EvRobert

The podcast BROADWAY BACKSTORY gives some insight into this. Usually it isn't one person writing a show and can be done in a matter of months but can also take years. From my persoective, although I don't write music or musicals, if properly inspired I can write a full length "straight play" in about a month with another month focused on rewrites. Then, while in rehearsals or during the casting process, I can and will often do further edits. For example, my play #JohnDoe, when going to cast I was short a male actor but we had more then enough female actors, so in about a night I changed one character to a female (and a lesbian not knowing I had cast a lesbian in that role) and I think it actually works better.

I haven't seen HSM2 but Sharpay, who was arguably your second best performer, was Gabriela's understudy? Why? In a school full of people who suck (based solely off the audition scene) why wouldn't you cast your secind best performers in secondary roles? As for the target audience, I assumed Disney was trying to cash in on the popularity of Glee. What year did this come out again? Maybe Glee was greenlighted because of this.

Jeez, I take a break to focus on a writing project and this thread keeps blowing up and blowing up. a) I have a musical in mind that may win for worst ever...or at least weirdest ever. I can't wait. in 2006 I went to the Philippines. When I came back, the day I landed, that night I went to a high school football game my brother was playing in. This is middle September in Kansas, it wasn't cold, but it was cool. What was I wearing, a thin button up shirt I had bought and a scarf thing. So I COULD see some people with no sense of decorum and too much money wearing something like that to graduation.

I also thought AoU was AtU...

I am going to have to listen to that. I love Hill's work but I come from a theater background where directing is working with actors to create their characters (in some cases--I have done shows where I am given carte blanche). I wonder if that comes out of a certain set of directors from the 70s, listening to I WAS THERE TOO with Ahmed Best, he mentioned that Ewan McGregor and Liam Nesson on Phantom Menace worked with him much more then Lucas ever did (that's not verbatium but certainly the impression I got)

I don't remember this sort of division of cliques and groups in schools being as prevalent in teen comedies in the 80s and 90s and didn't really start noticing it in movies until the late 90s and 00s (She's All That/Never Been Kissed, Mean Girls, etc). Maybe it's a case of the snake eating it's own tail. Kids saw it in the movies, so they started dividing up, which is reinforced by seeing it in the movies, which does it more as the kids who expirenced it go to Hollywood. That's not to say movies in the 80s/early 90s DIDN'T have that troupe (Breakfast Club and Heathers in particular). Ferris Bueller for example, wouldn't have hung out with Cameron in the late 90s because they obviously come from different groups (Ferris is the cool kid, Cameron a loner/nerd). Pretty In Pink is presented as a pull between the popular kid and the nerdy kid but more for romantic reasons then social constructs.

I graduated in a class of 100, in a town of around 5-6K. These kind of social circles DID exisit in my school, although it wasn't really what you were interested in that defined it, but rather who you're friends were. For example, my best friend graduated valedictorian and went to MIT ("nerd" material in the HS movie troupe). I was a drama and sci-fi geek. We ate lunch though with the captain of the f team and some of the athletes, but not the ones who were in our grade, rather the ones who were a grade above us. It didn't really seem to be determined on what you did, just sort of how things fell into place. Now then, a school I had did some associating with a couple of years ago, a much smaller school it seemed that the social circles and cliques were more divided by what you did and didn't do. There was a bit of controversy when on "Senior night" (the final home basketball game) athletes, cheerleaders, were acknowledged (they also had one on the last football game) but seniors in the pep band weren't. I ended up writing a blog about it and it went a bit viral and divided a lot of people's feelings. I think that troupe, prevelant in this movie, you see much more in smaller rural schools then in bigger schools.

I read on Wiki that Efron described this as "a Romeo and Juliet story" but it's not. Grease is a much closer analogy then R&J... unless Troy fell down on the ski slope and this is all a fever dream/Jacob's Ladder scenerio...

I have more "newsboy" caps then I probably should (I'm approaching old man level with them) so I have to give it to Ryan's hat.

I think Whiplash will get a lot of flack from La La Land (which we are seeing here) but we have to remember that Cody's writing follow-up (Jennifer's Body) ain't all that great either. Both suffer from a "sophmore slump". Cody came back with the great and underrated Young Adult.

We did (and probably still do) have posters. They were like one-sheet calenders that the booster club put out as a fund raiser, all the businesses supported and people bought. Picture of the team at the top, school year calender at the bottom. Different seadon, different poster sent around town.

I know I am bringing up a 3 and half month old thread but I saw this mentioned in the High School Musical thread and wanted to juno in real quick because i love this movie. But I will also say that Taylor's posts at the beginning got me thinking. Edna is a bucket role for me. Over the past couple of years I have scaled back on how much acting I do (mainly because I live in a small Kansas community with only community theater and it is a political backstabbing group there) and have focused on podcast audio dramas, writing, and directing (and have gotten to work with some great talents) but if given the chance to audition for Edna I would. I would hope that as a white cisgendered man I would bring a sensitivity to the role but I totally get where taylor was comimg from. That said I really disliked Firestein's Edna in the TV version. I thought it was too harsh and too campy at the same time. Firestein also lacked a connection with Martin Short tjat was there with Travolta and Walken. That is all

Ha! I edited it with the average wage of a teacher in New Mexico in 2017!

in 2017, a major sport head coach in New Mexico (where HSM takes place) makes between 51,000-80,000/year. And I have known schools where the coach is a full-time position. We know that the town (is it stated to be Albuquerque? ) is big enough to support two schools (East Wildcats and West Knights) so...ten years ago, I would say probably around 40 or 50k/year.

Well if we take the age of the actor playing Coach Bolton into consideration (36) and the age of Troy (17) that means they would have had Troy when he was 19 or 20. So right out of college, maybe two years of college as a star basketball player, then bam a kid comes, he is struggling through teacher's college while his wife is doing, whatever it is she is doing. Maybe troy's parents were high school sweethearts and his dad is trying to help his son live the life he never got to. As mentioned, his dad is kind of a man-child living through his son.

Having read White's reviews in the past, I expected a much more...bombastic edition. This one was actually almost, I hesitate to use the word boring but that's not the right word. I was expecting one not quite so academic.

Looking at Tisdale's bio on Wiki, it looks like she had much more expirence, including quite a bit of musical theater experience before she ever went to Hollywood. She did two years in a touring company of Les Miz as Cosette and a tour of Korea in Annie. Compared to Hudgens who did almost no professional theater work and was doing TV and movies before HSM. Tisdale is also 3 years older then Hudgens and 2 years older then Efron. I also feel that not enough love has been given to Corbin Bleu. I remember talking a lot of shit when he replaced Lin-Manuel Miranda as Usnavi in In The Heights on Broadway when lin left (IIRC he took the role directly over from Lin) judging him solely on HSM, and I haven't even seen High School Musical. He was quite good in this in a very underwritten role.

That show would be so much better if they got rid of her (although it works because she is basically playing a straight man type character in an office full of wacky people).

Watching this in hindsight, it is surprising how good of a comic actor Efron turned out to be. As a regular watcher of NBC's Powerless, Vanessa Hudgens hasn't improved much.

I have never seen a "pair audition" at least like Sharpay and Ryan do, but yeah, sometimes during callbacks or sometimes during the inital audition, they might say "I wanna see how see how so and so work together" For example, a couple of years ago I auditioned for The Odd Couple. I read a bunch of scenes as Oscar with different actors as Felix. I read some scenes as Felix with different people as Oscar. I even read as Speed and Murray. When I co-directed Legally Blonde, we do various pairings, but in the end, we trusted our gut and our Emmett and Elle didn't do any scene work together. Sometimes you just have to trust yourself.

It was SUPER weird!

Oh that spelling is even worse. It reminds me of a play I wrote I had two character named "Rowdy" Roderick (a reality TV guy) and his sister Amythyst (who changed her name to Amy). Their mother's name was Alison (also a reality TV star--the whole play was kind of a send up of the Kardashians). I had someone suggest that I should change or modify Alison's name because it was too normal of a name for such an outrageous character. I never got the sense that Sharpay was the princess and Ryan was the afterthought in this film, it seemed as if they were almost equal partners in their weird Cersi and Jamie Lannister musical theater relationship. If that comes out in the later 2 films, I'm glad because it was so...weird. Also, I'm glad for Ryan

I think that the "Status Quo" and "Get Cha Head In The Game" numbers are why you hire a director like Kenny Ortega. They were the best directed numbers and had great flair and feel to them. Something that the more static numbers didn't. When they gave Ortega the chance to shine with the big dance numbers he really did.

I would argue that removing the bowler hat and suit (and going back to something that was said on page one or two about the third movie and Ryan (that is Sharpy's brother right? Seriously why do you name one twin "Sharpy" and the other "Ryan") wanting to come out (or the actor wanted the character to be revealed as gay) and Disney nixing it. I think in the Disney safe world, any hint of androgyny is okay for being "weird" but when we all come together and accept each other, you need to conform to cultural norms.

That actually lines up with my experiences with classmates who got married too early and live hrough their kids, saddling them with their hopes, dreams, and expectations.