrey alien They're all like, "Yeah."

[00:36:13] Jonathon: So they head toward the beach, and then you have the famous 'Cause I'm a Blonde sequence after that And that's really the only reason they go to the beach is so that they can do this song And I love this sequence not just for what it is, but because it is placed in the last moment anything fun could be placed before we have to start winding up the plot.

[00:36:37] Jonathon: If we're dealing with a three-act structure of storytelling, in the first act you gotta get the characters in trouble, then there's a little break in the action, and in the second act, you keep getting them into trouble. You raise the stakes on the trouble. You try to figure it out, but you don't actually solve it yet, and then there's a little break in the action.

[00:36:55] Jonathon: And then the third act is you get the characters out of trouble. In the two spots in [00:37:00]between the act breaks, so between acts one and two, and then acts two and three, you can have a moment of some sort of tonal shift in the action. And we see this in musicals. So in Guys and Dolls, between the first act and the second act, and I'm talking about story structure acts, not like where the intermission is in the show, you have the song Guys and Dolls, where two minor characters step forward and they sing something that doesn't further the plot but carries through with the themes of the show.

[00:37:25] Jonathon: And what that extra song is called, a charm song, not because it is charming, but because it's like a little charm that you put on a charm bracelet. It's a lovely bauble that's not essential to your wardrobe, but it's something very nice to have on board. And this even goes back further than that. If you look at Macbeth, there's murder and death, and then you have the sort of like finished act one section, and then you have a porter who, like, comes to the door, and it's this hilarious sequence where you bust out the best comic actor you can for that moment because you just need a moment of levity after, like, bloody knives appearing before people and hallucinations and murder attempts [00:38:00]

[00:38:00] Andi: And the same thing happens in Hamlet with the gravedigger scene 

[00:38:03] Jonathon: Like, guessing about, like, how people lived their lives and digging graves and cracking jokes and things like that, and it's the last moment that you can do that before there's a bloodbath Where everyone dies.

[00:38:13] Jonathon: So the Emma Blonde sequence happens at the last moment where anything like that can happen. It happens at that traditional, like, spot between acts two and three in the storytelling because then after that, the, the aliens accidentally hold up a convenience store and they get arrested. 

[00:38:29] Andi: Because they go the wrong way on the highway

[00:38:32] Andi: And so they go in a high-speed police chase and then they crash, and that's how they end up at the hospital with Dr. Ted. 

[00:38:39] Jonathon: Dr. Ted realizes that they actually have two hearts, and they're like, "Wow, I'm gonna dissect these weird dudes and I'm gonna make my fortune this way," because Dr. Ted, not a nice guy.

[00:38:50] Jonathon: Then the Jeff Goldblum alien and Valerie, they decide to get themselves arrested so that they could get a ride to the police station . [00:39:00] And while they're there, Jeff Goldblum uses his magic love touch to make the two cops fall in love with each other, and they decide they're gonna... Shopping for a home in the suburbs 'cause they're gonna settle down with each other, and I love that for them.

[00:39:15] Jonathon: So they rescue their friends, but they rescue their friends because they're able to mimic sounds, and so they convince Dr. Ted that he's going insane. And he runs into Valerie in the parking lot and they're like, "Let's just go home. I'm tired of all this. Let's just get engaged. I'm sick of this. I'm so sorry.

[00:39:31] Jonathon: I was a jerk. I won't do this again." And Valerie's like, "Okay, I'll take you back." So they all go back to Valerie's home. Oh, and the aliens are sitting in the backseat hidden and clearly visible. So they're at the home and the aliens are preparing for takeoff, and it looks like Valerie is gonna get together with Dr.

[00:39:48] Jonathon: Ted. Yeah, they're gonna elope. Candy Pink shows up there 'cause why not? So the aliens start taking off, and they do one last love touch to Valerie and Dr. Ted, and they start making out in [00:40:00] the empty pool. But Valerie stops it and she's still undergoing the effects, but she's like, "No, I just realized I'm actually in love with the Jeff Goldblum alien."

[00:40:09] Jonathon: Because he's my real husband. Because true love. And that's a part of the thing, too. It's real cute 'cause Jeff Goldblum's like, "Wait, I'm your true love? All right." Dr. Ted is still, like, writhing under the love touch in the swimming pool, and then the cat comes up and then the two of them are just, like, cuddling with each other.

[00:40:28] Jonathon: And Valerie ends up flying off with these three aliens, and the movie ends with this very phallic-looking spaceship flying through a circular asteroid 

[00:40:42] Andi: Classic 

[00:40:43] Jonathon: There is a lot of sex in this movie 

[00:40:46] Andi: The title is Earth Girls Are Easy, so- Yeah. It's not a surprise There is a expectation that is set, and then it is met.

[00:40:57] Jonathon: I remember when I was little, like this show was [00:41:00] on Comedy Central 

[00:41:01] Andi: Yeah. It might have been edited though, 'cause I don't remember the sex scenes When I was little I don't remember the sex scenes either But I'm just saying, they probably weren't on TV. But I do know that a lot of the stuff was still permissible on television back then, like sexism and misogyny A little bit 

[00:41:20] Jonathon: of gay panic thrown in there too 

[00:41:21] Andi: Yeah, like a lot of that kind of stuff, like the attitudes and the way women are treated and thought of was definitely there.

[00:41:31] Andi: It says it's rated- PG. Look at that That's crazy. It's so inappropriate 

[00:41:40] Jonathon: for PG I'm also gonna say too that I think nowadays we're in a sort of more conservative era when it comes to our media 

[00:41:50] Andi: I agree because there is like all of that bad stuff, but then there's that scene when Candy Pink is giving Val [00:42:00] her makeover in the salon, and that is one of the campiest, gayest scenes.

[00:42:07] Andi: It's like out of a John Waters film. I mean, it is gorgeous. And that kinda brings me to the attempt at the musical, the stage musical, the reading 

[00:42:17] Jonathon: Yeah. Let's talk about that 

[00:42:19] Andi: So in 2001 there was a reading, there were several stage readings of the musical play version, and Julie Brown was going to be in it Reprising her role Of course.

[00:42:36] Andi: And Kristin Chenoweth was playing Valerie. Marc Kudisch was playing Ted, and Hunter Foster was cast as Jeff Goldblum So 

[00:42:47] Jonathon: why, oh why does the show always have the most amazing cast? Super bummed this did not get green-lit. One of the readings happened just days after September 11th, so yeah It 

[00:42:59] Andi: [00:43:00] was just bad timing for getting much done at all in New York.

[00:43:05] Andi: It was about a spaceship crashing. Yeah, so I just think people were extra sensitive about anything in that realm 

[00:43:14] Jonathon: There's some alternate universe out there where in a Broadway season in like 2003 we had a long-running Assassins and we had a long-running Earth Girls Are Easy 

[00:43:25] Andi: So anyway, I just wanted to mention that there was an attempt at doing the stage show, and it probably- Would've been awesome, but it didn't work out.

[00:43:36] Andi: They did try to do it a few more times, but it just, it never picked up traction. So part of the reason is it's a little bit of a jukebox musical, uh, so that might be 

[00:43:50] Jonathon: part 

[00:43:50] Andi: of the reason 

[00:43:50] Jonathon: why- The music that wasn't written by Julie Brown for this was written by Nile Rodgers, and Nile Rodgers is this amazing artist who [00:44:00] did...

[00:44:00] Jonathon: And I'm just gonna run through some of the songs on his repertoire. Dance, Dance, Dance, Everybody Dance, I Want Your Love, Le Freak, Good Times. His, part of his thing was sampled for Rapper's Delight. We Are Family, I'm Comin' Out, uh, Upside Down, David Bowie's Let's Dance, Duran Duran's Reflect, Like a Virgin.

[00:44:20] Jonathon: Songwriter behind all of those. He is so definitively the sound, at least for me, of the 1980s. So I understand why the people who are making the live musical version of it wanted to capture that sound. 

[00:44:32] Andi: Yeah, exactly. I think in this case the story is very solid. The characters are very clear and great, and maybe the aliens could be developed a little more roundly.

[00:44:44] Andi: But 

[00:44:45] Jonathon: they're so fun. And that's it. They're color-coded and you go, "Okay, this guy is the party guy. This guy is the sporty guy." They are delineated. I think the reason why we're clamoring for more development on them though was because they were played by three great [00:45:00] actors. 

[00:45:00] Andi: And that's why we didn't even call them by their character names.

[00:45:03] Andi: We were literally calling them by the actor names because they're so definitively played by those actors. 

[00:45:08] Jonathon: Yeah, who are, uh, as we said, 

[00:45:10] Andi: unknown at the time. But in the stage show they cut one of the aliens. Aw. Yeah, because like we said, the aliens are not defined, and I think when you don't have these big personalities in the roles they don't stand out as different from one another.

[00:45:29] Jonathon: You'd really want that to be in the text instead of just in the performance. 

[00:45:33] Andi: I think it would become difficult on stage to really delineate between all the alien characters if there were three. So I would love to see this on stage, but I get why it didn't fly. And some of the musical numbers that were considered were like Funky Town and Eternal Flame, True Colors, a lot of fun '80s songs.

[00:45:59] Andi: True [00:46:00] Colors sung by the Jeff 

[00:46:01] Jonathon: Goldblum 

[00:46:01] Andi: character. Absolutely. Yeah, and maybe some of the reason that it didn't move forward is 'cause that probably would've been difficult to get the rights to all those songs as well. 

[00:46:11] Jonathon: I bet nowadays it would be easier to do that part at least because we've got examples of like Moulin Rouge and, and Juliet that would have all of these different sources for the jukebox material.

[00:46:21] Andi: But since we're mentioning the music and we talked a little bit about Nile Rodgers, let's talk a little bit more about the music a- and how it functions in the musical. 

[00:46:31] Jonathon: We talked a bit about 'Cause I'm a Blonde already, and how that sort of functions as your traditional golden era musical theater charm song.

[00:46:39] Jonathon: Beyond that, the music of this musical, I think it's never like, "Here's the traditional I am song," but there are moments that sort of, you know, do function to pull out character a little bit, and then there are a lot of moments of, "Here we are just hanging out," that in LA, in Los Angeles, like in the club scene, having the time of our lives.

[00:46:59] Jonathon: So there need to [00:47:00] be a lot of, like, music things that sort of fulfill that function, when they go to the club or when they're driving down the highway. But yeah, even then, there are definitely some more musical theater-y kind of moments, like the one where Valerie is going through the makeover and all the different versions of herself.

[00:47:14] Jonathon: There's the one where, like, she's smashing up Dr. Ted's stuff, and it's a great revenge song happening there and very '80s. 

[00:47:20] Andi: And also because Julie Brown was mainly known as a artist who parodies a lot of Madonna, there's also a direct reference to the Madonna movie and song, Who's That Girl? At one point, Geena Davis holds up the record of Who's That Girl?

[00:47:38] Andi: But that movie, I think, had just come out or was coming out around the same time. So it's really interesting to throw that really random and specific and current reference into that moment, which is also so directly tied to who Julie Brown is. 

[00:47:57] Jonathon: And I love it too that the director [00:48:00] of the piece, Julian Temple, primarily known for music videos, so when we get into a musical number, it feels like we're in an '80s music video all of a sudden.

[00:48:08] Andi: All the songs, I would say, don't function as much like musical theater pieces as they do like music video numbers, which works because we're in an '80s movie. We're in a movie that is written by an '80s pop star. And so using the medium of music video to tell the musical story visually as well is so appropriate and really works.

[00:48:37] Andi: And also is another reason why I wonder how it would work on stage. And also because at a certain point, after I'm a Blonde, the music itself as a storytelling method drops out. 

[00:48:51] Jonathon: Yeah, and that is a thing that some musicals do, too, where if you look at A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, once you get into the...

[00:48:58] Jonathon: Like, after the [00:49:00] intermission, there just aren't that many new songs in the show. Uh- A lot of reprises, and even then not that many of them. Like, there's Lovely reprise, which happens, which is fantastic. But then you get the slamming doors farce, and if you try to stick a song in there, you're gonna wreck the momentum of it.

[00:49:17] Jonathon: So you just gotta let it play out, and that's a large part of the second act of that show. 

[00:49:21] Andi: Or, like, 1776 where there's three hours of dialogue before the next song. And then another cool thing about the soundtrack is that they're all performed by real people, not, like, just Geena Davis. No offense, Geena Davis.

[00:49:37] Andi: I don't even know if she actually sang or if it was voiceover. Yeah, I just think it's a really fun movie in spite of all the uh, obvious tropes of its time, and the music really elevates the story. If it was just the same movie and you took out all the song- like, the [00:50:00] actual singing and stuff, I think it would lose a lot.

[00:50:02] Andi: So I think that is a really, a testament of whether it should be a musical or not. Could it exist without the music? And I would say no, because I think it was founded on this musical idea. So it's inherently musical in its conception, and music is fundamental in the storytelling of it. So I think it is not only fair but right to consider it a musical.

[00:50:29] Andi: So let's talk about the sci-fi-ness of it, which I think is very clear and obvious. 

[00:50:36] Jonathon: Yep. Spaceships, aliens. Check off those boxes. 

[00:50:40] Andi: Yeah, it's just straight up sci-fi. It's like when we open the textbook to what is sci-fi, this is ... It's at the top of the list. 

[00:50:50] Jonathon: Yep. We get those genre indicators right there from the opening scenes of the film.

[00:50:55] Andi: And then again, as we were talking about with does the music of the [00:51:00] piece tell us something about the story of the world? And I'd say yes because of how the director uses music video as the medium to tell the story. It's ... Uh, 'cause this is not a story about the future like Via Galactica is. It's a story about now, which now then was the '80s, and so so it's a story about the '80s, and the '80s was MTV, and MTV is music videos then.

[00:51:29] Andi: It's not now, but then it was. It was music video television and just music videos, and that's what the movie does. And yeah, and the music is '

[00:51:39] Jonathon: 80s. And it's such a heightened version of the reality too of the times. This feels like every day was just the best day ever, and because you were living in some, like, 1980s music video fantasy.

[00:51:51] Jonathon: And it's, uh, 

[00:51:51] Andi: and it's almost everything is almost diegetic as well. We were talking about the aliens playing the soundscape song is very diegetic. But [00:52:00] the fact that she says, "Oh, I won a contest from MTV," she's referencing specific things, like referencing MTV directly. And when she holds up the e- Madonna record, that's so specific.

[00:52:13] Andi: Like, I don't know how they even did it, like how it's timely of it's specifically that moment in time. So yeah, I think the music captures exactly the feeling of that, uh, thing. So before we wrap up this section, let's do our tech check. 

[00:52:30] Jonathon: Oh, tech 

[00:52:31] Andi: check. So we wanna say on a scale of one to 10 how scientifically plausible the world of the musicals are.

[00:52:42] Andi: So let's start with Via Galactica. How realistic or scientifically plausible is it? 

[00:52:48] Jonathon: Okay, this is an interesting one for me because there's what science thought was possible in 1972 versus what we know is possible [00:53:00] now in science. 

[00:53:01] Andi: Let's look at it from the first perspective. 

[00:53:05] Jonathon: Okay. So in that sense, I'm sure that they were

[00:53:08] Jonathon: They thought, "Yeah, you know what? This isn't too far off from scientifically accurate." We landed people on the moon. It's only gonna be, like, a little bit before we put everybody in the solar system. We're gonna come up with these mood-altering hats, which, like, we have mood-altering drugs now. We have antidepressant medicine.

[00:53:23] Jonathon: We have antianxiety medication. So yeah, that's a thing. Like, in terms of the spaceships to go to another star, sure. If we're progressing this quickly, we just put people on the moon, of course, we're gonna get to another star pretty soon. That's just self-evident. Didn't they say it's 

[00:53:39] Andi: 1,000 years in the future too?

[00:53:41] Andi: They were really projecting. 

[00:53:43] Jonathon: In 1,000 years in the future we can take 100-year journey to something that is, like, 15 light years away. That just makes sense. We can totally work around that. So I think it's easier to give higher scores to works that take place in the farther future because we can [00:54:00] just assume, okay, if we're not extinct, we're just gonna solve a lot of problems by that point.

[00:54:03] Jonathon: So I'm gonna give this, like, a seven or so, maybe an eight. 

[00:54:08] Andi: Okay. I'd score it a little bit lower because of, like, they're not wearing spacesuits. 

[00:54:15] Jonathon: Yeah, and they're on a barren rock. That is a problem. 

[00:54:17] Andi: Yeah. Uh, and they're different colors, like the sort of science of why are they gold and blue, that doesn't make sense to me.

[00:54:25] Andi: Some of the biology of it doesn't make sense to me. The 

[00:54:28] Jonathon: why of it is confusing to me. The how of it, we can throw in genes onto things to make things glow. 

[00:54:37] Andi: Yeah. Like everyone's... Or maybe everyone's drinking a lot of mercury. I don't know. 

[00:54:42] Jonathon: Yeah, 'cause why not? It's possible. I don't know why anybody would do it, but it's possible.

[00:54:47] Andi: I guess it's not impossible. I could see, like, maybe, like, babies having, like, different bone densities. I don't know. I've read, like, Galapagos, where we've evolved into having, like, fur. 

[00:54:59] Jonathon: Like I said, the why [00:55:00] of it is confusing to me. I- I'm very uncomfortable with the why, but the how is plausible. 

[00:55:05] Andi: Okay, so let's say I'm more like a six, but I'm also not super low with, uh, our other comic book worlds, where they're, like, literally cartoons.

[00:55:16] Andi: I'm, I'm gonna give a little more credence to our speculative fiction because it's not totally impossible. So let's talk about Earth Girls. 

[00:55:25] Jonathon: This is another tricky one, I think, 'cause there were attempts to make the aliens alien. Like, they look very different in terms of the fur and the coloration, again, with the coloration from humans.

[00:55:40] Jonathon: They speak a different language. Their control setup looks very different. Their ship does look like... The interiors of it do look like there are all kinds of, like, things that are designed more for their anatomy than for our anatomy perhaps. If we shave them, will they look like humans? No. In fact, is it likely that when we encounter aliens, they're [00:56:00] gonna be, like, bipedal cat people?

[00:56:02] Jonathon: No, they're gonna be, like, weird energy blobs or squids or spiders or rock monsters. It's not gonna be that. And they're probably gonna be crabs with the way that evolution 

[00:56:10] Andi: goes. Yeah, I'm with you on the four, maybe three, but, um, again, Gina needs a space suit, and I agree that the aliens are not realistic at all as far as what we might actually encounter if we encounter aliens someday.

[00:56:27] Andi: I think the only part that's unbelievable is when they're shaved, and then they look exactly like humans. They're, they're hunky guys now. Look at that. Now they're hunky 

[00:56:36] Jonathon: guys. Which I guess in the logic of, hey, we're all just having a romp of a good time on this, sure, like, logic goes out the window, but we are literally talking here about how logical it is, so we gotta take the points off for that.

[00:56:48] Andi: Yeah, for '80s m- movie logic, I give it a 10, but for, like, real-life logic, I give it a three or a four, like you said. 

[00:56:54] Jonathon: We're, we're not grading on a curve here. 

[00:56:56] Andi: Not for this. [00:57:00] Let's welcome our guest, Briana Harris. 

[00:57:04] Jonathon: Hey, Briana. 

[00:57:05] Andi: Hi, everybody. Thank you for having me. So Briana is a musical theater writer, someone I write with.

[00:57:14] Andi: Can you tell us more about yourself, Briana, and some things that you're working on related to sci-fi musicals? 

[00:57:21] Briana: I have written a few sci-fi musicals/operas. Basically, I'm a musical theater writer. Some of my recent projects are a virtual space opera called The Dragon Transfer set on the International Space Station.

[00:57:36] Briana: That turned me into a space nerd, 'cause I had to do a lot of research. We were writing it during 2020. My entry point into it was watching this SpaceX Dragon capsule land at the ISS for the first time, and watching the astronauts greet each other in May of 2020, and I was like, "I'm just jealous that they could-" They had really sophisticated [00:58:00] masks.

[00:58:00] Briana: But yeah, that was just the inspiration and jumping-off point for that. So we turned it into kind of a space musical sitcom with one crew coming in and one crew that had been there for a while. Recently, in April, I had a concert of a musical that I'm writing about Pluto. It's called Pluto: A Rock Opera.

[00:58:21] Andi: Get it? 

[00:58:22] Briana: Pluto is a character, and it's the story of Pluto's discovery over 115 years, as told from the perspective of Pluto and their five moons. Andi and I are also writing a sci-fi musical. 

[00:58:35] Andi: Yeah. We wrote another show. Briana and I work on another show with a sci-fi twist about Pompeii. 

[00:58:43] Briana: Maybe a little closer, in a way, to reality, because we didn't know this when we started writing it, but during the process we read this article about how they have charred scrolls from Herculaneum that were burned up in the [00:59:00] volcanic eruption.

[00:59:01] Briana: And then they had this open contest inviting programmers to use AI to unravel the contents of these scrolls and try to predict, based on the text that was there, what these ancient texts were. But yeah, there was a kid who found the word purple in there, and we were fascinated by that idea, so we were like, "Okay, that's definitely going in the show."

[00:59:27] Briana: And he's a time-traveling tech genius kid, and he's a trans guy, and he's gonna go back and prove that trans people have always existed. 

[00:59:38] Andi: But he also loves Elon Musk, so he's a flawed character. 

[00:59:42] Briana: Yeah. Problematic. We may have to change some of those things. We'll have to see how Musk shapes out in the future.

[00:59:52] Briana: He's a full Nazi, so 

[00:59:53] Andi: we'll consider taking that out. 

[00:59:57] Briana: Don't put real people in. When 

[00:59:59] Andi: we [01:00:00] started writing it in grad school during the first Trump administration ... we had a lot more specific political references. A couple of them are still vaguely there, but because they were so specific, later when they were less recognizable as references, they were really offensive.

[01:00:22] Andi: The show involves time travel, very sci-fi, and because the protagonist is a tech bro, it's very sci-fi in that way. Which is funny, because the scroll reading and the machine learning and AI and stuff, when we were writing it a few years ago, it was before the big AI explosion. So it, it seemed- None of us were interacting 

[01:00:46] Briana: with it.

[01:00:47] Andi: Yeah, it seemed more sci-fi than it would be today. It was really advanced technology for its time, and now it's just, oh, now AI is a thing that is kinda normal. 

[01:00:58] Jonathon: This is fascinating to me, because [01:01:00] when we as writers, i- if we're writing about future stuff, we'll throw in all kinds of things, and sometimes on our plausibility scale we try to make it as plausible as possible or not very plausible at all, depending on what sort of story we wanna tell.

[01:01:10] Jonathon: But we throw in these elements because we think that it's gonna work with the storytelling of it, not because we think that this will happen in the future necessarily. So when we nail it, like when we get it right, it's like it makes me feel a little bit weird, honestly. 

[01:01:25] Andi: Yeah, that's how we were feeling.

[01:01:26] Andi: We were like, "Wait." With the scroll thing, it kept getting bigger and bigger news, and the AI stuff was getting more and more sophisticated, and then Big Balls got into Doge. It definitely wasn't Big Balls who decoded the scroll, but the guy who decoded the scroll who won the contest, he was in Doge. I mean, that doesn't surprise me at all.

[01:01:48] Jonathon: Why does that feel like a weird reverse version of Bletchley Park during World War II, where they have scouted the country for people who are like, "You're a chess champion, a really sophisticated musician. [01:02:00] You are a college professor. Now come and break the most sophisticated code ever because you did these really cool other accomplishments."

[01:02:06] Jonathon: It's like, "Oh, cool, you decoded ancient texts that were burned up in a volcano to ash and you figured out the writing that was on there. That's great. Come and ruin the US government." 

[01:02:16] Andi: I just thought that connection is so wild, because we were already connecting our protagonist, who was a scroll decoder, with Elon Musk.

[01:02:27] Andi: So then for it to actually also be accurate- What's the opposite of historical? Happening right now. Yet another thing about this show is it's supposed to be a warning about disasters and how to avoid them. Oops. 

[01:02:44] Briana: Yeah, it keeps getting more relevant and true, and that's kinda creepy. 

[01:02:51] Andi: And that's why we pivoted to this chiromancy cheese musical because, one, The Pompeii show is almost too scary and [01:03:00] relevant and current

[01:03:01] Andi: And two, because it's dealing with gender and transgender topics, it's a little bit on fire as far as producers go. And three, because it's a huge cast and it's more expensive to put up. And so by doing this smaller show with only three people, we just feel like it's gonna be a lot easier to get it off the ground and get it produced and out there.

[01:03:28] Andi: And so then we'll get more people to know what we're doing, and then they'll be like, "Oh, what else do you have?" And then we're like, "We have this huge 30-person cast transgender time-traveling political farce. Do you wanna do that?" You're 

[01:03:41] Jonathon: getting your foot in the door with the fortune-telling cheese. So you could do time-traveling transgender farce with a lot of dick jokes.

[01:03:50] Jonathon: So many dick jokes. 

[01:03:51] Andi: Oh, yeah, we didn't mention the dick jokes. There are many dick jokes. 

[01:03:56] Briana: Because ancient Rome. Any serious student of history would [01:04:00] know that we had to include them. 

[01:04:03] Andi: Yeah, they were written on the walls of Pompeii. 

[01:04:07] Briana: They were in the street, in the stones of the streets. 

[01:04:11] Jonathon: The earliest texts from any civilization that we have are dick jokes.

[01:04:16] Jonathon: That's it. 

[01:04:17] Briana: It's like I always say, "Fart joke, 

[01:04:18] Andi: dick joke, done." Speaking of political musical theater, let's talk about Via Galactica and how it has some of the similar problems that Brianna and I are facing with. Too big, too big to fail. Oh, wait, it failed. Oh, no. I know we're all too young to have seen the show, but I know that you've gotten a chance to hear the music, and I know that you're also a big fan of some of Galt's other work.

[01:04:49] Andi: Yes. 

[01:04:50] Briana: I always say my favorite musical is Hair. Tell us your thoughts about the show. In references to Via Galactica, [01:05:00] which you kinda have to dig deep on the internet to find in the first place, but it's usually just people making fun- Of the production aspects of it, which it was the Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark of its era.

[01:05:16] Briana: Production-wise, we're talking about trampolines on stage, and actors falling through the floor of the stage, and getting stuck in the rigging, a rigging system that cost a quarter million dollars in 1972 that did not work. And actor getting stuck in a spaceship for, like, 20 minutes. Apparently they also used wireless mics for, like, the first time on Broadway, and they were picking up the police beat radio frequency broadcasting that instead of the singing.

[01:05:52] Jonathon: You can have the best show ever, and if you get those technical things wrong, then you can't show that you have the best show ever. You start to 

[01:05:59] Andi: [01:06:00] sing, "La la," "Breaker, 

[01:06:00] Jonathon: breaker one nine, one nine." Aspect is running down 42nd. 

[01:06:05] Briana: In retrospect it's like a comedy of errors, all of these tech things going wrong. But it really is such a shame because listening to the music, it slaps.

[01:06:16] Briana: The music is so groovy and so good. From listening to the soundboard recording, I could not get much of the story. And there was that concert recording, I don't have all the details in front of me, of the Cooper Union concert that they did in the early 2000s. That recording is great, but if you just listen to the lyrics, not getting a lot of what the actual story really is, and I think it had some obvious book problems.

[01:06:48] Briana: But the music itself is so awesome. I love those grooves. I was listening to an interview with Rick Gore, the brother of Chris Gore, who wrote [01:07:00] Via Galactica, and he was talking about his brother's purpose in writing it, and he said that even before Voyager he was really obsessed with the idea of space travel and imagining the idea that humans would develop these outposts on other planets, moons, and asteroids.

[01:07:23] Briana: When was Voyager? It's 1977. This is all before that, and they don't really know how uninhabitable everything out there is in our solar system. 

[01:07:36] Jonathon: Space is doing its best to try to kill you. 

[01:07:39] Briana: So yeah, I really resonated with that. It's his brother saying this, so who knows if it was really what he was thinking about.

[01:07:46] Briana: But that for me was like, "Oh, of course it all starts with what if humans were colonizing space?" And then he wanted to see it as like the ancient Greeks. He was into mythology, and he was also thinking of [01:08:00]the British Empire. It's, it's colonization of the world, and how could he work that into a show? I'm not sure if any of this is really true, but according to his brother, Chris Gore worked, uh, as a lifeguard at a health club.

[01:08:15] Briana: There was a guy working out there who was a producer, and they just started talking. 

[01:08:22] Jonathon: Amazing. That's the dream. 

[01:08:26] Briana: He had envisioned this thing as a folk musical, and his brother didn't really know how he came to know Galt MacDermot and work with him. Then all of a sudden it was Broadway bound, and it was the most expensive musical that had ever been made.

[01:08:43] Briana: So this thing spiraled beyond his control. His brother said that during the previews, he would come in, watch things, and be like, "Hey, you need to fix this," or like, "I think you should change that." And, uh, Chris Gore was saying, "You don't understand. I don't have the power to [01:09:00] do any of that." 

[01:09:01] Andi: It's too late. The train is off the tracks.

[01:09:04] Briana: That's also relatable. Most of the material that's out there about Via Galactica came about in 2010, 2011 when Spider-Man- 

[01:09:16] Jonathon: It invites comparison. 

[01:09:17] Andi: Yeah, they were like, "What other flops are out there?" 

[01:09:20] Briana: Yeah. So there's an NPR interview with a producer's daughter. There's this interview with the brother of Chris Gore.

[01:09:28] Briana: It was just a little blip of interest in Via Galactica because of Spider-Man being such a massive flop. There's a, a comment from an actor in the show, Livia Genise, and she was in the original cast. She describes some of the dangers of these trampolines and stuff. She said that Ian Curtis, who played the scientist husband of Virginia Vestoff, was supposed to enter

[01:09:59] Briana: He was in a [01:10:00] box on a kind of railway car thing. So he would enter and exit on a track. And he started singing because it was kind of like a rock opera, and it didn't move, so he's still off stage. And during the tech rehearsal, they were doing the finale, Aldebaran. Traps were supposed to come in under the trampolines, and there was a huge staircase that went on top of the catwalk, and the whole cast was on the catwalk getting ready to go down the staircase.

[01:10:29] Briana: She said, "I guess the cement wasn't the high quality kind." Oh. Oh. The staircase was suspended by cables to the ceiling, along the walls and to the floor. Half the cast was on it, and it gave way. That is scary. If half your cast thinks that they almost died, I think it's pretty hard to get them back on that catwalk again.

[01:10:55] Briana: I think the majority, uh- Of the issues were that the [01:11:00] tech was not there, and it was incredibly unsafe, and these people didn't wanna die. I think that it's a great shame because the music is great. I have a very loose concept of what actually happens in Via Galactica. I know the main character is a intergalactic garbage man.

[01:11:22] Briana: His ship is called the Helen of Troy, and there's an evil scientist who's the head, who wants him to mate with his wife. 

[01:11:34] Andi: I think he was the guy in the box 

[01:11:36] Briana: that got stuck on the track. The guy in the box. Just imagine you start singing and your set piece doesn't move. You're just- 

[01:11:46] Andi: You're backstage singing.

[01:11:48] Jonathon: Yep, in a box. 

[01:11:50] Andi: Yeah, I don't know what you're saying you don't understand the plot. You nailed it. 

[01:11:53] Jonathon: Yeah, that's it. You got it. 

[01:11:55] Andi: Yeah, and then they go to Aldebaran. 

[01:11:57] Briana: Which is a great song. [01:12:00] Aldebaran is the ultimate disco party. Like, yeah, I wanna be there. I really enjoyed it. Galt MacDermot has such a varied musical palette.

[01:12:09] Briana: He's not strictly a musical theater guy, and Galt MacDermot actually wasn't a hippie. He said, "I met these guys, Jim and Jerry, and they said they wanted to write a musical, but they didn't have any music. They took me downtown, and they showed me all the hippies." 

[01:12:25] Jonathon: Behold, a hippie. 

[01:12:26] Briana: He had such a elemental understanding of groove.

[01:12:30] Briana: Partly it might have been because he studied music in South Africa. There's these stories about in the '90s, rappers would drive to his house on Staten Island and ask if they could dig through the basement to find some little-known tracks that they could sample. I'm not sure if there's stats on this, but I think Galt MacDermot might be the most sampled musical theater composer in hip hop, and those are really popular.

[01:12:59] Briana: All [01:13:00] kinds of hip hop songs. Busta Rhymes is probably the most well-known one. Run-DMC, um, you... I think that's one of the cool things about him is that he's a musician's musician. I think that's one of the cool things is that you just don't see that a lot of musical theater. I think maybe David Yazbek is the closest example that I can think of, where, like, a composer has references in all kinds of musical worlds.

[01:13:27] Briana: I heard David Yazbek actually say, uh, at the BMI Advanced Workshop to someone, he said, "I've got an assignment for you. Don't listen to any other musical theater cast albums for a year. Just don't listen to musical theater and listen to everything else." 

[01:13:44] Andi: Good advice. If you do only listen to musicals, if that's your only sonic palette, that's good advice 

[01:13:52] Briana: I think that's one of the reasons why I love this music.

[01:13:55] Briana: It's really the only redeeming thing about Via Galactica. The [01:14:00] music is so good. Uh, there's some interesting wordplay there lyrically sometimes, but mostly it's just a great score. I think the concept of it, I resonate with, what do they call us, emerging writers latching onto a concept and thinking it would be so cool if we did something that was about life on another planet or colonizing space.

[01:14:24] Briana: And, you know, we could, like, address the current issues of the day while setting it in space. Yeah. Or we could do Hamlet in space. I think it was supposed to have a healthy dose of The Odyssey in there. 

[01:14:40] Andi: I see that. 

[01:14:41] Briana: That in fact you might call it a space odyssey. 

[01:14:44] Andi: Let's move on to our other show, Earth Girls Are Easy, a musical film.

[01:14:50] Andi: Brianna, did you get a chance to see the movie, and what are your thoughts? 

[01:14:56] Briana: I did watch this movie. I was surprised that I [01:15:00] hadn't seen it before, because I love a wacky '80s movie. I think it was maybe a little too adult for me to be shown by my babysitter in the '90s. But my favorite wacky '80s movies are mostly because of her.

[01:15:15] Briana: Mannequin, and my all-time favorite movie, Troop Beverly Hills. 

[01:15:20] Andi: Is there a musical of Mannequin? If there isn't, we should do it. Besides the Sondheim show, Evening Primrose. I'm gonna look that up. Hold on. Mannequin. I feel like somebody tried to do a musical of it. Okay, maybe not. All right, I think we found our next musical.

[01:15:38] Briana: Can we call dibs on that? Mannequin is maybe more fantasy than sci-fi.

[01:15:44] Andi: That's okay. 

[01:15:45] Jonathon: We're all inclusive here. 

[01:15:47] Andi: No, we include fantasy. A mannequin coming to life, we include that. 

[01:15:52] Briana: Yeah. She's an ancient Egyptian princess under a curse. Even better. Yeah. There's magic. That, that totally counts. Magic is science fictional.

[01:15:58] Andi: That totally counts. Who [01:16:00] wrote the movie? 'Cause I wanna go get the rights, like, right now.

[01:16:03] Briana: And we have to write a diva song for Kim Cattrall.

[01:16:05] Andi: Do you think she'd do the show? I know she didn't wanna do the Sex and the City reboot, but do you think she'd be in for a Mannequin musical reboot? Anyway, let's talk about Earth Girls Are Easy.

[01:16:18] Andi: Yeah, what'd you think? 

[01:16:19] Briana: I loved it. It is like everything a B movie should be. There's, like, the really gratuitous camera work on Geena Davis in a transparent bikini. One of the greatest things about it is that under all that fur, the aliens are just really hot, and it's like if you shave all the fur, then they just look like regular hot guys.

[01:16:43] Jonathon: And it's not even like their hair is the same color as what their fur is. It's like it's not the neon orange and blue. It's like, okay, he's blonde. 

[01:16:52] Briana: That's one of the greatest conceits of the movie, I think, is that okay, they just look like regular humans under all that fur. But of course, [01:17:00] another great hallmark of a wacky '80s movie is a makeover sequence, which like they start out with Geena Davis in a makeover sequence at the beginning, so when they do it for the aliens, it's particularly rich.

[01:17:13] Briana: A risk to do two makeover sequences in one movie, but- 

[01:17:16] Andi: It's like the makeover sequence for Geena Davis is foreshadowing the need for the makeover sequence of the aliens. It's look, we're so good at makeovers that we can even make these furry aliens look like hot dudes. 

[01:17:32] Briana: I think the real turning point of the film is the dance-off.

[01:17:38] Briana: Yeah, this is a totally irrelevant scene. It doesn't have a lot of payoff other than you wanna see these aliens interact with these valley girl types at the club. Just hilarious. They don't really care what these guys have to say. They don't have to be good at speaking English or [01:18:00] even have any command over it.

[01:18:02] Jonathon: Now hang on, though. I think that there- Yeah ... could be like a horror movie take on all of this because the aliens- Oh, yeah ... main power seems to be like, like excellent mimicry, right? Yeah. So, like the... You shave them and they are humans, and hunky humans, like better than human. If the aliens were to have stayed on Earth, then within like five generations it would've been a genetic takeover of the human species is what happens 'cause they would be better than the humans in every way.

[01:18:28] Jonathon: Yeah, yeah. Like a slow invasion of like humankind until it's all just like, like purple furry creatures who go out and like explore other planets and do things. So the horror movie take, but nope, we're in fun, happy, we're doing makeovers kind of plot land.

[01:18:50] Briana: Yeah. Thankfully they just seem to be so blundering that they have ... Yeah. We ... You know, which I think is ... It stands in [01:19:00] contrast to, in a way, kinda has like the same sort of pulpy elements to it. I don't know if this was like based on an earlier film of some kind. I'm not really sure what the source material of it is other than that Julie Brown released some of these songs on an album beforehand.

[01:19:20] Briana: And I remember hearing those songs growing up because even though my babysitter didn't show me Earth Girls Are Easy, she had a tape of '80s novelty songs, and I'm a Blonde and I Like 'em Big and Stupid were on there. So, you know, when I watched the movie, I was like, "Oh my God, I've heard these songs before."

[01:19:41] Briana: As kids, obviously we thought that Julie Brown songs were- Hilarious. But the idea that you could take novelty songs and turn them into a movie musical or as some people say, just a giant extended music video [01:20:00] is great. And I was reading a little bit about the difficulties of making the movie, which it seems like it went through a pretty long process of its distributor and producers going broke.

[01:20:15] Briana: Yeah, so basically they were ready to make this movie in 1986, and they were trying to get a big name like Madonna or Molly Ringwald or Debra Winger to star in this, and Geena Davis was definitely not at the top of the list. But then all the financing kind of fell through, and basically, uh, the director's previous film was called Absolute Beginners, and in 1986 that was a box office flop, so they finally got to making it in 1987.

[01:20:47] Briana: This movie was a box office flop, too, and now it's a cult classic. Jim Carrey, hello, he was comedy gold in this movie. It's a delight to see them all young and a little [01:21:00] scrappy in this movie. Sometimes you just don't realize what you have, but then it's like Susan Sarandon and Tim Curry being in Rocky Horror Picture Show.

[01:21:10] Andi: We like to play some games, or we like to ask some questions. So the first fun question we're gonna ask is, if you could stage any musical on the ISS, what would it be? 

[01:21:27] Briana: I think it would be a cool place to do Hair because in zero gravity your hair floats around and I think a lot of astronauts choose a short clip because of that.

[01:21:41] Briana: But there's one up there now that she's got really long hair, and she looks like a troll doll in every picture and video. And you can look this up. There's a lot of YouTube videos of, uh, astronauts washing their hair and explaining how they wash their hair on the ISS. It's more of [01:22:00] a dry shampoo situation, but they have a little tiny pouch of water, and they're trying to clean it, use some shampoo that way.

[01:22:10] Briana: I just think that would be great with all of this hair floating around because one of the best parts of the show is when they're doing that, in the movie I guess it's the Twyla Tharp choreography where their hair is whipping around, and I think that would be great on the ISS. 

[01:22:26] Andi: That would be cool. So now we're gonna play a game called Sci-Fi Musical Smash Or Pass.

[01:22:33] Andi: Are you familiar with a smash or pass style game? 

[01:22:37] Briana: Yes. 

[01:22:38] Andi: Okay. We're gonna name characters from sci-fi musicals, and you're gonna say whether you would smash or pass. Okay. 

[01:22:46] Jonathon: All right. So first off, Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. 

[01:22:51] Briana: Pass. I don't think I would survive that. 

[01:22:54] Jonathon: At first when you said that, I'm like, "Okay, but like, wait, what about like Little Audrey II?"

[01:22:58] Jonathon: But no, still, there's no surviving [01:23:00] that. You're devoured by the capitalist monster that is Audrey II, no matter what happens there. 

[01:23:07] Andi: Next one is Marty McFly from Back to the Future: The Musical. Smash. That is the correct answer. That's the canonical answer, too. Michael J. Fox was my first crush. He was the coolest dude.

[01:23:20] Andi: And our inspiration for our time traveling musical, of course. 

[01:23:24] Briana: Yeah. Oh. 

[01:23:25] Jonathon: Oh, that makes sense. We have Oliver from Maybe Happy Ending. 

[01:23:31] Andi: Mm, 

[01:23:32] Briana: pass. He's so sweet. 

[01:23:35] Jonathon: Care to explain that one? 

[01:23:36] Briana: Well, it's just like he's recording the whole thing with his mind. Oh, privacy. Yes, exactly. That's fair. Andi and I have talked about this a lot.

[01:23:47] Briana: Like, I fall into the category of fearing robots more than I'm, uh, attracted to them. 

[01:23:54] Andi: I'm the exact opposite. I won't elaborate. Next one is Gabriel, the [01:24:00] garbage man from Via Galactica. 

[01:24:02] Briana: Pass. I just don't know what his story is. Doral Julia. I was telling my partner, "Why don't you treat me like Gomez?" I thought when I was growing up that romance was a man kissing up your arm.

[01:24:16] Jonathon: All right, next. Hadies from Hadestown. We're still talking like this is a god, so we're still talking somebody with like that immense power, but on the other hand... He's hot. You are watching the Gilded Age. 

[01:24:30] Briana: Love the voice, but the vibe is probably just a little too evil for me. 

[01:24:36] Andi: The vibe's off. Orpheus. 

[01:24:40] Briana: Oh, my God.

[01:24:41] Briana: Pass. Orpheus is like an irritating emo 

[01:24:47] Jonathon: boy. I think there's this trope in the musical theater cannon of sad emo boys who just wanna write that one song that's gonna change everything, like Roger from Rent. I'm sure there are others [01:25:00] out there too who fall into that trope. We, on the other side of the sort of like we are writers, instead we are just enjoyers of it, we look at these people and go, "No, you write every day and you do a whole bunch of things, and eventually, some of what you do is that, but you don't just like one song."

[01:25:14] Jonathon: It- No. Just 

[01:25:15] Andi: no. Yeah, if your whole life is leading up to one single motif, come on. 

[01:25:21] Jonathon: One of my favorite studies to quote is they had a group of people and they separated them out into two groups, and one of them they said, "You have- A week to make the best pot you can. And they turned to the other group and they said, "You have to make as many pots as you can in a week."

[01:25:38] Jonathon: And the group that made the best pots were the ones who were making the most pots because they got the practice doing it, and it turned out that their pots ended up being very good. Make a lot of pots. Don't make that one perfect pot. Make all the pots, and they're gonna be even better than if you just focused on that one great pot.

[01:25:54] Briana: That's a great answer for why I'm writing so many musicals right now. 

[01:25:59] Andi: Yeah, you're not [01:26:00] working on the one perfect musical. You're working on the thousand ... maybe there's one in there that will be perfect. Okay, last one, the Jeff Goldblum alien from Earth Girls Are Easy. Hang on. Post 

[01:26:14] Jonathon: makeover or pre-makeover?

[01:26:16] Andi: You decide. Post-makeover smash. I agree. Pre-makeover, no thank you. Post-makeover, it's Jeff Goldblum. 

[01:26:24] Briana: I know. He is the sexiest man of the '80s. 

[01:26:27] Jonathon: Just the '80s? 

[01:26:29] Briana: He is who he is, and that's distinctive. It is interesting seeing him wedged into this rom-com musical because now he has such an identifiable personality.

[01:26:40] Briana: He's like an obvious bad boy, so to see him in this movie where he's a good guy, romantic lead alien, no ulterior motives- It's a little weird. 

[01:26:51] Andi: Yeah. He's not playing the character actor type. Like, even though he is a weird alien, he's still the leading man role. 

[01:26:58] Briana: You wonder if [01:27:00] taking this movie was a part of establishing that characteristic that he's not typical rom-com leading man fodder, but he is kooky.

[01:27:10] Jonathon: Yeah. Well, he did The Fly around this time too, so this could be a one-two punch of sexy kookiness. 

[01:27:17] Briana: That movie, I don't know if I ... I haven't sat through the whole thing yet. No. But ... 

[01:27:22] Jonathon: That's totally like a spectrum. That's a- Like, in the beginning- That's- ... it's like, oh, he's just in his underwear, and he's, like, getting into the pot.

[01:27:28] Jonathon: And in the end he's like, "Ah, a Cronenberg monster. This is creepy as hell." So we see the entirety of the Jeff Goldblum experience in front of you. 

[01:27:36] Andi: Yeah. Yeah, that's probably a musical we're not gonna write, Brianna. No. 

[01:27:40] Jonathon: I would appreciate the challenge of that. Yeah. I might take a crack at that one. All right.

[01:27:45] Jonathon: All 

[01:27:45] Briana: right. You write The Fly, and we'll write- It'll be 

[01:27:47] Jonathon: great. 

[01:27:48] Briana: I can't wait for the antics that will ensue as we embark on our '80s movies adaptations- Yes ... that will no doubt result in [01:28:00] box office success. 

[01:28:01] Jonathon: Massive success. Revitalization of theater in America through our '80s movies adaptations. You're 

[01:28:06] Briana: welcome.

[01:28:07] Briana: I- But I just think it's the best era for movies. Agree. I agree. There was a time when anything could happen in a plot, and no one would be like- Yeah ... "Seems unrealistic." 

[01:28:17] Andi: Although '90s rom-coms, that was the best era for rom-coms 

[01:28:22] Briana: That is true. But this, I'm talking about wacky concepts. Yes. Time travel, body swapping- Yes

[01:28:29] Briana: all of that stuff. That was the E- That's what I love. 

[01:28:31] Andi: Okay, I found the ET, a workshop. This was in 2009. A workshop was being planned with Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire. Okay, 

[01:28:42] Briana: well, uh, they got their hands on it already. They s- It's covered. We'll keep working 

[01:28:47] Andi: on 

[01:28:47] Briana: the mannequin. If that helps David Lindsay-Abaire keep putting up his fabulous Halloween decorations here in Brooklyn, uh- I 

[01:28:56] Andi: mean, that was in 2009, and I haven't heard a peep about it, but [01:29:00] I hope they're still working on it.

[01:29:02] Andi: These things take a long time to develop. In this one article, it just said there will be a puppet on stage. 

[01:29:08] Briana: I would love to see give it that kind of a Life of Pi treatment. Those puppets were incredible. 

[01:29:15] Andi: Like War Horse? Is it like War Horse? 

[01:29:18] Briana: A friend of mine was the heart of the tiger and also an understudy for one of the human roles.

[01:29:24] Briana: There's three puppeteers on the tiger. 

[01:29:27] Andi: On the tiger? Yeah, so my friend, uh, Andrew Durant, who you might have seen in Dead Outlaw, he was the boy in War Horse. But yeah, we were always a big fan of puppets. Yeah, we love puppets. In Pompeii, we had puppets. The columns were puppets. We had characters who were columns who were also puppets.

[01:29:48] Briana: Yeah, w- we needed more characters. 

[01:29:51] Andi: But then we had to cut them because ... 

[01:29:54] Briana: They were like, "You only get seven actors for this reading," so. 

[01:29:59] Andi: [01:30:00] Yeah, and then we were like, "Maybe we don't need narrator puppets." 

[01:30:05] Jonathon: But we miss them. We do love columns on this podcast. 

[01:30:08] Andi: Yes. 

[01:30:10] Jonathon: As we'll see in The Wiz. 

[01:30:12] Andi: Oh, yes, the subway column.

[01:30:14] Andi: Great. I think that probably wraps up everything. Is there anything else that you wanted to say about either show or sci-fi musicals in general? 

[01:30:25] Briana: If you like impossible musical theater puzzles, you might wanna join us at Verse Intro Cabaret. We're on the first Sundays of the month at Soho Playhouse in the basement.

[01:30:38] Briana: Uh, you can follow us @verseintrocabaret on Instagram. We have sci-fi musicals on all the time. You might see Jonathon there. 

[01:30:46] Jonathon: That's 

[01:30:46] Briana: true. 

[01:30:47] Jonathon: This is produced by Andi and Briana, but I may be the person to have appeared most in 

[01:30:52] Andi: it. You're in the top three or top two maybe. We like to spread the love around to everyone in our [01:31:00] community, all the musical theater writers.

[01:31:03] Briana: Really hard to get this stuff in front of an audience. Wanted to make it really easy for people to- throw stuff on stage, and it's only 30 minutes of material. If you only have 25, we don't mind if you stretch it out a little bit. 

[01:31:17] Andi: Yeah. We don't have a hard out. 

[01:31:20] Briana: One of my favorite things is when the artists tell us, "I just wrote this last night."

[01:31:25] Andi: Yeah. That's awesome. We do love that. As Briana mentioned, we offer extremely hard Broadway brain teasers that Briana and I come up with. Mostly Briana, but I help a little bit sometimes. 

[01:31:38] Briana: It's really just for ourselves, but there's a few people in this world who love a really tricky puzzle, love writing lyrics, and love musical theater, and if you're one of those people, this is for you.

[01:31:52] Briana: From my demented brain to yours, this is my gift. 

[01:31:55] Andi: Thank you so much for joining us today, Briana. It's been such a pleasure, [01:32:00] and we hope to have you back again. Thank you. Oh, 

[01:32:03] Briana: yes, anytime. Thank you for your listening. Go listen to that concert recording of The Galactica. You won't regret it. 

[01:32:13] Andi: Thank you for joining us today.

[01:32:16] Andi: We've really had a lot of fun talking about space. We'd also like to let you know that summertime it is a little bit crazy with travel, so our schedule might be a little irregular, but we'll definitely be putting out at least one episode per month. Make sure you follow us on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Blue Sky, all the things, @SciFiMusicals, and you can find the blog at scifimusicals.com.

[01:32:44] Jonathon: Take off your emotional dampening hat and tune in for future episodes.

[01:32:50] Andi: Bye-bye.

[01:32:50] Jonathon: [01:33:00] Bye.