Over a year after Kevin Smith toyed with the idea of staging Clerks III as a theatrical production before abandoning the idea in favor of a film that will begin photography in the spring, he’s announced that another of his fledgling film projects will head to the stage.In a Facebook post addressing his “rampaging Jesus” film Helena Handbasket, Smith told fans that the script he was writing would have a budget far too high for the kind of film he’s interested in making and able to fund easily. As a result, he said, he turned to the hit musical Book of Mormon for inspiration and started hammering out a script to turn the concept–which he came up with during a podcast rap session–into musical theater.Along the way, he reposted a YouTube video he’d uploaded about six months ago, showing Smith on stage in high school, playing Kenickie in Grease.
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So I spent 24 hour feverishly writing another script based on an episode of SModcast – this time SModcast # 52: The (C)Rapture. I got about 20 pages in when I realized there was no way to write this inexpensively as a feature film.
Everything was requiring too many effects that I could never achieve using in-camera tricks like forced perspective. It was starting to feel like a pricier project than I know I’d ever be able to find money to make. And then I remembered this is a SModcast Picture.
What do we do on SModcast sometimes? We sing. We make up stupid songs. And my favorite piece of art ever produced by human hands is the glorious Book of Mormon. So… I started reshaping the Helena Handbag script as a piece of SMusical theater, with Book of Mormon as my spirit animal. And holy shit… does THIS feel right! After making up all those goofy tunes on Edumacation and Plus One, not to mention the Fat Man on Batman theme song, this feels like a logical progression. And it’ll be fun (and way easier) to stage in a theater!
I’m a marginally-straight 43 year old fat man who has always loved show tunes: I guess I’d better finally try writing a musical. So there you go: another look inside the creative process. One day, you think you’re writing a movie. The next day, you realize it’s a that tuner you’ve always wanted to write. And making up songs? That’s the kind of whimsy I can push forward even if I’m standing in the shower (where I normally only masturbate and try to reach hard-to-wash areas with a loofah on a stick).
Alright: I thought Clerks: The Musical would be my first attempt at theater one day. So happy to realize it’s gonna be something original instead. And with that, I look to the heavens and shout “FATHER! The fat sleeper who was in the Henry Hudson Regional late-80’s performances of Damn Yankees and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Grease has awakened! (Here is proof that theater is in my blood: me as Kenickie in Grease!)
