Q&A of DOCUMENTARY NOW! PRESENTS ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM: CO-OP 2018

[Music] so I guess my first question is because we have a room full of theater fans thank God how familiar were all of you with the original Pennebaker documentary extremely well I assumed you because you wrote the episode yeah we at all we had all seen it it was a it was a VHS I got from the Lincoln Center library when I moved to New York it's uh it's it was all they had at the Lincoln Center library and I'd seen it many many many times and really just like many people was kind of obsessed with it and you you had all seen it by the time we ran out you'd watched it before we do it's infamous slash famous in our community yes and so yeah it's it's one of those things that our tribe celebrates I should say but but to be honest I've only seen clips I had never seen the whole thing so my attachment my coming on board to this was literally reading their script it was so funny to me I was crying I was weeping just reading the email asking me about it so so yeah so I knew a button clips and then and they kind of made me introduce me to the whole thing in its entirety I mean let's be clear when the email came in from IFC that this episode was happening the entire playbill staff screamed like all of us and we're not all middle-aged men like me there are some Millennials in there too but this is a huge thing in the theatre community and a big part of that goes to Jay Pennebaker who I mean I'm quietly freaking out and I'm talking about this documentary in front of da Pennebaker we're just gonna assume that he liked it we're not gonna give him a microphone - oh no we are going to give a microphone Steve oh my good friend Steve and no I haven't yet but he would like it - I'm - I'm telling you we love it oh yeah that's the dream is for some time to see it right yes that's the dream that's a lady's dream yeah yeah Seth and I discussed asking him to play Simon sort oh yeah we should have yeah yeah well how did I mean you emailed Rene about it but how did you choose the cast because Paul Appel is not the first person I would think of for the stretch role oh she was the extra yeah she was genuine you knew Paulo Pelle she would have been your first choice for the right not to digress but Paul Appel had been a writer at Saturday Night Live for many years and had worked with all of Alex Reis and Seth and I many many times and not only was she perfect for the role but it I loved the documentary and then after working a Saturday Night Live I loved it more because I think we could all relate to being with people we love at 4:00 in the morning but maybe wanting to kill them and people offering pointers like sung or the comedy equivalent like this would be good if it was funny or something like that so I thought this sort of like just 4:00 a.m. at an office building in New York where you really really want to kill people but you love working with them was a familiar feeling Paula I don't know yeah she was our absolute first choice for this I remember your - first the two people you mentioned first were Richard and Paula like from the first time we sat down at the table and you said I want to do company Richard Richard behind well Richard had been in bounce he'd been into Sondheim musical so I just also kind of looking at the company it's it's a bit more eclectic looking than some you know contemporary musicals I feel like you you have you have people that look like they might just be an accountant that wandered in and not that Richard kind looks like an accountant it looks like a bad account [Laughter] account where you say oh no yeah I'm gonna get April when I think I think the Paula first rich I mean Paula pal has a musical theatre background and I I knew she would know what it was like to be that mad at a group of pompous beta males and and then Richard I think I think it was after um you were very very very inspired by mr. penny Baker's company and also there's a small dose of the best worst thing that could ever happen the documentary that came out a couple years ago about merrily we roll along because they did indeed have to record their cast album the day that the show closed yes which we thought was funny but you all just sighed at I should say the moment when someone like Renee signs on to an idea like this this very idea of the show documentary now from the very beginning and we really celebrate the fact that I have si got behind it is a show for so few people they're all here tonight yeah I mean and and and oh and so when you actually get genuinely extremely talented people from the world that you're making this fake documentary about it is I mean I can tell you that when the email went around that said you were joining us on this it was just incredible for us I have to I have to ask when you were seeing the brown of the beige and the brown of the beige which good luck getting it out of your head yeah the song's called my home court all right not anymore but when you were singing the song was the Elphaba triumph scream you or was that written into the song at the end what's so funny as a singer when you when you're acting as you know you're playing a singer is that question of how well do you sing students say and my ego always says as good as I possibly can so that's really funny so but I was kind of playing with you know just kind of the things that make because I knew this is a very inside it's like it seems like an inside comedy slash inside theatre audience and so the beauty of that is the subtlety of the humor would really play like so even whether I was covering an odor or like belting it would be something that my audience would be watching for and judging and so so that made it really kind of fun to do I just felt like they set us up to be very very inside in our in our humor which was great but yeah I I you know they worked really it like they were it was it's a strange job because the music is really hard like there was like they cut it but there were like 20 verses to do well there's a lot of things that could be in a studio apartment tennis and kind of amazing and there's a lot of you know research that had to be done to know what the hell I was talking about so yeah so that was hard and then you know music theater people are you know they're this is what I find really interesting is that and this is what I find this makes me laugh so hard about this is that we are like such pathetic pleasers dude I mean that's what I love about the watching just knowing us and watching the company musical and then the way we did it is that there's this desperate need for Pleet you know to please these people even though there's no point it's over like it doesn't go away and and so that's but that's reality and that's also like in the cotton because in the in the reality I was desperately trying to please them with this and that meant actually learning these lyrics because the other actors had learned them well I love the moment where you see where you see your face acknowledge that yes you are going to now sing ruined on this cast album yours there's a resentment / please please please give me the approval of that I need well and I I mean I was lucky enough to get to go to the set in Portland and watch a day of filming which was almost entirely taken up by going up so I've had that in my head since June but Alex and Rhys I I got to go into the room during the filming and the level of detail that you guys didn't even see so I've also like in my career I've been fortunate enough to be and on some cast recordings and I've also am very old and so the fact that you guys had oriental rugs like on the floor in the recording studio was phenomenal so is that like how much detail work do you guys do for just a regular episode versus this one in particular I mean I I think we go pretty deep on all of her episodes it's sort of part of the fun of the show yeah that there's no stopping there's you don't ever stop is that the fun for you I mean it's definitely it's a it's an obsessive show and in a way you know getting it right oh you know they're a these should be white curtains and these aren't the right microphones and this is should be a but it in a way it it sounds kind of insanely obsessive but it's also in a way the easiest way to do it because let's just do the thing for real yeah that's what we're gonna do you know so yeah I mean that was in for people like us who obviously love all of the documentaries that we make but in this case company being able to recreate company as close as you can with great singers and incredible music it was such a as a fan of the documentary it's such a crazy and amazing experience to step into this world that you have sort of loved so much yeah I did the to the songs and everything else add even more stress to the filming of an episode or was a pretty par for the course is pretty stressful yeah I was also because this episode getting all of that we shot this in Portland Oregon where there are no recording studio like old vintage recording studios here in New York you have a lot of them in LA we have a lot of them but in in Portland everything's just these really kind of cool like hipstery you know new places and so we had to like load up a truck with old gear and drive it up to Portland build this thing and then getting all this great talent to come to Portland we had to limit ourselves to two days of shooting and so yeah we shot this episode in what became about a day and a half and then half a day of you know trying to figure out how we were gonna state at all so yeah it was it was uh it was sort of stressful but what was amazing is that you guys recorded the songs live like I was watching the recordings happening well the the the singing was live yes yeah yeah the music was not live the music was was just all big illusion they had real Orchestra players they've got not lip-synching but the miming that they were playing but they actually knew what they were doing we thought that was really interesting well we had I love that even then even they were in costume like somebody they were they were there that was that was another secret was that we can't afford to like hire a real Orchestra to play for real and so we just hired extras who happened to own musical instruments acid they would bring them no they were they were all like local music teachers and again they were well that was the thing was then some of I think some of them certainly played in orchestras but we didn't we weren't saying okay learn this music and come in and play it we were like hey so can you bring your instruments and um you know we had just said look just you know in case you're curious this is the music that we'll be playing and they all just took it upon themselves that you know they're like you know what we just hated in TV shows and movies when it looks fake and so we learned it and so totally you know without telling us and so we were able to do all these cutaway shots and things where it you know looked like they were really playing it we gamed the system on that one there was a union thing don't get in the back no no no I'm saying that we were like don't learn it that would violate the Union they were like they said quote we don't we waive all things and we just wanted to do it for a verse melody that is what happened yes and and it's in writing they said on camera yeah it was it was intimated but you a lie is a lie here Mike is here right where's Mike Mike Petri back there in the back oh Mike you should come up here man yes our musical arranger and yeah breakfast writer camera also are on the beautiful conductor come up here Mike yes well and as he's walking up here it's important to note that co-op the cast album is going to be available yes it is what present someone I was told I'm gonna throw to and there will be us I'm throwing to the yes it was a long we made a picture yes the original you can you can apparently purchase the coop cast album my tree everybody back for everybody Seth Meyers and I wrote the lyrics to these songs Eli Bolan composed them and and Mike Petri was our arranger director and then because we could find this shirt like the original director you were our director on camera I love like getting to meet you in Portland during that filming and I was like how much of this is like you know just Jonathan Tunick like yeah there was a lot of going back to that original you know a cast album to listen to me like how do you do that and just doing that but it's such a specific sound to I mean for that era for that show in particular especially like that keyboard sound yeah that's like a very specific seventies instrument called a rocks Accord that was not made it anymore I had to find a you know a patch a keyboard patched to match well we talked to you and Eli about like you know I don't know how many pieces are in the average Broadway musical now and the orchestra pit but we're like how many pieces would they have had on something like company and you guys put together a 15 piece yeah 15 piece orchestra in New York to record the tracks that you hear in the film but I mean how many drafts of the songs you do go through and/or their lost songs there was a song Seth and I were noodling on a song where multiple people are ordering Chinese food it was basically like one person on the phone and a lot of people yelling out what they wanted yeah it was kind of a you could drive a person crazy type number where everyone was just saying what they wanted yeah but even to just fit these songs in a lot and again as Renee pointed out there's a lot of dropped verses that you know because all I mean you think a lot bigger and then the reality is what are they 21 30 I think you get down to time pretty quickly and so you have to cut things Richard kind has a small reprieve during going up where he says all I ever wanted was to not be a doorman and which is he is a callback to a short section in his song doorman tips where he says all I ever wanted was to be in the majors maybe play for the Yankees or look just like Paul Newman so it's a debrief event that he has repeated but the the album is gonna have the full version so Renee you're full my home court is this is the third full album we have generated from documentary now there's a band called blue jean committee and there is a test pattern yeah so there have been and there I mean you know for us you know not speak for John but there's this thing where we because we came out of SNL we wait until almost the very last minute to write these scripts yeah and and like we kind of turned them in they're not even formatted it's like somehow even with computers they're unlike loose-leaf paper and we just we give them to Alex reason in this case you know also Eli and you can't believe how they then take this attention to detail and give you back not just an incredible product but incredible songs so oh yeah I could only come up with pure song time sound-alikes not sound-alikes copies plagiarism melodica melodic plagiarism so I would go like okay this one is something just broke from Assassin's and then I need you to change the melody and then I would do a voice memo with like my dog barking in the background and he would write an entirely new piece and nothing's worse than the fact that Jon and I would just sing it into an iPhone way prefaced with an apology yeah hey hey sorry about this I can sing but not right now well I can't wait to hear all these songs at Marie's crisis yeah as soon as that album comes out I hope so I would be very happy if people started singing these in public oh that I mean this is gonna be the new 54 below like go to cabaret standards like a couple of them did get some it 54 below yes oh yes yeah Eli did a night of his he and his wife's work from volley girls in lots of other shows they did and Richard kind came and performed doorman tips and then we had a performance of cocaine tonight yeah and I did not come to do I was available I did not cause the lyrics there was no teleprompter that would have been impossible there was everybody read them off pages yeah you but yes it was a lot of like frantic turning of pages and I think that that's all the time that we have I'm being gestured at by some yes it is it is I'm so sorry guys congratulations on this episode you have you have successfully pleased the theater Queens of the world so well done thank you and thank you guys for sticking around Oh when does the episode air with the season premieres February 20th and I believe I can resist a 2nd up a 2nd week the second week so what are some other episodes you guys ever see the artist is present we have one based on that called waiting for the artist starring Cate Blanchett have you heard of her yeah there's a bowling documentary a professional bowling documentary there's what am i mid there's a michael see whole is in a professional bowler yeah there's a documentary about cults called batshit valley that has Owen Wilson and Michael Keaton yeah it's crazy this they should not be agreeing to do these things but the point is just watch documentary now guys all right thank you guys thank you guys thank you [Music] you

Channel: DOCNYCfest

Views: 17,153

Keywords: documentary now, seth meyers, rhys thomas, john mulaney, alex buono, renee elise goldsberry, co-op, D.A. Pennebaker, pennebaker, documentary now!, season52, ifc, ifc center, documentary, doc, docnyc, doc nyc, film festival, nyc, new york, snl, Lorne Michaels, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Grey Gardens, Co-op, Original Cast

Id: X2bcz4rLvLo

Length: 20min 22sec (1222 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 12 2018