South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut Composer Reflects on the Music Over 20 Years Later
Marc Shaiman is a composer and lyricist known for an array of Broadway shows and films. Throughout his career, Shaiman has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, including "Best Score" nods for The American President, The First Wives Club, Patch Adams, and Mary Poppins Returns. He was also nominated for "Best Song" for numbers heard in Sleepless in Seattle and Mary Poppins Returns. However, our readers will probably know him best for his work on South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut, which earned him another Oscar nomination for writing "Blame Canada." Recently, ComicBook.com had the chance to chat with Shaiman alongside his longtime collaborator, Scott Wittman, about their latest musical feat; "Save the City," the song from the fictional show, Rogers: The Musical, seen in Hawkeye. During the chat, we asked Shaiman about the South Park movie, and if thinks they would have been able to create such an extreme musical now.
"Oh. Well, I mean, South Park lives on amazingly, even with all the new restrictions of what you're allowed to say or write about. God bless them, keep going on. I would hopefully think that we could still create that musical. I mean, that was the thrill of a lifetime. And not only did working on South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut led to me getting the call to write Hairspray, where I was able to say, 'I would want to write it only with Scott and I writing lyrics.' So that became the dream come true for Scott and I, and then Hairspray led to working on Mary Poppins Returns, another dream come true. And then who would've ever thought it would then also lead to a Marvel musical?"
Since the Internet is loving the musical, we also asked Shaiman and Wittman if they'd be interested in creating more music for Marvel.
"We need [fans] to get out their pens and papers and write to Marvel," Wittman replied. "Pen, pens, papers. I've never heard of such a thing," Shaiman joked. "Yeah because I think it should be, go back old school pen and paper, and say please dear Marvel Universe," Wittman added.
"We would love it," Shaiman continued. "I mean, of course, we would love it. I mean, so would a lot of other songwriters, so we've got to get going. Yeah. I'm sure there's already probably a whole musical on TikTok already. So we would love it. And the Marvel Universe is so expansive, not to mention the multi universes. See, I actually know things now about Marvel." He added, "Oh my God. I hope there aren't other songwriting teams in other multi-universes writing this. Yeah. I mean, can you imagine?" Wittman joked, "Who's on that program? We might have to send somebody after them."
"Can you imagine a Ragnarok section of the musical?," Shaiman suggested. "Hela. What a perfect name, of course. Just the song about how that dear antler headpiece." He added, "There's so many things. And then the fact that Steve Rogers also takes place in the forties, so we would get to do our big USO number, and it would be phenomenal."
The first three episodes of Hawkeye are now streaming on Disney+. South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut is currently streaming on Paramount+. You can watch our full interview with Shaiman and Wittman at the top of the page.