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- [00:05]
Tamsen Fadal
Welcome to another great episode of the Broadway show Uncut. I'm Tamsen Fadal. This week we're feeling hot, hot, hot, because the smash hit musical Some Like It Hot is coming soon to a city near you. Of course, it's based on the 1959 Hollywood classic with incredible music and dancing. Coming up in just a few, you're gonna hear from the songwriting team of Marc Shaiman, Scott Whitman. But first, Some Like It Hot has some serious and hilarious updates for a modern audience. Paul Wontorek talked to Amber Ruffin and Matthew Lopez, the team who penned this laugh out loud funny show.
- [00:43]
Paul Wontorek
So I assumed you didn't know each other prior to working on Some Like a Hot.
- [00:48]
Amber Ruffin
We had never met before Some Like It Hot.
- [00:51]
Matthew Lopez
We never even met after we started working on something like it. Odd.
- [00:54]
Amber Ruffin
No, that's true.
- [00:56]
Paul Wontorek
Because of COVID Because of COVID So.
- [00:58]
Matthew Lopez
It was like the most productive pen pal relationship.
- [01:02]
Amber Ruffin
My dearest Matthew.
- [01:04]
Matthew Lopez
My dearest Amber. See what you think of this new scene.
- [01:09]
Paul Wontorek
So what did you connect on? I mean, so obviously working with another writer. You know, a lot of writing collaborations. You know, people sometimes who write shows together are like, we met in college 25 years ago. We've been working together forever. We're just here now. But you two obviously came together in a very different way. What did you connect with each other on when you finally did start working together?
- [01:29]
Matthew Lopez
I mean, I think it was just this shared desire to make the show that we made. I mean, you never want to talk about starting a project from the negative, which is like, we don't want to do this, we don't want to do that. But when you're making Some Like it hot for a 21st century audience, you inevitably go to like, well, it's not going to be this and it's not going to be that, and it's not going to be that. And then once we had just sort of, like, cleared all the things that it wasn't gonna be, we then sort of looked at what it could be and sort of in those limitations, you really. We found the. What we wanted to say and what could be possible in it. And I think it was just this shared desire to take something familiar and completely remake it and make it something that is celebratory and inclusive and respectful and fun. Fun, fun, fun.
- [02:25]
Marc Shaiman
That's.
- [02:26]
Matthew Lopez
I mean, at the end of the day, if it ain't fun, then no one's gonna come.
- [02:31]
Amber Ruffin
That was almost the tagline or something. Like It Hot. Yes, it was very close.
- [02:37]
Matthew Lopez
Some Like It Hot. A New musical. If it ain't fun, no one's gonna come.
- [02:41]
Amber Ruffin
No one's gonna come.
- [02:42]
Paul Wontorek
So let's talk about the history of this property. People know, obviously, Some Like It Hot, that actually has a really complicated history or very dense history. Let me see if I got this right. It was a French film, then it was a German film, then it became Some Like It Hot, then it became the musical Sugar. Then it became a Bollywood movie, which I just found out.
- [03:03]
Matthew Lopez
I didn't know that.
- [03:04]
Paul Wontorek
We got to look that one up. And then it became Something Like It Hot. They took Sugar and then toured it as Some Like It Hot with Tony Curtis.
- [03:11]
Matthew Lopez
Yep.
- [03:12]
Paul Wontorek
In it. And then 30 years went by with nothing, and then now it's back.
- [03:15]
Matthew Lopez
Yeah.
- [03:15]
Paul Wontorek
With a totally fresh perspective. But that's a lot of history. People obviously love this story. I mean, this is. I mean, it just feels like a great thing to trigger, to, like, chew into, Right?
- [03:28]
Amber Ruffin
Yeah. This show has a ton of history, and people love it and pass that love down from generation to generation. And that is, like, where we are so lucky is because this show is already in so many people's hearts as the Thing I love. You know what I mean? So it is an honor to get to take the thing so many people love and rip it up into 1 million pieces and then reassemble it to be completely different.
- [04:04]
Paul Wontorek
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
- [04:05]
Matthew Lopez
Well, I mean, yeah. And the thing is. Yeah, it's got a lot of. The title is very recognizable people. And then people also assume they know what it's going to be. And, you know, when we started working on it, I told the producers, I was like, well, as long as I am not beholden to anything, then I'm in. And I mean, one of the things about the original musical, Sugar, the first one, was that it was incredibly faithful to the movie. And my attitude from the beginning, and Amber's attitude, too, is just sort of like, well, I mean, if you're just gonna do the movie, then just play the movie and put some music over it. But I think that in it, what I've always loved about the movie, it's about, there is nothing funnier than people in over their heads. Like, there's nothing funnier. And in the case of, like, in the movie, there's nothing funnier than Idiots in Trouble. Like, idiots in trouble is funny. And so. And we've all been idiots in trouble at one point in our lives, so everybody can relate to that. The idea is to take idiots in trouble and make it for a 21st century audience.
- [05:13]
Amber Ruffin
So it was almost some, like, hot Colin idiots in trouble.
- [05:16]
Matthew Lopez
Right.
- [05:17]
Amber Ruffin
But then we dropped that.
- [05:19]
Matthew Lopez
We had so many alt titles.
- [05:21]
Amber Ruffin
So many alt titles.
- [05:22]
Matthew Lopez
Yeah. Take your mom for Mother's Day.
- [05:24]
Amber Ruffin
This would have been done years ago if we had.
- [05:26]
Matthew Lopez
But we had a title. We just kept going. And then finally, Casey Nicholaw was like, why don't we just call it Some Like It Hot? And then we knew we had the show.
- [05:33]
Amber Ruffin
We had a show.
- [05:35]
Paul Wontorek
Well, I guess. But people might expect the classic. Right. A lot of people go see a Broadway musical based on a movie title, and maybe they expect to see all the. The same beats. And it sounds like you have really sort of. I mean, you're. You're. It's the same things they know and love about the story. But this is also a. A movie that was created by Billy Wilder and I.A.L diamond. Right. They wrote a bunch of beautiful, hilarious, classic Hollywood comedies, but, you know, CIS white dudes. Right.
- [06:05]
Matthew Lopez
I mean, they didn't look like us.
- [06:07]
Paul Wontorek
They didn't look like you. Right. And so you have brought yourselves and your lived experience to this, which is exciting.
- [06:16]
Matthew Lopez
It is.
- [06:17]
Paul Wontorek
I mean, you've said you wanted to queer it up.
- [06:18]
Matthew Lopez
Well, I mean, I just. It's like, look, let's be honest, Some Like It Hot. The movie was already queer. It's like. It is. It's just as far as it could possibly be done when the movie was made. And it's actually like, if you watch it through the lens of when it was made, you're like, that's pretty. That got away with some stuff that like that.
- [06:39]
Paul Wontorek
But the Hays Code obviously was, like, running Hollywood at the time. And this movie did not get the Hays Code certificate, saying that it was okay, but it was a hit anyway.
- [06:48]
Matthew Lopez
And I credit it with trying to.
- [06:51]
Paul Wontorek
Get rid of Hays Code.
- [06:52]
Matthew Lopez
You know, I've said in the past that, like, yesterday's ahead of the curve is today's behind the curve. And I think that's, you know, we didn't want to do anything. I always said that as long as. If I can make the purists unhappy, then I'm in. Because there is something wonderful about the story. There is something inherently exciting about two people in trouble, on the run, trying to save their lives, and along the way, falling in love. And, you know, the biggest difference that I think is between our show and the movie is. I mean, first of all, it's Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Marilyn Monroe. Like, I always say, like, they're good. Yeah. And they're also not available so, you know, how can you. You have an opportunity to completely just change who these characters are. And so with all three of the leads, we just. We rethought them from scratch. And there's. We didn't want. We didn't want those characters from the movie because they've already been done. They've been done so well. And we had a chance to put our own. Own stamp on it. And, you know, I mean, I don't know how much of our own lived experience is in the show. I think. I think what is more to the point is that we are. We are people who live in the world in the 21st century, and we are people who don't resemble the people who made the movie originally or who made the first musical originally. And there's just. We see the world differently and we have a different idea of what is funny and what isn't funny. And to the audience for the original movie, I think two CIS men in dresses was funny. Neither of us think that's funny. So it's hard to make a joke out of something that you don't find funny. What I do think is funny is idiots in trouble.
- [08:41]
Paul Wontorek
Right.
- [08:43]
Matthew Lopez
And what I do think is really exciting is our people. I mean, in the movie, the original movie, they didn't change. Nobody changed. Really. They were the same people they were at the end as they were at the beginning. And we had an opportunity to take three characters and put them through the wringer and change their lives. And then suddenly it's a story about transformation. Then it's suddenly a story about who am I in the world and who am I in relation to the people in my life? And then it started to get really interesting for us. I've been talking a lot. I said, you talk a lot. But, like, she was.
- [09:15]
Paul Wontorek
Amber. Amber, I want to talk to you about joining this team. You obviously joined the team in 2020 during COVID which is why you didn't meet right away. You joined the team at a time that there was a lot of talk about getting more diversity behind the scenes on Broadway and making sure that we were really telling stories with authenticity and new voices. What excited you about joining a team that was sort of already on a path, and what made you want to say yes to this? And obviously, we're, you know, we're. This. Some Like It Hot obviously has great diversity in the cast that was not in the film, which is amazing.
- [09:55]
Amber Ruffin
I said yes to Some Like It Hot for two reasons. One, the team is outstanding. You know, you've got Mark and Scott and Casey and Matthew. So I did want to work with them because that's a once in a lifetime opportunity. You know, you'd be learning at such a rate. So now I'm like, I've got all this, you know, how to put up a show knowledge that I didn't have a minute ago. And I also said yes to this show because the lead is a black lady. And that's it. I was like, oh, my God, yeah. Getting to write for a black woman on Broadway, I do want to do that. So, yeah, it's those two things.
- [10:46]
Paul Wontorek
So what was it like tackling the character of sugar in 2022? Obviously, Marilyn Monroe is her own thing, and you're able to really look at it as a character and a black woman.
- [10:57]
Amber Ruffin
Yeah. You know, usually when you write a black person at all, it's kind of a tightrope walk, because, you know, you can't get anywhere near any stereotypes. Right. You can't be a little late, or you're kind of the stereotype of lazy, or you can't be a little loud, or you're the stereotype of mean. So you have to walk this very odd tightrope. But this cast is so diverse that we just got to write a human being, and then she could just be all of the flaws and all of the good things, and you didn't have to do that normal, you know, black person in a white show. And then they have to be inauthentic. She could just be a human being. And it was an absolute delight. It was an absolute delight. I certainly never thought I would get to do that on Broadway because that's a very specific joy. Black writers don't get a lot. So, yeah, it was a thrill.
- [12:04]
Matthew Lopez
I also think one of the things that happened to the story after Amber Joined was this idea really, that we're seeing people, this is who we are when no one's watching. This is not the idea of queerness, the idea of blackness, not the idea of Latinidad. This is just simply who we are on a train about to rehearse. This is who we are. Tired from a hard day's work. The idea of sort of like the matter of factness of life, which, you know, that I think sometimes white audiences or predominantly straight audiences, like, oh, that's very interesting to learn about how black women and queer people of color drink their Coca Cola. That's. But I Now I learned something very important because that black lady and that Latino boy, they really taught me something. But, I mean, that can't be helped. And I mean, as long as they pay full freight for the ticket, that's great. But it's also just matter of fact life. And it's just that, I think, is one of the things that people are responding to the show to.
- [13:22]
Amber Ruffin
Instead of watching the show, instead of writing the show through the white lens, we just got to write the show with no fricking lens. It's a delight.
- [13:33]
Matthew Lopez
Yeah.
- [13:34]
Amber Ruffin
Yeah.
- [13:34]
Paul Wontorek
So we have to talk about Jerry. Jerry, I think, is the character that people are really gonna walk away being amazed by the journey of Jerry. I'm curious, how do you tell what seems like a very modern story in terms of the conversations we're having as a society, but in a period piece? Is that sort of interesting?
- [13:56]
Matthew Lopez
Our ideas of what a period piece are formed by the period in which that art was made, in which there are so many restrictions on who can tell what story and about whom these stories are told. It isn't as if queer people just magically sprung up from the ground in 1969. They were there all along. Queer people, non binary people, trans people, and every LGBTQIA individual was there on the planet Earth in 1933. They just didn't make movies about them. They didn't write novels about them. We were not gone. We were just not talked about. And so the idea of a 21st century lens on this story is a bit of a misnomer. What it really is is removing the 20th century lens from it. And if you remove the 20th century lens from the story, it automatically works today. And all we needed to do was just clean that lens.
- [15:00]
Paul Wontorek
I love that. And make it funny.
- [15:02]
Matthew Lopez
And make it funny.
- [15:03]
Amber Ruffin
In addition to being an excellent show with beautiful music and a talented cast, this set is so beautiful. All the design, everything you look at is gorgeous.
- [15:16]
Matthew Lopez
It's beautiful. I love. I. I mean, the set, the costumes, the lighting, it is.
- [15:20]
Amber Ruffin
You spend so much time without it.
- [15:22]
Matthew Lopez
Yeah, yeah.
- [15:23]
Amber Ruffin
When you see it, you're like, oh.
- [15:24]
Paul Wontorek
My God, what is it like for you to sit in the audience and to actually be like, hey, I wrote that. And to.
- [15:30]
Amber Ruffin
Feels insane. It absolutely feels insane. Walking by. We took a picture the other day with our names on the theater. I could have friggin died. It feels great to be a part of. Of Broadway. I would have never guessed in a billion years. And I am really shocked. Like, I have to be honest. I thought people would be so, like, weird and gatekeepy, you know, I thought they'd be like, well, this is like this obscure musical you've never heard of. Oh, you've never heard of it. Well, no one is like that. Every person I have met who has anything to do with this production and Broadway in general, is like, extending an invitation for you to become one of us. And not like a comic book nerd where it's like, oh, you don't remember the dazzler from 1979? Like, no one's like that here. And it is such a freaking thrill. It's a very open and inclusive community.
- [16:43]
Matthew Lopez
Except if you do ever want to, like, enter a pub quiz with, like, with obscure knowledge of musicals, Scott Whitman is your man. Scott Whitman is the one you want on your team. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [16:56]
Amber Ruffin
I think the term is encyclopedic.
- [16:58]
Matthew Lopez
Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
- [17:00]
Paul Wontorek
I just want to ask you, finally about the process of coming together, because, Amber, I know you come, obviously, from TV and, you know, the writers room, and I feel like. Matthew, I feel like you sat down in solitary and wrote this beautiful epic, the Inheritance, parts one and two, that won a Tony Award, by the way. Congratulations. One of my favorite plays ever, as you know. But I feel like that was probably done kind of in solitary, and that was probably very different than this experience. So what was it like, sort of coming together and becoming a writing team?
- [17:33]
Matthew Lopez
That was fun.
- [17:34]
Amber Ruffin
We wrote in every way you could write.
- [17:37]
Matthew Lopez
We really did.
- [17:38]
Amber Ruffin
Just us. We wrote separately. We wrote back and forth. But the funnest part was when we.
- [17:45]
Matthew Lopez
Had that week of rehearsals earlier this. It wasn't a week. I love that you think it was a week. We were doing that for, like, four weeks.
- [17:51]
Amber Ruffin
It felt like one minute. It was four weeks. It felt like one minute. We would. We'd watch rehearsal, then we'd take our little laptops, and we would have, like, a little writer's studio.
- [18:01]
Matthew Lopez
We went to Casey's studio, and we went with our assistants and our intern, and. Yeah. And we just.
- [18:07]
Amber Ruffin
And we all sat. What do you think about this? Oh, I like that. Well, this. Well, this. Well, if you do this. And it was a writer's room for a Broadway musical, and it was very fun.
- [18:20]
Matthew Lopez
Yeah. And Amber and I would, like, act out the scenes for everybody. And Owen, Elizabeth Williamson was there with us, my dramaturg.
- [18:25]
Paul Wontorek
So I'm looking at Jerry and Sugar, basically.
- [18:27]
Scott Whitman
Yeah.
- [18:27]
Matthew Lopez
Basically. Yeah. And I mean, we would just, like, act out scenes. And, like, there's. I'll never forget the one thing that I do I remember making. Cause I tell this story privately, and now I'm gonna tell it publicly. That line at the end of Jerry and Jo's last scene in Act 1. And Jerry and Joe says, I bet you don't know what I'm gonna say next. Adios, damn it. We were in that room, and I remember, like, we were working on. And I just said to Amber, I'm like, oh, yeah, I bet you know what I'm gonna say next. And we both, adios, Adio, damn it. And I was like, every time I hear that in the show, I'm like, I remember just making that with you in the moment, which is so much fun. And the fact that it gets a laugh. I mean, I think it's the one thing in the show that if it didn't get a laugh, I would fight to keep just for the memories of it.
- [19:16]
Paul Wontorek
You did something good together. Thank you so much, guys. Congratulations. Thanks for having us.
- [19:20]
Amber Ruffin
Yay.
- [19:24]
Tamsen Fadal
Now let's hear from the songwriting duo of Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman.
- [19:31]
Paul Wontorek
Some Like It Hot. I've heard of it. This is the. This is a big title. I mean, this. This is probably the biggest title you've. I mean, you've worked with some big titles before, but this is. This is pretty iconic. Something like It Hot, I feel like it has a lot of baggage. Some Like It Hot, right?
- [19:44]
Marc Shaiman
Yeah. Well, that. It. It did become a double dead sword. Because as much as it's such a beloved movie by certain generations, younger generations either don't really know it or took it only in a bad way about what it was representing. So that was our challenge with the show, the second we got hooked up with it, was how to deal with, you know, putting it in terms that make sense for a modern audience.
- [20:15]
Matthew Lopez
Right.
- [20:15]
Scott Whitman
And the really big baggage, the big trunk, was that there already was a musical of Sugar that Jules Stein wrote.
- [20:22]
Paul Wontorek
Julie Stein and Bob Merrill, two very Peter Stone. And it was a hit at the time.
- [20:26]
Scott Whitman
Yeah, it was a hit at the time.
- [20:27]
Paul Wontorek
Yeah.
- [20:27]
Scott Whitman
But that was a literal screen to stage, you know, almost word for word.
- [20:33]
Paul Wontorek
But that. But that is odd. To do a new musical version.
- [20:36]
Marc Shaiman
Yeah.
- [20:37]
Paul Wontorek
Something that's already been.
- [20:38]
Scott Whitman
Yes.
- [20:38]
Marc Shaiman
The only thing I. I mean, the Wild Party, the fact that there were two musicals in the same season.
- [20:43]
Paul Wontorek
Yeah.
- [20:44]
Marc Shaiman
But otherwise. Yeah. I don't think anyone has thought of. How has there ever been a new musical? Something that's already been musicalized?
- [20:52]
Paul Wontorek
Did you know Sugar?
- [20:54]
Scott Whitman
I saw it. I saw it. I'm old enough to have seen it. Yes. Yes.
- [20:57]
Marc Shaiman
And I'm young enough to not have seen it.
- [21:00]
Scott Whitman
And Tony Roberts came to a workshop of this. Of our version, was totally funneled by it. Yeah.
- [21:08]
Unnamed Performer
He must have been like, it Was.
- [21:09]
Marc Shaiman
He must have been like. He was on mushrooms, but he was very sweet.
- [21:15]
Paul Wontorek
Wow. So, I mean, it's interesting, though, because you get to see two talented theater artists and a whole. And actors. It was a big show. Tackle something that you then tackled. But I'm assuming you're just sort of like. You don't reference what they're doing. You just started taking the material and running in your own direction.
- [21:32]
Scott Whitman
Well, that had to do with Matthew Lopez. And really, I mean, Matthew had said, because we were in London doing Mary, working on Mary Poppins.
- [21:40]
Marc Shaiman
Returns.
- [21:40]
Scott Whitman
Returns. And then it wasn't that long ago. So it was. And Matthew said, well, what if Sugar is black? And what if it's. If we address some of the different issues that would make it Some Like It Hot for now? And so that became intriguing, especially the idea that Sugar would not be a Marilyn on stage, which is near to impossible to do. And it opened up a whole vein of music of, you know, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday. And that's something that really appealed to us to write to. To have vocabulary.
- [22:13]
Paul Wontorek
I was gonna say you're very good at creating great Broadway scores that reference a lot of music styles. I mean, you've done that many times, obviously, starting with Hairspray, where you won your Tonys and all your. All your fancy awards. That was a big one. But. So I was gonna ask, like, what was the. What was on the playlist this time? I mean, do you like to do that? Do you sort of like to immerse yourself in a sound?
- [22:34]
Marc Shaiman
But that's been our playlist our whole lives.
- [22:36]
Scott Whitman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also because on Smash, we had written. There was a Some Like It Hot musical in Smash. Crazy.
- [22:44]
Paul Wontorek
Yeah. I mean, that's a whole other element of this. So you did Smash, which was all about Marilyn and about a Maryland musical. So you were already deeply immersed in Marilyn, and then you created some, like, a hot musical without Marilyn.
- [23:00]
Scott Whitman
It's all so meta. It's so.
- [23:02]
Marc Shaiman
I know.
- [23:03]
Scott Whitman
Yeah. When you say it's practically a hall of mirrors.
- [23:06]
Marc Shaiman
Yeah.
- [23:08]
Paul Wontorek
I mean, maybe you got the Maryland part out of your system.
- [23:12]
Marc Shaiman
I mean, for me, what was I, 13 when Bette Midler's Boogie Woogie Boogie Boy was on the radio? And that, to me, opened up the world of swing music and the music of the 30s and 40s at the same time. This great Warner Brothers came out with a 50th year album that had just, you know, all the music from the great Warner Brothers musicals, mostly from the 30s and 40s. And that began my Love affair with that style of music. And it just. My whole life I just love that stuff. So like Jimmy Lunsford and Louis Jordan and Duke Ellington, Ray Hayler, that's, you know, if I could just listen to one thing, it would be just that.
- [23:58]
Scott Whitman
We also moved the period. So the movie takes place in sort of flappery twenties. We moved it. Matthew wanted to move it towards the end of the show. Prohibition is over. So that also changes the vocabulary because there's not a lot of Charlestons in this. So it was a different dance style for Casey, everything. So it made it more interesting. It was just the beginning of what big bands were about to do.
- [24:23]
Marc Shaiman
I mean, with everything. We tried to find a slightly different way to do it. There already was a musical Sugar. So sometimes we'd even say, did Sugar do it this way? So let's go that way, because otherwise, well, why are we doing this? So, you know, musically and like Scott said, when Craig and Neil first called us about it, Craig Zaden and Neil Marin, one of their ideas was, what if Sugar was black? Because at first we were like, no. I mean, who's going to go near Some Like It Hot? It's just. No, I mean, but when they said that, it really pricked our ears, like, oh, yeah. And then you think of Billie Holiday on the bus with the band or Ella Fitzgerald or Lena Horne becoming the Hollywood star. And so we've written that into the show that our Sugar has gone to the movies as a child and she wants to see someone up on the screen who looks like her. And that's her goal in going to California.
- [25:19]
Scott Whitman
Because even in the Billy Wilder, in the published script of the movie, it says the end and then says the world isn't ready for what happens next. So it was an interesting way to think about doing it now is that they are ready actually, because some of the politics, the sexual politics of the movie are really far advanced underneath it, underneath the men in dress jokes and all of that. So it was an interest. Matthew was sort of really a window into that because. And Casey as well. Because they didn't want it to be the movie. The movie was there and they wanted it to be this other entity.
- [26:01]
Paul Wontorek
I feel like some people talk about the original film as something regressive about queer politics and other people say it's actually very bold.
- [26:09]
Marc Shaiman
Yeah, I mean, for me, what we've done with the character of Daphne is all there in the movie, but we just go further with it. Yeah, Daphne is really enjoying being a woman. And Daphne gets proposed to by a man and completely accepts and is giddy about it. Now, of course, in the movie, it's played for laughs, but there is no. He never says, well, I can't marry a man. It's there. So we just let it blossom into what it might have been or even what Billy Wilder might have done if he was making a movie nowadays.
- [26:44]
Scott Whitman
Yeah. Steven Spielberg came to the show a couple of weeks ago, and he said to us privately, because he was a very good friend of Billy Wilder's, and I said, do you think he would. He said, he would have loved it.
- [26:55]
Paul Wontorek
I also, I have to ask you, there's a very famous line in the movie, Nobody's Perfect. That's how the movie ends. Was there ever a song called Nobody's Perfect? Yeah. I love how you've handled it in the show. It is handled musically in a really beautiful way. But was there ever just, like a.
- [27:09]
Marc Shaiman
Never a song.
- [27:10]
Unnamed Performer
Just that idea of how we've.
- [27:12]
Scott Whitman
Because that's the punchline of the movie. So we didn't. We knew we had to. We knew we wanted to honor that.
- [27:18]
Paul Wontorek
But.
- [27:18]
Scott Whitman
But then turn it on its head. So. Yes. So, no, there wasn't a whole song that was.
- [27:23]
Paul Wontorek
It's clever, but it's fun to, I guess, maybe play with people's expectations a little bit as well.
- [27:29]
Marc Shaiman
Right. I mean, it was one of great fears was like, are people gonna be like, we can't believe you didn't use the most famous last line of a movie ever. But we do. But we. You know how we played with it. And no one has been running up the aisles saying, how dare you? So it seems like we got away with it. We get that out. Yeah.
- [27:52]
Paul Wontorek
So do you. You said you've been listening to this kind of music your whole lives. So, I mean, was it fun to write? I mean, there's so many fantastic songs in this score.
- [28:03]
Scott Whitman
It was great fun to write because the vocabulary of the time and all of it, that was great fun. Fun to write. And also, there was such a wealth of inspiration. You know, when you go from Cole Porter to Harold Arlin, I mean, that was sort of our love letter to that.
- [28:23]
Marc Shaiman
And also was a time when there were white writers writing for black performers, like Harold Arlin at the Cotton Club. Harold Arlin and his lyricist, Ted Koehler. You know, they wrote Stormy Weather. They always kept writing about the weather. Stormy Weather, Winds out, Ill wind. So that's why we wrote the song. Ride out the Storm is our salute to that. And so the fact that there was a depressive Jewish guy writing these songs for fantastic black performers. I was like, well, if the shoe fits, like here I am.
- [28:59]
Unnamed Performer
The world is like a supper club. The Lord above the maitreides. He throws a menu down, lets you peruse, Then asks you what'll it be? The choices are many. So risk it, love, and have it your own way. Cause whatever butters your biscuit, Love is fine by me. Which is why I say. Some like a cool pastoral scene.
- [29:28]
Marc Shaiman
With rolling hills inwards of it's heaven sent to pitch a tent to bill and coot.
- [29:36]
Unnamed Performer
Some like a warm Hawaiian climb. Where one can really take one's time. And hit the sack In a grass shack just made for two. Some like it nippy on the ice. Cause then the sheets are paradise. Keep rubbing hips until your lips stop turning blue. Some like it rough, Some like it tame. Give me a moth who loves the flame. Some like it hot and hot is what I got for you. If everybody was the same, well, life would be a bore. If Manny goes with Sammy Hill, that's what he's yearning for. Let different rhythms move your feet. Cause I have often and found. We all dance to a different beat. And that's what makes the world go round.
- [30:59]
Paul Wontorek
I'm exhausted.
- [31:04]
Unnamed Performer
So, ladies, Hades is the spot to be where angels sure are not. Some like it hot and hot is what I got for you. Some like it hot and hot is what I got. Follow up, you.
- [31:28]
Marc Shaiman
God, I'm too old.
- [31:33]
Tamsen Fadal
And that's gonna do it. For this latest episode of the Broadway show Uncut. Be sure to check out Some Like It Hot when it arrives in a city near you. Until next time, I'm Tamsen Fadal.