Skip to main content

‘Totally fresh and weird’: Marshall Brickman on Jersey Boys, Dylan and Woody Allen

He wrote gags for The Tonight Show, won an Oscar for Annie Hall – and had a near-miss with the Manson family. As his musical Jersey Boys returns, the writer looks back on 82 years of sex, drugs and jokes

“When you describe it like that,” says Marshall Brickman, “it sounds like I’ve never been able to stick with anything I like!” I had given Brickman a quick run-through of his career highs, from scoring hits with folk band the Tarriers in the 60s, moving into comedy to become head writer on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, then winning an Oscar as co-writer of Annie Hall in the 70s, followed by a Tony in 2006 for co-writing the musical Jersey Boys. “My life,” he says, “is no example of how to plan a creative life whatsoever. My only philosophy is that I pick projects where I don’t mind having lunch with the people.”

When he was first approached to write Jersey Boys, based on the life of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Brickman turned it down. He only changed his mind when he met founding member Bob Gaudio, who told him about their colourful lives, which featured petty crime and encounters with the m afia. “They regaled me with all these stories, many of which were included in the libretto – and then I listened to their music.”

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3rEkd0D

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Knives Out review – Daniel Craig goes Columbo in Cluedo whodunnit

Craig grills an all-star lineup of suspects when a wealthy novelist is found dead in Rian Johnson’s sharp, country-house murder mystery R ian Johnson unsheathes an entertainingly nasty, if insubstantial detective mystery with his new film, Knives Out. Back in 2005, his debut movie Brick (a high-school thriller) paid tribute to the hardboiled noir genre. Now he does the same thing for cosy crime, although there is nothing that cosy about it. Knives Out has a country house full of frowning suspects, deadpan servants and smirking ne’er-do-wells and an amusing performance from Daniel Craig as Benoît Blanc, the brilliant amateur sleuth from Louisiana who annoys the hell out of one and all by smiling enigmatically, occasionally plinking a jarring high note on the piano during the drawing-room interrogation and pronouncing in his southern burr: “Ah suh-spect far-wuhl play!” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2L0NKO4
Post a Comment
Read more

Tracey Emin decorates Regent's Park and a celebration of Islamic creativity – the week in art

Emin and others survey the state of sculpture, Glenn Brown takes his decadent imagination to Newcastle and artists offer northern exposure – all in your weekly dispatch Frieze Sculpture Park Tracey Emin, Barry Flanagan and John Baldessari are among the artists decorating Regent’s Park with a free survey of the state of sculpture. • Regent’s Park, London , 4 July until 7 October. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IDCpPV
Post a Comment
Read more

When Brooklyn was queer: telling the story of the borough's LGBTQ past

In a new book, Hugh Ryan explores the untold history of queer life in Brooklyn from the 1850s forward, revealing some unlikely truths For five years Hugh Ryan has been hunting queer ghosts through the streets of Brooklyn, amid the racks of New York’s public libraries, among its court records and yellow newspaper clippings to build a picture of their lost world. The result is When Brooklyn Was Queer, a funny, tender and disturbing history of LGBTQ life that starts in an era, the 1850s, when those letters meant nothing and ends before the Stonewall riots started the modern era of gay politics. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2H9Zexs
Post a Comment
Read more