Patrick Oliver Jones:

There is an unparalleled magic when it comes to musical theater. It's this incredible world where stories just leap off the stage, where emotions soar into songs and each performance you see on any given night is a one of a kind event. Because unlike those perfectly edited movies or TV shows that we watch, a live musical unfolds right there in front of our eyes with an amazing energy that bounces between the stage and the audience. Think about the show come from away, where the actors seamlessly switch between roles, accents and costumes right there on the stage, transforming the set with just a few chairs. And musical theater has evolved from its early days of operettas and vaudeville through the incredible golden age of Broadway and and then into the rock operas and diverse stories we have now. And through it all, musical theater continues to mirror and even shape our culture with each new generation of writers and composers.

Joseph Zellnik:

Hi, I am Joseph Zelnick and I was born in New York and I live in Queens in New York now. So I guess I'm a New York boy and I am a musical theater composer as well as an author.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Joseph and his playwright brother David are best known for their 2010 Off Broadway musical Yank, which picked up Best Musical nominations from Drama Desk, the Outer Critics Circle, and the Lucille Lortel Foundation. Beyond that, Joseph has also written mystery novels including the Sound of Murder, the first in his Musicals Are Murder series, which cleverly combines fictional crimes with real theater history. He even has an upcoming book, the Periodic Table of Broadway Musicals, written with his husband. We also dive into a fun connection he and I have with the musical Oklahoma. His frustrations with the musical production process, and his thoughts on how Broadway has changed over the years, especially when it comes to what he calls spooficals like Spamalot. It is a unique and candid conversation about the craft, the history, and the sometimes messy realities of creating theater. I'm Pat Patrick Oliver Jones and thank you for joining me on season nine of why I'll Never make it, an award winning theater podcast where I talk with fellow creatives about three stories or moments of personal struggle and professional hardship. Subscribers will get additional audition stories as well as early access to the episodes.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

The website is why I'll nevermakeit.com where you can subscribe, donate and learn more about the podcast. Again, that's why I'll never make it.com.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Well welcome Joseph. It is so great to see you again. It's been many years since I was in front of you auditioning for your musical.

Joseph Zellnik:

Quite a long time. Yes, it's good to see you too.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yes, good to see you. Thank you so much for being here. Well, one of the other things that we share in common is that my first lead role in a musical was Curly in Oklahoma. This was back in the 11th grade for me. And the very first production that kind of had any meaning to you was actually the 1979 revival of Oklahoma. And you and your family, you got to see the pre Broadway tryout in Philadelphia. What was it about this production that you love so much?

Joseph Zellnik:

I think it was. It was sort of the. I mean, the reason that Oklahoma. Has been so iconic for so long. It was this idea of telling story through song and everything woven together into sort of one fabric. And I was just sort of overwhelmed by that. I had seen some other musicals in either amateur productions or. You know, I did see the Magic show on Broadway when I was probably four or five and I have no memory of it.

Joseph Zellnik:

Not that most people remember the Magic show on Broadway anyway. It's not that well remembered. It ran thousand plus performances. So I think I was just sort of overwhelmed by that. And I remember locking myself in my bedroom and putting on the album of Oklahoma and trying very hard to memorize all the lyrics. So obviously something in it really spoke to me.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah. Do you have like a favorite moment, favorite song from the musical?

Joseph Zellnik:

Well, I do have favorite song from Oklahoma, but I can't really tell you. It's the song that was my favorite at 10 because I don't remember. But now the song that tends to move me the most is Sorry with the Fringe on top. Partly because it's such a weird song to have become such a famous song because it isn't about love or it isn't explicitly about love, but I think it's a simple. It's these young people dreaming about something and their dreams to them are profound, but the audience is sort of like they're such small dreams riding in a nice carriage to a party. And so that touches me greatly.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah, yeah. It's so interesting. These older musicals, they talk about things. Well, especially in Oklahoma, it was talking about things that even that modern audience, when they saw it, they would have no probably concept of what it was like to ride in a carriage, to have this type of frontier life or anything.

Joseph Zellnik:

Well, the funny thing to me now as a 50 something is that to the audience in 1943, the events of Oklahoma were 40 years before. And that's like us looking back at things like shows that are set in the mid-80s and we remember the 1980s pretty well, so I think some of the audience did remember that early 20th century sort of era and certainly nostalgia and a longing for a simpler time. And you gotta remember this is during World War II. A longing for a simple time and really was part of what made that show the success that it was is people wanted to escape into the past. Something I truly feel at the moment.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I. I think every generation kind of looks back and be like, oh, well, wasn't it simpler then? Wasn't it better than. Didn't we have things going on that were not as chaotic as they are now?

Joseph Zellnik:

I mean, it'd be really sad, though, if future generations look back and say, oh, remember the Trump years? That was the simple, easy time. But it could happen. It could happen.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting what looking back at something, whether it's the rose colored glasses or whatever it is, that kind of changes the past and either makes it worse than it was, possibly, or even better than it was.

Joseph Zellnik:

Yeah, it's true. I mean, certainly it's a big theme that runs through everything that I do creatively, is they tend to be focused on the past and musical theater history in particular. So Oklahoma, in a weird way, has become sort of a talisman of many of the projects that I do.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah. Well, let us get into your first story. And I will say that for actors like myself, we often love that rehearsal process. We're most at home and, you know, because we're figuring out the blocking, the characters, how they interact with each other. But for you as a composer and a writer, one of your frustrations is this process of putting together a production, because many of the aspects of it are kind of out of your control. And as you put it, they're this army of people that are needed in order to put something, you know, on its feet. Has this always been a frustration for you from your early days of writing?

Joseph Zellnik:

Well, I think it is a source of frustration, but it's not a frustration exactly with the process, because I actually love the process of being in rehearsal. It's, I guess, part of process of getting to actually be in a rehearsal room with a music director and actors and a director and everybody working towards trying to bring your words and notes to life. You know, the frustration is that you can't even know whether or not what you have written will resonate with people, will resonate with an audience, until you have assembled an army of people to help bring it to life. And so certainly the. The older I got, the more it seemed like it just. You would Start to write a musical, and you'd think, all right, if I'm lucky, it'll take two years to write a show, and then maybe another three to 10 years before I can put this in front of an audience. And that feels daunting in a way that sort of, you know, you can't even be sure that it will ever see the light of day.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Of the shows that you've written, which one has taken the longest to come to stage?

Joseph Zellnik:

Well, I mean, Yank is the show that I've written that most people know best. And that one took about. We started working on that right around the year 2000 or so, and it reached off Broadway in 2010. So that took 10 years and another four years to get an album out. And other shows I, you know, that. That have never seen the light of day we've been working on for a long time, and they've been turned down for prizes and turned, you know, had readings, but private industry readings, and never went anywhere. So I don't know whether to count those. Maybe one day they'll appear, but if so, the gestation period for something like that might be 20 years.

Joseph Zellnik:

So.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Well, as. As a composer, I mean, you obviously have certain ideas and intentions as you're writing them. How do you balance that singular vision with. With the ideas and intentions from directors and choreographers that come in? And, you know, I. I guess what I'm really asking is, when do you stand firm on a particular point? When do you kind of acquiesce and let others kind of take your piece and go in a direction?

Joseph Zellnik:

That's a. That's a great question and very sort of an astute point, which is one of the things that my brother and I say, and we generally write musicals together. He has written some things with other people, but the musicals I've written have all been with my brother. And it's like, what are the tent poles? Like, what are the things that you won't give in on? What are the things you consider to be, you know, absolutely can't be changed? What are the songs that cannot be cut? And I feel like that's an important thing for a writer to actually know. What are the things that. If you take this out, then the structure collapses? Because, of course, we've cut songs along the way, and sometimes we cut songs at the request of the director. And there have been one or two cases where we cut songs because an actor didn't feel comfortable doing it or said, I don't need this song to get me to the next place. And usually we're very.

Joseph Zellnik:

I actually enjoy that sort of that push, pull. And there's a certain thrill to an ego, anybody's ego, that comes from people caring enough about what you have written to have that kind of informed opinion. It means they've spent a lot of time thinking about it. It means they're invested in it. So I don't take it as, like an insult if someone wants to cut something or if people want to change certain things, like change the write out on the song, you know, change the button. But, you know, so mostly, as I said, I actually enjoy being in rehearsal. And in fact, some of my most profound moments with various shows tend to happen during rehearsal. It's that first moment when the actors get off book, do the scene, are really inside the scene or song, and you're like, wow.

Joseph Zellnik:

I'm, like, overwhelmed by that. And you can only have that feeling once. That's that sort of tickle up your spine where you're like, wow, are your hair stand on end. And you think, this is really working. This is really good. That doesn't always last in front of an audience, but that's a different.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Well, yeah, like you said, as you're writing it, you're kind of with yourself or with your brother. The two of you are writing together. And that, you know, before you get to an audience in the theater, that your first audience really is the actors, that the creative team, the people there. And so that's your kind of test as to is it working or not.

Joseph Zellnik:

Oh, yeah. When you see the rest of the cast sitting out in the house watching someone else's number, you're like, okay, this one's working. Because they're already an audience, and they could be off on their phones, they could be off doing something else, but they're choosing to be there and watch their fellow actors do a scene. So you think, yeah, that's. You're absolutely right. They're the first audience.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah. Well, I mean, during COVID we were certainly all out of work and needing something to do. And you turned an idea that had been brewing, you know, quite a while for you, and it had to do with writing a particular kind of mystery novel. Now, to take a step back, when did you first discover mystery novels? What is it about them that you love so much?

Joseph Zellnik:

I grew up loving mystery novels, and they were sort of a feature in my house. We had tons of them. You know, among the books that we had, and we used to get something called Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which is a magazine of Short mystery stories, and that would come to the house every month and we would fight over who got to read it first. But my sister and I were really the ones who loved mystery novels. And she and I, in the early part of the century, had actually co written two historical mystery novels and had them published. And it sort of petered out especially she started to have kids, and then she was no longer available to work on books. And that's back sort of, you know, about 2007, 2008, when I first had this idea, what if I could write in mystery novels that had a musical theater background that brought together my two big loves, which were mysteries and musicals. So that's, that's.

Joseph Zellnik:

And Covid, as you say, is the time when finally, wow, I have nothing else to do. I'm in my house by myself. Maybe now's the moment to try to write this book that I've thought of back in my head for so long.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And why do you think that? You know, obviously you love musicals, you know, as do I. We're both in the musical theater world. What was it about that particular that you thought would lend itself to combining it with, like, a murder mystery novel?

Joseph Zellnik:

Well, part of that comes from, I mean, like, like many things, it's a copycat thing. There's a huge world, and if you aren't somebody who reads mysteries, you might not know this, but there's a huge world of genre mysteries that like little niches. There's. There's mystery novels around knitting, there's mystery novels around, like, dogs and cats. There's mystery novels around bookstores. There's mystery novels in all these little, like, niche interests. And I noticed that there was none for people who loved classic Broadway musicals. And yet almost everybody in America knows the Sound of Music.

Joseph Zellnik:

Almost everybody in the world knows Fiddler on the Roof. And yet nobody had done a mystery novel where the people who created that, Jerome Robbins, Zero Mostel, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Mary Martin, none of these people were characters in books, whereas you had plenty where Eleanor Roosevelt was a character or Jane Austen was a character. And so I thought, well, there's clearly an audience for historical mysteries with real people in them. Why not theater?

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Right? And you mentioned Sound of Music, and that is actually the first book that you went after, the Sound of Murder, as you call it, and it uses the 1959 tryout of the original Sound of Music as a kind of a backdrop. What made you pick this musical in particular?

Joseph Zellnik:

Well, in thinking about the idea, I really sort of had a realization that whatever musical I Picked had to be something that everybody knows so that I would not have to get bogged down in trying to explain the plot of a musical to the reader or who the characters are to the reader. And legally, you run into an interesting sort of conundrum. Here you are free to. With famous public figures like Rodgers and Hammerstein and Mary Martin, you can write them as fictional characters in your book, and there's no legal repercussions. But. But quote two lines of lyrics from the show, a quote, a line of dialogue, and now you need permission from the estate. And I wasn't certain that I certainly didn't want to get into that tangle of having to get legal releases for this. So by sticking with a show where I just had to mention the title of a song, My Favorite Things, the Sound of Music, the Lonely Goatherd.

Joseph Zellnik:

Everybody would already know what song I was talking about. And I could make jokes about yodeling, or I could talk about the staging of a song and the audience, or the reader, rather I still call them the audience. My readers would already know what I was talking about. And I wouldn't have to, you know, be really pedantic and explain everything.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah. Because with these. These classic musicals, like you said that so many people have seen them, but.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

You'Re taking a twist.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

You're taking what we know, but adding something different that we wouldn't know about.

Joseph Zellnik:

Yeah. And one of the fun things, to me, at least, about the Sound of Music is that the most people are familiar with the movie. And the original Broadway show was quite different in a number of different ways from the movie. So I thought, I have that going for me, that people will be familiar with the characters, they'll be familiar with the setup. But I can surprise them, too, because if I'm talking about My favorite things in the show, that's a duet between. In scene two, between Maria and the Mother Abbess. And obviously in the movie, it's, you know, with the kids during a rainstorm. And so I thought that can hopefully make people say, oh, maybe there's more to the Sound of Music than I know.

Joseph Zellnik:

And they won't just close the book and think, well, I've. You know, I already know what this is talking about.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Because like you say the Sound of Music, people immediately think of Julie Andrews, but that's not the Broadway version.

Joseph Zellnik:

It is amazing how many people, when I talk about the book to them, they're. They're like, oh, my God, I love the Sound of Music. Is Julie Andrews a suspect? And I'm like, no, no, she really isn't. She didn't really have anything to do with the Sound of music in 1959. So, you know, and as for, as for like, why a mystery? It's because that genre is something I love and I'm not sure that I will ever write a serious novel, a literary novel. And part of that is because there's a built in structure with mysteries. You always know what you're waiting for. You're waiting to reveal who the killer is.

Joseph Zellnik:

And that kind of structure is comforting to me because even if you get caught up in talking about the staging of a musical number, you know that you're still, you still know why you're reading the book. It isn't merely a backstage story set at a musical that we all know it has fictional characters who are involved in the murder case as well as real people. You know, hopefully that's something fun for readers that they, you know, weigh in too. I thought for mystery novel readers, musical theater is a fresh backdrop. And for musical theater fans, mysteries might not be something they do well. So for both sides of the equation, you get something fun and something different.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And with these real life people doing fictional things, you did try to at least base it as much on reality about what that rehearsal process was like, what was really happening, and then just adding your own splashes to it.

Joseph Zellnik:

Exactly. I read a lot of. I read everyone who had written an autobiography. I read that. I read biographies of the major figures and they're all big enough that, you know, there are biographies and autobiography from Mary Martin and Richard Rogers. Oscar Hammerstein did not live long enough to write an autobiography, but he's certainly been written about enough. So wherever possible, I tried to use quotes from these people. I didn't.

Joseph Zellnik:

I tried to, when I put words into their mouth, certainly words that were about what they thought about the theater, I tried to make sure that they were things that these people actually believed and actually said. And then it was really fun for me to try to weave in certain anecdotes and try to place them in the book in such a way that they supported the mystery plot as well as being true and giving people an idea of what life backstage at a musical headed towards Broadway might be like.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And as you were reading these histories and biographies, what did you actually come upon, maybe like a mystery or something that that could actually be used, you know, a real life thing that could be used in these stories?

Joseph Zellnik:

Actually, I have not. The. The Sound of Music was, was a fairly uneventful. Just for a moment, this actually gave me Gave me pause. But the Sound of Music was actually a fairly uneventful tryout. The. The people involved were so famous, the pre sale was so huge, it was going to be a hit, you know, or at least it was going to run no matter what the reviews were, you know, and they added one song out of town, but they really didn't change a lot of things, so I didn't have a lot of things to go on. I will tell you, actually, this is.

Joseph Zellnik:

This may be too obscure for people. You can cut it later if you want. But there was one fun thing that I discovered, very minor, that I was really excited to build into the Boston tryout part of the novel. And that was that the show went slightly over budget. And that was because, according to one of the producers, because Richard Rogers hated the sofa that they had picked for the Von Trapp living room, and he insisted that they throw it out and they buy a new sofa or build a new sofa, because musical theater sets are usually not just, you know, go to the store and buy a sofa. And that put them over budget. And so I had built a crime around blood staining a sofa and them needing to replace it out of town. And that section of the book eventually got rewritten so heavily that there was no blood on the sofa.

Joseph Zellnik:

And so I was not able to use that real fact as a piece of my mystery plot. But. Or at least it isn't in the book anymore. But, yeah, I like to try to do that as much as possible.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah, it's interesting. Even as you were telling that story, I got to thinking, right, he wanted to get rid of the sofa because there was a body in it, or there was something, you know, something nefarious was going on.

Joseph Zellnik:

But the conceit in these books is that I have based them, that I have found a great uncle's who was a stage manager's notebooks about his time working on these classic Broadway musicals, and that I've edited them for public consumption now to bring to light these crimes that were swept under the carpet. And partly I did that so that people would sort of get the idea that these were things based on fact.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And so with writing this book, you know, the process is all you, unlike what we were talking about with writing a musical where so many others are involved. Do you like this solo work compared with the collaborative process?

Joseph Zellnik:

Yeah. Coming full circle to where you began, which is. Yes. One of the reasons. One of the reasons I wrote was because Covid left me alone, you know, in my house with my husband and, you know, Nothing to do. But part of the reason that I, I wanted to write mystery novels was because when you finish a book, it's a finished book. You can hand, even if it's not published, you can hand it to a friend. They read the book, they have the experience of the book, you know, and so after years of struggling with the fact that I could write a song at a piano, but it might be years before I saw it brought to life on a stage because of needing all these other people, the idea that I could control everything was very, very appealing.

Joseph Zellnik:

And then technology has changed, you know, since I first had the idea back in 2007. And now it's very easy and doable to, to basically set up a publishing company yourself and to publish the book online, ebook and paperback, and you can get the book out there, and you don't need a major publisher, you don't need other people, you don't need gatekeepers. You can just say, I think this is ready to share with the public, and share it with the public.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

So is it sounds like your goal is, like you said, to share it with other people, not necessarily make a lot of money from it, although that's certainly a goal as well.

Joseph Zellnik:

I enjoy making money from things, but that is not the primary reason. If you dream of making a lot of money, I don't think writing books or writing musicals is necessarily your best.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Strategy, although you've certainly done very well for yourself.

Joseph Zellnik:

I have done pretty well. And, you know, on the dark days, I try to remind myself of that, that there are plenty of people who would kill to have the, you know, had the success that I have had. But, you know, I have never been able to solely support myself from artistic endeavors, at least not yet.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

As we get into the story number two, you say that you became dissatisfied with the state of Broadway. This was about 20 or 25 years ago with what you call spooficals, which, which are these, you know, these shows like you're in Town or Spamalot, which treated musicals kind of like a joke. Songs were presented with irony, kind of, you know, kind of quote marks, kind of.

Joseph Zellnik:

Look, we're singing a song.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah, right. And now I have. I must say that personally, I love Swim a lot. It is actually one of my favorite musicals. I would take that cast recording like you did with Oklahoma, and I would listen to it over and over again. So I, I, I love that musical.

Joseph Zellnik:

I don't mean to, I don't mean to, like, Stomp on Camelot or Urinetown, which I also like, but the specific, you know, the specific moment that gave birth to the show Yank that we've already talked about, that I wrote with my brother came because we were singing through old songs from. And specifically we were singing through some songs from Brigadoon. And we sang through the Heather on the Hill, which is a song I love quite a lot. But it's so sweet, it's so gentle, it's so lyrical. We thought, will this ever come back? Will audiences ever be willing to have a quiet moment with characters on a stage where they're not laughing at the idea that characters are saying they're in love by singing a song where they're actually watching characters fall in love and, and be inside the moment. Side note, this has happened. We have seen a great flowering of Broadway in the last 25 years. And now all sorts of shows.

Joseph Zellnik:

There are still shows that sort of thrive on wink, wink, ironic use of songs. But there are also very, very sincere, very serious minded musicals now finding success. But at the time it felt like that kind of musical theater was sort of dead.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Well, also in 20, 25 years ago, a lot of movies were being turned into musicals as well. So. So that, that was a whole other genre kind of. And so it's like, where's the original musical? Where, where did it go?

Joseph Zellnik:

Exactly, Exactly. It was sort of felt, it felt like there wasn't a lot of originality and there wasn't a lot of sweetness and light. So my brother and I thought, I wonder if a modern audience can even accept this. And that sort of sounded like a challenge to us. So we thought, why don't we try to write it? Because if a show like that can succeed, we're the right people to write it because this is what we love most. So that gave us the sort of first impetus of writing Yank.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And certainly, I mean, revivals of classical musicals are certainly a mainstay on Broadway. There's current productions of Gypsy and Cabaret. So do you think that writing a new musical in that style is just difficult or just our modern sensibilities, more contemporary? We're just in a different place.

Joseph Zellnik:

You know, I don't know that I'm the person best suited to giving you an answer on what modern audience is how they approach, you know, these, these projects. I know that you, you're sort of touching on a interesting point, which is very valid in terms of how we ended up writing the show that we wrote, which was Yank. For those of you who don't know, Yank is a World War II love story between two male soldiers who Find each other in the world. And what we decided after having decided to try to write something in this grand old style is like, well, we love those old shows. And as you say, they get revived. So there's no point in trying to write a new Brigadoon, because we have Brigadoon. So we did search for what could we write? What would subject matter be that would never have been written in the 40s or 50s, but we could treat it in that style. So it's almost like a lost musical, the musical Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't write.

Joseph Zellnik:

And that's how we sort of found. We found this book called Coming Out Under Fire by an author named Alan Berube, which was a nonfiction book about gays and lesbians serving during World War II. And we thought this could do it. We could write our version of a World War II love story, like South Pacific, only it would be between two men. And then we could see if an audience would accept this sort of sincerity, but it would also be a fresh sort of sound, because there had never been that kind of gentle, lyrical love song for two men in a Broadway musical.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And that's certainly true. And, you know, we talked about how actors received the music that you get. What was their reaction? Cause obviously, you're dealing with modern actors, you know, not actors from the 40s. What were their responses and reactions as they were getting this music?

Joseph Zellnik:

I mean, I will say that of all the things I have written, not only has Yank had more commercial success, Yank also was so immediately embraced by people in the room from the minute that we had our first sort of public reading, which was only the first act. We only had a first act at that point. And you could already feel the energy in the room was this was the story people wanted to see. And it's funny that you mentioned actors, though, in particular, because Bobby Stegert, who did the show a number of times up to and including the Off Broadway premiere in 2010, and then he did some pre Broadway workshops, which ended up not leading us to Broadway. But he was involved with the show for many years. And we had sent out feelers to him for the New York Music Theater Festival production of the show, which was a few years earlier. And he thought to himself, a World War II gay love story. This is gonna be camp, and I don't wanna do a camp show.

Joseph Zellnik:

So he turned us down. He didn't even come in to meet with us. And then a few years later, when we were doing the show in Brooklyn, he actually sat down and read the script. And, and because of. On the page, he could tell it was sincere and it was not an attempt to be a campy sort of joke about what would be funny if, like, soldiers fell in love. He said yes. Even though we were doing the show in a basement in Brooklyn. He, you know, he was at that point working on Broadway and he was like, I want to do this show so much that I'm willing to do it for no money in a basement in Brooklyn.

Joseph Zellnik:

So I do think actors, when they, when they find material that they like, you know, they're willing to do what they have to do to get to do it.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah. And it's interesting that you mentioned that. I think back because this was a show, it was this time that, that you and I got to meet along with David and. And I got to audition for Yank. And I remember I brought in. Now, I. I brought in a classic song, Stout Hearted Men. I think it's from the 1930s.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And. But I, I put a spin on it. I, I put, you know, stout hearted men, rather than just talking about men in uniform, I added a little camp to it. And I'm wondering if that campiness is maybe what was like, well, that's not really what we want. Thank you, Patrick. Off, off you go.

Joseph Zellnik:

I wish I could say I remember. I don't remember the reason, you know, casting is always a crazy.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Oh, my gosh. And believe me, that was. That was 15 years ago. I'm not even thinking you'd remember, but in my own actor brain, we remember auditions, like years. You know, I'm not a dancer. I know that dancers will remember an audition combination that they did 15 years ago for singers will remember the songs that we did. It's interesting as you talk about how you didn't want to be camp. And I was like, well, that's exactly what I brought to my audition.

Joseph Zellnik:

So I can say that, that probably that might have been a factor because we were definitely looking to forgive the term play it straight. I mean, it was intended to be, you know, grounded in reality and not an attempt to sort of, you know, camp it up. What's interesting in this regard, or maybe interesting. It's interesting to me, when we did the show in London, the show, we had a beautiful production in London. We were very, very happy with the director. We were, you know, ecstatic about the cast that we had. But there was one photograph of the title song that happened to look like. And it was a still.

Joseph Zellnik:

If you, when you watch the dance, you did not. This moment went by in half a Second, but there was a moment that sort of a wrist flick that made it look like limp wrists, like a bunch of men sort of flapping their wrists. And that was the picture that somebody chose to use as one of the press packet. And that's the picture that ran in Timeout London. We got many, many lovely reviews. But, like Time Out, London did not like the show. And they did not like the show because they felt it was too dour, too serious, took itself too seriously. And I.

Joseph Zellnik:

I remember thinking, this is the authors. We remember the press. I just remember thinking, I think they got the wrong impression of the show because of the advanced, you know, photographs they saw that made it look like this was going to be sort of campier than it was. And there is humor in Yankee, but there is not a lot of camping. It's not supposed to be treated as a joke.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Were there particular classic songs? You know, obviously your love of musical theater history was there as you were writing it, but were there particular songs or writers writing teams that you either emulated or wanted to evoke as you wrote Yank?

Joseph Zellnik:

Well, certainly Oscar Hammerstein had a lot to do with how we treated certain moments because of his love. The biggest love ballad in Yank is called A Couple of Regular Guys. And it's all about how we just want what our neighbors have. We just want a house with a picket fence and, you know, coming home at the end of the day and smiling at each other. And that is pure Oscar Hammerstein. That was what he did, and it was sort of loosely based, and this is lyrically more than musically, on a song called the Folks who Live on the Hill, which was written with Jerome Kern in the 30s. And it's the same sort of thing, is that the two of us will just have our lives, you know, together in a. A quiet, simple way, but we'll always be the happy pair that we are.

Joseph Zellnik:

And I would say that for me, some of the composers that I feel like I emulated in occasional moments, maybe stole from in the show were Rogers and Burton Lane and Frank Lesser and Harold Darlin. There are a couple things in the show that are practically cribbed from Harold Darlin. And when we were doing rehearsals, our music director, Rob Berman, who obviously knows from old musicals because he did encores for so many years, he said to me, this is the best thing Harold Arlen has written in years. Like, yeah, okay, fine, I stole that little phrase from, you know, but he.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Wrote so many songs in the 1940s, you know, around World War II. So, I mean, his style is almost just evocative of World War II itself.

Joseph Zellnik:

Exactly. @ this point, what you want, if you are trying to write songs that sort of give the audience, set an audience in a world, a period, you have to sort of lean on certain conventions of the period. And as you say, someone like Carol Darland, someone like Richard Rogers, they had so many hit songs that it's impossible that you're not going to be trying to evoke something a little bit.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Obviously there have been gay people throughout history, but it is certainly more of a contemporary storyline to have these gay relationships within musicals, within TV shows. You know, everything that we watch these days. Was there a concern that people might not take a World War II gay love story as seriously as you wanted them to?

Joseph Zellnik:

We've been lucky. And we worked hard to make sure people knew that the show was based on historical fact. The story of our main character, whose name is Stu and his love affair with Mitch, is fictional. Both of them are fictional characters. But I mentioned earlier, there's a book called Coming Out Under Fire by Alan Berube. And it was. He had interviewed, I don't know how many dozens at least, gay service people who served during the war and their stories were in the book. And so while we created a fictional storyline, mostly my brother, he created a fictional storyline.

Joseph Zellnik:

All of the things that happened in the book, I mean in the book of the musical Yank did happen in real life. There were people who fell in love with fellow soldiers and settled down after the war and had a life together. There were. Were gay orgies, there were gay codes. Ways you of sort of indicating to other soldiers that you were perhaps open for something. There was a lot of sexual activity between men that happened during World War II because there were. They would. People were living in a world where there were no women.

Joseph Zellnik:

Put a lot of men in a place where they have no women for four or five years, there's going to be some same sex activity. So the more outrageous the thing we describe in the show, the more likely it is that it is based on pure fact and in fact based on a particular anecdote that we read in that book, in our press releases, in our materials that we sent to people, all of this was sort of made clear. And the tagline we chose to use for the show, which we chose and used it from as early on as the New York Music theater festival in 2005, all the way through the Off Broadway opening in 2010, which is some stories, didn't make it into the history books. And so it. It sort of said right up front, this is an American history story as well as a love story.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

So did you give yourself any, I guess, boundaries, so to speak, like, well, we don't want to go too far with this story. We don't want to, you know, we don't want to shock people too much or, you know, do. Did. Were there certain bounds that you had as you were writing Yank?

Joseph Zellnik:

Actually, we were sort of really committed to the idea. Now, Yank is not an explicit show in any way. It's not have. Have sex scenes or anything, anything but. But we wanted to say that. I mean, the basic statement, which is not, I think, a profound statement is that gay couples are pretty much the same as straight couples. It's just the way they fall in love, the way they maneuver, you know, you know, maneuver themselves into actually acknowledging their love, the way they interact physically. Our director for the show for a long time and up through off Broadway was Igor golden, and he did a beautiful job.

Joseph Zellnik:

You know, characters just. Or the two lovers caressing each other, kissing the back of their neck, or just behaving the way they would behave. And for the most part, audiences took this perfectly. Did not mean anything to people or it didn't upset people because it wasn't that common in 2005, 2006, 2007 to see that kind of affection between same sex couples. And the few moments, and we were always very proud of it, but the few moments when an audience member would get up in a huff and leave the theater, which happened a few times, was always during moments of tenderness. It was not. We had one character who is very flamboyant and talks a lot about sex. No, that didn't bother them.

Joseph Zellnik:

That did not bother them in the slightest. But, you know, two men slow dancing cheek to cheek on a stage, that was too much for an audience member in Brooklyn. And she got up and huffily grabbed her coat and left at the theater. So as I said, we were sort of pleased that we were still able to shock somebody. But not many people get shocked by that anymore. And certainly in 2025 now, happily, audiences are of all, you know, TV, movies, theater are all used to seeing that. And so it's not groundbreaking anymore.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Well, as we head into story number three, Broadway history is certainly a kind of a theme that runs through almost everything that you've. And I have to confess that the Broadway history is not really my strong suit. You know, although I'm getting better. I mean, pretty much if, if I haven't seen it or performed in it, then I probably don't know much about it, but thankfully I've been in the business 30 plus years, so I've gotten to do a lot, a lot of shows. Yeah, but. But does someone like me, who is fairly ignorant of musical theater, does that frustrate you? Just, you know, since you value such an important place in Broadway history, it.

Joseph Zellnik:

Does not exist frustrate me, no. But I do wish sometimes that people would investigate because I think there's a lot in the past in Broadway's past that people might love. The project that you're sort of segueing into is that I have a book that I co wrote that is coming out in October of this year, 2025, and it's called the Periodic Table of Broadway Musicals. And what this is based on. This is based on a poster, a poster that was created by my husband, Andrew Gerla, and he teaches musical theater at Manhattan School of Music. And the poster was born out of a vague sort of frustration for him that he felt like his students didn't know some of the things they should know. And so he set out to sort of say, well, what are the shows that everybody ought to know? What if you want a grounding in musical theater, what are the shows you need to know? And so he created A poster of 118 shows because there are 118 elements in the periodic table of elements. And he kept that format and it turned out to be difficult to narrow it down.

Joseph Zellnik:

At first he was worried there wouldn't be enough shows that were important, and then it was like, oh, no, it's going to be a challenge to narrow this down to 118. So this poster has been a huge success. And so during COVID again, we created a book pitch saying, since a poster can only have little tile for each show, wouldn't it be great to have a book that had the artwork work blown up large and then had an essay about the show and why it's a show that every musical theater fan ought to know. And so together we wrote this book called the Periodic Table of Broadway Musicals. And it's got 118 little mini essays as well as each family in the table has an essay about what connects those shows. So, yeah, it's sort of 90 plus years of musical theater history in between two covers, so hopefully people will enjoy it.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

But the poster came first. And so, you know, just kind of deciding these titles. But then you have to write about them. And as you wrote about them, did that change your minds as far as, well, maybe this one shouldn't be on the list. Or maybe we should replace it with another. Did the list go through any changes?

Joseph Zellnik:

Well, the poster went through two editions. The poster was so successful, he issued a second edition a few years later and did. Did switch out some shows because obviously when something new comes along, that's a big, you know, influential show. You want to include it on the poster. And there will eventually, I assume, be a third edition of the poster. And so for every show that you add, you have to take one away. But this book is based on the second edition of the poster. So we did not change the shows that are involved.

Joseph Zellnik:

The only thing we did was add a section for Off Broadway which the poster does not contain. But there are some key titles in the musical theater canon that are off Broadway shows. Something like the Fantasticks. You'd be crazy to say that musical theater fans shouldn't know the Fantastics. But since the show, since the table is of Broadway musicals, we couldn't include it. So there are shows like that, your Good Man Charlie Brown, and yes, there was a revival of your Good Man Charlie Band on Broadway, but. But its initial incarnation was off Broadway. Same thing with Little Clap of Horrors.

Joseph Zellnik:

These are essentially off Broadway shows, even if later revivals are done on Broadway. And so that felt good. It felt good to be able to include more titles that we felt ought to be known.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Well, with 118, I'm curious, was there 119th show that you wish could have been in the list?

Joseph Zellnik:

Only, and I'm not going to tell you what it is, but only because there are a few shows that have opened since the last poster came out, I think in 2021, something like that. And there have been some shows in the last four years that we would like to include on the next version of the poster. And we considered, you know, knocking something off the table and putting in a more recent show. And then we decided we would leave it as it is for now and wait until we issue a third poster. But it was definitely an interesting. An interesting experience, sort of having to delve deep into a lot of these shows, you know, that I didn't know as well. You know, since we were dividing shows up, since both of us were working on the book, we would generally go show by show. I would work on a show, he would work on a show, and then we would sort of read each other's essays and make some comments.

Joseph Zellnik:

But so I tended to skew towards the past. Anything from like the 30s, 40s, 50s was more my area, his was more contemporary. But it really forced us to say what is meaningful about each of these shows? What is the thing that it, you know, even shows that I may personally taste wise. Spamalot is a big favorite of yours. It's not a particular favorite of mine, but it's on the table. And so why does it deserve to be on the table? Why does it deserve to be in our book? Why? What about it was notable and added something to the form?

Patrick Oliver Jones:

What would you say is a through line?

Patrick Oliver Jones:

If you can narrow it down to one or two things, what do you think is a through line that makes a show worthy of an inclusion on such a list?

Joseph Zellnik:

Well, actually, this is something that's sort of dealt with in the book. And there is no through line. There's no one thing that makes a show important. So we did sit down and try to figure out. Some shows are definitely important because the score is important. Some shows are. Are. Are, you know, evidence of the importance of star power on Broadway.

Joseph Zellnik:

Mostly female star power on Broadway. There is a whole section of the poster in the book called Leading lady shows. Because there are a lot of leading lady shows on Broadway. There are not very many leading man shows. There's only two that I can think of. I may be forgetting something, but the man of La Mancha and How to Succeed in Business without really Trying are very clearly leading man shows. The guy at the center of that is in every scene. The whole show rests on his shoulders.

Joseph Zellnik:

But there's so many more leading ladies.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah, the Music man was one that came to mind as well. That's another one where it's okay.

Joseph Zellnik:

Music man is a leading man show. But I would also say that Marian is. I'd say it's a little bit more of an equal balance. You need Marian or else Harold.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Kind of like Oklahoma. Curly is definitely the star, but you got to have Laurie and then Eller.

Joseph Zellnik:

Those shows often had subplots that were very important. But think about, like, Funny Girl. You know, Fanny and Nick are a couple, but Nick is. There's no way that Nick is going to steal that show. Like, Nick is not given the material to walk off with that show. Hello, Dolly. Yeah, Horace Vandergelder. I mean, he's an okay character, but again, Horace Vandergelder is never going to be the star above the title of hello Dolly.

Joseph Zellnik:

So, you know, Annie, get your Gun. All of these shows where women basically rule. And that has been a theme from Broadway. The earliest leading lady show on the table is Annie get yout gun, which is 1946. This has been going on for a Very long time. And so I want to loop back and finish the answer to your question about the throughline, which is that what we do in the book and what the poster does by dividing up shows into families, 10 families, just the same way that the periodic table has 10 families of elements, basically there are 10 through lines, we give 10 different sort of ways of looking at the musical theater canon and divide shows into families by that sort of idea. And then within each essay, we sometimes talk about star power, sometimes we talk about the score, sometimes we talk about choreography, sometimes we talk about sets. Some shows really rise and fall on their spectacle.

Joseph Zellnik:

So many different ways of pleasing an audience in musical theater. And it's one of the things that's thrilling about the last 25 years, I think, is that more and more we're seeing different ways of creating something. And it's still a musical, but it's not the same kind of musical that, you know, existed in the 1950s. And yet obviously there's some sort of connection.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

So. And this is something, as someone who's has studied this history, and it's something I've thought about as well, because in musicals, women are more often than not front and center. And the subject of these musicals, why do you think that in musical form they get such a starring role, whereas in society they didn't always have that? That.

Joseph Zellnik:

Oh, that's a. That's a big question. And I'm really not sure I have an answer for you. I mean, there certainly were talented male performers and I don't know exactly why. Audiences just thrilled to larger than life females and female performances. So I really don't have an answer. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I actually don't know why it's true. I only know having spent many decades looking at musicals, that it is true.

Joseph Zellnik:

True.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah. As you say there, the leading man musical series would just be much shorter than a leading woman.

Joseph Zellnik:

And I mean, you know, I'm trying to think of musical numbers that sort of, you know, are either built around a woman, like hello Dolly or Mame title songs or, you know, Don't Rain on My Parade. Some just numbers like that for men are Fewer, where a star either stands center stage surrounded by the entire chorus who's singing praises to them. I can't think of a single one that's like that for a man or where a man stands center stage alone and basically holds the entire theater in the palm of his hand. It's just sort of. I don't know whether at this point It's a convention of musical theater or whether or not there is something about, you know. Yeah, really, I'm really mystified that you have stumped me.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah, it is something interesting because maybe something like what you were saying that the tender moments in Yank are when you would see people possibly walk out. It was that tender moment that maybe that made them feel uncomfortable. And I wonder if a woman can go there, but men can't go there. Maybe something societal. And when it comes to those roles.

Joseph Zellnik:

Per se, we're moving way past musical.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

I know, I know. Now we're getting to the deep stuff.

Joseph Zellnik:

It's possible that since in our culture, men are not generally allowed to show vulnerability or emotion, that it makes it difficult to wear your heart on your sleeve in the way that tends to connect with an audience in a theater. Yeah. Maybe you're onto something.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

And what do you think it is about musicals in particular as opposed to plays? Musicals are done more often. More people go to them, they love them more. They're just remembered more than plays. Is it just simply because there's music in it? Is that the difference?

Joseph Zellnik:

Well, there's a number of different ways of sort of slicing up your question. Cause you ask sort of something that there's different answers to. Yes. I think that musicals tend to be bigger and splashier and give you different kinds of pleasure. People moving, whether that's fully danced or whether it's just motion, tend to have bigger and glitzier sets and costumes to look at. But as to why musicals are done more frequently, why they last longer than many plays, I think that the answer to that is the music and the fact that music and the songs from a musical are something that can be consumed and enjoyed away from the theater. So shows live or die on whether or not they have a cast album. It was why it was so important to us that we had opted not to do a cast album of Yank when it was off Broadway, because the show was optioned for Broadway and we didn't eventually get there.

Joseph Zellnik:

But that meant that after the Broadway production collapsed without reaching Broadway, we didn't have a cast album. So we had to do a Kickstarter and. And raise the money to do a cast album because we knew that the only way that the show would find a broader audience would go out there and have more productions. And indeed, since the album has come out, we've had productions on four different continents. People fall in love with albums, and that makes them want to see the entire show.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Hamilton is. I mean, obviously there's many Examples. But Hamilton is one of those that, like non musical theater people who'd never seen the show, loved that music just because it was so different.

Joseph Zellnik:

Exactly. They love it. And, you know, Hamilton actually points to one of my favorite, favorite phenomenon, and it's only happened a handful of times in Broadway history, which is. It's kind of crazy how a show which, when it opens on Broadway, exists in one small place in one city in the country, can somehow, within the space of like a week or two weeks, everyone in the country knows that it's happened. Everybody in the country is aware of it and wants to see it. And you're like, how does this happen? It happened with South Pacific, happened with Chorus Line, happened with Hamilton. But it's very rare that you get that kind of a show where it has cultural impact overnight.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, the subject matter was certainly it, but I. But I think getting back to what we were talking about, the music is what makes it stand apart. That's what makes musicals stand apart. And it's a different way into the story, a different way into the emotions of what's being told musically. It just speaks to a different part of us.

Joseph Zellnik:

Yeah. And also we've seen. Not that musicals can't be movies, not that musicals can't be done as television shows, but plays over the 20th century, over the last, actually hundred years, have been increasingly cannibalized. The audience for plays, I feel like, has been cannibalized by people who can turn on their television and watch a story about people, you know, movies, TV shows. Certainly we had a golden age of TV, you know, 10, 15 years ago, where lots of fascinating, interesting stories with great actors doing great performances. But if you want the thrill of watching people, a line of people tap dancing and somebody having a moment of like, you know, realization, you can't get that from a TV show, really. You can only get that by going to the theater. Which is why musicals, in some ways, I feel like, can't fully ever be replaced by TVs, movies, podcasts.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Well, this has been such a joy to talk to you and get inside your head and figure out the process that you go through these musicals. Thank you so much for sharing all of your stories.

Joseph Zellnik:

Thank you for inviting me.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Patrick Oliver Jones:

Well, thank you so much for joining us today. And remember, you can can get early access to our full conversation by going to why I'll never make it.com and click subscribe. Well, that about does it for this episode. I'm your host, Patrick Oliver. Jones in charge of writing, editing and producing this podcast. Background music is from John Bartman and the theme song that was created by me. Stay tuned for the next episode when I ask the fine final five questions and we talk more about why I'll never make it.