The Word Cloud

Well not exactly stolen. It's like this; when George Lucas wanted to show some of his film school buddies a rough cut of his film 'Star Wars' (back when it was just called 'Star Wars') he famously filled in the gaps where the spaceship effects were not ready with footage of dogfights from war films. I feel I could do similar with songs from musicals to fill in the gaps in my musical. With no prior experience of writing musicals (pantomimes don't really count), I am inevitably going to take inspiration from musicals I am familiar with. I am not a musical expert so that is a relatively small pool, which may be just as well as it ought to lead to at least some consistency in the songs. Of course musically none of this matters since I'm not writing the music, it's more the role that the songs play within the narrative, how they sound in my head and of course how I describe them to the composer. So, for better or worse, when I consider my opening number I hear a combination of Double Talk from City of Angels and Bobby from Company. My leads' first songs bear a resemblance to Where I Want To Be from Chess and Who Knows from Westside Story respectively. Interestingly, where I am unable to make this comparison, I find the songs to be a bit thin, and they are all the better when i have a think and find something to take as a point of reference. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I really don't know. Having so little experience means that I am playing it by ear and I probably won't know until some way into the process whether or not I am doing it right. That said, it seems to me that as long as I am not the one writing the songs, and as long as I do not mention my inspiration to the composer or exert any undue pressure on her to push a song in a certain direction, it can't do any harm. We are all inspired bywriters we admire. I freely admitted that the film I wrote which started this whole blog thing was inspired by Frank Capra's films and the writing of Robert Riskin. While the sitcom I have been working on is more than a little influenced by Galton and Simpson. Based on those examples I do at least pick my inspirations well. The writer who has most influenced my musical must be Stephen Sondheim, thanks to his character based songs and brilliant lyrics. Sondheim (best known now for Sweeney Todd, courtesy of Tim Burton's adaptation) celebrates his 80th birthday this year and enjoyed a special Prom in his honour on Saturday night. If you missed it I would heartily reccomend the BBC i-player, it was on radio 3 as well so you shouldn't have too much difficulty in finding it. If you have even the meanest interest in musci you will not be disappointed.