Marc Shaiman Finds His Inner Activist

Like many gay people, composer Marc Shaiman wrote a check to No on 8, watched the polls enthusiastically and, perhaps blinded by the promise of a Barack Obama presidency, thought that on November 4, California voters would extend this idea of change to marriage rights. 

And like many gay people, on November 5, when it became clear that Prop. 8 had passed and same-sex marriage had been banned throughout the state, Shaiman sprung into action. 

First up was his now well-chronicled call to a theater director in Sacramento who Shaiman found out had donated money to Yes on 8. Coincidentally, California Musical Theatre’s artistic director, Scott Eckern, had just produced one of the first licensed regional theatre productions of Shaiman’s musical Hairspray. 

So the composer called him up to ask why, then issued a public decree that the theater would no longer be able to produce any of his works. Other composers followed suit, the public caught wind of the conversation, and days later, Eckern resigned. 

That exchange, plus an idea Shaiman had thought up in passing during the Prop. 8 campaign, sparked this week’s must see video clip -- the FunnyOrDie.com-hosted Prop. 8 -- The Musical.

“At the risk of sounding insensitive to the people who did the [anti-Prop. 8] commercials, they were good, but they weren’t good enough -- I do remember sitting there, watching the commercials and thinking to myself, God, I wish someone would call me and ask me to do something. But, I’m the fool who didn’t figure out who I needed to call.” 

The mini-musical, featuring an all-star cast of your typically outspoken gay rights advocates (Margaret Cho, Kathy Najimy, Neil Patrick Harris) mixed with some surprises (John C. Reilly, Jack Black), premiered Tuesday, and Shaiman talked to Advocate.com about what prompted this engaging, albeit (his words) “six weeks late” call to action. 

Advocate.com:Howdid Prop. 8 -- The Musical come to be?
Marc Shaiman: Two years ago, I guess, Adam [McKay, from FunnyOrDie.com] and I did this Oscar number with Will Ferrell, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly. Me and Adam and Judd Apatow had written that together. So that’s how I knew him. Anyway, he e-mailed, amid all the e-mailing I’d been doing [re: the Sacramento theater director] and said, "Why don’t you do a song about it for FunnyOrDie?" I thought, Oh, God. Why didn’t I just write a song about it in the first place? That’s what I do. So he planted that seed. Literally, I wrote it on a Tuesday. We started thinking about how to put it on Wednesday, cast it, brought in Adam Shankman. We got on the phone and called friends, called agents and managers -- we spread around my demo, which was just me singing it. People said yes and wanted to be a part of it because of what it was about, but because of the nature of doing this so fast, if we had said we’re filming it Monday night instead of Monday afternoon (when we shot it), we’d have had a whole different cast. It was right before Thanksgiving.

So once you had everyone in place, how long did the actual shoot take?
Adam staged and filmed that thing basically in four hours. As silly as it is -- even when something’s silly, what he pulled off was unbelievable. We all had the best time -- we felt like we were 15 years old again.

It’s got that musical theater summer camp feel to it.
And that’s what I wanted when I wrote it. I knew the second I started writing it, I was writing just that -- music summer theater camp style of cramming all this stuff into three minutes and writing in a simplistic, unvarnished style. Kind of almost like this Gilbert and Sullivan light opera. We kept thinking, Where are we gonna film this? Luckily, once Adam came aboard, he called production designers and costume designers from films, and then I remembered that this magic store in Santa Monica has a theater. If you open this door at the back of this magic store, you’re suddenly in this theater -- it’s this bizarre thing.