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[0:00] Robert W. Schneider: So no one told you creating musicals was going to be this way. Now you might be asking, what in the name of Smelly Cat does a TV show Friends have to do with Broadway? Well, before Marta Kauffman and David Crane created the quintessential 90s sitcom, they were musical theater writers and had their hearts set on the Great Bright Way. But they had to pivot. What happened was, well, we're going to let Marta, David, and composer Michael Skloff tell you themselves in this week's episode of Broadway Bound, the musicals that never got to New York, which explores Arthur: The Musical, or “The One Where A Great Score Needs To Be Heard.”

[0:46] Robert W. Schneider: Hello, friends. I'm Rob Schneider and welcome to Broadway Bound, the musicals that never came to Broadway, the podcast. Friends, you must bear with me today because we are looking at one of my favorite musicals of all time. Actually, this one keeps me up at night wondering how this did not come to Broadway because it is so damn good. I think I need to lay down. I'm getting a little overexcited and overheated. But if it had succeeded, then we might not have had Friends. Yes. So, you win some, you lose some.

[1:13] Robert W. Schneider: Now, I love the 1980s. I'm like VH1. Do you remember that, kids? I love the 80s. Nope, just me. Okay, God, I feel so old. So, when you tell me that one of the greatest films of the 80s, one that actually needs to be musicalized, I'm very sorry for that flash dance in 9 to 5, but one that actually needs to be musicalized is going to be brought to the stage, I am as excited as Nancy Reagan in a kneepad factory. And if you don't know what that means, look it up, kids. And honestly, had this show come to Broadway in the mid-1980s, I think it would have given the Brits a run for their money in the 80s battle for Broadway.

[1:45] Robert W. Schneider: You know, where the Brits and the Americans were pitted against each other and they were giving us, like, you know, Starlight Express and Phantom of the Opera. And we were like, hey, here's star mites, here's quilters. And don't even get me started on quilters. I have a whole quilter story, but I'm going to talk about that on another day because today is not about quilters, dammit. It's about Arthur: The Musical. But before Arthur: The Musical, and even Arthur 2: On the Rocks, or the remake of Arthur with that walking Petri dish we call Russell Brand, there was just Arthur, the movie, and it was fabulous.

[2:14] Robert W. Schneider: Take it away, movie trailer.

[2:19] Robert W. Schneider: Don't you wish you were Arthur? Would the more attractive of you please step forward? It's going to cost you $100. Let's make it $200, but I will ask you to Simonize my car. How rich are you? I wish I had a dime for every dime I have. Anticipating your condition, I brought you orange juice, coffee, and aspirins. Or do you need to throw up? What do you do for a living? I race cars, I play tennis, I fondle women, but I have weekends off and I am my own boss. Dudley Moore is Arthur.

[3:13] Robert W. Schneider: If you've never seen the movie Arthur, I encourage you right now to pause this recording and head on over to Amazon Prime to watch Arthur, the movie, starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli. 4 out of 5 stars. Amazon Prime not a proud sponsor of Broadway Bound, the podcast. Anyway, our story starts in the late 1970s with a brilliant comic mind named Steve Gordon. Steve was your average LA TV writer tooling around writing for shows we don't really remember today like The New Dick Van Dyke Show. If you've not seen The New Dick Van Dyke Show, it's kind of epic. It was filmed in Arizona and the cast not only included Dick Van Dyke but Chita Rivera and it was most notoriously known for an episode in which a daughter walks in on her father and mother having sex and then they have to explain the birds and the bees.

[4:02] Robert W. Schneider: And, you know, just picturing Dick Van Dyke having sex to me is kind of funny because I imagine it's happening on an ottoman. But anyway, Steve Gordon didn't want to just write for the small screen. He wanted to write for the pictures, kids. And at a time when movies were trying to show how socially aware they were with things like The China Syndrome about, you know, nuclear proliferation and Apocalypse Now about the Vietnam War, Gordon wanted to escape back to a time when movies were movies, to quote Jerry Herman, and you paid a dime to escape. Or at least a dollar.

[4:26] Robert W. Schneider: So he was going to revive the screwball comedies of the 1930s. Now, hopefully you know screwball comedies. That's movies like Dinner at Eight and The Philadelphia Story. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, go ahead and see if you can find one of these movies on streaming. And if you cannot find it on streaming, I swear to you, go knock on every single door at Manhattan Plaza and I am sure someone there has a VHS copy for you to watch. But basically, it's about rich people being witty and possibly losing their wealth or social status.

[5:00] Robert W. Schneider: So Steve crafted a story with a screwball foundation, a modern New York fairy tale. Arthur Bach is a millionaire playboy who seemed to have it all. He had money, cars, servants, and a drinking problem. Well, it really wasn't a problem because Arthur drank any time he wanted, and boy did he have something to drink about. To keep his wealth and inherit $750 million, Arthur has to marry the cold fish socialite Susan. Now, if not, he's going to lose his entire fortune. Broke. A broken Bach. And to make matters worse, while wandering Bergdorf Goodman's one day, he meets Linda, a Queens waitress with a penchant for shoplifting. Arthur is smitten. How could you not be? She steals really nice things and it's a tie for her dad's birthday, so she's not stealing for herself.

[5:41] Robert W. Schneider: Now, when security's about to arrest Linda, Arthur steps in and says that Linda is his girlfriend and the tie is on his tab. And then he takes Linda out to Coney Island for a fun night and he is smitten. And when he's with Linda, he doesn't drink. Now, Arthur is torn between love and logic. Eternal wealth or eternal love. Caught between the moon and New York City, you might say. Luckily, he has a Jiminy Cricket in the form of an English butler who throws shade like he's an extra in the picture of Dory and Cory. The butler is dying and his last advice to Arthur is that love triumphs all and Arthur ditches Susan, marries Linda and, happy ending, he gets to keep the money.

[6:19] Robert W. Schneider: Romantic comedies are all pretty much the same and that's why we like them, but what makes them unique and memorable is the casting and chemistry of the two leads. Think of The Wedding Singer, Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, right? It's basically the same old story when Harry met Sally. Basically the same old story, but with the casting and chemistry of these performers, suddenly what seems like a tired trope feels reinvigorated. So, casting has to be just right for this movie. So, for Arthur, they looked at, here's a wide list of people that were up for this particular role. George Segal, John Belushi, James Caan, Al Pacino, I don't want to picture that one, Robert Redford, John Travolta, hey, my hair, he puts my hair, Jeff Bridges, Chevy Chase, oh boy, Steve Martin, Bill Murray, Jack Nicholson, Sylvester Stallone, Gene Wilder, Robin Williams, Charles Grodin, Burt Reynolds, Tom Selleck, and Michael Constantine were all looked at for the role of Arthur Bach, but the role eventually went to Dudley Moore, an impish British actor, all of 5'3", who was hot off of the films Foul Play and Ten.

[7:15] Robert W. Schneider: Now, he didn't look like old Hollywood screwball comedy heroes, but his talents were so unique and his aura so lovable that audiences would fall madly in love with Arthur Bach. You would forgive him for always being drunk, and you would root for him. I don't know how Pacino would have played Arthur Bach, but I think it would have been a little bit disturbing. Anyway, how could you not love an Arthur of Dudley Moore? This is Arthur talking to a lady of the night he has just picked up for the evening.

[7:43] Robert W. Schneider: What do you have in mind? VD, I'm really into penicillin. Ha, ha, ha, that's funny. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Actually, what I had in mind was spending the evening with a stranger who loves me. It's going to cost you $100. Oh yeah? What time do you get off work? Ha, ha, ha, ha. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Let's make it $200, but I will ask you to Simonize my car. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Tell me, has there been a death in your family? This is funny stuff. He's so funny. But who is Linda? Who can represent the down-on-her-luck waitress who's willing to risk jail time to steal her father a tie for his birthday, but also keep up with Dudley Moore? Here are the actresses they looked at for this role.

[8:30] Robert W. Schneider: Kim Basinger, Mia Farrow, Farrah Fawcett, Goldie Hawn, Barbara Hershey, Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Bette Midler, Gilda Radner, Susan Sarandon, Sybil Shepherd, Carrie Fisher, Deborah Winger, Tuesday Weld, and Meryl Streep were all looked at before the team went in a very unconventional way and snagged Oscar-winning singer Liza Minnelli as Linda. And she is wonderful in the film. Everyone talks about Cabaret, and one guy at 9th Avenue Saloon consistently talks about The Sterile Cuckoo. But if you haven't seen Arthur, watch her in this. Watch her brilliance. It's clear no one in Arthur's family wants to deal with Arthur, or even likes Arthur, so Hobson the butler has become Arthur's surrogate father.

[9:11] Robert W. Schneider: So for this role, they wanted David Niven or Alec Guinness, but both turned them down, and it was offered to Sir John Gielgud, who refused it about 10 times before he said yes. And thank God he did, because his ability to cut Arthur down to size without batting an eye is probably one of the best comic performances ever captured on camera. And in a rare turn of events, the Academy actually nominated John Gielgud for a comic performance. The Academy never, like, recognizes comedy performances, because apparently that's just too easy. Who knew? And if you don't believe me, look at Margot Robbie. Where's her nomination? Anyway, John Gielgud got a nomination for this, and he won. His only Oscar he won for playing Arthur's drunk butler.

[9:54] Robert W. Schneider: Here's a clip of John Gielgud doing the Hobson he's so brilliant. I'm going to take a bath. I'll alert the media. Do you want to run my bath for me? It's what I live for. Perhaps you'd like me to come in there and wash your dick for you. You little shit. Juliet Taylor, who did casting for this film, should have gotten an Oscar. One, because her work was also great, but also, when is the Academy going to give casting directors an Oscar? They don't want to, and it's absolutely ridiculous. The work the casting directors do cannot even be described. There's a beautiful documentary called Casting By, which talks about the history of casting directors. Watch it, and then write the Oscars, and after you're done saying that Greta Gerwig did not get an Oscar nomination for Best Director, which is something that I'm going to be talking about until the day that I die, then start to complain about the fact that casting directors do not have an Oscar nomination, because they deserve it.

[10:50] Robert W. Schneider: Anyway, Miss Taylor did great work. The cast was stacked, or included, depending on how you want to say it. Seinfeld's dad, original Mr. Cellophane, Barney Martin, the great Lou Jacoby, Geraldine Fitzgerald as Aunt Martha, Jill Eikenberry as Susan, the cold fiancée, The Wiz's lion, Ted Ross, and Woody Allen favorite, Ann DeSalvo, as a hooker with a heart of gold, plus a banger song that everybody was singing, written by Burt Bacharach, Carol Bayer Sager, hello, they're playing our song, Christopher Cross, and Peter Allen.

[11:26] Robert W. Schneider: When you get caught between the moon and New York City, I know it's crazy, but it's true. If you get caught between the moon and New York City, the best that you can do, the best that you can do, is fall in love. Now, the movie debuts in July of 1981 and was a critical darling, although it took a while for audiences to warm up to it, and they eventually did, making the film the 7th highest grossing film of 1981. Four Oscar nominations, two wins, one for song, one for Sir John, who was so baffled by it all, five Golden Globes, four wins, including Best Motion Picture Comedy.

[12:18] Robert W. Schneider: You'd think that Steve Gordon would be working like crazy, but sadly, this, oh, it breaks my heart, sadly, he had a heart attack at the age of 44 in 1982, a year after the movie came out. And 1982, ironically, is not only going to be the death of screwball comedies, but it's also going to be the first nail in the coffin for Arthur to become a musical. More on that a little bit later.

[12:40] Robert W. Schneider: Unlike today, where it seems like every movie is being turned into a musical right after it hits the screen, it usually took some time before a movie's debut and its musical production. I think the distance helps a bit because you're not competing so heavily with the memory of the film. But there were two producers, Bruce Michael and Joseph Bilone, who thought Arthur should be a musical, and they didn't see any reason why they should wait. Bruce was working over at Radio City, and Joseph was a director and choreographer for Industrials, but neither had helmed a Broadway musical before, but that didn't stop them. Pause. If you don't know what an industrial is, I encourage you to watch an amazing documentary called Bathtubs Over Broadway, which explains how musical theater talent and writers were hired by large corporations to produce shows celebrating their product.

Bathtubs Over Broadway, seriously, it's amazing. But Bruce and Joseph knew what they wanted, and they were going to get it, no matter how long it took, which is not really going to help Arthur the musical. The first challenge was the rights. It took a whole year to get them. Then, once the rights were secured, you're going to need writers, not only to adapt the screenplay to the stage, but to give these characters songs. And importantly, they had to be funny, and funny songwriters in New York in the early 80s was quite rare. In the early 2020s, it's even rarer. It took a year and a half to find them. There were three writers that were getting known in the review scene in New York, especially with their 1985 review, Personals.

There is a wonderful cast recording of Personals from the London production, so it unfortunately didn't capture the original New York cast, which included Jason Alexander, Dee Hody, Nancy Opel, amongst others. Listen to that if you get the chance. These writers were Marta Kauffman, David Crane, and Michael Skloff. And here is their origin story.

[14:31] Marta Kauffman: David and I met in college. We were in a show called Camino Real, and he was a street urchin and I was a whore. And so we met then, and then we didn't know each other very well. And a couple of years later, someone wanted to produce an extracurricular production of Godspell, and they asked Marta to direct it. And we were in a directing class together, and she said, hey, if I did this thing, would you be in it? And I had already decided the last thing I should be as an actor. So I said, no, but I'll direct it with you. And so we did. And so we directed this production of Godspell, and it went really well. And after that, we were like, hey, we should write something and put it on. Neither of us had ever written a show.

Genius. And we just went, yeah, let's do it. And so the two of us, with another friend, Seth Friedman, we wrote a musical. And we actually booked the theater space before we'd written it, so we would have to do it. It's college. And we did it and really enjoyed it and didn't look back. At the time, it was called Foundation of Feathers.

[15:52] David Crane: Foundation of Feathers.

[15:56] Marta Kauffman: Foundation of Feathers.

[15:59] David Crane: Of Feathers. It was about our relationship. It was about relationships. It was like our relationship is built on a foundation of feathers. It was very dramatic. Then waiting for the feeling. And it actually, for a college production, it did very well. It ended up winning a national college contest and being done at the Kennedy Center.

[16:19] Michael Skloff: Michael, how did you get involved with this partnership over here?

[16:22] Michael Skloff: So I met Marta and David in New York. I was, through a series of connections, became David's roommate. And I'd heard about Marta, but she started coming around. And one thing led to another. And we started writing music together, writing songs together for reviews. And I'm leaving out huge chunks of life here.

[16:52] Marta Kauffman: No, no, no. The first one we did was something called Upstairs at O'Neill's.

[16:59] Michael Skloff: We wrote like three or four songs and sketches for that. And from that, we did Upstairs.

[17:12] David Crane: A, My Name is Alice.

[17:13] Michael Skloff: A, My Name is Alice with Joan Micklin-Silver and Julie Boyd. And also, the second show that we wrote in college, even though it had a thematic through line, it was basically a review. So that was, that was, it was this thing called Personals that we did at the Minetta Lane. It was kind of, that was our thing for quite a while.

[17:36] Robert W. Schneider: So this trio seemed like the perfect team to bring Arthur into the world of musical comedy. Now, we were commissioned. Because of some of the exposure we're getting through the A, My Name is Alice and Personals, and maybe some other things that we were doing around town, we were approached by Bruce Michael and Joe Ballone, Joseph Ballone. They acquired the musical theater rights to the movie, to the Steve Gordon screenplay.

[18:07] Marta Kauffman: Let me just amend when Michael says commissioned, there was no money involved.

[18:15] David Crane: Of course. That goes without saying, of course.

[18:19] Marta Kauffman: It was a couple hundred bucks, maybe, or something.

[18:22] Robert W. Schneider: Now, if you're a fan of Ken Mandelbaum's book, Not Since Care, you know that one of his major points is, don't musicalize what doesn't need to be musicalized. But this was not the case for Arthur.

[18:34] David Crane: There are a couple of things. One is the emotions run large. As a character, he's big. And it's very easy to make the leap from characters who have strong emotional arcs, and characters who are large enough to sing. And this was a movie that had it all, and funny. I think it's a love story. And the minute you start with a love story, um, you know, and a funny love story.

[19:08] Marta Kauffman: So it's, it immediately you go, oh, well, that, that can be bigger. You can, it's, it's got the emotional underpinnings to, to sort of ramp up.

[19:20] Robert W. Schneider: Now, from agreement to the first production, it was four and a half years. How did Marta, David, and Michael begin?

[19:27] David Crane: Knowing us, it was probably, we started with the opening number.

[19:31] Robert W. Schneider: This is from the first demo made of Arthur in the late 1980s with Crazy For You's Harry Groner, Baby's Liz Calloway, and Your Esteemed Writer Singing Back Up.

[19:41] Robert W. Schneider: The opening number of Arthur.

[19:44] Michael Skloff: Arthur, millionaire playboy, has a problem. His family insists that if he doesn't marry the woman they have chosen for him, he will lose his inheritance. It's only $750 million. He has resigned to marry her until he meets Linda, a waitress from Queens. Not exactly the kind of woman his family had in mind. Arthur is the story of a man who finally grows up. It is a coming-of-age story about a 36-year-old. A spotlight comes up on Hobson, a manservant. The birth of Arthur.

[20:26] Robert W. Schneider: Lights come up on a tableau, a nativity scene. It is the entire Bach family.

[20:46] Michael Skloff: A child is born, let it be known, that Arthur Bach will someday sit upon the family throne. And when he's grown, he will be Arthur, captain of industry, Arthur singing home. Carrying forth a family flame, marrying a woman worth his name, soon as the future moans, we can gather and proclaim.

[21:21] Michael Skloff: A child is born, you can be sure, the financial world is waiting for this investment to mature. With the wealth of generations coursing through his veins, a child is, a child is, a child is born.

[21:42] Robert W. Schneider: And 36 years later, a huge bathtub moves on, Arthur is in it, he is rip-roaring drunk.

[21:51] Michael Skloff: A child here remains.

[22:00] Robert W. Schneider: Out of the bubbles, Gloria emerges.

[22:06] Gloria: So tell me about yourself.

[22:08] Arthur: You mean, why am I a hooker?

[22:10] Gloria: Are you a hooker?

[22:11] Arthur: Jesus, I forgot. I just thought I was doing great with you.

[22:16] Gloria: We need more champagne.

[22:18] Arthur: What do you do for a living?

[22:21] Gloria: I race cars, I play tennis, I fondle women, but I get the weekends off and I'm my own boss. Don't you wish you were me?

[22:30] Arthur: I know I do.

[22:32] Gloria: Are you married?

[22:34] Arthur: There's only one woman for me.

[22:36] Gloria: There's only one woman for me, and I can't stand her.

[22:44] Arthur: There's only one woman for me, her name is Susan.

[22:52] Gloria: I can't tell you her last name, because that would be indiscreet.

[23:00] Arthur: Johnson, you're the only woman for me in this bathtub.

[23:10] Arthur: You're the only woman for me, I think I love you.

[23:18] Arthur: This happiness that we share is something very rare.

[23:25] Gloria: How much do I owe you?

[23:27] Arthur: How much do I owe you?

[23:31] Gloria: Fun, isn't this fun?

[23:33] Arthur: Isn't fun the best thing to have?

[23:37] Gloria: Right, every night's New Year's Eve.

[23:42] Arthur: Hey, what do you say we stay inside here all day?

[23:48] Gloria: We'll hide here all day.

[23:50] Arthur: We'll laugh and drink champagne and never leave.

[23:57] Gloria: Do you like me?

[24:06] Arthur: You're cute.

[24:09] Gloria: I know that, but do you like me?

[24:12] Arthur: Yeah, I like you.

[24:18] Arthur: There's only one woman for me, and I've never met her.

[24:26] Arthur: There's only one woman for me, and she'd better get here quickly, because I haven't got much time till my family decides that I'm going to spend the rest of my life with Susan Johnson.

[24:51] Arthur: There's only one woman for me.

[24:53] Arthur: There's only one woman for me.

[24:54] Arthur: There's only one woman for me.

[24:56] Arthur: There's only one woman for me.

[24:58] Arthur: There's only one woman for me.

[24:59] Arthur: There's only one woman for me.

[25:07] Robert W. Schneider: We love a great I am slash I want number. A number that very early on established what a character wants in a musical. Please think somewhere that's green in Little Shop, Wizard, and I from Wicked.

[25:18] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, uh, uh, uh, Waving Through a Window.

[25:19] Marta Kauffman: From Dear Evan Hansen. Then there's the I Am song. That's where a character in a musical describes who they are as a person, so we know what their identity is. Think like, I'm an ordinary man from My Fair Lady, or shy from Once Upon a Mattress. But in Arthur, these writers gave us a double whammy. An I Am and I Want song rolled into one. Well, what was important is that he is very quickly lovable. So we wanted to start with something very positive and up and adorable, so that you fall in love with him quickly, because there are things about him that are kind of, well, bad behavior. Right. And so that the essence of the character isn't drinking. The essence of the character is fun. The drinking is something that he's dealing with his demons with. But... It's his child-ness.

[26:16] David Crane: Yeah. And I have to say, to Steve Gordon's credit, the line, "isn't fun the best thing to have," is in the movie. And so I think we heard that and went, well, that's a song in that, as you say, sort of, you know, musical theater school, you're like, oh, find the line in the source that captures the thing. And then, you know, so yes, that's, that was the inspiration for it. But it did speak to what's the essence of the character that we wanted to convey. The melody kind of came naturally, but, you know, from the lyric, you know, "isn't fun, isn't this fun, isn't fun the best thing to have." It's sort of the rhythm and the melody almost kind of wrote itself for that, in my opinion. But the style of the music is very much of the time in which we wrote it. There was something very, we couldn't help ourselves. We were writing it in the 80s, you know, so it has an 80s kind of sensibility, harmonically and rhythmically and everything, which is, which I enjoy.

[27:25] ♪ Musical number: "Life Can Be Wonderful" — performed by the Broadway Bound Players ♪

[32:17] Marta Kauffman: And maybe they're going to add moments to the musical that were not in the original movie to enhance its storytelling. And that happens, I think, quite often. Think I Am What I Am in La Cage, where in the original source material, the 1978 French film, there is no moment for Albin, the drag queen, to declare he is who he is. Or as they turned it into the musical, I am what I am. Or think about taking Fellini's Eight and a Half and making it all a female identifying cast except for the role of Guido. These are sort of the things that you can do to make a musical version of a movie stand out a little bit from its source material. So the question always comes, I think, down for writers is, do you veer away from the material, or do you stay true to it? Let's hear what the writers have to say.

[33:01] David Crane: I think also we were smitten with the screenplay. It's a hilarious screenplay.

[33:07] Marta Kauffman: You get a lot of respect for it.

[33:09] David Crane: Yeah. And as I say, maybe to our detriment, because I think if we weren't in love with so many of the scenes and the lines that we would feel, oh, we can, we need to tear this thing apart. But I think, and it might have been better had we been forced to do that. But because I think we admired the original work so much, we found ourselves really adhering to it, and even chunks of dialogue and scenes. And I think I sometimes wonder if we hadn't, would we have succeeded more? Inexperience.

[33:53] Marta Kauffman: Yeah. And you don't know. You don't know. As Marta said, we're really inexperienced at this. Now, even though they think they didn't veer too much in the dialogue, they did actually enhance the structure. In Arthur, the movie, there are two competing love stories, Arthur and Linda, Dudley and Liza. Like, why am I calling them by their first names? Like, I know them. Mr. Moore and Miss Minnelli. And Arthur and Hobson, the butler. And honestly, Hobson, whether it was the writing or John Gielgud, that story becomes the most fascinating to us. The one between Hobson and Arthur, because there's a time clock on this particular relationship, right? Because Hobson is dying. And that leaves Linda with not a lot to do for the audience to get particularly invested in.

And luckily, Miss Minnelli's performance and Steve Gordon's direction enhance that a little bit. And. And here is where our writers expanded Linda for the better in the movie, after Arthur saves Linda from being arrested, he offers her a ride back to Queens in his limo, which we, the audience don't see. We see Liza Minnelli get into the limo. She drives off and then we hear we cut away to something else. And the writers decided to change that. What goes on while she's in this limo for the first time in her life? So he's got a lot of money. That isn't everything. So he's smart and quick and cute and funny. Yep, that's everything. I wonder if my heart will ever start beating again. Okay. Okay. Okay. He's just a guy. It's just a date.

[36:09] David Crane: This is just a Rolls-Royce. Try not to hyperventilate. Okay. Okay. Just relax. Try not to sweat. This is only as good as it's ever gonna get. Oh, God, you're going along. A day's a day. Nothing's wrong. It's all okay. You take a class. You set an act to show. You work an extra shift. The time just seems to go. Then out of the blue, in a blink, in a flash, out of the blue, with a wink, with a crash, something happens. You're seeing guys. What else is new? So there's no surprise. That's okay, too. You go for drinks. Sometimes you go for more. With luck, you might have fun, but your heart is still secure. Then out of the blue, with a kiss and a rush, a dream comes true. With a sigh, with a hush, something, something happens.

I know there are no such things as princesses, especially for girls from Queens. And I'm riding in the coach. Tomorrow night's the ball. And I'm trying, I'm trying not to fall. But deep inside, there's a pull, there's a pop. You're on for the ride. And it ain't gonna stop till something happens. It happens. He's just a guy. I'm just a mess. But what the hell?

[38:00] ♪ Musical number: "I'm in a Really Great Mood" — performed by the cast ♪

[42:10] Robert W. Schneider: While all of this is going on, they still need to raise money so the writers got themselves into the world of backers auditions, hoping to raise some cash. And I'm sure you've seen backers auditions like in those old 1940s and 50s films, which is the writers invite everybody over to somebody's living room, they play the score, they read through the show, and they try to get money from investors. Nowadays we call them, you know, readings and workshops and all that stuff, but back then it was much more informal with like Milano cookies being passed around. Preferably, you know, I prefer the Milano cookies, especially if they're mint or orange Milanos, and you can send them to me. I'll just, you know, give you my address. If you DM me, I'll even come pick it up. I'll do anything for Milanos. Anyway, here are the writers talking about the backers auditions.

[42:53] Marta Kauffman: We had a bunch of backers auditions, even before it was completed. We did a lot of the singing ourselves at these backers auditions.

[43:01] David Crane: I can't remember. I mean, Jason Alexander did some for us. He might've done one of the things. Gosh, this is terrible. People are going to hear this and go, hey, why don't they remember me?

[43:17] Marta Kauffman: Oh, no, please. We're going to edit it. The demo has Harry Groner and Liz Calloway on it.

[43:23] David Crane: Oh, right. Yeah. I remember now. Honestly, it was, you know, it's our 20s and we're no longer in those. And so it was a while ago. But it was just, I remember, you know, just time and time again, pitching and selling and getting actor friends to sing songs.

[43:49] Marta Kauffman: And the first real sort of, it was more than a workshop, was the Paper Mill Playhouse.

[43:58] David Crane: In 1989, the writers of Arthur got two major gets for themselves. The first was Tony award-winning director Richard Maltby Jr., who had directed Ain't Misbehavin' and had done Song and Dance and was doing pretty well for himself. And he decided to take on directing the project. And he was brought in. And I don't know exactly how he was attracted to the project, but he had a lot of influence on us.

[44:25] Marta Kauffman: I remember specifically for me and with Martin and David, of course, when he advised us to try writing some of the songs music first instead of lyric first.

[44:36] David Crane: Oh, interesting.

[44:37] Marta Kauffman: Or music and lyrics at the same time. I guess he felt that maybe the music was a little bit too slavish to the lyrics that I was falling in love with, you know, because to write music for Martin and David's lyrics was always just such a treat for me, you know. So I didn't feel any reason to do what Richard was suggesting until he suggested it. And I'm like, oh, well, that's interesting. Let's try that.

[45:05] David Crane: I don't remember. I mean, but we did do that. We did try that. So several of the songs in the score are, in terms of the process, were written music first. And I think to a degree, because we were coming out of doing a lot of reviews, we were always lyrics first.

[45:22] Marta Kauffman: Oh, sure.

[45:23] David Crane: Lyrics first, ideas first, jokes first. We were very joke driven. And also Martin and I may be control freaks a little bit. So, you know, we'll start.

[45:35] Marta Kauffman: Is that a true statement?

[45:36] David Crane: Is that a true statement?

[45:37] Marta Kauffman: Absolutely true. But we would come up with the idea of the song first, even with music first songs. We'd all come to an agreement of what does this song need to accomplish? And then in those music first songs, I'd go off and try to take that notion and that feeling and see what I can bring back to them.

[46:01] David Crane: How about breakfast at the Cloisters? A boat ride up the Hudson?

[46:05] Marta Kauffman: I'm due at work in half an hour.

[46:09] David Crane: So we've got time.

[46:13] Marta Kauffman: There's not a ride we haven't taken. Not a game we didn't play.

[46:23] David Crane: And if I danced another step, if I ate another bite, if you won me one more stuffed thing tonight, they'd have to carry me away.

[46:49] Marta Kauffman: Tomorrow, when you're home in bed and I've lost my job. Tomorrow, when the corndogs take their toll, I'll see you on the bumper cars and I'll know I'll be all right.

[47:12] David Crane: I'll always have the memory of tonight.

[47:20] Marta Kauffman: Tomorrow, when I wash the cotton candy from my hair. Tomorrow, which is actually today.

[47:34] David Crane: You'll be screaming on that rocket thing and squeezing me too tight.

[47:42] Marta Kauffman: Yes, I'll always have the memory of tonight.

[47:49] David Crane: Thank you for the memory of tonight.

[47:56] Marta Kauffman: You make me happy. You make me see what a lifetime of night like tonight might be.

[48:11] David Crane: The light's getting stronger. The night's almost gone.

[48:17] Marta Kauffman: Why can't we make this last longer and stop the dawn?

[48:25] David Crane: The dawn.

[48:32] Marta Kauffman: I've never taken care of anyone. Everyone's always taken care of me.

[48:37] David Crane: But if you got sick or anything, I would take care of you.

[48:41] Marta Kauffman: Then I'll get sick.

[48:43] David Crane: Hey, I had fun.

[48:44] Marta Kauffman: So did you.

[48:46] David Crane: She falls asleep on his shoulder.

[48:50] Robert W. Schneider: And on Thursday, when I'm staring into Susan's eyes.

[48:59] David Crane: On Thursday, when I'm down there on one knee.

[49:07] Marta Kauffman: I'll see you as you're sleeping now in the foggy morning light.

[49:17] David Crane: At least I'll have the memory of tonight.

[49:27] Robert W. Schneider: Come on. I'll take you home.

[49:32] David Crane: Come on. I'll take you home.

[49:40] Robert W. Schneider: The second get for them was they attracted the Paper Mill Playhouse, one of the most prominent regional theaters in America. And they were looking to debut a musical that could go to Broadway. And Arthur seemed like the right fit. This is from the New York Times, April 14th, 1989, right above an ad for Ladies at St. Clements. It has been almost six years since Joseph Balone and Bruce Michael began planning a musical version of Arthur, the motion picture in which Dudley Moore played a lovable drunk, if there is such a thing, and Liza Minnelli, the daffy shoplifting waitress. And although some may have considered the project dead, theater people know better. As of Monday, the work that has been going on, David Crane and Marta Kauffman's book and lyrics, and Michael Skloff's music is going to emerge in the form of two staged readings at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey, directed by Richard Maltby, Jr. The musical will have a full cast of 23, including John Horton, Judith Blazer, and Greg Edelman. And if all goes well,

[50:39] ⚠ About 13 minutes of audio could not be automatically transcribed.

[1:03:19] Michael Skloff: So, here is what some other critics had to say about the show. Quote, warm, clever, graceful, sharp, superb, vivacious, best new musical, unusually high quality, but Mr. Richards of the Times was not a fan of it, and therefore it would not be coming to Broadway in 1992. Now, it did have a production at the Marriott Lincolnshire Chicago in 1992, and it was directed beautifully by David H. Bell, who encouraged the writers to not hew so callously to the movie and to expand their ideas and choices.

[1:05:09] Michael Skloff: A director that we worked with, David Bell, in Chicago, he encouraged us to do something with the opening number. Previous to the Chicago production, it was just Arthur and a hooker, and he helped us expand it and experiment with, well, what if we were bringing all these other people? What if there's a plumber? What if there's all these people that come in? And so the number kind of grows in size, and that was maybe one of the biggest departures from the screenplay, and it kind of came late in the game, so we didn't really do anything like that with any other aspects of the screenplay.

[1:06:13] Michael Skloff: The Chicago production is the version I think, had it been seen at Paper Mill or Goodspeed, would have been the show that could have come to New York, because it embraced Steve Gordon's original intentions, which was a New York fairy tale. David Bell had the Bergdorf Goodman mannequins come to life. In the second act, there's a number for Linda, who they made a waitress, and she sang a song called Attila the Hun, because she's appearing in an Attila musical off-Broadway. The bathroom scene was like the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera. It elevated the material and put it firmly into the world of magical musical comedy.

[1:06:50] Michael Skloff: But at this point, our writers, after almost a decade with this show, had some choices to make. If we had a show that we could live off of financially, I mean, I had a baby at that point, so it was really important that we find a way to make a living. Had Arthur gone forward, no doubt we'd still be doing that. Yeah, I don't think to the exclusion of television, but if Arthur had actually made it to Broadway and succeeded, there might not be a Friends.

[1:07:37] Michael Skloff: I remember David and I went to see Towards the End of This. And by the way, we'd been told it takes seven years to get something on Broadway, and what we said to our agent was, at seven years, we'll come out if it didn't get done. I forget what I was saying before that.

[1:08:03] David Crane: Seven years?

[1:08:05] Michael Skloff: No, before that.

[1:08:07] David Crane: We needed to make a living?

[1:08:09] Michael Skloff: No, that's all right. All right. It'll come back. Make a living, have a baby, seven years. It'll come back. It'll come back. Yeah.

[1:08:14] Michael Skloff: But yeah, I think the year before we moved to L.A. to pursue TV and when we were just doing theater, I think I was 30 years old and I made $9,000 for the year, total. And I was 30. And at that point, you find yourself going, okay, maybe stop pushing at this door and see what's behind that door. And that's kind of what happened. But, yes, absolutely. If Arthur had succeeded, we would absolutely be doing that as well.

[1:09:01] Marta Kauffman: Now, the three of you are talking about something that we talk a lot about with our students, which is this idea of imposter syndrome, this idea of at some point, we're all going to hit a magic level or a magic switch, and then boom, we're not imposters anymore. And so you're telling, if we can just reiterate, please, for all of us, the three of you are so brilliant and accomplished as artists, and you still feel every once in a while of imposter syndrome. Is that correct?

[1:09:29] David Crane: Often.

[1:09:30] Marta Kauffman: It's not every once in a while. It's often.

[1:09:33] David Crane: Yeah, pretty much every day.

[1:09:34] Marta Kauffman: I would say it's more the other feeling of like, oh, that's pretty good. That's the really unusual day. The day when you look at something you've done, maybe it's just a line, and you go, oh, that's nice. I'm really happy with that. And a little bit of, I did that.

[1:09:57] Michael Skloff: Yeah.

[1:09:58] Marta Kauffman: So how do you make peace and still create? How do you do that?

[1:10:04] David Crane: I don't think you make peace at all. I think you just keep creating. That takes the priority. The creativity takes the priority. I mean, therapy doesn't hurt.

[1:10:14] Marta Kauffman: Of course.

[1:10:16] David Crane: Of course. It's a bit of masochism, but it's also a bit of belief in magic. Like when those nuggets, as David had said, when you look at something going, oh, I made that. I feel good about that. That's what kind of keeps you going, going, well, maybe there's more nuggets out there. I just have to keep finding them, you know, and stay open to them.

[1:10:41] Marta Kauffman: So over 30 years later, could we see Arthur the Musical again? Either the movie or the musical, because alcoholism isn't funny anymore. You know, we're not laughing at people who are unable to control their drinking. I just wish we'd done better.

[1:10:56] David Crane: I understand that.

[1:10:59] Marta Kauffman: Yeah, I mean, it was what it was, and it's also, it's the product of people who are really doing this like a big book musical for the first time. And, yeah, there are, I guess, in the service of doing it better, I wish we pushed ourselves more to depart from the original source material. Because I think we needed to break it more.

[1:11:37] David Crane: I know, as you say, if it ain't broke.

[1:11:39] Marta Kauffman: But on the other hand, you know, the movie is, something magical happens in that movie. I don't know. And as much as I'm proud of the work that we did, or a lot of it, I don't know that something magical, we ever got to the point where something magical happened with the musical.

[1:11:59] Michael Skloff: And that, my friends, is Arthur the Musical. A movie that seemed perfect for musicalization, but ended up falling victim to the times in which it debuted. We can use that word in two ways. Between the flash of the mega-musical and the barometer change in the culture, Arthur the Musical just didn't have a chance. But after today's episode, I'm hoping actors out there will bring the score back into the public eye. And maybe some adventurous director or producer wants to bring this show back to audiences.

[1:12:30] Michael Skloff: We will end Broadway Bound Today with the writers in their own words. And I asked them, what moment was the hardest moment for them to musicalize? And they mentioned the moment where Linda shows up to Arthur's engagement party to Susan for one final goodbye.

[1:12:48] Marta Kauffman: You know, I just remember it being really hard and trying to walk that line where you got the emotional essence without it being too sweet or too earnest.

[1:13:05] Michael Skloff: If this is not to be, then this has got to be the greatest thing that never got to be.

[1:13:21] Marta Kauffman: But I'm not sorry, and I won't be sad. This was the best thing I never had.

[1:13:34] ♪ Musical number: "One More Day" — performed by Marta Kauffman, David Crane, and Michael Skloff ♪

[1:15:00] Michael Skloff: Not even one more kiss, one more laugh, one more time. I wish there were a way for not even one more day.