Eclectic Company: Please Release Me

In 1984, Craig Zadan produced a musical film under a distribution deal that changed both the filmed musical and recording industries. Footloose, starring Kevin Bacon and John Lithgow — about a big city teen who dares to dance (and to incite dancing in others) in a small midwestern town, despite local religious prohibition — was the first movie sold to a distributor with a recording division, under an agreement that the record company would release the soundtrack coordinated with the release of the film, thereby increasing the visibility and revenue for both products.

Or so said Zadan some years back when we spoke of another musical film he and his partner Neil Meron were then producing — Sing! — about a soon-to-be-closed Brooklyn high school’s last annual musical theatre creation/event. Zadan was convinced that if he could find the right artistic and marketing formula — a pinch of Broadway, a dash of rock, a soupçon of popcult sensibility — he could introduce musicals (his first love) to new generations. (I know he loved musicals, because that’s where we met; Zadan was a teen years friend when I was a musical comedy hopeful at our local YM-YWHA. One year he squired me to a Broadway revival of Cabaret starring the frightening and fabulous Joel Grey as the Master of Ceremonies, with Tandy Cronin, pale daughter of monster talents Hume and Jessica, who faintly revived Sally Bowles; Zadan also procured excellent seats for us at the Tony Awards that season.

Flash forward several decades, and Zadan and Meron, partners in the prolific Storyline Entertainment production company, are now hailed as fathers of the modern movie musical, the musical film and recording industries have taken up the perfected formula (see Zadan and Meron’s award-winning work including Chicago and Hairspray), if not always so successfully, and these days you won’t see a musical production hit the boards without a simultaneous soundtrack release, with its fecund, cross-pollinating advertising.

And speaking of advertising, have you noticed that many films have a relatively gratuitous music video embedded, so it can be used whole as a film trailer? Whoever dreamed up this marketing ploy is a bloody genius. Not only is the scene ready to be used with just a little captioning overlay, but the format can speak to a whole new audience — kids. Hell, they like music, they like music videos. Taking a page from Zadan’s playbook, these filmmakers are trying to reach the next generations. I see it like this: Music videos are perfect marketing tools for selling non-traditional audiences (read “young” and “contemporary” and “fashionable”) on musical movies, because it’s easy to make the leap from one music video to a film that’s just a string of music videos with a narrative throughline. Now there’s a move that’s clearly been dictated by the advertising budget.

Well, tonight, I had the chance to see the Zadan/Meron formula for producing successful musical films and the music video marketing mash-up in this season’s Musical Event of the popular (but previously uninteresting to me) medi-drama, Grey’s Anatomy. While idly overhearing ABC’s teasers for tonight’s show, I couldn’t help noticing that they weren’t selling plot twists, they were touting the actors’ singing! While acting! Like, like, like a musical! So I googled the show. And learned that OMG! Grey's Anatomy: the Musical Event would come with a nine-song soundtrack that had already been released by the producers on iTunes this morning before the show would air tonight. A soundtrack! quelle reprise, of cast members singing popular tunes that had been embedded in prior seasons’ shows! plus the return of a popular theme song that had previously been scrapped! to some viewers’ dismay.

I won’t spoil the plot if you’ve Tivo’d it to watch later, but Sara Ramirez (a 2005 Tony-award winner for Spamalot) opened the show singing Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars.” There were fantasy montages underscoring some of the songs, and operating-room efficiency/anguish scenes were the visuals for others. We heard reprises of Anna Nalick’s “Breathe (2 AM),” Gomez’s “How We Operate,” Get Set Go’s “Wait,” Jesus Jackson’s “Running on Sunshine,” KT Tunstall’s “Universe & U,” Kate Havnevik’s “Grace Master,” The Fray’s “How To Save A Life,” and Brandy Carlile’s “The Story.” I liked some of those songs when they first appeared, mostly in 2006, and some of the cast's cover versions weren’t bad. But listening to even the appropriate songs while watching the show’s serious plot line divided my attention instead of enhancing it. Mamma Mia! (was better).

Well, it’s over now, but you can try out Grey’s Anatomy: the Musical Event episode on ABC’s website and judge for yourself. As for me, though I liked Ramirez’s voice and re-meeting some songs I’ve previously enjoyed, the rest was an hour I can never get back. So I’m sticking with Zadan and Meron’s dramedy series Drop Dead Diva when it comes back this summer, and otherwise waiting for their rumored Peter Pan.