Zen and the Art of Non-Self-Promotion

[NOTE: If you are new to this journal, I suggest you start with the first entry and then skim a few others before reading this one. As I write this preface, I haven't written whatever it is yet, but I'm sensing it's going to be bizarre no matter how much you've prepared. To my regular readers (both of you): this is what we call the occasional "off-ramp".]

[With apologies to David Davis & Lorenzo Music and Mr. Bob Newhart]

FADE IN

INT. BOB'S OFFICE - DAY

BOB HARTLEY, an unassuming 55-ish psychiatrist, walks toward his office door. He opens it.

BOB: Hello, you must be Mr. -- (checks his note card) Ko --Kop --

Suddenly, TED KOPULOS enters.

TED: Kopulos. It rhymes with "hopeless".

He pauses as the audience laughs and applauds for no apparent reason. TED is 53, and has a trimmed beard. He wears glasses, a tasteful Hawaiian shirt, somewhat baggy jeans, and white athletic shoes. He is carrying a binder. He shakes BOB's hand.

BOB: (smiling) You know ... if you pronounce your last name a certain way it almost sounds like --

TED: Yes, I know.

BOB: Please ... have a seat.

TED sits on the couch. He occasionally will absent-mindedly tap on his binder.

BOB: May I get you anything?

TED: No, I'm fine. Thanks.

BOB sits in his chair.

BOB: So, Mr. Ko -- Kop -- um ...

TED: Just call me Ted. It's a lot easier and you'll be less inclined to giggle.

BOB: Oh, I would never do that. So "Ted". What brings you here today?

TED: Well, Dr. Hartley, I've been feeling a little depressed lately.

BOB: I -- I'm very sorry to hear that. How long have you been feeling this way?

TED: About twenty years.

BOB: Well ... I'm glad your decision to seek help today wasn't a snap decision. So why do you think you feel depressed?

TED: Oh, a million reasons ...

BOB: Um ... since we only have an hour, how about starting with just one or two?

TED: I feel like a failure.

BOB: In what way?

TED: Oh ... financially, professionally, physically, romantically ...

BOB: Excuse me a minute. (into intercom) Uh, Carol, can you clear my afternoon? I think I’m going to be here for awhile. (to TED) So ... you feel like a failure.

TED: A complete failure.

BOB: May I ask what you do for a living?

TED: I’m a writer.

BOB: (into intercom) Uh, never mind, Carol.

BOB notices TED tapping on his binder.

BOB: I notice that you've got a binder there, Ted. May I ask what you have in it?

TED: It's my latest work. I always carry my latest work around with me. I guess it reminds me I'm a writer. This one's a musical revue for the stage. It's called The Poptimists.

BOB: Well, that certainly sounds exciting.

TED: Yeah. I suppose so.

BOB: You don't seem too excited about it.

TED: Oh, I am. It's just that sometimes I get so depressed, I can't enjoy the good stuff.

BOB: Any idea why you might feel that way?

TED: I've been a writer for over 35 years. I've written hundreds of things and yet I can't make any money at it.

BOB: (carefully) Uh-huh. Pardon me for asking something this personal this soon into our first session, but ... are you a good writer?

TED realizes this thought has never occurred to him. The audiences laughs and applauds as we:

FADE OUT

Next: How Can I Follow That?

Sometimes Ya Just Gotta Book

Music ... check.

Lyrics ... check.

That leaves the usually neglected child of the three musical kids:

The book.

For those who may not know the term, the book (or "libretto") of a musical is everything in the script that's not lyrics. It's the dialogue, the stage directions, the scene structure, and the dialogue interwoven with the music and the lyrics.

It's the final cohesive version of the show that is typeset, bound, and sent to the wonderful people who will be producing the show. (Okay, the lyrics are also in the libretto, but they're the lyrics ... not the libretto. Got it?)

It's also the part of the show that frequently gets no respect. No respect, I'm tellin' ya!

And yet without a decent book to a show, the songs tend to fall flat and the audience gets bored. Or all you're essentially left with is an evening of singing, or a dance recital. But not a complete musical.

In original shows, it's the librettist who creates the very characters upon which the score is based. Even in adaptations, the librettist still is still initially responsible for how the characters are used within the framework of the show.

Contrary to a number of amateur theater folks' opinions, the book is not merely the "junk between the songs."

The lack of attention paid to the book is usually the major downfall of most musical productions. Where direction should be primarily focused, it's sometimes barely perfunctory. ("Perfunctory" is my big word of the day. I try to be pompous at least once a day. Makes me feel my college education was at least partially worth the money it cost.)

Some people find the book and dialogue to be the most expendable part of their show (even though cutting or trimming dialogue is actually illegal by contract). I've seen terrible hack jobs on such classics as West Side Story, My Fair Lady, Camelot and Fiddler on the Roof. Killing the dialogue kills the characters, which kills the entire show and actually diminishes the precious singing and dancing.

I was guilty of it myself in my very early career. Until I learned better ... and became a playwright and librettist myself, of course. And through that, I have come to realize with every fiber of my being that every single word I write is golden.

[Insert cricket sounds]

Shoot ... I almost wrote that with a straight face.

Writing the book takes me the longest to do.

Creating a song means creating a musical piece or story that's only 2-7 minutes long, and it must remain consistent only within those few minutes.

The dialogue, though, carries the weight of the evening and usually fills over half the content of a show. And it must remain consistent in tone, style and flow throughout the entire work -- from curtain to curtain. And while it is "between the songs", it's the foundation and logical progression of story to get from song to song, and it makes each song make better sense within the show.

It is also the vacation from the songs. (Just as some feel the musical numbers are the vacation from the dialogue).

I love writing the dialogue, and I hate writing the dialogue. While it's really fun, it's also really hard (well, hard to do well. I've written a lot of stuff very quickly, but it usually shows and ends up getting rewritten. One of my favorite activities.).

The exception, I think, is The Poptimists. Since it's almost a revue, the book is very scant. I wrote the whole thing in about 45 minutes. But as I mentioned somewhere, I'll be expanding it, so that means at least one more pass.

I've always been dialogue-oriented. Let's face it: I have a big mouth and I love playing with words. I began writing TV and film scripts very young, and they are primarily dialogue-based. I tried writing fiction, but I always ended up with a ton of dialogue, and very little prose.

The stage format is faster. It's visual. I can get on with the story and not have to write nearly as many flowery descriptions of the location, or inner thoughts of the characters. That's what the set designer, the director and actors are for. Let's get to it! Chop, chop!

I especially love writing the transitions into the musical numbers, and the dialogue within the numbers. And since I also write the music and lyrics, it's usually seamless and I don't have to run it by my "collaborators." But, as mentioned in previous posts, if it sucks, it's all my fault.

But as the librettist, I essentially decide who's in what scene, what scenes are necessary, the order of the scenes, the locations of the scenes, how every story element is going to tie and interweave together throughout the story .... whew!

Crap! I just realized I'm not getting paid near enough!

When I'm working on the libretto, I always write "long". No, that doesn't mean I'm stretched out on the sofa, or on a chaise by the pool ... (if I had one). It means I deliberately write too much dialogue. I over-write. I do this because it's much easier to trim and edit a scene than it is to "pad it" if it's too short.

Also, I can play with more ideas in a scene and decide which ones best suit the show.

And I never really know how a scene will be until I get it on its feet and I hear someone else read it aloud. I hear it in my head as I write, but I know exactly what I want, so I'm a little biased. When I see the furrowed brow on a friend's face as s/he reads the dialogue, I usually know something's amiss.

And the rewriting is almost endless for a libretto. Because once the score starts creeping in, changes to the book are inevitable.

But the end result is always very satisfying. I love typing the final "BLACKOUT" at the end of the book.

One of the reasons I became a writer and left performing is that a writer has something concrete to show for his work. A script. Sure, you can video performances, but there's something about producing a completed printed work that gives me tremendous satisfaction.

I can share it with other people and I'm removed from it when they read it. They're not judging how well I perform, but reading a black and white page that they have to interpret. It's much more objective, so when I succeed, it's much more satisfying.

And you can't rewrite a performance. I know. I have some of my performances on video.

And I hope they're not played at my memorial service. Well ... except that one, maybe ...

Next: The Art of Distraction (Unless I think of something better)

Let Me Compose Myself

I'm always hesitant to refer to myself as a composer.

"Songwriter", "tunesmith" and "musical satirist" seem to be closer to how I see myself and how well I think I write music. Even "mimic" seems more appropriate than "composer".

The title Composer, to me, has always implied a formal education in music, extensive studying of various styles of composition & theory, and having a fairly good academic grasp of the history of music.

I'm self-taught. I've been able to pick out songs and play them on a piano (improperly, of course -- using only about seven of my ten fingers) since I was about eight or nine.

Of the three things I write in musical theater -- book, music and lyrics -- I'm the most insecure about my music.

A few reasons why:

I'm a terrible pianist. I can't play the songs of mine (that I also manage to arrange) as well as I should. Instead, I just use the melody line and the chord notations above the melody line and fake it. And that's when I'm alone!

If anyone walks into a room or theater where I'm playing, I'll either stop completely or start playing so poorly that I'm sure the intruder is mentally wondering if I should take a blood test to see what I might be under the influence of.

Yes, I openly admit that I have pianist envy.

[Insert cricket sounds]

I started composing actual songs around the age of fifteen. You know the kind of songs teens write when they first take the musical plunge : angst, true love, and more angst.

But I also wrote funny songs. Satirical songs. And I found that because of the influence of humorous composers like Tom Lehrer and Stan Freberg that these songs came to me much more quickly than "serious" songs.

But if I were going to write scores for stage musicals, I had to learn a number of other styles and moods. My 30 years of performing in musicals were an immense help in that regard. The composers of those shows taught me a lot about emotion, character, pacing, length and so on.

And I was raised around music since I was born. We weren't the Partridge Family, but my dad was a sax and clarinet player who played all styles of music, and I always loved watching musical and variety shows on TV from the time I could focus on a TV screen. Ed Sullivan, Lawrence Welk, The Hollywood Palace, Jackie Gleason, Carol Burnett, and all the wonderful musical numbers on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

I couldn't get enough.

And yet when I tried to be an instrumentalist (drums and sax), I found I was mediocre at best. Ask my family. Especially after I got the drum set I wanted in high school.

I soon realized that sitting at the piano was where I felt the most at home. And I learned to read music from that big, light green Reader's Digest Family Songbook.

When I first started composing stage scores in earnest (around 1980), I suppose the word I felt best described my musical writing ability was the same word I hated to hear about musical scores: serviceable. It gets the job done and doesn't stink. Sufficient praise for someone as insecure as I am sometimes.

But a few things happened and I became a little more secure.

1. I wrote an original musical using only the Devil from Damn Yankees. When I sent it to Ray Walston, the original devil on Broadway and in the movie, he said thought it was excellent and wanted to do it. (But alas, it was the early 80's, a terrible time for musical theater, and no one would even read the show despite having Ray's name attached to it). But Ray's approval meant the world to me.
2. When I approached Neil Simon about musicalizing his play Fools, and he LET ME, that was a bit of a confidence booster. (Especially getting it produced locally in 1990).
3. And when Jeannie Schulz (widow of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz) gave her approval for me to write and compose a new Peanuts musical for the opening of the Schulz Museum, that was a boost, too.

So apparently through the years, I learned to write the occasional winner. There are a large number of my songs that to me have wonderful melodies. I say this not to brag, but because I am astonished when one of these tunes comes out of my brain and out of my heart. (Hmmmm ... sounds like a good title for future evenings of my music)

And through the years I've become more confident, and less hesitant to toss something out if it's wrong for the show or the moment, or if it sounds just a little too familiar.

One other invaluable resource I have is access to a number of amazing friends with incredible vocal and performing talent. I can't imagine the frustration some songwriters must go through when they have no one to sing their work. (Stage composers are notoriously the worst people to perform their own work. Have you ever heard Marvin Hamlisch, Burt Bacharach, or Stephen Sondheim sing?)

I get to hear and record them singing my work. And you know, I'm proud to say that for the most part, those recordings blend seamlessly into existing eclectic collections on my iPods. My friends make me feel like I'm actually writing real songs.

And if you've heard some of my songs through the years, you can hear all those past musical influences in my work. Unless I'm writing a crazy comedy song, I tend to be a little Romantic, traditional, classical, popular, heartfelt and/or playful. And I especially love to tickle the ear every once in a while with something just barely out of the expected.

I'm hoping all that I've learned will culminate in my musical adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo -- which I think has some of my best serious work in it. Maybe that's why I'm dragging my heels about finishing it. What if the first score I take completely seriously, sucks?

But with a show like The Poptimists, I feel the most confident and relaxed about my music because it's all for fun, but yet using different styles of music to create that fun. (Big showbiz theme, classic Souza-type march, waltz, dreamy ballad, gospel song, pop power ballad, and so on.)

So yes, for The Poptimists I suppose I am a composer. I'm happy with the score so far, and hope it doesn't require too much tweaking before we get to opening. But doesn't every composer secretly hope for the same thing?

But if it does require a lot of changes ...

... it's probably the damned lyricist's fault.

Next: Book 'em, Teddo

Words, Words, Words! I'm So Stuck with Words!

I enjoy writing lyrics. And as I'm rather old-fashioned, I contend that lyrics are called lyrics because they:

1. convey a story, a feeling, a condition or a desire in only a few minutes.
2. are pleasing to the ear and sometimes play with the ear.
3. demonstrate some thought, effort and craft behind them.
4. actually sound lyrical.
5. actually rhyme. Unless the circumstances of the song require that they deliberately don't.

Call me wild and radical, but nothing drives me crazier than when I hear "songs" that are merely unmetered sentences, bad poetry, or non-rhyme (trying to pass as rhyme) with some kind of rhythm track or monotonous "melody" underneath them.

But enough about rap.

[Insert cricket sounds]

Lyrics, while occasionally seeming to be ad-libbed by the singer, take a great amount of care to sound so spontaneous. They're crafted. Effort goes into them and, when successful, entertain the listener on a level the listener is unaware of.

Theater lyrics, unlike lyrics to popular music, are essentially heard only once by the listener, and cannot be frozen, rewound, nor repeated to be understood. They exist only once during the course of a show, and if too convoluted or forced become completely useless.

The audience member must be able to understand them without going through mental gymnastics. The audience member should also be able to "keep up" with the song so as not to be left behind.

And what about "sophisticated" lyrics? If they can serve the right purpose, they're great. One of my favorite polysyllabic lyrical phrases is Stephen Sondheim's "imperturbable perspicacity." Now that's how you use alliteration! (A repeating initial or internal consonant sound. Sportcasters do it ad nauseum, and doing it that poorly should be the only offense legally punishable by death) .

Dumbed-down lyrics can be very boring and overly verbose lyrics can be a turn-off. The balance lies between, and depends on the character and story at the time they're performed.

(I apologize for using "verbose", which is its own best definition.)

Without going into a complete dissertation (which I am not qualified to do), I believe good lyrics are the unsung heroes of musical theater -- though they actually are sung. Bad or flat lyrics can kill even the best of melodies. And great lyrics can elevate a lesser melody.

I've never heard a great melody with crappy lyrics that was a big hit. At least not to me.

Elements I frequently like to interject into my own lyrics are:

1. unexpected (and sometimes bizarre) rhymes. But true rhymes, damn it. "Fine" and "time" do not rhyme. Nor do "together" and "forever".
2. internal rhyme. When words within the same line (or within consecutive lines) rhyme.
3. extra words. I like to surprise those people who think they know where a lyric is going before it gets there. Gotcha, Smartypants!
4. making up words that almost seem like real words, just to make the rhyme. Ogden Nash was the master. And when done properly, people cannot help but laugh (or groan) for the right reasons. I once rhymed "Kiev" with "beli-ev".

I think some of the absolute finest American theatrical lyricists include: Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein II, Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, Alan Jay Lerner, Adolph Green & Betty Comden, David Zippel (City of Angels), Stephen Sondheim, Howard Ashman, Stephen Schwartz and a few dozen others.

I mourn the demise of clever lyrics. And I mean "clever" in the good sense of the word, not the condescending way in which it's been used in the last twenty-some years. Hearing some stuffy old rich woman saying, "Oh my, how clever" makes me want to puke! [Reference to a line from The Producers, and the two old women in the restaurant scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life].

And I get very bored by a current trend of simply putting what sounds like dialogue to droning, monotonous notes, and pumping it up with dramatic orchestrations. Style over substance is a weak approach, and rarely successful in my eyes -- and ears. Give me style with substance every time.

The songwriter father of Richard & Robert Sherman (Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, tons of rides at Disneyland, and dozens of other great popular scores) gave his sons some of the best advice I've ever heard. He told them when creating a song, keep in mind the three S's: Singable, Simple and Sincere.

In addition to the Sherman brothers another Sherman, Allan Sherman, was an early influence as well. Long before Weird Al Yankovic, Allan Sherman wrote parody lyrics to famous melodies and, along with social commentator/ composer/ lyricist Tom Lehrer ("Pollution", "National Brotherhood Week" and "The Vatican Rag"), demonstrated how pointedly sharp and funny lyrics can be.

There is no way I shall ever be confused with any of the really great lyricists (since The Poptimists is satiric in nature, familiarity-with-a-twist is more important than originality), but if I'm writing a funny song and it makes people laugh for the right reason, that's good enough for me.

If I can avoid rhyming a singular with a plural ("plate" and "mates"), I've succeeded on another level. (Again, that isn't rhyme.)

If I can match the scansion of the lyrics (how one would say them naturally) with the scansion of the melody (how each note is naturally accented or not), I'm a happy camper.

So I'm hoping my lyrics throughout The Poptimists will succeed during the split second the audience hears them. For unlike the songs in Oklahoma!, the songs in my score have not been heard 3,426 times. Or even once. So the audience has to understand them the moment they hear them for the first time.

That's a lot of pressure for a lyricist.

I may not succeed, and if I don't, I'm man enough ...

... to blame the friggin' composer.

Next: The Composer Strikes back