It was fun to see Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Seth Meyers talk on his show yesterday about both being in the annual "Mee-Ow Show" at Northwestern University -- since I had written for the show in its first year of existence.
"The Mee-Ow Show" was created as a sort of alternative student production to offset the far-more famous and substantial, student-produced Waa-Mu Show. ("Waa-Mu" stands for Women's Athletic Association and Men's Union.) The Waa-Mu Show has been going on for 89 years now, and began life as a collection of events around one theme and has evolved into a full-blown musical. The Mee-Ow Show (not only named as a play on words, of course, but comes from Northwestern being the Wildcats) began as a sketch revue show and itself has evolved into an improv show.
I wrote two songs that were accepted for that initial show -- music and lyrics. Though the end result was somewhat different. A few days before opening night, I went to a rehearsal. One of the songs was done very well. The other song, though, was odd -- they had cut out the middle verse, and so the song made little sense and seemed a bit stupid. I went to the producer to ask him what in the world was going on. (He was a guy from my dorm, and knew pretty well. When I was president of the dorm, he was the treasurer, and my quip was that he would either end up being a big, successful producer or an embezzler. I heard a few years later after I had graduated that I was closer to being right about the latter. Though I don't know the full details of the "scandal," only that it was related to a subsequent production of the show.)
What he said was that the production was running long, by about 20 minutes, so things had to be cut. I replied that seemed an odd decision, since by cutting the verse they saved about 40 seconds. Meanwhile, the sketch that preceded it ran about 12 minutes -- which is an eternity for a sketch, most of which run about 3-5 minutes. I suggested that if they really wanted to save time, that was a far-better place to start. It was the correct argument, but not a winning one. He gave me two options: leave the song as is, or cut the song completely. I chose the latter. I'm sure the performers were disappointed, but then so was the composer-lyricist, more so by the mangling than pulling it. But I was sorry for that, as well.
In the end, the program shows one song by me. But I've always stood by the larger reality that I had two songs accepted in the show and only by personal choice did it end up halved..
Alas, I don't have footage of that initial production, though I do have Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Seth Meyers' show last night, having a good time and talking about the Mee-Ow Show, which is almost the next best thing! (It comes along about the 3:30 mark, though the whole interview is fun.)
By the way, fun too is that her son Charlie Hall is there, and they chat with him a bit in the wings, largely about him just finishing a small role on the final season if Veep, and then Seth Meyers even brings him out on stage. Readers of these pages with good memories will recall that I wrote about a very funny video of Charlie over a year ago. He's also at Northwestern, and on the basketball team, and did a series of videos in the locker room interviewing other players that all are a hoot. So, it's not a stretch that he apparently did well on his mother's show, even if not trained in acting. If you're interested, you can see one of those locker room videos here.
And you can see the Seth Meyers video underneath...
"The Mee-Ow Show" was created as a sort of alternative student production to offset the far-more famous and substantial, student-produced Waa-Mu Show. ("Waa-Mu" stands for Women's Athletic Association and Men's Union.) The Waa-Mu Show has been going on for 89 years now, and began life as a collection of events around one theme and has evolved into a full-blown musical. The Mee-Ow Show (not only named as a play on words, of course, but comes from Northwestern being the Wildcats) began as a sketch revue show and itself has evolved into an improv show.
I wrote two songs that were accepted for that initial show -- music and lyrics. Though the end result was somewhat different. A few days before opening night, I went to a rehearsal. One of the songs was done very well. The other song, though, was odd -- they had cut out the middle verse, and so the song made little sense and seemed a bit stupid. I went to the producer to ask him what in the world was going on. (He was a guy from my dorm, and knew pretty well. When I was president of the dorm, he was the treasurer, and my quip was that he would either end up being a big, successful producer or an embezzler. I heard a few years later after I had graduated that I was closer to being right about the latter. Though I don't know the full details of the "scandal," only that it was related to a subsequent production of the show.)
What he said was that the production was running long, by about 20 minutes, so things had to be cut. I replied that seemed an odd decision, since by cutting the verse they saved about 40 seconds. Meanwhile, the sketch that preceded it ran about 12 minutes -- which is an eternity for a sketch, most of which run about 3-5 minutes. I suggested that if they really wanted to save time, that was a far-better place to start. It was the correct argument, but not a winning one. He gave me two options: leave the song as is, or cut the song completely. I chose the latter. I'm sure the performers were disappointed, but then so was the composer-lyricist, more so by the mangling than pulling it. But I was sorry for that, as well.
In the end, the program shows one song by me. But I've always stood by the larger reality that I had two songs accepted in the show and only by personal choice did it end up halved..
Alas, I don't have footage of that initial production, though I do have Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Seth Meyers' show last night, having a good time and talking about the Mee-Ow Show, which is almost the next best thing! (It comes along about the 3:30 mark, though the whole interview is fun.)
By the way, fun too is that her son Charlie Hall is there, and they chat with him a bit in the wings, largely about him just finishing a small role on the final season if Veep, and then Seth Meyers even brings him out on stage. Readers of these pages with good memories will recall that I wrote about a very funny video of Charlie over a year ago. He's also at Northwestern, and on the basketball team, and did a series of videos in the locker room interviewing other players that all are a hoot. So, it's not a stretch that he apparently did well on his mother's show, even if not trained in acting. If you're interested, you can see one of those locker room videos here.
And you can see the Seth Meyers video underneath...
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