Update on Brickman & Elice’s Musicalization of “Father of the Bride”
November 9th, 2006Playbill.com’s Ernio Hernandez states that Marshall Brickman — one half of the Tony Award-nominated bookwriting team of Broadway’s Jersey Boys — seems a glutton for punishment as he prepares for musicalizing “Father of the Bride.”
At first, Brickman was tentative about the project, but was “dragged into it by Rick [Elice, his Jersey Boys collaborator] — kicking and screaming — as I was into Jersey Boys,” he told Playbill.com. “The way he convinced me was he reminded me that I have two daughters, and I have a lot of material.”
Having undergone the daunting task of creating a book for what many term a “jukebox musical” (using the existing catalog of Four Seasons songs), the duo will now venture into further taboo territory by using a film as source material. The biggest challenge, according to Brickman, is “to do a version of the story that works as a musical that won’t upset people who love the three movies.”
Summing up the project, Brickman stated,
“So I think, in a sense, we can’t win. Well, we couldn’t win with Jersey Boys either because we came in being heckled by everybody ‘Jukebox!,’ so I kind of like the challenge.The way we grow is by fear and trembling.”