Broadway's an Open Book: Bookwriters From ON YOUR FEET!, TUCK EVERLASTING, ALADDIN, SOMETHING ROTTEN!, JERSEY BOYS and DISASTER! Talk About Creating Musicals

Writers seeking fame and recognition are generally advised to steer clear of the task of writing books for Broadway musicals. Regarded by theatre insiders to be perhaps the most vital, yet most underappreciated element of a successful musical, the book oftentimes receives the least credit when a musical's a hit, but is the first thing blamed if it's a flop.

Legends like Oscar Hammerstein II, Alan Jay Lerner and the team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green would write lyrics as well, but Broadway's history is loaded with lesser-known writers who were primarily noted for penning the books of musicals, such as Michael Stewart (BYE, BYE, BIRDIE, HELLO, DOLLY!, 42nd STREET), Peter Stone (1776, MY ONE AND ONLY, THE WILL ROGERS FOLLIES) and JOSEPH STEIN (FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, ZORBA, PLAIN AND FANCY).

However, the late 20th and early 21st Centuries have seen a sharp decrease in the number of repeated names credited for writing the books of shows. Thomas Meehan wrote an excellent book for ANNIE, but since then has been working as a collaborator on books for shows like THE PRODUCERS and HAIRSPRAY. Terrence McNally has successfully balanced a career as a playwright with one as the bookwriter of musicals like THE RINK, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, RAGTIME, THE FULL MONTY and most recently THE VISIT. Harvey Fierstein, currently represented by KINKY BOOTS, started his bookwriting career with LA CAGE AUX FOLLES and has also adapted the films of A CATERED AFFAIR and NEWSIES.

But these are the exceptions and many of the names you see credited for creating the books for Broadway's current musicals, despite extensive writing credits for film and/or television, are making their debuts in the field. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean they didn't grow up loving musical theatre.

Raised on Long Island, Alexander Dinelaris, one of the four screenwriters to take home an Oscar for the "Birdman," and making his Broadway debut as a bookwriter with ON YOUR FEET!, remembers his grandmother taking him into New York for theatre trips.

"The first two Broadway shows I saw were GODSPELL and PIPPIN," he remembers, 'but it wasn't until I was in high school seeing shows like SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE and GRAND HOTEL that I really began to appreciate musicals. I loved Sondheim. I saw SWEENEY TODD when I was a kid. SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE was one of the ones where I sat there at intermission thinking 'Oh God, I'm ruined.'"

ALADDIN's bookwriter, Chad Beguelin, who also penned the books for THE WEDDING SINGER and ELF, began his appreciation for musical theatre books in the 6th grade as an ensemble member of a community theatre production of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF.

"I remember specifically telling my mother that she would be amazed how often Tevye gives in to his daughters. This was a long time ago, before I knew about spoiler alerts."

But of the eight writers interviewed for this article, all currently represented with a musical on Broadway, only Karey Kirkpatrick, who collaborated on the SOMETHING ROTTEN! score with his brother Wayne Kirkpatrick and co-authored the book with John O'Farrell, pursued writing musicals as a career. He and his brother, in fact, wrote their first musical right out of high school.

"It was pretty bad," he admits. "And we also wrote a couple of screenplays together early."

Kirkpatrick improved his skills at the USC School of Cinema-Television's Filmic Writing Program and scored a big job right out of college.

"I wrote an animated spec musical and got hired by Disney to be a staff writer, so my first three years writing in Hollywood was a screen and songwriting deal writing animated musicals. Script and music and lyrics. I've always wanted to write a musical and I think I'm just arrogant enough to think I can do it all."

Another writer who found himself working on a musical after a stint at Disney is Rick Elice, who co-wrote the books of JERSEY BOYS and THE ADDAMS FAMILY with Oscar-winning screenwriter Marshall Brickman ("Annie Hall").

"I was a creative consultant, a troubleshooter on whatever project may be around that may need a polish."

Of the writers interviewed, only the Kirkpatrick brothers and DISASTER!'s team of Seth Rudetsky and Jack Plotnick, who had been performing sketch comedy together for ten years, came up with the ideas of their current musicals themselves.

"It's not that I wanted to write a musical," Rudetsky says of DISASTER!. "I wanted to write this. I always wanted to write a disaster movie as a musical and I always wanted to put in certain songs."

He names the 1975 hit single "Mr. Jaws" as an inspiration. The record was one of numerous comedy singles by comedian Dickie Goodman, who would narrate three-minute stories using quick cuts from hit songs as punchlines. In DISASTER!, inspired by the 1970s disaster movie genre, full performances of hit songs of the decade are used as punch lines.

Kirkpatrick says one thing he's very proud of is having written a musical with an original story.

"It made it a little bit harder,' he admits, "staring into the blank nothingness and trying to come up with what happens next. We always joke about a great episode of "Seinfeld" where they're trying to write a sitcom and they write two lines and then go 'We need something here.' We thought of naming our production company We Need Something Here Productions."

"I've taken books and turned them into movies," he continues, "but that's a completely different process. It's particularly daunting, especially for the bookwriter, to do something completely original. Just making up a story is the hardest thing, but also you're not tapping into any existing audience when your show opens."

Others had their initial opportunity to write a musical offered to them. Elice, for example, got a call from one of his former clients from when he was working for the New York advertising agency, Serino/Coyne.

"MAMMA MIA! had just opened and he said he had the rights to The Four Seasons. I said 'I love Vivaldi' and he said 'No, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. Would you be interested in doing a MAMMA MIA! thing with that catalog?' It didn't interest me, but he asked if I would at least meet with Frankie Valli and the principal songwriter Bob Gaudio. I asked if I could bring a friend. That was Marshall Brickman."

"So we meet Frankie and Bob in the back of a dark restaurant on 46th Street. They start talking about their lives and by the time the food came we said to them, this should be your show."

Dinelaris had written three Off-Broadway plays, and had contributed material to Tim Acito's musical, ZANNA, DON'T!, when his agent got a call from producers who were looking for a bookwriter for a West End musical based on the film, THE BODYGUARD, using songs from the Whitney Houston catalogue.

"They asked about a few different people. I wasn't on anybody's radar as far as the books of musicals are concerned but my agent felt out the material and told them he thought the best person for the job was Alex Dinelaris. And they probably said 'Who the hell is that?' But he sent them my play STILL LIFE and they immediately called back and said 'Yes, we want to talk to him.'"

Best-selling British author and comedy writer John O'Farrell got involved with SOMETHING ROTTEN! because the Kirkpatricks felt they needed assistance working the Shakespeare angle.

"When Karey talked to me about this," says O'Farrell, "I mentioned various Shakespearean tropes he could include within the Shakespeare canon. I had a better knowledge of that and Karey and Wayne had the better knowledge of the great American musicals. I would mention a wonderful character in CYMBELINE and they would look blankly at me and then they would mention a Sondheim song and I'd look at them blankly."

Tim Federle was a Broadway gypsy who had put his theatre career on hold when his comic novels and cocktail recipe books took off when he was recruited to join the team of TUCK EVERLASTING.

"I've known Casey Nicholaw (director) for ages and have been a fan and friend to the show stretching back to one of its workshops. I got a call last summer to come take a look at the show again, as Casey had been working on it with Claudia Shear (book), Nathan Tysen (lyrics), and Chris Miller (music) for close to seven years and felt they could use a fresh set of eyes, which is pretty normal on many shows. What started as a peripheral role for me grew pretty quickly and organically into a co-writership, and it's been quite a ride."

Shear, best known for her solo comedy, BLOWN SIDEWAYS THROUGH LIFE, and her Broadway play inspired by the iconic Mae West, DIRTY BLONDE, had worked on musical projects in the past, but TUCK EVERLASTING will be her first to open on Broadway.

"As a bookwriter, you supply the dirt," says Shear. And nobody really sees the dirt. You walk on top of it and you just see the flowers and the plants. And that's what it should be. That is the garden. You're growing a garden. You can't say, 'Wait, what about me? I gave you all of this dirt!' Pretty white gravel is not going to grow anything. And it might seem like a waste to have these acres of rich black soil that I like to think I bring. But look what comes from it."

"You write 9,000 drafts and everything gets thrown out and thrown out and thrown out, but it leaves a ghost trail," she adds. "It's like an oil painting where you start with dots of color and you paint over them, but it leaves something underneath. My mother painted in oils and I'm a bit of a painting freak. It's a layering process like with great paintings. The titanium white glows through, even though you might not see white when you look at it."

"If you do your job right as a book writer, nobody notices," is the way Federle puts it. "Every show is different and every room is different; it's one part trusting your own internal storytelling gut, one part deferring to a larger group - of both creators and producers - and one part copious drinking. It is also many parts fun."

"I usually start with an outline first," Beguelin says when explaining his process. Whether it's an original musical or a project with existing songs, the main goal is to make sure that the musical moments are advancing plot and revealing character. It's always a good idea to decide what the 'I want' song is early on in the process. In ALADDIN, there was a song cut from the musical called 'Proud of Your Boy' that became Aladdin's 'I want' song and drove him through the rest of the show. For ELF, we knew that Buddy's desire to be part of his father's life had to drive the show, so we wrote a song called 'World's Greatest Dad.'"

"If it's a musical with a lot of dance," he adds, "the bookwriter usually works very closely with the choreographer to find moments where dance can advance the plot. I've been lucky enough to work with amazing director/choreographers like Casey Nicholaw and Jerry Mitchell and they have an uncanny ability to know when they can advance the story through dance and movement. There have been moments when both of them have said to me, 'I can handle that story point with dance.' And they always do something amazing."

"Peter Stone said, generally speaking, the book is the first thing that happens," explains Elice. "You have maybe two people in a room deciding what the musical is saying and that's the story. Then they're deciding how to tell it and that's the structure. And then they overwrite so that someone like Stephen Sondheim will take a look at everything in the scene and turn it into a song called "Send In The Clowns," at the end of which the scene is over and everyone feels satisfied because the song can only exist because the scene has led up to it. The song finishes the process so you're able to move on in your storytelling. Overwriting - providing material that they can take. You write past the point where the dialogue needs to take you so the songwriters can understand the function of the song."

It's trickier, of course, when the songs have already been written and the bookwriter needs them to push the story forward. Dinelaris gives an example from ON YOUR FEET!:

"'When Someone Comes Into Your Life' is a song the spirit of her father sings when she needs his advice. The song is originally a love song, but I saw that if I could change one word in the lyric it could be a song a father would sing to his daughter. 'When someone comes into your life, take a chance... Kiss him goodnight and not me.' When you take it out of a romantic love context it's very sweet. When a man replaces your father, that's what happens."

"There's a lyric that said, 'I will love you the same as I did that first day I found you.' I asked Gloria Estefan if I could change this one word to change the whole context of the song. Change the word "found" to "held." All of a sudden the rest of the lyrics fell into place and the song can push the story forward."

"The image that I give," Rudetsky says of his process with Plotnick, "is that you're on the 10th floor of a building and there's all this empty space in front of you and then you put a brick down and you step on it. And then you put another brick down and you step on that. So as you're writing the show you don't really know what's going to happen. It's weird. You just keep putting these bricks down and you keep going forward."

"That's how Seth and I write,' says his partner. "We don't worry about what other people will think and we don't copy what other people are doing. We like what we think is entertaining and we move in that direction. We figure if we enjoy it then other people will as well."