Movies-to-Stage. On Musical Adaptations

Today we've turned the blog over to Tom Mizer, one half of the songwriting team Mizer & Moore...

Musicals have alwasy been adapted from non-musical material

by Tom Mizer

Can I admit something and you promise not to judge me? My writing partner and I are working on adapting some movies into stage musicals. If eye-rolling made a sound, I bet I would hear a thousand violent swooshes. “Not another movie made into a musical! Why can’t there be original musicals?”...

Here’s the deal: musicals have always been built largely on the foundations of other forms, whether adapted from novels (South Pacific, Show Boat) or straight plays (Oklahoma, My Fair Lady) or, yes, movies. Musicals are incredibly difficult to make work; there are so many moving parts that having the framework of a good story already in place can be an enormous advantage...

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Filming the Marvelous Mrs Maisel's Musical Numbers

Guest Blog Day! Please welcome Tom Mizer, one half of the songwriting team Mizer & Moore (The Marvelous Mrs Maisel), a longtime TFE reader and previous Smackdown panelist. 

me on the set of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. A dream come true

by Tom Mizer

When Amy Sherman-Palladino, the producer/director/creator and all-around whiz-bang brain of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, asked my writing partner Curtis Moore and I to write original music for the third season, we knew immediately it was going to be a big challenge. (Also, let’s be honest, wicked cool.) The songs needed to sit alongside the needle-drop classics they deploy so expertly on the show (don’t tell anyone but the show is a musical in perfectly pink disguise). They needed to help tell the story and illuminate character while also being believable pop hits of 1959. They also needed to be written, approved, and recorded before filming in a few weeks. So, yeah, just a wee bit challenging.

What we didn’t know was how welcomed we'd be into the “family” of the show. Instead of just turning in demos and hoping for the best --fly free little songs, fly free! -- we were invited to collaborate during the whole process....

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'Wish We Had Written That' - A Best Original Song Game

Today we turn the blog over to Tom Mizer, one half of the songwriting team Mizer & Moore...

Curtis Moore & Tom Mizer photographed by Xanthe Elbrick

by Tom Mizer

The Contestants: Tom and Curtis have been songwriting partners since meeting at Northwestern University. This may or may not have been before computers were required at college. 

The Oscar Winning Song Game: Without looking in advance, the contestants will receive a range of Oscar Winning Best Songs. They will each have 30 seconds to peruse the list. When time is up, they will text the other the song “they wish they had written.” After years of working together, will their choices match? If not, they will have a short period to discuss and convince the other of the wisdom of their selection, hopefully arriving at an agreement. This may end their partnership.

Ladies and gentlemen, the transcript begins:

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How I Came to Write Musicals

IT'S A SPECIAL GUEST STAR DAY!

We are thrilled to turn The Film Experience over today to Tom Mizer, one half of the songwriting team Mizer & Moore (The Marvelous Mrs Maisel). In addition to his many career accomplishments, he happens to be a longtime TFE reader! Please give him a warm welcome - Nathaniel R.

by Tom Mizer

It’s a little disturbing to discover that the best way to introduce myself to you, good readers, is by having you meet 10 year-old me. During a lockdown cleaning binge, I found a stack of “scrapbooks” I made as a kid out of construction paper and newspaper clippings. The extreme Tom-ness of who I was and who I’d become is all there. I mean, look at just this one page.

First, note the slipshod but intense workmanship. I have not a crafty bone in my body and clearly needed to avoid the visual arts...

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Almost There: Sidney Poitier in "In the Heat of the Night"

by Cláudio Alves

Last week, we took a look at the cast of A Raisin in the Sun for the Almost There pieces. Among that quartet of fabulous performances, Sidney Poitier's Walter Younger stood out as the most overwhelming one, so full of energy that the claustrophobic set seemed incapable of containing him. This week, we're again exploring the filmography of the first Black man to win the Best Actor Oscar, giving him a solo opportunity to shine. You could actually do an entire miniseries about the many times Poitier might have come close to an Oscar nomination and failed:  A Raisin in the Sun, Edge of the City, Porgy and Bess, A Patch of Blue.

Today, however, we'll be looking at Poitier's 1967 Oscar bid, when the actor starred in three hits, two of which went on to be nominated for Best Picture. Of them, Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night went on to win the big award and features what is probably the best performance of Poitier's career…

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