Surely you’ve seen it on the Internet already: Prop 8: The Musical features a surprisingly stellar cast (Jack Black, John C. Reilly and Neil Patrick Harris, among others), a pretty good song, and a biting message on one of the more controversial topics of this political year.  Marc Shaiman—five-time Oscar nominee and producer of Hairspray and Sister Act 2, among other films—is behind it, but why exactly would he do it?

It started with, among all things, an email.  “I wrote this questioning email a few weeks back that caused some controversy, about one man in Sacramento whose public record we saw; he had donated to Yes on 8,” he said.  “He’s an artistic director at a theater that puts on musical theater, and they had put on Hairspray just a few months ago!  For me, that was just very personal … It was kind of a tone-deaf decision on his part.”

The openly-gay producer/composer decided to speak out in the way he knows best.  He sent out the aforementioned email to everybody in his address book, and got responses from the most unlikely people.  “One of those was Adam McKay, who is Will Ferrell’s partner in Funny or Die, and he just gave me the V8 moment by saying, ‘Why don’t you write a song about this?’” he said.

The cast was also a significant factor. “No one would have shown up if they didn’t feel strongly about the message, because they wouldn’t want to put themselves [out there] for some of this hate stuff on the Internet right now,” he said.  “The idea came one day, I wrote it the next day, I recorded a demo, and then Jack Black said ‘yes’ to playing Jesus.  We filmed it on a Monday.  If you couldn’t be there on Monday from 11-4, you couldn’t be in it.  If we’d done it on Tuesday, it might have had a completely different cast.”

The result is a video that everybody’s been passing around, although of course there are those who like it, and those who hate it.  “[1.3 million views in barely a day] feels good, until I read some of the angrier comments left by some very angry people,” he said.  But it’s all worth it, he figures.  “We were having so much fun; I kept saying ‘Gee, I’d go see this!’” he said.  “John C. Reilly said, ‘Marc, why don’t you just write Gay: The Musical?”

If a video can say something like, “gay marriage can save the economy,” well, that must be something.


-Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: MTV News
(Image courtesy of WireImage)