BWW Special Interview: Rupert Holmes Talks Marvin Hamlisch, The Future of THE NUTTY PROFESSOR & More

It's becomes very clear very quickly, when talking to Rupert Holmes, that writing the libretto for The Nutty Professor-which paired him with composer Marvin Hamlisch-has been an astonishing and inspiring experience for the man whose resume is filled with noteworthy achievements in theater, music, publishing and, practically, any endeavor of self-expression that one can name. Yet, as Holmes remembers his friend, his collaborator and his fellow musical theater legend, it is apparent that Hamlisch's sudden death this week has left an indelible imprint upon him.

"These are not Happy Days in my life…this is a tough time," Holmes admits, his voice thick with emotion as he recalls the events of the week that have been the focus of the theater community all over the world, providing fodder for the message board chatterati and musical theater prognosticators bent on predicting the future of a new musical that is bound for Broadway. But for Holmes, the speculation and questions that abound pale in comparison to the realities of the moment: a musical genius is no longer among us.

"People rarely use the words 'genius' and 'mensch' in the same sentence," he muses. "But Marvin was both of those things. He had tremendous insights beyond music and the theater-he was a warm, funny, passionate man and he loved to make you laugh."

While the personal and professional orbits of both men had brought them together time and again during the shared tranjectories of their careers-"We had known each other over the years and we often ended up on the same talk shows together, which I always thought was an example of rather strange booking. We met, we chatted, we became friends. We came from similar backgrounds. He was a classical musician trained at Juilliard and I was a classical musician trained at the Manhattan School of Music, which is sort of the rival to Juilliard."-their collaboration on a new musical based upon Jerry Lewis' 1963 film comedy The Nutty Professor was their first time working together.

Since their pairing some five years ago (both men are admitted longtime fans of Lewis and his remarkable body of work), the two have worked to bring the unique blend of Lewis' comedy and musical theater to life in The Nutty Professor, which is now onstage in its world premiere, pre-Broadway run at Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center, taking a new and heretofore untried path to the Great White Way through Music City USA, with Lewis himself helming the production as director.

"We've since written a number of songs together for a number of purposes, including a new song for a Steven Soderbergh film [Behind the Candelabra, the upcoming HBO film that will feature Hamlisch's final film score]," he says. "I was just looking over the lyrics yesterday-Marvin and I last worked on the song together only two weeks ago.

"Among the many things I cherish about The Nutty Professor is that it brought us together, and it gave me the joy and the great privilege of writing with one of our greatest composers."

In fact, Holmes admits that there have been moments during the partnership of the two men when he's thought, "I should call my parents and tell them, 'Jerry Lewis just called me a ham,' or 'Marvin Hamlisch said he likes the note I suggested better than the one he had thought of for a particular piece of music.'"

"If there is someone you've admired all your life, every now and then you have the thought of 'oh yeah, he wrote this or that and I should tell him how much I loved it,'" he admits. "My admiration for Marvin began first with his score for the movie Take the Money and Run: his underscoring of that was so evocative of classic film scores from another era.

"And in another Woody Allen film-Bananas-he wrote this wonderfully daffy caballero type of song that kicks the movie off…an up-tempo, kind of festive mariachi song. Then, over the end titles, he played the same tune very slowly on piano, with the vocalist Jake Holmes singing one of the most touching ballads I'd ever heard. It was the same song-we'd heard it in a comic way earlier in the movie-and he then turned the very same tune into something that could make you cry. He was masterful in that way."

While anyone would be awestruck to find themselves sitting down to lunch with some of the entertainment world's best-known names, Holmes confesses that at some point you come to the conclusion that if you are in the room, then you deserve to be there.

"If you're in the room, you have the right to be there, but there's always that 'kid' inside of you," he maintains. "When I first met Barbra Streisand, we went to a dinner at Columbia Pictures-it was Barbra, John Huston, George Segal, Groucho Marx and me! You sit there, considering how surreal an experience that is. Or you're having lunch with Orson Welles, talking about a shared interest in the writings of G.K. Chesterton, and you think, 'so this is real?'"

"Marvin and I had worked together over the years in other ways [in fact, when Hamlisch conducted Streisand's first major concert tour in years, he would conduct Holmes' arrangement for 'Lazy Afternoon' that had been created expressly for her]," Holmes says. "We had fought in the same trenches, as it were, as conductor, composer and songwriters; we had both worked with the Bergmans [Alan and Marilyn] and with Barbra. We were connected because of their shared gifts and that was the awe that I felt in working with Marvin. We had shared so much already before The Nutty Professor."

While Hamlisch's untimely death has cast something of a pall over the Nutty Professor cast in Nashville (who have performed "amazingly," according to those close to the production-as well as audiences who've been at the Polk Theatre this week-since news of the composer's death was made public on Tuesday morning, and plans for the show's transfer from Nashville continue unabated, according to producers Ned McLeod and Mac Pirkle.), Holmes calls the composer's musical score "a blessing" for lovers of musical theater the world over.

"We are incredibly blessed by this musical score," he contends. "I will stake my personal and professional reputation on the fact that this is as good as anything that Marvin has ever written. We are blessed that he gave us a score so rich and diverse that the truth is, we wouldn't change a note of it."

Legend, however, might support the notion that tinkering with the score continues right up until opening night on Broadway-something that Holmes discounts: "There are a couple of true stories out there that give people a false idea of how a show moves along to Broadway. There's the story of Oscar Hammerstein II standing at the back of the theater, shouting that 'This show needs a song called "Oklahoma" since that's the name of the show!' or that Stephen Sondheim wrote a song called 'Comedy Tonight' and everyone's take on the show was completely changed."

The fact remains, however, than in the case of The Nutty Professor-a project on which the two men have worked for longer than five years-there are other songs that aren't included in the score that's been performed for Nashville audiences since July 19.

"We've been writing this show for over five years, so it's not like you haven't heard songs we didn't write. We have songs of every kind that we have not put into this show. We do not lack for additional material. The show needs tweaking-every show does as it moves along its way-we don't need to go back to the drawing board and reinvent the score.

"I feel the biggest mission we have is to make sure that this score that Marvin wrote reaches the widest possible audience it can reach."

"All of the songs advance the plot, so you're not going to be tinkering with that and I wouldn't suggest changing even one note of one of Marvin's songs," Holmes says. "We will want to do more work on the show before it debuts in its next venue, but the work would be the tweaking, adjusting, nipping, tucking of, primarily, the book."

"There are some things that you discover can work better," he explains. "Not everything that happens onstage in a show is your first choice, there are some things that are changed to make the show work better."

For example, Holmes says, "you will have a scene in a specific setting and the things we have been working at achieving don't come together. I would like to do some tightening of the book-I would love to knock five minutes off of each act. I don't think it feels overly long at all, but I'd like for the audience to leave the theater hungry for more."

If there are changes to be made to dance music, that is the purview of dance arranger David Dabbon, and music supervisor Todd Ellison would be expected to further help shape the score if need be.

"We haven't lost the score that Marvin created because he has died," Holmes suggests. "We are very lucky to have this score that is equal to anything he created in his career…it is tragic that we have lost him, but this is on a par with any of his best scores."

"I think it's a great score and I haven't heard anyone say anything to the contrary," he contends.

Talking about The Nutty Professor, it's obvious that the show occupies a special place in Holmes' heart and mind as he discusses various aspects of the production and the creative process itself.

"I think that to me it is a show that demands an overture-it almost serves as a portal into the consideration of 'do you remember when shows were like this?-I love the fact that we meet Julius Kelp within a minute of the show starting…we have a very explosive opening…it's Kelp alone on the stage for a few minutes. Because of the performer [Michael Andrew] and Marvin's music, it allows him to charm his way into our hearts."

Recalling The Nutty Professor's big, showstopping "classic Marvin Hamlisch" ballad-"While I Still Have the Time," introduced by Marissa McGowan as Stella Purdy and reprised by other characters in the show's two-plus hours-Holmes is struck by the song's poignancy and its importance to Hamlisch.

"I think it was a very personal song for him. He told me, 'I want us to have a song to tell people that you have to savor every moment…' I'm not sure he said 'savor,' rather he may have said 'you have to appreciate every moment you are given' and that time is not an elastic thing. Whether or not that was based on anything happening in his life, it seemed to be a terribly important song to him."

"Marvin created the branches of this beautiful tree with that song and I was given the honor of finding the words to hang on that tree. I think it was a very personal song for him and it provides the spine of the show."