Episode 111: Transcript
Episode: 111: Escape Into Musicals with Laser
Transcription by Keffy
Charlie Jane: [00:00:00] Welcome to Our Opinions Are Correct, the podcast about science fiction and society that communicates entirely in song and dance. You can't actually see the dance but just know that we are dancing the entire time as we record this podcast. I'm Charlie Jane Anders. I'm a science fiction writer and general weirdo. And my most recent book is Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, which is the second book in a young adult trilogy about queer teens who go out and save all the worlds.
Annalee: [00:00:28] And I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm a science journalist who writes science fiction, and my latest book is Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.
Charlie Jane: [00:00:37] So in this week's episode, we're going to be talking about musicals, those wonderful stage plays and movies where people are liable to just start doing elaborate musical numbers at the drop of a hat, sometimes literally at the drop of a hat. And we're going to talk about why we believe that musicals are inherently kind of portal fantasies, in which we're transported to a fantastical world and why they maybe lend themselves so well to stories with fantastical themes.
[00:01:02] And later in the episode, we'll be joined by Laser from the wonderful acclaimed musical group, The Doubleclicks, who will talk to us about their brand new stage musical, Teaching a Robot to Love.
[00:01:15] Also, on our audio extra next week, we'll be talking about Bronze Age feminism, and all the mind-blowing things that we've learned recently about.
Annalee: [00:01:21] Yeah!
Charlie Jane: [00:01:21] By the way, did you know that this podcast is entirely independent, we have zero tentacles embedded in our brains. And it's funded by you, our listeners, through Patreon. That's right. If you become a patron, you're helping to make this podcast happen. And you also get audio extras with every episode. You also get access to our Discord channel where we just hang out all the time, dispensing wisdom and more importantly, dispensing foolishness. I think our foolishness is worth a lot more than our wisdom, I’m going to be honest.
Annalee: [00:01:54] I think we do a lot of sort of foolish ideation on the Discord server and that’s part of what you pay for.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:01] Yeah, that’s true. So, all of that could be yours for just a few bucks a month. Anything you give goes right back into making our opinions increasingly correct. I would even say asymptotically correct. So, find us at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect. So, let's get dancing.
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Charlie Jane: [00:02:49] Annalee, do you remember the first time you saw the movie Xanadu?
Annalee: [00:02:56] Yes!
Xanadu clip: [00:02:56] [singing] I’m alive. And the world shines for me, today. I’m alive! Suddenly I am here, today!
Annalee: [00:03:11] Okay, that was a very deeply important and meaningful movie to me when I was in elementary school, which is when it came out. First of all, I loved Olivia Newton John, as you know, all right thinking 10 year olds do. And I loved the sparkly fashions. But here's the thing, what I loved most in the world at the time was roller skating. So that scene where like the muses come alive, and like jump out of a giant painting on rollerskates and they have glowing light all around their bodies. It made me feel like anything was possible. And especially because the whole point of the movie was that art could make anything possible. These muses were going out on the roller skates to influence people to do things like I don't know start a dance club.
[00:04:03] And the other thing I loved about it was that the dance numbers that incorporated Gene Kelly were just incredible and the whole movie kind of collapses time into this like glittery dance orgy where 1940s swing music merges with contemporary ‘80s music. And it just really stuck with me. It was incredibly important. And I think all of the songs I have memorized.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:28] It's a movie that does such inventive things with form and function and kind of just, it's just so exuberant and the soundtrack is so great.
[00:04:36] So as for me, I have a really powerful memory of being a little kid and a family friend had just passed away. And so my parents decided to go to the funeral, but they deposited me and my brother at a matinee of the movie Can't Stop the Music featuring the Village People.
Annalee: [00:04:53] Awesome!
Charlie Jane: [00:04:53] That movie. I mean, it was such a weird thing because my parents were off kind of mourning their friend who had died and my brother and I were like what watching disco dancing. It just made such a huge impression on me though, with all these colorful, campy set pieces and just everything. So over the top. And all these gay themes that completely went over my head at the time, but also, I think sunk deep inside me. And I drank a soda as big as my own face, while watching the Village People do a song and dance routine about milkshakes. And I think that that movie is responsible for a lot of the person I am now and that's the thing about musicals is that they combine narrative and song in a way that's just joyful and immediate and kind of gets into your head in a way that other narratives maybe don't quite in the same way.
Annalee: [00:05:38] Yeah, you get to enter into this whole other world where the rules are suspended. And it is like passing through a portal.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:47] It really is.
Annalee: [00:05:50] Yeah, so are musicals kind of like portal fantasies?
Charlie Jane: [00:05:53] I mean, I think so. I think a musical is kind of an inherently unreal type of storytelling just because of that thing, where people kind of burst into song in the middle of a conversation. And the best musicals are often ones where everybody joins in. Everybody suddenly is doing a choreographed number that everybody seems to do all the steps and even though they may have just met a second ago, it's sort of like a fairy enchantment has overtaken everybody. Or it’s like a heightened version of reality.
Annalee: [00:06:23] Yeah, it reminds me of a couple of really recent TV shows like Heartstopper and Ms. Marvel, where, as characters are talking, you kind of see cartoony images appearing in the frame, or like on the walls that reflect what they're talking about, or what they're thinking about, but that add this kind of fairytale quality to the whole scene.
Charlie Jane: [00:06:47] Yeah, and, you know, a lot of my favorite musicals do kind of get so over the top that they become like living cartoons. And, you know, there's also a lot of great animated musicals. And some of the cartoons I've watched as a kid, were very musical oriented, like the Betty Boop cartoons from the ‘30s. The early Disney animated films have always had musical sequences, like including Fantasia, which is completely off the wall.
Annalee: [00:07:11] So where do you think musicals get the sense of heightened or altered reality from?
Charlie Jane: [00:07:16] You know, I mean, the stage musical as a genre has a lot of different antecedents. The roots include things like vaudeville performance, pantomimes, burlesque but also these grandiose, very kind of weird, silly comic operas by people like Gilbert and Sullivan and Harrigan ‘N Hart. And a lot of those antecedents are very kind of bonkers. And I was obsessed with Gilbert and Sullivan as a child. And those just gets so weird at a certain point.
[00:07:45] And, you know, I think that a lot of the musicals that you and I grew up loving, were a product of the late 1960s and onwards, where the popularity of rock music and changing social norms started to kind of rewrite our relationship with the musical and things just get more wild and out of control. You have things like Hair, The Wiz, Grease, Cabaret, that they have this kind of anarchic zest that feels really outrageous. And, I read that musical budgets, like musical theater budgets, like Broadway musical budgets, skyrocketed in the 1960s, and sets and cast just became so much more elaborate as they were trying to keep that rock and roll exuberance in the traditional musical form. And you had choreographers like Bob Fosse, who just made everything more frenetic and wild.
Annalee: [00:08:28] Yeah, I mean, and that's also the era when you got those kind of rock operas like The Who doing Tommy, and then somewhat later, Pink Floyd doing The Wall. And then there's also things like Rocky Horror Picture Show. And Rocky Horror is such a great example of thinking about musicals as a portal fantasy, because it was such an effective fantasy that people really did want to live in that world. They would go to midnight shows every week and dress up as the cast and reenact the story and participate. And going to see Rocky Horror was like passing through a portal into a world where you could be queer and flamboyant and as weird as you wanted, and it was fine. And I also want to acknowledge, by the way, that you and I have recently become obsessed with the work of Kenny Ortega, who choreographed Xanadu and then directed among other things, Newsies, the High School Musical films, The Descendants and Julian and the Phantoms. So, this episode is basically an Ortega-verse fan show.
JatP Clip: [00:09:34] [singing] I got the music back inside of me, every melody and chord. Can’t stop the music! Back inside my soul and it’s stronger than before. I got the music…
Charlie Jane: [00:09:50] Yes, Kenny Ortega is our god-king. Whatever he directs, there's this kind of crackling energy to it and his work has been so instrumental in helping me personally get through the past few years. He's definitely a big part of why I've been thinking about musicals so much lately as well. And he's a great case study because his oeuvre includes things that are like explicitly fantasy like Xanadu, and Julie & the Phantoms, alongside allegedly realistic stories like High School Musical, or Newsies, and those feel like they're cut from the same cloth to me. I don't think, well, Xanadu is much more fantastical and weird than High School Musical. They're both kind of the same. They both have that kind of like, reality is kind of our plaything. And there's the kind of campy generosity to everything Kenny Ortega touches, which, you know, leads to possibilities that normally wouldn't feel real, like basketball players and nerds dancing together.
Annalee: [00:10:46] Yeah, I love the phrase campy generosity. I feel like that's very much the Ortega-verse. And Kenny Ortega got his start performing in the musical Hair.
Charlie Jane: [00:10:57] He did.
Annalee: [00:10:58] So his roots really go back to some of the stuff that we were talking about earlier. And I just love that in the Ortega-verse, enemies can become friends, swing music can become disco, unionized paper boys can defeat capitalism. So, if anything can happen, I wonder if that means that musicals are always hovering somewhere between pretty weird and totally wild on the narrative spectrum.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:24] I think that's a great way to put it. And I think that the heightened reality of musicals kind of gives us, the audience, and the performers and everybody permission to go on kind of more flights of fancy and depending on the story, things can go intensely silly or extremely dark, and it all can be encompassed within that same kind of tone. So, I talked about this with playwright MJ Kaufman, who, among other things, worked on a Transparent musical. And this is what MJ told me.
MJ: [00:11:52] Musicals have to kind of exist in heightened reality because of song and dance. And the fact that the big events of the story, want to take place through song or dance. Where, in another play, characters would like fall in love through dialogue, in a musical should probably happen in the song and so that kind of just lifts out the moment and that kind of heightened tonal flavor has to be woven through the story.
Charlie Jane: [00:12:27] And I was also so happy to talk to playwright Reina Hardy, whose recent stage works include Annie Jump and the Library of Heaven and the forthcoming Glassheart. And she's also worked on a couple of genre musicals that aren't available online yet. And she said that this heightened tone might not give you any additional leeway to go nuts with genre elements, but it's still a very real thing.
Reina: [00:12:51] The fact that people break into song and dance to express their emotions makes it much easier to include other theatrical representations of the play’s reality, whatever genre that plays reality exists within. So, for example, in Billy Elliot, a work of social realism, Billy, a young boy who dreams of being a ballet dancer, can dance on stage with his future self. This doesn't happen in the movie Billy Elliot is based on and it would have been pretty hard to get the audience to accept it in that film. But in a musical, he can pas de deux with his adult self, and it feels totally natural. It would not feel totally natural, however, if he got into a spaceship and flew to the moon.
[00:13:31] The dance is understood to represent his emotional reality through a time travel metaphor. It's not actual time travel. And we're still in a basically realistic world that's being represented in a fantastical way.
Charlie Jane: [00:13:44] But Reina at the same time was kind of cautioning that a sci fi or fantasy musical really is no different from like, the way that you would present sci fi or fantasy things in other formats, you still have to do all the same work.
Reina: [00:13:57] Now, that doesn't mean you can't get an audience to accept that they are watching a sci fi or fantasy musical you just do it the same way you do with the movie or a book, by setting those expectations up front. Or at least that's how most successful sci fi and fantasy musicals have done it. Into the Woods tells you it's a fairy tale by beginning with the words, “Once upon a time.” Even Rocky Horror Picture Show, which includes a lot of different genre elements tells you right in the opening song to expect a lot of trashy late night genre movie elements.
[00:14:29] So, I say all this with a caveat that I'm talking about what's worked for shows in the past and what you can usually get an audience on board with. I've always been in the camp that believes you can do almost anything with a little ingenuity. But while I do think the inherent theatricality of musicals gives you more leeway to represent the play’s story in fantastical ways. I don't think it makes it any easier to include fantastical elements in that story.
Charlie Jane: [00:14:56] So those are really good things to think about as we go forward and I love the way Reina kind of put that about how you have to kind of set the expectations one way or the other, you have to kind of prime the audience. So when we get back, we'll talk to Laser from The Doubleclicks about their new musical, Teaching a Robot to Love. And we'll talk about why musicals are such a great vehicle for science fiction storytelling in particular.
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Charlie Jane: [00:15:26] If you're searching for a show that pulls back the curtain on the mystique of the writing life, look no further than The Writer Files.
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Charlie Jane: [00:16:15] So now we're incredibly lucky to be joined by the wonderful Laser Sidney Webber, who is a member of one of our favorite groups, The Doubleclicks and also the co-creator of an amazing new musical called Teaching a Robot to Love, which we're both obsessed with. We watched it.
Annalee: [00:16:31] It’s true.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:33] I've been listening to the music constantly. And you know, so thanks. Thanks for joining us, Laser.
Laser: [00:16:38] Oh, my gosh, it’s an absolute honor. I love you both so much. Thank you so much for having me. I've been bragging about this to everybody like yeah, I'm gonna be on Our Opinions Are Correct, like no big deal. It's fine. It's cool. Coolest people ever, yes.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:52] It is we who are honored and it is you who are cool. So Teaching a Robot to Love is such an amazing musical. And I read an interview where you said that you got the idea for the musical after you yourself threw a party and you kind of came up with the song, “Normal Human Party,” which is one of my favorite songs in there. And then you started trying to imagine like a robot trying to throw a party for humans. And can you tell us more about that process and how that kind of came about?
Laser: [00:17:16] Sure. Yeah, I mean, the musical came from a few different places, but “Normal Human Party” was the first song I wrote that made it into the musical. We do a lot of weekly songwriting challenges in The Doubleclicks, the great song “Dimetrodon” was a song that came out of that, inspired by a current person on this Zoom call.
[00:17:36] But the—
Annalee: [00:17:38] Who is a huge fan of that song and that album, so.
Laser: [00:17:43] But yeah, I threw a party, the last party I think I've thrown, where I had a bunch of people over to my house and was like, okay, I'm gonna do just like a normal party and it'll be fine and got really obsessed with having enough food for everybody and chairs and not enjoying it at all, obviously, because that's not possible when there that many people in your house.
[00:18:05] And I think I've, for a really long time, for a lot of reasons felt like I have been pretending to be a person or piloting a body that is not my body, or piloting a brain that's not my brain and just trying to see how to fit in with humans who seemed to feel so comfortable with it. And that's where that song came from.
[00:18:32] The other place that this musical comes from is, you know, in the middle of the night, once, when I was not at my house, which is usually when I come up with ideas, I wrote down this idea of like a woman who creates a program and tries to teach it how to be a person when she herself does not know how to be a person. And the kind of therapeutic idea of like, a brain in a box who wants to be a person when I am the opposite of that. A person who wants to be a brain in a box. And the musical obviously turned into a lot of things and became basically the story of my transition, in addition to having a lot of hedgehogs and cheese.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:04] You know, no wonder I relate to this so deeply. And I think a lot of us have had that feeling of being alienated.
Annalee: [00:19:10] Yeah, and also hedgehogs. I was just going to say, it's important.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:13] Oh, yeah. Hedgehogs are an important part of any good transition. Yeah, for sure.
[00:19:18] So, I mean, part of what struck me about Teaching a Robot to Live is that there's a lot of dystopian stuff in it. There's a lot of stuff that's like surveillance capitalism is a huge theme with the company Advernado that's just like this kind of, you know, I can't imagine what inspired that. But it feels very relevant right now. And also the way that artificial intelligences and artificial life in general could be abused and exploited.
[00:19:41] But at the same time you deal with these really dark, upsetting themes in a way that the tone is kind of light and friendly. And do you think that that's partly thanks to sort of being able to use musical numbers to kind of delve into these serious topics without hitting us over the head with the dystopia?
Laser: [00:20:00] Yeah, I think there's a lot of things, and you probably as artists yourselves kind of know this yourselves, where you just kind of make stuff and you don't really realize why you make the art you make. But I've recently been coming to terms with the fact that I'm just adorable. And that's what I make. Which is not something I've really been able to accept before now. But yeah, I think I just like things that are cute. And I like being able to feel good watching art, I think, especially art about the present, about technology, about being queer. All of this, it's just so like, I don't need to be sad about it. I'm sad about it all the time. I don't need art to make me feel bad about it. Like I'm good. I actually have that. I would rather have like the catharsis and joy. And music is a great way to do that. I had it kind of beat into my head at a really early stage of music that it's easier to write a sad song. So, it's more of a challenge to write a happy song about surveillance capitalism, or an upbeat song about the downfall of capitalism. And that kind of stuff is more of a challenge. So, if you can do it, it's kind of fun. And it's more enjoyable to experience for me.
Annalee: [00:21:21] The other thing that happens with songs in this musical is that they're kind of, they sometimes work almost as a plot twist. Like one of the scenes that I really love is when, so Marsh, the AI is supposed to be the ultimate sales brain, right? It's supposed to figure out how to target everybody and stuff like that. And then Mr. Norton is like, all right, well, tell us what you're thinking, Marsh. And Marsh sings this amazing song about how capitalism needs to be destroyed. And so I wonder like, do you feel like the songs partly keep us guessing? Or is that they’re ways of revealing character traits that we didn't see before?
Laser: [00:22:03] This is the first full-length musical I've written. And I think one of the really fun things that you can do with songs in a musical is change the story, right? Like, a scene can just be like, okay, this is the scene. And then this is a song that emphasizes what just happened in the scene. But a fun thing to do with this song is be like, this song is integral to this scene. And if you didn't have the song here, the scene would be a totally different thing. And that was something I was really trying to do with this show is like, these songs are important. And they change what's happening in this moment.
[00:22:38] I have to give a shout out. That particular song, “Software Testing 404,” I believe, is was a song that I co-wrote with Aaron Wilson, who is my collaborator on this project. And we went through a lot of genres on that particular number. It was reggae for a while, it was ska. It's a weird one and it ends up being shorter in the actual stage play than it is on the album just for the way that the pacing worked out. But it was a really fun one. And I enjoyed. I don't know, enjoy the fact that a robot who knows everything about what humans need, realizes that what we actually need is to burn down the world. Think it's good for all of us.
Annalee: [00:23:21] Just parts of the world, you know.
Laser: [00:23:24] Right, yes.
Annalee: [00:23:24] Keep the love and the happiness intact.
Charlie Jane: [00:23:29] Yeah, keep this part where you run through the forests and kind of take off all your clothes and enjoy being in the world.
[00:23:32] I actually read a thing the other day where people were saying that they feel like musicals are kind of like action movies, because in a musical you have like, things will be happening, and then you'll have like a musical number. And in an action movie, you'll have like a fight scene. And I feel like sometimes it's the same thing. Like, an action movie, the fight scene could actually move the story forward or be something that actually is important to the characters or it could just be like garnish, almost. And like, how do you think about making it kind of integral to the story rather than just garnish?
Laser: [00:24:02] Yeah, it's what's called, and I've learned a lot about this in the last few years making this happen. Where you write your outline, and then you do something called song spotting where you find what parts of the story are going to be songs.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:16] That's interesting.
Laser: [00:24:18] And to me, it's like, what would be the most fun thing to be a song? What would be the most like, obviously has to be easy to understand if you're in the audience and it’s not like. Like a throwaway line in a song can't be like really important to the plot.
[00:24:35] But I mean, I think to me, I just follow what would be the most fun and then yeah, it's the same thing. I come from a journalism background and songwriting, right. Which are all about like economy of words. So, anything you take out, nothing in the story could be there that you could take out and it wouldn't be essential. So that's kind of what I was trying to do. I was in this kind of rigorous musical theater program when I was writing this that I ended up dropping out of because I hate the system. But one of the things that they kind of drilled into us is things should be important. Things should matter. And that's what I went for.
Annalee: [00:25:14] So, as you were mentioning earlier, there's clearly a subtext of transition in this story. And there's just queerness everywhere. And it's just presented in this really matter of fact way. It's just like part of the universe. And I wonder if you think that a science fiction musical is particularly good for queer storytelling?
Laser: [00:25:32] Oh, thank you. Yeah, yeah, I love the world that we've created, especially the stage version of the show, because we had these costumers who came in, Atelier [a bene?]. And they really wanted… I kind of pitched them like, it’s retro futurist but extremely gay. And they were like, yes, yes, absolutely. We're here for it. And we're gonna make this the gayest show that you've ever seen. And it kind of just turned into this, like rainbow world that I want to live in forever, which is very funny, because the show now, at the same time, is very utopian and dystopian at the same time.
[00:26:05] But I think that the way that I tried to build this world, in a way is very matter of fact, about queerness was based on a conversation I had with my friend Allie Goertz, who's a writer, and she told me like, you’re making it up, right? You're making up a world. So why not make up a world where people are accepted for being queer? Why not make up a world where there is no sexism? Why not make up a world where these things that you want to model in reality actually are real, because it's fake anyway, so you don't have to have these problems. And problems do exist, but they are robot problems instead of gay problems or whatever.
Annalee: [00:26:54] Yeah, they're capitalism problems as opposed to like systemic transphobia or whatever.
Charlie Jane: [00:26:57] So, who are some musical creators who influenced you and kind of the way you want to tell stories using this form?
Laser: [00:27:04] I love musicals. My favorite musicals are Disney musicals. I love them. I've been listening to a lot of them recently. And just every single song and just being like, this is so gay. This is like the transest story ever. Like, listening to The Little Mermaid now, and it’s just like come on. Come on, get out out of here with your have to not talk and give up your voice so you could get a vagina. Sorry. Anyway—
Annalee: [00:27:31] No, no, getting legs, okay, that’s all it’s about is legs.
Laser: [00:27:35] Sorry, yes, that’s the whole things.
Charlie Jane: [00:27:36] Legs.
Laser: [00:27:36] I just love Alan Menken and the way that they… the songs are so catchy and so emotional at the same time is telling. Those stories are huge and have influenced my life and obviously huge Mulan fan from the beginning. Because trans-masc. I love Rebecca Sugar, Rebecca's incredible way that they tell queer stories, and I was able to interview them once and they told me about some of the songs that they've written for Adventure Time and Steven Universe and how those are written about their own experiences but put into this world.
[00:28:17] Like this is actually a song about like a stuffed animal I had in my lost childhood, but it's actually now it's in this and it's about gems and a fantasy world and like taking such specifics from your own life and turning it into specifics in the fantasy world was really inspirational to me.
[00:28:33] And then yeah, Aaron and I obviously talked a lot about Lin Manuel-Miranda, and Hamilton and all of these like, bringing in themes and reprising musical themes and words and referencing things that in a way that makes it a very satisfying listen. Those are the main musical people that we were looking at.
Charlie Jane: [00:28:58] So right now is a huge time for sort of science fiction musical stuff. Like there's science fiction and fantasy musicals. There was obviously like Schmigadoon! which is an actual musical portal fantasy. There's like, the stage musical of Matilda has been a huge hit and it's coming to Netflix. There's been a bunch of old movies have been turned into musicals recently and a bunch of episodes of sci fi TV shows just like randomly will have a musical episode. Why are genre musicals so big right now?
Laser: [00:29:23] It's escapism, right? Like, isn't that why musicals always become popular is like right after World War II or whatever. We all just need to like, jump into sci fi. We need to jump into musicals. It's like what if the world was different?
[00:29:37] I'm a fan. And also absolutely my dream to be the person that they bring in to write musical episodes of sci fi shows like that's all I've ever wanted to do. And please for the love God, let me do it.
Annalee: [00:29:50] Okay, so what is your first choice? Like they're coming to—any show whatsoever can come to you? Who's coming to you to ask you to do the musical episode?
Laser: [00:29:58] Oh, this is great. I mean, I love all of the like DC shows and how absolutely earnest. They're so set up to be musicals because it’s so earnest and dramatic all the time. I mean and they do this already, but I think that they don't write original songs for them and they should, like—
Charlie Jane: [00:30:18] No, no they did.
Laser: [00:30:20] Oh, they do?
Charlie Jane: [00:30:21] Supergirl and The Flash had like a musical crossover.
Laser: [00:30:25] Yeah, but they don't do enough original. I've seen them at there's not enough original songs, and a lot of them are like, we’ll do some old standards and we'll do like, just like you said, [singing] I’m Supergirl and I put on a cape and pants. I mean, just like frickin’ do it. I'm down.
Annalee: [00:30:42] I like the beginning of that song. [Singing] “And I put on pants.
Charlie Jane: [00:30:48] I mean, that literally is almost a song that they did in that episode. Yeah, that's pretty much. I don't know, I want a musical episode of like Star Trek: Discovery.
Laser: [00:30:56] Absolutely.
Annalee: [00:30:57] Oh my God, yes.
Charlie Jane: [00:30:57] Like, Michael Burnham and—
Laser: [00:30:57] Yes. Earnest.
Annalee: [00:30:58] Like, to nice to make in Star Trek, disco for real.
Laser: [00:31:01] What if we just did like Obi-Wan. We just watched Obi-Wan—
Charlie Jane: [00:31:04] Obi-Wan: The Musical. Oh my gosh, if you staged Obi-Wan: The Musical, oh my God, that'd be amazing.
Laser: [00:31:11] One of the things that I keep thinking about is writing a Witcher musical. Like I would absolutely love it. I've also just like—
Charlie Jane: [00:31:19] Oh my God.
Laser: [00:31:19] I don't know if I'm in love or I want to be Henry Cavill. But either way, I want to play him in the musical, so.
Annalee: [00:31:25] Yeah, I mean, it also could be like, updated so that he's like a robot too. He could be like a robot Witcher but then you know, the Witcher himself, he could be a robot.
[00:31:37] Okay, so we need to talk about our favorite science fiction musicals now. So, I want to go around and have each of us name a musical that's like one of our favorites. And talk about why and it's understood that of course, we love many musicals but these are just our ones that we're picking. So okay, Laser, do you want to go first?
Laser: [00:32:01] Sure. I mean, my favorite sci fi musical. And I honestly just got the chance to see it live for the first time was Little Shop of Horrors, which is an amazing show that's like about employment and capitalism and abuse. And like all of these things. It's so good. It's a wonderful small cast musical. And it was really inspirational to me because our show also has like a puppet problem like how do you have your cast a main cast member who does not exist for most of the show?
[00:32:35] And I saw an Off-Broadway production that was absolutely fantastic. Huge, absolutely huge Little Shop fan with, of course, like, honorable mention, for the problematic or whatever, but like, I absolutely love Dr. Horrible. It was hugely influential in my life, amazing duets, in that show and really good use of tropes and not tropes. And all of that.
Annalee: [00:33:00] Yeah, I still sometimes listen to the Freeze Ray song. It's like such an incredible—
Charlie Jane: [00:33:05] That is a good song. It’s a really good song.
Annalee: [00:33:08] The staging of that whole scene is just great. So, yeah.
Laser: [00:33:10] It’s brilliant.
Annalee: [00:33:11] All right, Charlie, Jane, your turn.
Charlie Jane: [00:33:14] So, I think you probably can guess what my favorite sci fi musical is. Because you know me and because like I'm a total goofball. But I love The Apple, which is a 1980 disco dystopian musical film, in which it takes place in kind of a future world where basically, Satan is running a record company. And he's making people get like the mark of the beast on their foreheads. But it's kind of a disco mark. And he makes everybody do disco music. But the musical is kind of like, oh, this disco music that you’re doing is terrible. But it also is amazing. And the film clearly knows that it's amazing. And it has some of my favorite musical performances, like the kind of just set pieces, of all time, and it gets so campy and so weird and so amazing. And I've turned so many people onto this film, who are just like, oh my God, I had no idea.
[00:34:08] And the guy who directed it went on to make, kind of produce. I would say most of the cheesiest movies of the ‘80s through the [Canongate?] company. He was like a maestro who just did hundreds and hundreds of films. But this film was the one that he directed and poured his heart into it. At the end of it, you know, I’m just going to spoil the ending. In the end, God shows up at a giant flying limousine and saves everybody and that's just how it ends.
Laser: [00:34:32] And that's how most stories should end, that way. I love a musical about music, also. Just like—
Charlie Jane: [00:34:38] Oh yeah. Oh, yeah.
Annalee: [00:34:40] Yeah. And also I love how in The Apple, the thing that makes Satan so satanic is that he's a copyright maximalist. So, it's all about how he's taking all of the IP of these musicians and abusing them by getting them to sign these horrible contracts. So, it's very pro piracy, I suppose.
Charlie Jane: [00:35:04] I mean, it's sort of anti music industry, which, you know, I think that time was when people were starting to realize how abusive the music industry was. So, it's actually pretty topical of its time.
Annalee: [00:35:13] Yeah. And also the main characters are from Saskatchewan. So that's exciting for me.
Laser: [00:35:16] Oh, great.
Annalee: [00:35:17] Yeah, they're a folk duo from Saskatchewan who become disco Satanists.
Laser: [00:35:20] Like all good heroes.
Annalee: [00:35:24] So my—
Charlie Jane: [00:35:24] It’s the hero's journey.
Annalee: [00:35:26] My favorite science fiction musical is called Mr. Burns. And it was, Charlie and I were lucky enough to see it in a preview performance in New York City, I want to say like 10 years ago.
Charlie Jane: [00:35:39] Pretty almost 10 years ago, yeah.
Annalee: [00:35:43] And it's this incredible story about, there's a horrific apocalypse, we never quite know what it is. And the show takes place over three generations as the apocalypse recedes into the past. And so, the first generation, a group of people are trying to feel better about themselves. So start trying to reconstruct old Simpsons episodes. And so they're just like retelling Simpsons episodes around the fire as nuclear power plants light on fire in the distance.
[00:36:16] And then in the second part, the group of people from the original, from the first act, I think their children are now part of a theatre troupe that stages Simpsons television shows as musicals. And there's an incredible number with a car where they're dancing around, and they're kind of recreating Simpsons stories, and they go around to different apocalyptic swap meets and pay people to tell them lines from old Simpsons stories so that they can kind of gather more and more material.
[00:36:47] And then by the third act, which is in the far future, The Simpsons have become like a miracle play or like a morality play. It's like an opera. And they're all wearing these like Simpsons masks that are like super distorted and kind of monstrous, and it's become this like story of almost like the hero's journey where Bart Simpson is this character with all this gravitas and he's like going into the world and doesn't know what's going to happen to him. And we're sort of watching this being staged for us. And so the music has gone from being this kind of campy disco-y music to being like literal opera. And I just love so many things about this play, but I especially love the idea that we get to see how pop culture turns into this almost like religious ritual and that it goes from being like a silly comedy to being this, amazing morality play, which makes you wonder about things like the Bible. Maybe I should originally written as—
Laser: [00:37:48] Yeah, Shakespeare, and—
Annalee: [00:37:50] Shakespeare’s like, originally written as a sitcom, now treated as a great moral treatise, you know, so one day the Simpsons might be our biblical texts.
Charlie Jane: [00:37:59] That is the life cycle. That is the lifecycle of all texts, you know, they become decontextualized and over moralized,
Annalee: [00:38:10] Yeah, or the opposite. They become stripped of their original meaning, and…
Charlie Jane: [00:38:16] That’s kind of what I meant by decontextualized.
Annalee: [00:38:16] No, no, but I mean like, sometimes they become demoralized, like they originally have a meaning and then they become like a national anthem. Not national anthem, but we always sing that Woody Guthrie song, you know about America that is originally like a super anti-authoritarian song. “This Land is My Land.” And when I was a kid, we sang that as a patriotic song, but we just didn't sing the verses about how private property is evil and we should all unionize and stuff. So yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:38:51] Right. That's a great example.
Annalee: [00:38:53] It’s a great example of like I said, stripping it of its meaning.
Laser: [00:38:56] Or when people are like when did Star Trek get political or something like that.
Annalee: [00:39:00] I know! [Laughs]
Charlie Jane: [00:39:01] It always drives me nuts. When people use that Stevie Wonder song that’s about, like, we need a national holiday for Martin Luther King's birthday. And they’re just like, this is a happy birthday song. And it's like it is but it's also got a very specific point, you know, anyway.
[00:39:15] So, yeah, I guess you know, have you been bitten by the musical bug now? Are you going to do more stage musicals after Teaching a Robot to Love.
Laser: [00:39:23] I would love to. I really, really enjoyed doing it. I would love to not have to produce it myself. This was a lot. I have, my house is currently full of costumes and props and it has been for months now. That's a lot. Usually, you don't have to do that. When you're the writer, you just have to write it and then submit it places but it was nice to be able to have a little bit more creative control and make sure that Marsh was cast as an enby actor in addition to you know, being an a non-binary character and all of that stuff was within our control. But I would love to. I absolutely enjoyed what writing this. It took, you know, three years, but loved it. Would love to do more.
Annalee: [00:40:08] I was just curious whether you've watched, R.U.R., Rossum’s Universal Robots? That old… it’s not a musical. It's just like the play that launched the idea of robots.
Laser: [00:40:22] I've read it. The Czech play? Yes.
Annalee: [00:40:23] Yeah, yeah.
Laser: [00:40:24] Yes, I have and I love it.
Annalee: [00:40:27] Yeah, because I was going to say I feel like Teaching a Robot to Love is like, at points, kind of a tip of the hat to R.U.R.
Laser: [00:40:35] I love robot stuff. Any books and I mean, obviously as a non-binary, there's the non-human non-binary trope and playing with that is interesting. And also I’ve identified with robots my whole life, but there's, I absorb robot content. And yeah R.U.R., I think, at one point, I was like reading a bunch of Czech literature just for fun. And that book is really good. And also like, amazing that that has been what we have thought about robots for so long, is like, oh, and eventually we're going to abuse them and they’re going to rise up. I mean, Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot is just basically the sequel to R.U.R. like but in beautiful way. It's an interesting. And like your work on robots. All of robots are. But do we learn? No, never.
Annalee: [00:41:30] Well, hopefully, by the time we have human equivalent robots, we will… No, we won't really have learned anything.
Charlie Jane: [00:41:37] So, I mentioned earlier that one of the big trends is kind of taking classic movies and turning them into stage musicals. And you know, what classic movie would you want to turn into a musical if you had the chance to do any of them?
Laser: [00:41:47] I also want to know your answers, but my answer is Carol. Just so you know. I've been thinking about it a lot. The 2015 lesbian film Carol, I think would be a really good musical. I think taking it—
Charlie Jane: [00:41:59] Oh, interesting.
Laser: [00:42:01] Making a really silly musical about this movie where basically nothing happens except for Cate Blanchett falls in love with Rooney Mara or Rooney Mara falls in love with Cate Blanchett over a train set and some gloves would be a really good film. And there would probably be a few dream ballets in it. I think about it a lot.
Charlie Jane: [00:42:19] Oh, I want to watch that.
Laser: [00:42:22] Have you not seen Carol?
Charlie Jane: [00:42:21] I haven't seen it, no. We have to watch it, now.
Annalee: [00:42:23] It’s actually on our list of movies that we needed to see. It's so funny because I remember being like, I really want to see that movie. And I forgot the name. And so now I just actually wrote down as you were talking.
Laser: [00:42:35] Literally, both of you. I have a podcast about Carol. You'll come on. We'll talk about Carol. You'll have to watch it. That's the only way I watch movies anyway, these days, is people make me for podcasts. It's a great movie. It's just yearning.
Charlie Jane: [00:42:47] Oh my gosh.
Laser: [00:42:47] It’s two hours of… it's more than two hours of yearning.
Annalee: [00:42:51] No, I'm so down. It’s so my jam. I love slow burn.
Charlie Jane: [00:42:51] I’m excited.
Annalee: [00:42:57] It’s like my favorite kind of burn and my favorite kind of slow.
Laser: [00:43:00] But it's interesting, because it's women.
Annalee: [00:43:01] Yeah, yeah.
Annalee: [00:43:03] Okay, Charlie, what are you going to make into a musical?
Charlie Jane: [00:43:04] I mean, you know, the movie that I would most love to turn into a stage musical is the the movie Bedazzled, starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. It was remade with Brendan Fraser and I've never seen the remake because it just didn't look like it was going to be good.
Laser: [00:43:18] It’s a Faust story, right?
Annalee: [00:43:20] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:43:20] It's basically a Faust story. Dudley Moore is a dude, who kind of he's at the end of his rope. Like literally, he tries to kill himself early on. And the devil, played by Peter Cook, comes to him and offers him seven wishes in exchange for his soul. But a lot of the movie is just Peter Cook complaining about how hard it is to be the devil. And how people are so unfair to him. And there actually is a musical sequence already in the film. There's a couple of musical sequences in the film, so you could use those. But you could also turn a lot of those other scenes into musical sequences, and it would just be so brilliant and wonderful.
Laser: [00:43:54] It’s got a little bit of “Once More, with Feeling” vibes, like the Buffy episode, just that, I’m a demon, my life is hard.
Charlie Jane: [00:44:03] I mean, kind of. There's this amazing sequence, which is on YouTube, where Peter Cook is explaining why he got cast out of heaven. And he sits cross legged on top of a mailbox and he says to Dudley Moore, okay, I'm God, you're me. Now dance around praising me. And so, Dudley Moore does this soft shoe routine and dances around like, “You're wise. You're wonderful. You're creating birds. That was a good idea. You know, blah, blah, You created all this stuff. You're so great! Da da da.” He dances around and then after like a minute, he's like, I'm getting tired, can we change places? And Lucifer’s like, “That's what I thought!” And like, it's just such… it’s so incredible. It's such a great film. I'm sure, I haven't watched it years. I'm sure parts of it have aged badly because it's from the 1960s but I think it'd be a great stage musical. Okay.
Annalee: [00:44:53] I would like to note that like you have a theme, which is like all of your musicals must feature Satan, so.
Charlie Jane: [00:45:01] I mean. Well, yeah.
Annalee: [00:45:05] Satan is a great—
Charlie Jane: [00:45:04] In fact, you could probably just combine Bedazzled and The Apple into one stage musical.
Laser: [00:45:11] But if you want to pretend that Norton is Satan in our musical, if that helps you enjoy it, please, feel free.
Annalee: [00:45:18] No.
Charlie Jane: [00:45:18] He kind of is.
Annalee: [00:45:18] I mean he's a bad guy, but he's not. I mean, I think you know, hyper capitalism and Satanism are not the same thing.
Laser: [00:45:24] No, Satanism’s way cooler.
Charlie Jane: [00:45:27] He tries to lure people into terrible deals. He tries to take people's souls.
Annalee: [00:45:29] So. Yeah. I'm gonna say Robocop.
Laser: [00:45:32] Yes.
Charlie Jane: [00:45:33] Yes!
Annalee: [00:45:34] Because, we’ve been thinking about robot musicals, and I can just imagine amazing scenes with Robocop dancing. I think, because the original Robocop movie deals with a strike, the cops are on strike, you can have an amazing dance sequence with the strikers. And like, pretty much any fight scenes could be turned into like a dance fight.
Laser: [00:45:59] Dance fights are the best.
Charlie Jane: [00:45:58] Dance fights are the best, but also, I’ll buy that for $1 could be a musical number.
Annalee: [00:46:05] There'd have to be a musical number about the secret fourth law, where like we learn about the secret fourth law and it would be like, [Singing] The fourth law. What do you say? Don't do anything against the corporation. The fourth law! See, this is, see how I'm such a great, yeah. So
Charlie Jane: [00:46:23] Oh my God. Musical producers, I hope you're taking notes right now.
Annalee: [00:46:30] All right. I think on that note, we have definitely figured out the future of our Hollywood careers. Or para-Hollywood careers.
Laser: [00:46:37] We did it.
Annalee: [00:46:37] Yeah, we did it. We've figured it out. So, awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, Laser. It was so good. Like just exchanging ideas with you for our future projects.
Laser: [00:46:52] An absolute honor, I can't tell you how excited I was to get the email that, first of all, that you'd watched the musical and that you wanted to have me on this show. You both are incredible. And obviously a huge admirer of you in the SFF world. So, my first step into creating my own SFF of universe. To be able to talk to you about it has been wonderful. Thank you.
Annalee: [00:47:14] We hope to see many more science fiction creations from you.
Laser: [00:47:17] Thank you.
Annalee: [00:47:17] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:47:20] Laser, where can people find you?
Laser: [00:47:22] People can find me on Twitter at @LaserMWebber. You can also check out my stuff at The Doubleclicks.com including the ability to stream Teaching a Robot to Love. It's unlimited time stream. But if you go to The Doubleclicks.com, there'll be a link to get Teaching a Robot to Love, to watch the stream. We can't keep it up forever, just for reasons. But get there. Watch the show. You can also check out Teaching a Robot to Love anywhere you listen to music, Spotify, iTunes, wherever, Jeff Bezos’s house. Yeah, he's got it. Check it out. I'm really, really proud of it. And the album is something I’ve… Aaron did an incredible job producing it. So please check out Teaching a Robot to Love and find me.
Annalee: [00:48:07] Yes. Awesome.
Charlie Jane: [00:48:10] Yay.
[00:48:11] Thank you so much for listening. This has been Our Opinions Are Correct. If you just randomly stumbled through a musical portal into this episode, you can find our podcasts wherever podcasts are found. You can subscribe to us. And if you like us, please do leave a review, because that helps a lot. Also, we're on Twitter at @OOACpod, and we're on the web at ouropinionsarecorrect.com
[00:48:34] You know, I want to thank our wonderful, amazing producer Veronica Simonetti, I want to thank Chris Palmer for the music, and thanks to everybody who supports us on Patreon. It really makes a huge difference. And we'll talk to you later. If you're a patron, we'll be hanging out with you in Discord and otherwise we'll see you in a couple of weeks.
[00:48:50] Bye!
Annalee: [00:48:50] Bye!
[00:48:50] [OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.]