![]() I’m not sure that we’re any more outrageous than any of those other properties. I have a similar feeling about the two of them, in that they cover similar ground. Yes, I saw “Jerry Springer” in London and loved it.ĭe Vries: I mean, there’s a certain kinship that I perceive, because I worked on that as well. Marius De Vries: I don’t know - is it that much more edgy than “Book of Mormon”? My yardstick for this is a show which you might remember, which was on in London and had a very brief run in America, called “Jerry Springer: The Opera.” If people thought that “Book of Mormon” or something like that was an irreverent musical, “Dicks” might be “Book of Mormon” squared. … I think relying on the understood grammar of those things is really crucial to tying it together, but also setting up expectations that we can then subvert. So yeah, we hit a lot of kind of familiar song types. But there are certainly gestures, right? Like the fact that “The Sewer Song” song is a quodlibet, a device that’s done in many musicals, where a few songs are written to sort of eventually go on top of each other, like “Joanna” from “Sweeney Todd” or “One Day More”. I don’t think we’re trying to elicit humor by referencing other particular, specific songs. But there’s not much specifically parodic writing going on. And without making the satire obvious within the music, it feels like there are subgenres of musicals that are being parodied or paid homage to, from an “I want” song near the beginning to a rousing brotherhood-of-man anthem at the end.ĭe Vries: I think that was just paying attention to the art and the discipline and the canon of the form we were working with. There’s a little bit of supportive comedy score, but there are no places where the music treats itself with the same kind of lack of respect as the narrative does and the direction does and the acting does.Įvery song is very different in the way that it would be in a really good Broadway musical, hitting different beats. There’s no overt music-driven comedy in this. And more than a technical thing, that the music should never be seen not to take itself seriously. As the custodians of the music, we felt that the one thing that would enable all of that anarchy to fly would be a solid foundation in terms of musical structure. ![]() Marius De Vries: I think we always felt we had a responsibility towards being particularly attentive to the detailed work in within the songwriting and the arrangements, because the overall mission of the show is so anarchic and uprooted… and demented, as some reviewers have called it, with some justification. (Meanwhile, if you want to know what prompted writer-stars Sharp and Jackson to come up with something so completely berserk in the first place, a separate interview with that duo will follow.)ĭid you have an inherent philosophy about how to treat the music in “Dicks”? Variety had a serious talk with Saint Lucy and de Vries about their somewhat straight-faced show tunes and score for the outrageous new musical. When the project got picked up for film treatment, de Vries came on board, to lend a hand that has been practiced on other movie musicals, from “Moulin Rouge” to “La La Land.” (You may also know him outside of filmdom as a veteran record producer who’s done notable work with Madonna and Bjork, among countless others.) The latter co-writer has been in on the job with Sharp and Jackson since they first birthed a miniaturized version of “Dicks” (then known as “Identical Fucking Twins”) at UCB in New York nearly a decade ago. But when it came to lending them total-earworm melodies, or production values that sound like the Great White Way or golden-era Hollywood, those responsibilities fell to Marius de Vries (above, right) and Karl Saint Lucy (above, middle). (We’d say that, when it comes to the music of “Dicks,” size matters, but going that route would open quite a Pandora’s box.)Ĭreator-screenwriter-stars Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson wrote the lyrics for the songs. It sounds like a fully fleshed-out Broadway musical brought to vibrant life on the big screen, even though it went directly from being a two-man mini-show in a New York comedy club to a movie with a traditonal-sounding, fully orchestrated song score, the scope of which is matched only by the gleeful vulgarity of the lyrics. The songs and score of the new film “ Dicks: The Musical” are deadpan, but about as far away from dead and humanly and musically possible.
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