Well, dear readers, what makes a great parody? Well, I’ll tell you, in case you were wondering and I happen to know you WERE wondering because a little birdie told me and then that little birdie flew off and as it did I said, “Bye bye birdie” and the birdie thought that was ever so clever. I have, in my time, written a LOT of parodies, starting way back around 1998 in my One from Column A thing on the Sondheim site. And in so doing I adhered to what I consider to be the very strict rules of what makes a great parody – it has to be funny and clever, and you cannot cheat by adding notes that aren’t in the music and you cannot emphasize the wrong syllable of a word just because you can’t think of a way to phrase the joke you want to do. That is lazy parody and lazy parody is, to me anyway, lazy and anything but funny. You want it to be easily understandable and easy for the ear to decipher. The Forbidden Broadway parodies, at least the ones I’ve heard all adhere to the rules. Every parody I’ve written adheres to the rules. No extra words or notes, words sitting on the music so that it matches the original scan perfectly. All my What If parodies work well because of that strict adherence to the rules. I’ve heard a ton of parodies that don’t – lay people think they’re hilarious, but people who take the craft seriously know better. In the workshop I’m directing, there are quite a few parody lyrics. The first time we did this as a one-nighter, everyone struggled to learn the songs because the parody lyrics did not obey the rules and therefore they were tough to learn. This time around, one of the things we wanted to fix were those things. Listening to stuff last night, I knew that many of the parodies still needed work, so I spent almost four hours making adjustments to them, always keeping the intention that the author was going for – just removing words where there were too many words or revising the line to make it fit the music whilst keeping the point of the line as the author intended. Sometimes I’d add a word or two or come up with different words that fit the music and made the same point. Sometimes I moved lines around to make them make more sense musically. Then I sent all of those little adjustments to the author and he was fine with them, so off they went to the cast and our pianist – it will now be MUCH easier for them to sing this stuff, since there’s no variance ever from the scan of the tune. Everything is consistent now.
Well, that was a paragraph about parody. Maybe this should be a parody about a paragraph? Otherwise, I did watch two-thirds of a motion picture after finishing the one-sided documentary, Leaving Neverland. You really can’t trust anything that this documentary presents because it has so many provable lies and so much of it has been debunked and all that is available on Google, for those who care about actual truth or at the very least those who like to hear all sides of a story. In the case of this, the director even has the chutzpah to admit that he didn’t interview anyone from the other side because he only wanted to tell the story he wanted to tell. Well, director twit, then your film is fiction and just call it that. Who CARES what story YOU want to tell – you have to be unbiased if you’re making accusations about a person, especially a person who is no longer here to defend himself. The movie I watched the first two-thirds of and will finish after posting these here notes, is entitled Clear and Present Danger, one of those Jack Ryan movies, this one being the second to star Harrison Ford. They’re all very typical in their plotting but I enjoy them for what they are and Ford is very good in this kind of film and there are some nice performances from some but not all of the supporting cast, especially Donald Moffat, and actor I adore and had the pleasure of working with in Forget-Me-Not Lane at the Taper and then on PBS’ Theater in America. The only thing I don’t really care for at all is James Horner’s silly score – Goldsmith he’s not – and why he keeps making with the Khachaturian rip-offs is anyone’s guess, but he’s done it a LOT.
Yesterday was all right. I got about eight-and-a-half hours of sleep, so that was good. Once up, I answered e-mails, did some Sami stuff, ordered a submarine sandwich from the local Numero Uno and it came with a little salad. It was pretty okay – I used to love Numero Uno but it’s really just a shadow of what it was. After that, I began cleaning up the parody lyrics and after that I sat on my couch like so much fish and finished Leaving Neverland and began watching Clear and Present Danger. Oh, and books are on their way and may be here today or tomorrow.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll work on the script for the workshop so that I’m ready to block as soon as we finish the second music rehearsal. I’ll eat a little something, maybe from Gelson’s or maybe a chicken breast from Popeye’s – we shall see. Then I’ll shave and shower and mosey on over to the theater to have our second music rehearsal and if we finish that within an hour, then I’ll start blocking the first three scenes of act one. Those are pretty simple. Then I’ll come home and listen and relax.
Tomorrow is more of the same and an evening rehearsal, Saturday she of the Evil Eye comes and we have a rehearsal so that works out well, Sunday we have another rehearsal, and one on Monday as well. Then we do our two performances on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, work on the script, eat a little something, shave and shower, have a rehearsal and hopefully start blocking, after which home I’ll come. Today’s topic of discussion: What parodies have made you laugh out loud and that would include Randy Rainbow, too? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have written a paragraph about parody.