Q: Are you getting any outside critiques as you work on the show?Ī: We don't really care. So I'm expecting Gina to be a lot more vulgar, a lot more rough around the edges. So now Gina Gershon is playing the part, and she sees it that way. The mother was always supposed to be colorful and a drunk, but we had a Broadway gal that just couldn't bring herself to be falling down onstage. He's going to be aggressive, he's going to hateful, he's going to be more of a Stanley Kowalski grown-up type of father and you'll understand why the kids don't want to be around him. Well, what you're going to see, the father's not going to be that way. If you listen to the record, Kris Kristofferson is playing it, he's forlorn, he's sad. I got the monkey.Ī: When we started this thing, the father was too nice. If you and I were doing a scene together and I had a monkey in my hand, who the f-k is the people gonna look at? Me.
#John mellencamp eye patch Patch
Anybody can go up there and say the words, but if you wear an eye patch onstage and there's no explanation for it, it would be like walking onstage with a monkey.
When you're creating a character, you want to create a character that is memorable. Just this morning I was trying to convince the guy who plays the father to wear an eye patch. Not only are we the writers, but we are the producers of the show, so we have our fingers in everything. You might see it one night and then see it the next night and go, "What happened to that section?" Well, John and Steve decided to take it out because they didn't think it worked. Q: How has the show changed since the first tour?Ī: The show is in motion. But a lot of times Steve would call me and go, "John, I am in the part of the story where Anna is being approached by the devil and he's got her by the throat, and she's got to sing a song of sympathy, why she's in this position and why Satan has got such a hold on her." That was my assignment, so I wrote that song. There's a song in this show called "Tear This Cabin Down" that Steve did not call for. Q: If you wanted to get out of the musical-theater box, how familiar were you with the genre?Ī: As laughable as you may think this is, probably "My Fair Lady." And the reason I like that is because it was originally a play, and then it was turned into a musical, which is very similar to what Steve and I did.Ī: I was allowed to do anything I wanted to do. I want to go outside of the box." And it just so happened, I didn't even know it, but my agent was also Steve's agent. But if you would be interested in news and some new ideas, then perhaps I'd be interested." I said, "I have one real germ of a story, and if someone could get me in contact with Stephen King…" And they said, "Well, he's not a Broadway writer." And I said, "Well that's the whole point. I really don't have any interest in revisiting that in a new fashion. I wrote 'The Authority Song' when I was 22 years old. I wouldn't be interested in that, because I'm never interested in looking backwards.
They contacted me and said, "Would you be interested in doing a Broadway show using your hit records?" And I said, "No. How did the project get started?Īnswer: Broadway had a very big success with "Mamma Mia!," so they started looking around for different artists who had a lot of familiar songs. Question: "Ghost Brothers" was in the works for a decade.
Mellencamp spoke by phone about his 14-year venture into the theater biz.
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