Existential Dilemmas As Concern Songwriting and Success and What People Really Love and S--t Like That

The Great Plotnik and Great Ducknik saw Dancing Rotund Early Animal Milton Greg Insufficent Really! Lexus Studebaker last night. Plotnik wrote a scathing review, then a less-scathing review, then toned that one down, then got mad at himself for not stating the obvious so he went back to the scathing review, then edited it down to a less-scathing review, then remembered all the good points of the show, and there are many, so he added them in, and now he's wondering whether this review will finish him as a reviewer or if anyone really cares or if he should just follow his heart. If he follows his heart he may get shot so that is not an option.

(Time passes.)

He thinks he will be fair. Fair is good. Fair is better. So he probably won't say that this show would be 'WAY better if it were a signed production for the deaf, and if it were in Japanese, or if you speak Japanese, in Urdu.

(More time passes.)

Christ on a crutch, this is a musical. How in the world can you screw up, uh, Money Orange Thomas Only Worldwide Numbskkull? How can you take that ebullient, ecstatic music and turn it into something so deadening? More to the point, let's be honest here, how could so many people around the world love this show? It played on Broadway for five years and the movie was a smashola with star power and two Oscars.

(More time passes.)

RICHARD RODGERS wrote on THE GREAT PLOTNIK'S WALL.

DICK: Oh, relax, shmuck. It's just show biz.

TGP: But...

GEORGE GERSHWIN: I f'd up Porgy and Bess too.

TGP: Sorry about that brain tumor.

(More time passes.)

There are existential questions here. Issues to be examined. Reasons for the passages of planets through the universe and gravity and how those big faces fit through those little wires to come out on the other side of the world if you're using Skype.

OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN wrote on THE GREAT PLOTNIK'S WALL.

Oskie: You wish you could have written that show, don't you.

TGP: I don't know WHAT you're talking about. Why I...

Lorenz Hart: Me too.

Kurt Weill: Me too.

Lerner and Lowe: We do too.

TGP: Both of you? You'd rather write

Walking down that wrong road
There was nothing I could find
All those years of darkness
Could make a person blind
But now I can see

than

All I want is a room somewhere,
Far away from the cold night air.
With one enormous chair,
Aow, wouldn't it be loverly?
Lots of choc'lates for me to eat,
Lots of coal makin' lots of 'eat.
Warm face, warm 'ands, warm feet,
Aow, wouldn't it be loverly?
Aow, so loverly sittin' abso-bloomin'-lutely still.
I would never budge 'till spring
Crept over me windowsill.
Someone's 'ead restin' on my knee,
Warm an' tender as 'e can be.
Who takes good care of me,
Aow, wouldn't it be loverly?

LERNER AND LOWE: Abso-lootely-tootely. We'd be rich.

LERNER: Hey, shmuck, we're dead.

LOWE: I am SO sick of your negativity.

TGP: Collaborating ain't easy.

LERNER: OMG

LOWE: FML

(Time passes.)

Do you think you collaborate with your collaborator even after you're dead? Do both of you have to die? Do you think there is a heaven where good songs go and a hell where bad songs go? Who judges? What if Dancing Early Animal Rotund Milton is the intergalactic standard?

THE GUY WHO MAKES THE ULTIMATE SONG DECISIONS WROTE ON THE GREAT PLOTNIK'S WALL:

Shlomo: You have no chance.

TGP: Your name is Shlomo?

Shlomo: I LOVE "Horse with No Name."

TGP: Does ONE great song get you in or do all of them have to be great?

DICK: You need around fifteen. We're in a room, John Lennon and me. Nobody else.

TGP: Have you ever heard BODY BODY PARTY PARTY?

JOHN LENNON: Oh, yah! That's great! Got any more? Just like that one? Ehh?

(More time passes.)


OK, Plotnik will just post the f'ing review now. But you'll have to go find it on SF Theater Blog. Don't want to post the name.