Amish: Out of Order

I think some people are surprised at the show’s success. It’s not exactly the blueprint one usually follows for a hit TV series. Don’t get me wrong, those of us that worked on the show are unbelievably proud of the series and what we were able to accomplish. But no one throws a drink at anyone else, there are no eliminations, people speak slowly and with strange accents, we have to blur a lot of faces, it has a different feel and pace than almost anything else on TV. Because of this, most outsiders didn’t expect much from the show.

But to be totally honest, those of us who worked on the show weren’t that surprised. We had a pretty good idea that people were going to tune in, that the show would capture people’s attention. And while I’d love to take credit and say that it’s all just because the show is so brilliant, I know the truth. As good as the show is, we had an ace up our sleeve that we knew would help us no matter what, something that we would refer to in internal meetings simply as the “A word.” I’ll let you in on our little secret.

We were pretty sure that the show would do reasonably well simply because it was about the Amish. And the public appears to have a never-ending fascination with the Amish. Look, I’m certainly not complaining. I also know that that the second you take any of that for granted and make a second-rate product, people stop tuning in. So because of that, we have always made each and every one of our Amish projects with as much care and sensitivity as possible. These shows usually take years to produce, and quite honestly very few other producers could do it. Many have tried and most have failed. But as much as I like to make everything about me, our show, Amish: Out of Order, is just a small portion of the public’s incredible fascination with the Amish.

Lancaster, Pa., makes nearly $2 billion off of tourism every year. Amish-style crafts, cooking, quilts and markets are major commodities across the U.S., whether Amish people made them or not. Walk into any bookstore and you will usually see a wall dedicated to “Amish fiction.”

But why? Why do people care so much about the Amish? I mean, this is a religious group we are talking about

If we are being totally honest, some people care about the Amish simply because they are different. It’s not a pleasant thing to talk about, but almost every Amish person can tell you a story about being out in public growing up and having a group of people staring at them, pointing, gawking, talking about them as if they weren’t there, so that they ended up feeling like a zoo animal trapped in a cage. To a degree, it’s understandable, and most of the time people who do it are just curious and don’t realize what they are doing.

But there is more to the fascination with the Amish than just the freak factor of funny outfits and haircuts. The Amish are devoutly religious Christians who generally want to remain separate from the rest of society. They are usually humble, hard working pacifists who don’t seek attention – exactly the opposite traits that usually capture the fascination of the American public.

And perhaps that’s why people care so much. They live among us, but they don’t live like us. How do they do it? How is it possible that they know about all the cool stuff that we have and yet they willingly choose not to use it? There is something about a culture that is able to remain so separate, that keeps itself at an arms length from the things that we strive, for that is enticing.

In many ways the Amish represent a way of life that we wish we could live. It is a type of fantasy. Maybe not they way we all would want to live the rest of our lives, but I would almost guarantee that each and every one of you has thought at some point in time, could I do it? Could I live without all of this stuff, could I be Amish? We don’t typically think like this about other religions or cultures.

But let’s be quite clear. It is a fantasy world. The image we have created of what the Amish are is very far from the truth, as I’ve written about in previous posts.  There is a reason why the wall of Amish books is next to the sections about sparkly vampires and bodice-ripping romance. Amish life is a type of fiction. And the fascination that the American public has with the Amish is created mainly in their heads and has very little to do with the Amish religion, or the actual Amish way of life.

Because of this, it’s unsurprising that most Amish people are pretty shocked when they learn that people throughout the country care so much about them. To most Amish, this is just their way of life. In Lancaster, they have embraced tourism as a way of life and are pretty savvy at capitalizing on the cottage industry of all things Amish.

But if you meet Amish from most other areas, the rest of society’s fascination with their way of life is usually pretty bewildering to them. They really don’t understand why the quilt that their mother made for them suddenly can be sold for 10 times what it cost. Or that people would pay them for a ride in their horse-drawn buggy. Or that their story might be worth telling on a television program.

This week’s episode of Amish: Out of Order was a really interesting episode for us to make. The day that National Geographic Channel ordered this series, I knew I wanted to make an episode that tackled the question of why people are so fascinated with the Amish. For a while we were going to make it as more of a newsmagazine-style episode, where we interviewed experts, used a voiceover and really studied the topic in a typical documentary style. But then a remarkable thing happened. Two of our characters were confronted with real issues that dealt with this very topic. And by being able to follow their journey as they struggled to understand how to reconcile their lives with the public’s interest in the Amish, we were able to create a really unique and thought-provoking episode.

Because he has become the face of the ex-Amish, Mose Gingerich has opened himself up to a lot of criticism because the Amish have always been taught to remain humble and not promote themselves or exploit their Amish background. But the town of Lancaster seems to be totally free from that criticism, so Mose travels to Lancaster for the first time to see how the Amish there are able to balance self-promotion, tourism and keeping core values. At the same time, Esther, an ex-Amish girl, has an opportunity to exploit her Amish past to help her burgeoning acting and modeling career. But this goes against everything she grew up with as well. Both Mose and Esther have to make difficult decisions on what to do, with surprising consequences.

Ultimately, I know that the “A word” might get people to take a quick glimpse at the show, but it won’t necessarily keep people around. What will keep them watching is great characters, unique access that you can’t see anywhere else, and a deeper look at the most fascinating subculture in America. So thanks for tuning in, thanks for reading these articles. Keep watching. I promise, as long as you keep wanting to know more about the Amish, we will keep doing our best to find great stories to tell.

If you have a working telephone and an affluent zip code, you have likely been getting all kinds of calls from brokers over the years, but none so insidious as the one I’m about to reveal.

The bucket shops in lower Manhattan, northern New Jersey and Long Island simply couldn’t watch the Facebook & social media IPO desperation blood orgy from the sidelines without springing into action.  Brokers have a NASA-calibrated schmuck-seeking radar and it hasn’t set off this many schmuck alarms since the aftermath of the Netscape deal in the mid-90′s.

The frenzy for the Facebook debut is a target to fire at the size of Mike and Molly‘s haunches laid end to end and believe me, the brokers want to hit that target hard.  “It’s a fuckin’ layup,” I’ve been told by a few of my former colleagues, “as soon as they hear the word Facebook it’s a done deal, I’m getting their social security numbers.”

So here’s how it’s going down…

For the past 9 months, low-rent broker-dealers have been accumulating shares of Facebook and Twitter from the fringes of the employee pool of these companies.  Some are free-trading but most are 144 insider shares (which cannot be sold right away).  They’ve created private funds to hold these shares, named them, packaged them and set them up as Reg D vehicles.  They’ve exhaustively beaten the story into their sales forces, gotten the brokers all hopped up on promises of large inside commissions (the kind the clients don’t see) and the potential to “become monster producers” as a result of what these IPOs will do upon launch – “your clients are going to make MULTIPLES on their money!”

What they’ve not explained in great detail to the “kids in suits” who are being mobilized to sell this shit is that their clients aren’t actually getting pre-IPO shares.  What they’re getting instead is shares in a fund that may or may not hold a good amount of these shares.  The funds are loaded with all kinds of contingencies and miscellaneous fees and caveats.  They are also able to do whatever they want with the money raised, including taking shots on other venture deals that sound social media-y enough to qualify.  The PPMs (private placement memorandums) are written so as to protect the firm from everything and anything that could go wrong (and it will all go wrong).  The money is being held in escrow and the clients are signing their lives away.

Making a deal with the devil is child’s play compared to doing principle business off-exchange with a third-tier boiler room brokerage firm.

And you know who’s on the other end of that phone – guys like this:

From the Gryphon Financial Group’s website (prior to their arrests, I kid you not):

The Wolf begins to circle, claws of black steel, a beast approaches, fur as dark as night, eyes glowing red, fangs from the pit of hell itself. The Giant Wolf sniffing, savoring the scent of the meat to come – its not fear that grips them, only heightened sense of things and the anticipation of millions to be made.

Financial Times Reports – this secret group has identified as the latest hedge fund to exploit the weakening sub prime markets – pounding stocks down to nothing and making billions along the way, one hedge fund run by this group had been rammed to see returns of over 1000% in 2007. Together we beat up hedge funds that are said to have realized over 20 million from one trade.

From: “Alone, the Gryphon Financial are incredible, together they are unstoppable.” (Dealbreaker)

Anyway, I gave people the heads up about these sales pitches last month on Max Keiser’s show and my pal Kyle wrote it up for Benzinga this morning:

Finally, Brown warned against the dangers of shady brokerage firms who have “figured out a way to buy shares from Twitter and Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) employees who need liquidity.”

“They’re taking these shares, they’re bundling them in these private funds with escrow accounts,” said Brown. “They’re layering it with fees on top of it, and these are restricted shares of stock. They’re selling it to people as though they’re buying pre-IPO shares in Facebook, when in reality what they’re really buying is shares of a fund that owns stock that may or may not be sold at some point.

“It is probably the biggest scam going on right now. People are cold calling investors with this thing. I think everyone needs to be on their guard. If somebody calls you up and offers pre-IPO shares of Facebook at a discount, it’s a lie, they don’t have them, they won’t give them to you, you are about to be screwed. Do not trust anyone that has something that’s too good to be true.”

The bottom line, as we race toward the Facebook IPO, the brokerages are out in full force this week and next, milking this cow with both fists until its udders squirt blood.  They are pounding the phones from morning til night, taking breaks only to smoke butts and holler at girls on Broad Street.  Then it’s right back upstairs looking for the next Midwestern farmer to call with this deal.  You almost feel bad for the kids pushing this stuff, they have no clue what they’re talking about and the big dogs have indoctrinated them.  And when it melts down and the customer complaints start rolling in, the principals of the firms will lawyer up and claim that everything was “fully disclosed” and that the buyers were “accredited investors” – apparently you can be fucked over as long as you have a high enough net worth and are deemed to be sophisticated.  But the kids on the front lines, they will have their licenses shredded for doing what they were told.

This particular product push has been going on for half a year but the urgency is now reaching a fever pitch.  “Mr. Jones, this deal is coming any day now and the longer you wait, the less chance there is that I’ll be able to get you in!”  This is their last chance at selling something they can pretend is “exclusive” or “of limited quantity” before the big first day IPO pop, it’s like cramming for finals only the only thing final in this case is the sale to you.

If you get one of these calls this week, don’t express interest and don’t answer any questions.  Hang up the fucking phone.  And if Facebook is that important to you, play it like everyone else with that burning desire – in the engorged aftermarket. You may buy high, but at least you’ll be buying shares of the actual stock and not a broker-sold mirage.

Read Also:

Are You Being Scammed By Your Broker?  (Benzinga)

Every Lie Told By “Gryphon Financial” Better Than The Last  (Dealbreaker)

If I Were a Broker, Here’s How I’d Sell Facebook  (TRB)

Way more in the book:

Backstage Wall Street

I was going through the board deck of our portfolio company Wattpad this morning. Wattpad is the leading writing/reading community on the web and mobile. Quantcast says over 7.5mm people visit their website each month. And Wattpad is one of the top free “Books” apps in both the iOS an Android apps stores.

Wattpad has a very large mobile user base around the world as a result of the sucess of its mobile apps. And so this slide on geographic distribution of its user base caught my attention:

The iOS user base for Wattpad is about 65% in North America. But Wattpad’s Android user base is less than 50% in North America.

More notably is what is going on in Asia and Europe. 24% of Wattpad’s Android users are in Asia versus 12% of their iOS users. And 19% of their Android users are in Europe vs 13% of their iOS users.

Some of this data may be representative of Wattpad’s user base. Everything on Wattpad is free. Wattpad makes writing and reading books feel like writing and reading blogs. And Wattpad is big in places like Vietnam, Phillipines, and New Zealand. But it is also quite popular in the US, Spain, and the UK. It is a global reading and writing community.

In any case, it was quite interesting to me that in Wattpad’s user base, the North American users skew toward iOS but the Asian and European users skew towards Android. I plan to look at more data from our portfolio on this. Could be a trend here that would be useful to understand.

Just when everybody was starting to get along, Betty reappears, spiteful, spitting venom on everything that moves. A snowball’s chance in hell.

Betty has stooped lower, everybody! Not to say that Don was the “winner” in their divorce, considering that she only had one affair and he had several, but Don has moved on with more grace than Betty has. Feeling that she is the victim of a series of increasingly-poor decisions, Betty has become a remorseful, spiteful,  self-loathing, and venomous. Perhaps worst of all, she is showing few signs of improvement.

Then again, who on Mad Men ever actually shows signs of personal growth or improvement in consecutive weeks? Well, Megan, honestly.

The poor thing might have gotten more than she bargained for, being sucked into the eye of Don’s bullshit hurricane. From the center of it all, she can see everything — his failed marriage, his career ambitions, his pride and rage, his secrets, and his vulnerability. Marrying into it all, in addition to marrying into the money he has, has put her in a precarious situation. She has the talent, the motivation, and the security to be special, but people will resent her for it. Sitting practicing lines with an old acting friend, Megan has the freedom to proclaim that the play they’re rehearsing as crap — her friend knew it, sure, but she had no such flexibility to admit it. Her friend needs work, needs to wait tables, needs to act to survive. Megan has an apartment with a view and a rich husband that also loves her a whole lot, as was evidenced by the note he wrote out on the back of one of Bobby’s drawings.

In essence, when others in the world lay eyes on Megan, and they’re see somebody that has cut in line. She didn’t have to get dirty and she didn’t have to wait for her credibility-certificate to arrive in the mail after years of suffering under America’s whip. She appears so un-burdened, so those that see her will sting her.

“You’re so lucky,” her actress friend announced.

“I am,” Megan answered. People hate luck because there’s no argument against it.

Megan bet on Don. Betty bet on Henry. We know that neither has been a walk in the park, especially now that Don and Megan’s honeymoon period is over and she has revealed herself to be an assertive personality. Betty has become petty, viewing Megan as a rival, oh-so-nonchalantly telling Sally that Don was “married” to Anna (For Real) Draper way back when, a secret that had the desired effect at first by setting Sally against Megan and then Don against Megan for confirming Anna’s existence when approached her about it. Again though, Megan is assertive and talked Don down from rising to Betty’s passive-aggressive manipulation. They deprive Betty of the satisfaction of being able to “poisoning them from 50 miles away.”

Megan is young, skinny, and free, living in apartment in Manhattan. Betty is in the burbs, weighing her food portions of burnt toast and cheese in the dark, panic-chugging whipped cream straight out of the can between weight watchers sessions. She’s come to eating her frustrations instead of confronting them. ”You shouldn’t stuff yourself instead of telling your family your problems,” the weight watchers’ group leader explained calmly. Betty doesn’t want to be calm. Betty wants to yell and cry and rage. She feels her gamble to go with Henry isn’t paying off and she’s even more frustrated that her conniving bullshit didn’t work to turn Sally against Don and Megan. Now she’s a miserable liar at Thanksgiving dinner, talking about how great she thinks she’s got it. Does Betty actually have it pretty good? Again — it’s all about varying degrees of success this year, and being able to know what you’ve got.

Ginsberg got to face that question this week too. He developed a good, playful campaign for Pepsi Snowballs that got Don wondering if he could come up with something that good. Don went the ominous route, pitching an mediocre campaign involving the devil eating snowballs in hell. After Don chose his own lazy writing idea over Ginsberg’s, Ginsberg was obviously worked up. He had a great idea and Don passed it by out of pride. They still won the account, but it’s clear that wasn’t enough for Ginsberg, who obviously had his pride, which led to this damning exchange.

“I feel so sorry for you,” Ginsberg said.

“I don’t think about you at all.” Don. Dropping the hammer. Unlike Megan, Ginsberg is still waiting for his credibility-certificate to arrive in the mail. He can’t cut in line. Nevertheless, having a good idea and seeing the company win business isn’t enough for him. Once more, with feeling: define success. It’s all by degrees in Mad Men.

Pete is off fantasizing about banging his neighbor’s wife again in a sneaky, “Holy shit, that neighbor-lady is crazy, oh, wait, it’s a dream, and Pete is an under-sexed boy fantasizing” couch-nap-sequence. Roger is commissioning Ginsberg for some under-the-table ideas for a potential Jewish wine-maker client — key word, Jewish. He also commissioned his mid-divorce, and Jewish ex(ish)-wife Jane to be his arm candy. After a successful meal, he got her to bring him up to her new apartment and then he nailed her.

I’m open to people’s interpretations on this one. Is Jane justified feeling as used as she does the morning after? She went to dinner with him, she let him upstairs, and she slept with him. Later, she says he ruined the apartment because they’d already filled it with a tainted memory. Was she victimized?

Yes, because Roger bought his way up there by promising Jane a new apartment, the same way he bought Ginsberg’s help to have ammunition for prospective Jewish clients. On the other hand, Jane could have said “no” in the first place. What do you guys think?

Image.

Still bored? Read my most recap for this week’s Person of Interest and my recent piece on the 9 Things Bad TV Does For You over on GhostLittle.com – and as always, you can keep up with my thoughts on Twitter. Til next week!

In the 1970s, on behalf of his bands Parliament and Funkadelic, as well as all their spinoff satellites and solo stars, George Clinton created a cosmological mythology so dense and elaborate and wonderful, it’d take a Joseph Campbell to properly cross-index and contextualize. But no matter how you manipulate its meanings–its myriad metaphors merged with musical virtuosity–at the symbolic and sometimes literal center of the P-Funk universe is the stage-set Mothership that used to descend in the midst of concerts, a 1,200-pound life-sized landing craft constructed, collectively, in the name of the P-Funk ideal. Clinton as Dr. Funkenstein would emerge and strut down its stairs to the opening bars of Funkenstein’s eponymous song, this otherworldly presence with his otherworldly sound, secure enough in his band’s own excellence to indulge such a clownishly contrived conceit.

These past couple weeks, the Mothership has landed in America in a big way, and I’m just glad its primary mastermind, 70 years old and still counting, has lived to see it occur. One of the songs he made, with Parliament in the seventies, was this thing called “Chocolate City,” on an album of the same name. And when that one dropped in ’75, the idea of a black man in the White House was so unthinkable, Clinton turned it into cosmo-comic sci-fi just by reciting, in spoken word over a swamped-out, slow-stepping funk groove, his fantasy’s mere premise:

What’s up, CC. They still call it the White House, but that’s a temporary condition too—can you dig it, CC? […] Uh, blood to blood, players to ladies, the last percentage count was eighty. You don’t need the bullet when you got the ballot. Are you up for the down stroke, CC? Chocolate City, are you with me out there? And when they come to march on ya, make sure they got their James Brown pass. And don’t be surprised if Ali is in the White House. Reverend Ike, Secretary of the Treasure. Richard Pryor, Minister of Education. Stevie Wonder, Secretary of Fine Arts. And Miss Aretha Franklin, the First Lady.

We know what happened thirty-three years later—not just a direct descendant of slaves becoming the actual first lady but Aretha Franklin singing at the ceremony that inaugurated her husband, who is also black. And no less than Stevie Wonder his own self was among the first to be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the new black president. The appeal of Clinton’s zany fantasy is timeless. Just this past weekend, Saturday Night Live ran a sketch very similar to Clinton’s political premise, with a bunch of candidates vying to become mayor of “Funkytown.” When one of the candidates, Will Ferrell as Captain Catfish, introduces his Clintonesque ideal cabinet, the city comptroller is a black man, someone called Diaper Jones as played by Jay Pharoah, and goddamn it if he isn’t wearing nothing but a fucking diaper, just like Clinton’s own late rhythm guitarist Garry Shider.

There are other P-Funk parallels in the sketch, but you get the idea. And anyway, fleshing them all out here would mean leaving no space for the real news from out of Chocolate City last week, that week that saw Chocolate City’s very own head of state publicly concur with his vice president on the issue of gay marriage. So on this week that saw the country take a giant stride toward becoming more hospitable to those who dare own up to their own differentness–a rising tide in support of eccentricity and idiosyncrasy that promises to lift all motherships–it’s only appropriate that the Mothership itself, Clinton’s Mothership, finally came to occupy the place it had been vaguely navigating toward for nearly four decades: the Smithsonian Institution, right in the officially sanctioned cultural heart of Chocolate City.

It certaintly did not come as a surprise to hear that Game of Thrones is on track to be the most pirated TV show of 2012. With its high production values and obvious “nerd appeal,” Game of Thrones is a show that can both be watched by the family and obsessed over individually in said family’s basement.

While the reasons seem fairly straightforward for pirating Game of Thrones, what is of more interest is a Reddit thread that points to the reasons that people pirate.

The top commenter, user The_Second_Beast, makes an excellent point:

Heavy pirating didn’t seem to stop first season DVD sales [source], if it wasn’t for pirating I would never have got into the show and wouldn’t have bought the DVD myself.

While not everyone has the capital to invest in a premium cable channel like HBO, anyone can buy a DVD, which is likely why Game of Thrones has had the highest week one DVD sales of any cable TV show in history.

While there is no empirical evidence to make a definitive statement of this, common sense dictates that there is a correlation between piracy and DVD sales, particularly in this case. While this may not cover everyone who pirates television, people in the long run want to help out the creators of the entertainment they are consuming, even if piracy is the only affordable way that they can initially view it.

While the people themselves cannot be totally absolved of responsibility, there is currently no way for people who do not have a cable subscription to watch the show, as HBO’s internet service HBO Go requires a cable subscription.

This puts people like myself in a precarious position. As a college student studying abroad (or even when I’m back home), I do not have access to cable in my dorm room. Therefore, the only way to watch the show would be to pirate.

While morally there may be a reason for me to not pirate a show such as Game of Thrones, the Internet gives me a practical and easy means to do so. It is likely people such as myself who account for at least a sizeable portion of pirates — people who otherwise would not even have access to the show, or likely even get into it in the first place.

Those are some of the suggestions so far in response to the Ghost ticket giveaway contest questions: What movie would make a good Broadway musical? OR: What movie should never be made into a Broadway musical?

Hollywood has been the source of some of the biggest hits (The Lion King) and notorious flops (Carrie) in musical theater.

There are currently seven musicals on Broadway that were adapted from films – more than one-third of all the musicals currently on Broadway:
Ghost the Musical, adapted from the 1990 film starring Whoopi Goldberg, Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore.
The Lion King, based on the 1994 Disney animated film.
Mary Poppins, based on the 1964 Disney movie starring Julie Andrews.
Newsies, based on the 1990 Disney movie starring Christian Bale.
Once, based on the 2006 independent Irish film.
Priscilla Queen of the Desert, based on the 1994 Australian film
Sister Act, based on the 1992 movie starring Whoopi Goldberg.

Leap of Faith, based on the 1992 film starring Steve Martin, closec on Sunday, little more than two weeks after it opened. Other recent Broadway musicals based on movies included: Catch Me If You Can, Elf, Women on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown. There was even a play based on a movie, “Brief Encounter.” Before that, there was “9 to 5” and “Shrek” and “Ragtime”….

While Broadway and Hollywood have had an extensive and complex relationship from the beginning of the movie industry, the adaptations from one medium to the other were for the first few decades largely in one direction, from stage to screen.

There are some examples of the reverse starting more than half a century ago.
The earliest so far unearthed (by classic movie buff and Twitter pal Bobby Rivers) is the 1942 film My Sister Eileen with Rosalind Russell, which became the 1953 Broadway musical ‘Wonderful Town”…with Rosalind Russell
Other examples:
The Apartment (1960) became Promises, Promises (1968, recently revived.)
All About Eve (1950) became Applause (1970)
42nd Street (1933) became the 1980 musical of the same name.
Woman of the Year (1942) became the 1981 musical of the same name.

But it is arguably only in the past 20 years, and especially in the past decade, that the dominant direction has been from Hollywood to Broadway.

What is next? What movie should be made into a Broadway musical? Which should never be made into one?

That was the question asked of those entering a contest for a pair of tickets to Ghost, a contest that ended May 14, 2012. Here are some of the answers:

What would make a great musical?
A League of Their Own
“It would be a high energy, funny and heartfelt good time, just like the movie.” (Taryn Crow)
“I know we have Damn Yankees but this could showcase some fierce ladies and the 40s had such bangin’ costumes” (Alana Rader)

Across the Universe
I’ve seen it 100 times (Mary Ann O’Rourke)

Aladdin
(Rosaria Panzeca )

Amelie
“Lighthearted whimsy, beautiful love story, and tons of Parisian atmosphere. I can hear the accordion now.” (Geoffrey Greene)

Arthur
“The better one…the original with Dudley Moore…was hilarious. Maybe get Liza in for a short run. (TaraLynn Yanagisawa)

Bride and Prejudice
It has amazing songs and great costumes (Christine DeLuca)

The Brother from Another Planet
‘But only if John Sayles stayed involved” (Lynda Crawford)

Center Stage
This ballet film already has fierce dancing and was even directed by a theater director – Nicholas Hytner – and has Broadway performers like Donna Murphy and Priscila Lopez in it! It would be like ‘A Chorus Line’ for a new generation! The film is already a cult hit, a la ‘Newsies’ (Sarah Packard)
There would be spectacular dancing, drama, romance, energy, and appealing characters. (Daphne Basset)

Clerks
Especially a big interpretive dance number for Silent Bob.(Robb Johnston)

Clue
“So many great characters, plot twists, special “murder” FX, dark comedy, and the possibility of multiple endings or “choose your own adventure”-type audience participation. Has anyone done this yet?” (Sierra Rein)

Clueless
“Funny, classic, satisfying love story.” (Ashley Fedor)

Dirty Dancing
(Lauren Conlon) (Dawn Vanburen-Fanning)

Do The Right Thing
should be made into a musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda! Great dialog – just needs music/choreography! (Annabelle Malibago Kline)

Earth Girls Are Easy
“The special effects could outdo the movie! Julie Brown could be in it an write some additional killer songs! Costumes would be colorful and fun!” (Hollis Stern)

Election
“The tone and characters are just dying to be musicalized. Plus the movie is SO clever and intelligent and the musical could easily reflect that.” (Philip Iannitti)

Empire Records
I think it could be a really great rock musical with a young, energetic cast. (Jessica Liebling)

Enchanted
“Already has great music and I’m sure Disney can create a magical way to switch from cartoon world to the real world” (Allie Cornblath)

Field of Dreams
“would make a beautiful heartwarming musical. It has comedy, drama, heartbreak, and is a tearjerker. It also would be amazing to see how they would do the baseball scenes on stage.” (Dan Guitelman)

The Help
“…would translate well onstage. I would love some William Finn music to supplement the story. Let’s get Jennifer Hudson on Broadway. And maybe Fantasia, Capathia Jenkins, Audra McDonald, Da’vine Joy Randolph, LaChanze, Patina Miller… Perhaps Laura Osnes as Skeeter? Are any investors reading this? Call me. “(Derek Hersey)

Julie & Julia
Can you imagine Julia Child singing? Haha. (Nina Monshine)

Moulin Rouge
“the best tragedy/comedy/musical/extravaganza ever! Sparkling Diamons, Le Tango de Roxanne, Come What My, Your Song demand to be sun on a venue in NYC” (Mauricio Herrerabarria)

Mrs. Doubtfire
Lots of laughs and great characters (Melissa Battye)

The Notebook
Great love story with many emotions that could be turned into great songs. (Sarah Moran)

The Outsiders
Great music, lots of action and I think it’s different enough from West Side Story to be a hit (Lisa Vigna)

Pretty in Pink
Classic rich boy falls for poor girl (and vice versa) and overcoming society’s opinion of it all. Love all John Hughes films (Cindy Vega)

Pretty Woman (Jamie Huggins)

The Princess Bride (Marta Myers Gillilan)

Purple Rose of Cairo.
” It’s got such a fabulous story, and visually it would be fantastic. There’s lots of longing, conflict, and self-discovery, and it would be interesting to see how the “movie” scenes are staged. I can imagine a big cast with lots of great group musical numbers and intimate scenes between the two main protagonists.” (Wendell Entin)

Slumdog Millionaire.
“Can you even imagine all the spectacular sets and costumes with the bollywood numbers that could be included? (Bill Blatchley)

The Social Network
“A great story that allows actors to develop characters further than other shows” (Robert Koehler)

Step Up
The dance numbers would look great on Broadway (Lori Liebowitz)

That Thing You Do
“The nostalgic feel of the film can be easily translated to the stage” (Tara Wroblewski)

What would make a terrible musical
Aliens (Ryan Brinson)
Before Sunrise (Ran Xia)
The Exorcist
“Could you imagine the musical numbers: The eerily, special effect laden “Mother; Make It Stop!” The haunting ballad: “You’re Going To Die Up There”… (Kevin LeCaon)
The Hunger Games
“Amazing movie and book but I don’t think there would be too many good songs about killing people from other districts.” (Jackie Cookfair)
Schindler’s List (Brian Stoll)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Jay Hawk)

What would make a terrific musical, or a terrible musical?

Fight Club
It would be an amazing Broadway musical, because of the fun, edgy themes, and they fight shirtless so hot guys! (Jeff Walsh)
It should never be made into a musical. I could picture it now…chorus boys dreaming of being in the ensemble just to wrestle with each other. It is a man’s man show with grit and anger and craziness…no music necessary. (Brad Buchholtz)

Forrest Gump:
Its moving plot and passionate characters are what great musicals are made of. I can’t even imagine all the possibilities for using the SONG for advancing the plot (which is what musicals are intended to do). A feel-good ending would leave people singing out the door, and the possibilities for big ensemble numbers could be limitless (Jordan Campbell)
Who wouldn’t want to hear a song about life being like a box of chocolates and “Run Forrest Run”? (Catherine Tui)
The underlying love story in Forrest Gump would be great but with all the different story lines and scenes and the length of the movie, I would be nervous it would get ruined with flashy musical numbers. (Anna Kivela)

Hocus Pocus
I’d be very interested in seeing am usical version…it was one of my favorite movies as a kid (Nicole M. Wright)
Please no Hocus Pocus musical. That movie is a lassic and I feel like a show wouldn’t live up to its awesomeness. Who could you possible cast in Bette’s role? No one…not even her, because of her age now. (Alesandra Klug)

Mean Girls
It could easily become the next big campy hit that Broadway needs. (Rob Lawlor)
It’s kind of over the top but has a good message — if you watch the movie, it is pretty episodic and I think would lend itself well to using music to cover large swaths of time and emotion. (Liz Sager)
The songs practically write themselves, and it would be a huge hit. Everyone quotes the movie on a daily basis (Ashley Catherine Feinstein)
It should never be a musical. Why tamper with perfection? Also, Tina Fey’s humor is too quick and subtle to translate into a brassy musical. (Matt Kennedy)

For up-to-the-minute New York theater news, views and reviews, follow Jonathan Mandell on his Twitter feed at @NewYorkTheater
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How did you even get “God Bless America” made?

[Laughs.] I made it with the same folks I made “World’s Greatest Dad” with. I guess the key is that I keep the budgets really small. And one of the producers, who’s a really nice guy, is part of the Hamm’s beer family, so I got this Hamm’s beer tattoo, and I said, “Hey are we gonna make this!?” And they didn’t actually laugh. They were like, “Uhh….” And then I was like, “Hey, don’t worry, there’s plenty of room for Fox Searchlight on the other side of my chest.” But still it’s like, “Oh, I’m glad you like the movie where his son dies during autoerotic asphyxiation! Now will you make a movie where we shoot a baby in the first five minutes?” After “World’s Greatest Dad,” I actually wrote five more screenplays. I’m very productive with writing scripts. Writing a screenplay to me is much easier than Tweeting. That’s why I’m not on social media. I know that I need to do it because it would help promote the movie, and reach people. But to write a screenplay, I usually have a theme and I usually have a world where this theme takes place. And then I go into a chain hotel for four days or so and write the script. But I don’t know if it gets any easier to get one made. Maybe a little. At least the producers know I actually will deliver a movie.

This movie has, shall we say, a certain ranting quality. So how do you decide to do it as a movie and not as stand-up?

This is the first time a couple of lines from my act actually snuck in as lines of dialogue. And it was just out of laziness. Like when he says that he wishes he was a super genius and he could figure out how to make a cell phone into an explosive device. But somebody who I always admired, and whose filmmaking I’ve always been a fan of — and of course he gets bashed in the movie — is Woody Allen. Every once in a while as a young man I would see a Woody Allen joke from his stand-up occasionally come in to one of his movies. That can be fun. I don’t know, maybe someday I’ll try something like a “His Girl Friday,” where it’s really snappy stuff, but for some reason that kind of comedy doesn’t always interest me — where it’s joke driven, or it’s people topping each other. The first review of my stand-up from when I was 19 said the laughs came from my unnervingly realistic weirdness. And you know, that’s the comedy I’m interested in. When you’re uncomfortable. The movie is like my stand-up in that I always would dig a hole. And I think the more well known I got, the harder it was to dig a hole for myself. So when I make movies, it’s a lot easier to do.

Well, yeah, the hole you’ve dug here looks pretty deep and dark. And the way out isn’t exactly “toward the light.” I figure some people might not like what you’re saying here.

Really I just wanted to write a movie that was kinda like, “Who are we, and where are we going? And am I the only one who feels a little pushed off to the side because this big steamroller of stupidity is coming? I’m really just trying to connect with my people. I’m not trying to corrupt anybody. You can’t change anyone and I’m not interested in that. But there’s a lot of fucking crazy people out there. They’re crazy enough to think that “The Muppets” is a leftist communist agenda. So when a guy in a movie is actually shooting a guy who’s loosely based on Bill O’Reilly, yeah, of course, people are gonna be upset. Someone asked me if I’m concerned with copycats. And you know, if you can take a normal person and convince them to become a murderer by showing them a movie, then the military would be producing movies. And I do hope people are influenced by the movie but I don’t think they will be because the message is kindness. It’s a violent movie about kindness. Frank has a code. He wants people to be nice. But the subtext is Frank realizing that he’s a human being, and that he can’t even keep all these unrealistic rules that he wishes everybody else would keep. That’s when the wheels fall off. My movies are fables, kinda. They’re not supposed to be the real world. Someday maybe I’ll I do a biopic or something, and I’ll be truer and create the actual world. I’m sure movies like the first “Willie Wonka” probably informed the way I make movies more than, like, “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” But you know, sometimes, when I’m ego-surfing, I read things where people say the movie should be banned. I’m like, wow. If you want to start banning violent works of fiction, you should really start with the Bible.

Do you get into it with people on line?

Well, one time I was on Reddit, and people were talking about a clip from the movie. And unfortunately there were so many questions, and I was trying to answer as they came down the line, so I couldn’t get into it with people. So one guy said, “Oh sure, ask me anything, as long as it’s about my movie.” And I said “Hey man, I’m answering questions as they’re coming to me.” And I said, “Hey, yell upstairs and tell your mom I said hi.” And then that guy goes, “Hey, how’d you know I lived at home?” I think he was being nice, he was joking….

“My mom’s actually a big fan!”

[Laughs.] “You banged my mom in the ’80s!” Yeah. But that world is so funny and strange. I have friends who do talk back to the folks on social media, and so many of them, as soon as you acknowledge them, not only do they say sorry, they go, “Oh, hi!” I have one friend who, when she ends up challenging people, they all end up going, “Oh I love you, what are you talking about?” But then I have another friend, Charlyne Yi, and you know she’s younger, and she’s like, “What, you read that stuff!?” She can’t even begin to think of it. And she’s someone who’s posting stuff constantly. Yeah, it’s a really weird thing. She’s got a lot to teach grandpa.

What about your “God Bless America” leading lady Tara Lynn Barr, who’s still a teenager?

Yeah, and thank goodness her parents were cool. It’s funny, once you find them, I do like a background check on the parents, ’cause that’s who’s gonna be around the set. And thankfully Tara and her mom were really awesome to work with. But Tara’s really fun because she’s really anti-gun. So I’d take her out to a gun range. And I’m so glad I actually have it on video, I recorded it, where she unloads a whole clip — blam blam blam blam blam — and then she turns and looks at the lens like a fucking maniac. She’s all teeth. It was like the scene in the original “Producers”: “I found my Hitler!” I’m interested to find out what younger folks make of this movie. Like if you’re sitting there at home playing first-person killing games all day. I mean, I think people in the older generation, my contemporaries, aren’t even aware of that. So again it’s that question: What’s happening to us, where the hell are we going?

On last Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Joe Biden came out in support of same-sex marriage, an alleged gaffe that precipitated Obama’s announcement this week that his own thinking on the issue has evolved to the same effect. This then allowed Obama to tout his new position to the Hollywood crowd from whom he was raising $15 million on Thursday evening (that’s $13k per second of speech). Next morning, Obama wakes up to a story breaking about Mitt Romney bullying a presumptively gay classmate while in high school. Romney, for his part, is going to deliver the Commencement address at Liberty University this weekend to appeal to Christian conservatives — which is, believe it not, exactly in sync with the temporal frame and media storyline the Obama campaign has quite consciously created.

What a way to launch the Obama re-election campaign. The campaign opens with one message: this is the Obama Democrats voted for in 2008. Who would have thought that the politics of Hope would actually make a come-back after three years of compromises and disillusion? Hope is what excites young people, and with it, it will not be the record Obama will be running on, but an America liberals can be proud of. Because this is a state-by-state race to 270, Obama understands that the youth vote matters in North Carolina, Iowa, and Colorado — states that offer him an alternate route to victory other than the traditional way of Florida and Ohio.

The political dexterity of the Obama campaign in responding to changes on the ground can be seen in how they have turned the culture wars against Republicans. In 2004, the Bush administration used the culture war to rally the conservative base on the same-sex marriage issue, when a dozen of so states put constitutional amendments to define traditional marriage on the ballot. Today, Barack Obama is hoisting with that petard. Same-sex marriage is a losing issue for Republicans because while a majority of Republicans oppose same-sex marriage, a super-majority of Democrats support same-sex marriage. The reason why culture wars are waged is because their effect is asymmetric, and this time, it is benefiting the Democrats. And Republicans cannot in good faith argue that the culture war is a distraction from real economic issues that Americans ought to be talking about because they were the first to wage it.

In just two electoral cycles since 2004, the Republican candidate who ought to be spending his time talking about the lackluster economy is being forced to address allegations about his actions as a high school kid. If there is a science to politics, Team Obama obviously understands its laws and equations.