It wasn’t enough for the third season of Hulu’s “Murder in the Building” that Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd joined the main cast trio of Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez. When it came to creating a perfectly integrated musical for the “Death Rattle Dazzle” season, the production team’s mindset seemed to be: nothing would work better than two powerhouse songwriting duos.
Enter Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (“Dear Evan Hansen,” “La La Land”) and Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (“Hairspray,” “Smash”), who together are multiple winners of every industry award. So how did John Hoffman, the show’s lead singer, get it?
“Justin and I were big fans of ‘Just Kills,’” Pasek said during a recent Zoom call with the four writers. And I said we would work for free to work on the show in any capacity.”
“We said, ‘Why not fill the writing staff with the best of Broadway?’ “Paul added. “So we invited some of our favorite writers, including Mark and Scott, our heroes. And they didn’t say it.”
Many songs have emerged from this unique collaboration, including “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?”, an irresistible way to listen and sing along to Martin’s performance. It’s the centerpiece of Oliver Putman’s new musical (short film) about three children and a dead babysitter.
“It’s a drumming song and pickwick “It’s a fantastic word for liberation,” Wittman said. “So that was the starting point. And it was the first time we wrote lyrics with just four people in the same room. It was really cool, it was like being on a game show!
One of the running gags of the series is that Oliver has a history of producing chickens. (The musical is based on the 1984 film The Piece! It’s just one of many bad ideas of his.) “That’s the question we’ve always had: Should it be good or something annoying? And I think the answer is that it was… Ha!” Paul said.
Pasek added: “The theme of the musical is ridiculous.” “But we tried to write a song that was as fun as possible; You know, the idea of accusing three babies of murder.”
The song is not only a triumph of writing, but also a triumph of performance for Martin, who tries the song in various incarnations, not all of them successful, until the sweeping rehearsal at the end of the season. “It was fantastic because they were so absorbed in everyone else. [in the cast] but no one went because they wanted to see Steve,” Wittman said.
“They probably took it four times,” Paul said. “So a lot of what you see from an actor is actually their reaction. This is what happened to life-imitation-art-imitation-life.”
All four agreed that musicals seem to be on TV right now, with recent projects like “Shmigadoon!” and Hawkeye’s legendary performance from Rogers: The Musical (co-written by Shaiman and Wittman). But Shaiman doesn’t understand why marketers don’t openly say that their music is… music.
“It’s a mystery because all these musical movies that have come out in the last few months had commercials without music or singing,” he said. “So there is still a fear that people will hate the music. But people love music and everyone wants to do an episode and everyone wants to have a musical episode. “That’s a good question that I don’t know the answer to.”
“It’s an enigma,” Wittman said.
This story was first published in the Comedy Series issue of awards magazine TheWrap. Read more in this issue.
