A Conversation with Matthew Sklar – HuffPost 11.25.11

Mike Ragogna: Matthew, can you tell us about your thoughts on the movie Elf when you first saw it?

Matthew Sklar: Well, I first saw the movie in 2003 sitting in a theater by myself, laughing my butt off. I thought it was the funniest movie I’d ever seen and the story was so heartwarming. I remember floating out of the theater thinking it was such a great movie and that Will Ferrell’s performance was great. I loved all of the casting in the movie–Ed Asner as Santa, Bob Newhart as Papa Elf, and all of the great actors made for such an incredible movie. I just had a great time.

MR: How did you get commissioned to compose the music for the stage version?

MS: My writing partner and I, who have been working together since college, wrote the music for The Wedding Singer, which was on Broadway in 2006. The week we opened, Mark Kaufman, who was one of the producers of that show and who also worked with New Line Cinema came to us and said that New Line owned the rights to the Elf story and was thinking of making a musical out of it. I think we both said yes before he even finished his sentence because we both loved the movie, and I love Christmas even though I’m Jewish. (laughs) So, we jumped at the opportunity when it was presented to us.

MR: And The Wedding Singer was nominated for a Tony Award.

MS: That’s right.

MR: Congratulations on that. What was that whole process like?

MS: It was such a blast, we had such a great time. We worked on developing that for about three or three and a half years. We also had such an amazing cast led by Stephen Lynch, who is an amazing stand-up comedian and writes his own fantastic songs. He sort of had his own take on the character of Robbie Heart instead of doing an impression of the movie. Whenever you take a movie and make a stage adaptation, you have to make it it’s own entity, you don’t want impressions of people because that just doesn’t seem to work. We had a wonderful time making that. We took the show out of town to Seattle and worked on everything and made changes. It was a really special group of people. Most of us are still very close, and The Wedding Singer gets done all over the world now, and we’ll go to see productions in other countries. Sometimes, we’ll even see kids productions. Without a doubt, almost every time, the cast comes to us and tells us how much fun they’re having doing it and how much the audience is enjoying it. It’s really gratifying to see how well the show is doing five years later.

MR: What is the process like when you undertake a project like this?

MS: Usually, before we start writing any songs, we sit down with whomever is writing the book and we outline the show. Before we write any of the songs, we really want to see where the songs lie and what the shape of the whole evening is going to be. That way, you can make sure you don’t have three songs with the same tempo in a row. If you write them out of order and out of context, you can get yourself into trouble. We like to have an overview of the entire show, then we pick the moments where we think a song should be. We try to work on the songs that feel the most natural first. For the actual writing of the songs, the process is the same about 50% of the time. In an up tempo song, Chad usually like to write the lyric first, and if it’s more of a ballad usually I like to go first because it’s more musically driven.

MR: So he’ll come to you with lyrics and you’ll write music for it?

MS: Absolutely. And there are some times that we have to go back and forth many, many times. Then sometimes he’ll give me a lyric and that’s exactly what winds up being in the show.

MR: Amazing. And I suppose the inverse is true when you give him music?

MS: Sure. The beautiful thing is that we’ve been writing together for almost 19 years now, so we used to have to get on the subway and run to each other’s apartments and work. Now it’s much simpler because I can record something and make an MP3 of it, and send it to him instead of having to schlep up to his place. We can go back and forth over the internet very quickly and that’s helpful. We actually wrote a song called, “Just Like Him,” that we decided we needed right before we started rehearsals for the Broadway production while Chad (Beguelin) was in Paris and I was in New York. We all realized at the last minute that we needed to write this song, so Chad and I were able to do most of that work across the Atlantic via the internet. It was kind of crazy.

MR: And you’ve kind of become the go-to-guys for musical conversions of movies.

MS: Yeah, we’re very fortunate. Before we wrote The Wedding Singer, we mostly wrote obscure little black box musicals. Eventually, some of them got the attention of some Broadway producers and a woman named Margo Lion saw one of our small one-woman shows and found us and told us that she really wanted to work with us. This happened probably in 1999, I think. It took a while for us to find something to actually work on together, and in the meantime, she produced the monstrous hit Hairspray. That’s kind of what led us to The Wedding Singer. Non of us anticipated saying that we were going to take movies and turn them into stage musicals. But my feeling about the whole thing is that if it’s a good story, then it’s a good story. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musicals were even based on something else. A musical that is truly written from nothing is very rare. They happen, certainly, but most other musicals are based on some other pre-existing material.

MR: That’s true. For contrast or maybe context, it’s as if it’s better to start from a piece that people already relate to before adding people suddenly dancing and singing.

MS: Sure, I understand that. It’s also just good to have a pre-existing structure in place. Then you can work with that instead of coming up with something when there are infinite possibilities. I mean, it certainly is gratifying when that works, but musical theater seems to be a more adaptive form.

MR: Now that you’ve seen this musical come to life, is it everything you dreamed of and more?

MS: It’s been a joy to work on. The people that we’ve gotten to work with on this show are heroes of mine. Tom Meehan, who wrote the book, also wrote the books for Annie,Hairspray, and The Producers, and those shows were all monster hits. Then there was Bob Martin, who also made a big splash on Broadway as “Man in Chair” in The Drowsy Chaperone on Broadway, who is also a great writer and performer. Then there is Casey Nicholaw, our director and choreographer–who just won the Tony Award for Best Direction for The Book of Mormon–was also a joy to work with. It’s just been so wonderful. Then there’s out cast who is just brilliant. It was amazing going to the theater last year and seeing packed houses and seeing the audiences go crazy. It was also great to see little kids going to the theater for the first time and really paying attention. Sometimes, we’d speak to the parents at intermission and they’d be amazed that their kids were actually paying attention. The kids were mesmerized by it. It was really fun seeing the whole thing come together. And the beauty of a Christmas show is that Christmas happens every year, so hopefully, we can see it in many different places for many years to come.

MR: That’s fantastic. What was it like working with Phil Reno?

MS: Phil is our music director and vocal arranger, and he’s fantastic. He has so much energy and is an amazing conductor and vocal arranger. The big choral vocal arrangements in this soundtrack like “The Story Of Buddy The Elf” or “Nobody Cares About Santa” have these glorious vocal arrangements that make our cast sound great. Watching him lead an orchestra is great because he has such fantastic energy that you can tell that the orchestra loves playing with him–it’s really very joyous. It was a great collaboration. He’s a really terrific guy.

MR: You’ve also been associated with some big Broadway hits. You served as assistant conductor for 42nd Street, Putting It Together, and Titanic. What were those experiences like?

MS: Well, Titanic was the first show that I was with from the very beginning. I was very young and got very lucky as a freshman at NYU and got myself a job as a substitute keyboardist for Les Miserables when it was still running in New York. So, I sort of got involved in that world very early on through just meeting people through a high school, pre-college program that I did at Julliard. My freshman year, I started playing Les Mis, Miss Saigon, and the Guys and Dolls revivals, two revivals ago with Nathan Lane and Faith Prince, which was, incidentally, at the same theater that both The Wedding Singer and Elf played, which is kind of a fun thing.

MR: So, I guess you’re kind of committed to this whole musical theater thing.

MS: Yeah, I think I’m stuck. (laughs) I’m stuck in the Broadway world, which is just fine with me.

MR: Matthew, do you have any advice for any budding musical theater composers or artists in general?

MS: I think the best thing to do is stick to what you know. If you’re an actor, act. If you’re a pianist, play. Also, try to work on every project that you can. Everybody has got to start somewhere, so if you have an opportunity to put on a show at your school, do it. Experience is really what keeps getting you someplace, and you learn by doing. This is really one of the few industries where with each new project you complete, you take away brand new information and people. With every project I do, I usually find people that I want to work with on my next project, and then I take them with me for the rest of my life. I have accumulated a team of people that I love, trust, and feel comfortable with as I move on to whatever is next. I think that’s something you can only do by doing as much theater as possible.

MR: Since we see recording artists appear on Broadway more frequently now, do you have any advice for those artists looking to make the transition?

MS: Well, I think it’s great if you’re a great singer, but if you want to be a part of the musical theater world, you have to make sure you’re going to acting class and dance class. These days, you kind of have to be a triple threat to be working in musical theater–that’s the way Broadway is heading because there’s so much movement in shows now. My advice would be to concentrate on the acting and dancing if you’re already comfortable with the music part.

MR: Nice. With all of the success you’ve had so far, could any of that equal having one of your songs on The Mickey Mouse Club?

MS: (laughs) The song I had on The Mickey Mouse Club was a stellar moment for me. That was actually the first song that I had ever written that was performed anywhere besides my Junior High School. It’s a song called “Tomorrow Is Calling,” and I wrote it for my junior high graduation on a whim. My parents have always been very supportive, so for one of my birthday presents, I split the cost of a four-track recorder and recorded a little demo of this song of me playing and singing and sent it off to the show because I knew they performed original music on every episode. About a month later, I got a call saying that they wanted to do the song and fly me down to have me on the show. They even gave me a Mickey Mouse Club Hall of Fame trophy, which I am staring at on my bookcase right now. (laughs) They fully produced the song, and I got to be on it, and they paid me $100. It was very exciting.

MR: You’re also the proud owner of some other awards including ASCAP’s Richard Rodgers New Horizon’s Award, the Gillman Gonzales-Fala Musical Theater Award, and the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award, right?

MS: That’s right. There are a bunch of organizations in New York that are supportive of young writers and they know how hard it can be. If you’re spending your life writing musicals, there isn’t always a lot of money. Some of these awards are given by nomination, some by application, but they’re so helpful to just help get you by. It’s also a very nice pat on the back saying, “Keep doing what you’re doing.”

MR: Do you have any predictions about how long Elf eventually will run on Broadway?

MS: Well, we hope to be back next year. Unfortunately, this year, we weren’t able to get a theater that was the right size. Hopefully next year, we’ll be back and we hope to have a lot of different productions starting all over next year. We’re very lucky to have Warner Bros. producing the show, and hopefully, we’ll be back from next year on. This winter, we’ll also be doing some selections from the show in Indianapolis at Yule Tide with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. I think there are 28 performances, and we’re very excited to fly out and see those.

MR: Are you working on any other projects now?

MS: I’m working on two things right now that are in the very, very early creative stage, so I’m a bit too superstitious to talk about them. (laughs) But I’m very excited about them both and they are keeping me very busy.

MR: Awesome. Matthew, thank you for taking time to talk with us. Best of luck with Elf.

MS: Thank you so much, Mike.

Transcribed by Evan Martin