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Speaker 1: Hey, Wildcats, this is Bart Johnson and you're listening to

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Speaker 1: get your hitd in the game. Hey everyone, and welcome

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Speaker 1: back to get your head in the game today. I've

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Speaker 1: got a real treat for you. My guest is the

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Speaker 1: creative force behind the cultural phenomenon. The person who had

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Speaker 1: a vision, turned it into a script and used his

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Speaker 1: own daughter's name for the lead character. He didn't just

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Speaker 1: write this story, he helped launch a franchise that defined

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Speaker 1: a generation. Please give a warm welcome to the writer

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Speaker 1: and creator of High School Musical, Peter Barsacini. This is

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Speaker 1: the guy you walked in and he said, oh, don't

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Speaker 1: stand up. I was like, are you kid? I gotta say,

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Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta hug the man that changed my life.

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Speaker 2: But Bart, we're like related, We're related, going, you know,

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Speaker 2: going all the way back to the beginning the filming

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Speaker 2: of High School Musical and all of a sudden what

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Speaker 2: it became and to the shack of all has continued

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Speaker 2: to be you know, I mean, I saw a thing

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Speaker 2: on social media of you the other day where you

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Speaker 2: were at where they were doing the stage version at

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Speaker 2: a school. Since two thousand and six, it's been like

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Speaker 2: a million performances of high school musical It's schools, you know.

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Speaker 2: At one point there was a production of high school

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Speaker 2: musical stage show going on in Israel and in Lebanon

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Speaker 2: at the same time, you know, And it's just so

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Speaker 2: it's like one of these things that's crossed. I had

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Speaker 2: no idea, nobody had any idea it would cross borders

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Speaker 2: like it. Yeah, you know, but so it's a cool

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Speaker 2: and I still get letters I get, you know, from

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Speaker 2: people around the world, and you know, it's pretty crazy.

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Speaker 1: Well, this is this is a special one for me because,

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Speaker 1: like you're it, you were at the beginning. This is

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Speaker 1: none of this would I mean, it's easy to say

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Speaker 1: that about a lot of people, but this is actual,

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Speaker 1: literal you have created all you created this.

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Speaker 2: Okay, But do you want to know how it started? Yes, okay,

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Speaker 2: I to tell you. It started when I was rewriting

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Speaker 2: another an action movie for somebody and the two producers,

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Speaker 2: Bill Board and Barry Rosenbush were the producers of this movie,

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Speaker 2: and the big executive on the movie was a guy

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Speaker 2: who was ran an hour late to every meeting. So

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Speaker 2: I'd be there on time, you know, and we'd wait

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Speaker 2: for an hour and so we started talking, you know,

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Speaker 2: and they said, oh, we're doing something a Disney channel.

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Speaker 2: And so we would talk sports and we would talk

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Speaker 2: music because those are the two things in my life,

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Speaker 2: you know, growing up, that was my life. And after

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Speaker 2: a month of us byessing, you know, they said, maybe

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Speaker 2: you should do something for Disney. Maybe because they've got

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Speaker 2: girls watching, they don't have boys. They want to do

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Speaker 2: something where the girls will still tune in, but the

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Speaker 2: boys won't gag and run out of the room, you know.

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Speaker 2: So they want to do a sports thing and this

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Speaker 2: and that. And I was a Jim Ratt growing up.

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Speaker 2: I played basketball my whole life, and we went to

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Speaker 2: pitch to Disney. He wrote a thing. So when I

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Speaker 2: was in high school, literally in high school. The music

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Speaker 2: part comes from I started as a writer covering rock

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Speaker 2: and roll in San Francisco at fifteen years old. Sixteen

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Speaker 2: years old, and we didn't know all the I didn't

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Speaker 2: know I was going to fill More West three nights

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Speaker 2: a week, Winterland. I didn't know these people were going

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Speaker 2: to be famous, you know, but they were cool. It

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Speaker 2: was Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Elton John, the Bowling style

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Speaker 2: and all these people were coming through there, so I

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Speaker 2: got my music fixed. Sports thing. I was on the

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Speaker 2: basketball team and the best player on our team was

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Speaker 2: Lynn Swann, who was a great football player who went

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Speaker 2: on to win five Super Bowls and he got a

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Speaker 2: Super Bowl MVP. So Lynn was like world class and

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Speaker 2: going to be a world class phenomenal athlete. And so

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Speaker 2: one night I'm in high school, junior year of high school.

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Speaker 2: This has to be like nineteen sixty eight or sixty nine.

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Speaker 2: I guess nineteen sixty nine. I'm sitting next to Lynn

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Speaker 2: the bus and like when you're the writer, it's like

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Speaker 2: people always say things to you. It's like they figure

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Speaker 2: you must know something, or maybe because I'm Italian, they

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Speaker 2: know I'll keep my mouth shut if they say to

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Speaker 2: And so Lynn says to me, you know, I'm going

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Speaker 2: to tell you something, and if you tell anybody, I'm

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Speaker 2: gonna kill you. So that was a nice breaker right there.

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Speaker 2: But he goes and you couldn't get a better jock

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Speaker 2: than Lynn. You know, every school in America literally was

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Speaker 2: pursuing him as a football player. And he said to me,

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Speaker 2: you know what I really wanted to do my whole life.

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Speaker 2: And I go, yeah, me know, he goes, I want

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Speaker 2: to be a ballet dancer. I go, what, Yeah, I

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Speaker 2: want to be a bally said the neighborhood where I

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Speaker 2: grow up. Man, you say you're a ballet dancer, you

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Speaker 2: get your kicked, you know. I go, wow, I mean

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Speaker 2: that's pretty amazing. Okay, file that into my feebrow brain

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Speaker 2: to you know, twenty thirty years later, you know, and

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Speaker 2: I'm sitting talking to these guys, and we go, well,

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Speaker 2: what if the biggest jock in high school, the big

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Speaker 2: man on campus, wanted to do something way out of

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Speaker 2: the box, like being musical theater. Now, remember we're talking

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Speaker 2: about this in two thousand and three. It's not like

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Speaker 2: today where nobody would care one way or the other

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Speaker 2: if somebody does anything. You know, back then, if you

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Speaker 2: if you were Tom Brady, you weren't starring in the

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Speaker 2: school musical. Yeah, trust me, you know. And so we go,

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Speaker 2: what if the big guy on campus and they say, okay,

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Speaker 2: you know, maybe we can get a great songwriter, you know,

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Speaker 2: And we're saying, well, the way to do the music

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Speaker 2: isn't one guy, you know, it should be the right

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Speaker 2: songwriter for the right song. Now Disney had great experience

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Speaker 2: with this, but I was in a Volkswagen Beatle sometime again.

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Speaker 2: I'm sixteen years old with Janis Joplin, right, and she

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Speaker 2: had asked me to give her a ride home from

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Speaker 2: Fillmore West because she just had a big art you meant,

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Speaker 2: with her boyfriend, right, and she was Southern comfort and

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Speaker 2: all this stuff. I said, I'll give me a ride

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Speaker 2: because I think I'll get in the greatest scoop. Now,

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Speaker 2: I didn't have a driver's license or a car, so

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Speaker 2: that was a little drawback. But I went to a

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Speaker 2: friend of mine. You gotta lend me your brother's car.

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Speaker 2: You gotta lend me, he says. If you no, I'll

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Speaker 2: be fine. Now, remember this is San Francisco, so it's

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Speaker 2: got the stick shift, you know, which our friends here

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Speaker 2: have never driven in their lives. And you get in

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Speaker 2: San Francisco, driving a stick shift is challenging. And so

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Speaker 2: I'm int the car with jan it's just trying to

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Speaker 2: not crash this car. And she's going on and on

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Speaker 2: about her boyfriend. In her big bag. She had one

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Speaker 2: of these big carpet bagger like you see and gone

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Speaker 2: with the wind bag. You know where she kept your

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Speaker 2: bottle whiskey. And she had these old eight track tapes.

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Speaker 2: This guy had an eight track as a machine bigger

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Speaker 2: than that phone over there, you know, and she would

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Speaker 2: say something about this son of a and then she'd

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Speaker 2: take out out a tape and shove it into the

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Speaker 2: thing and play and it'd be like Somebody to Love

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Speaker 2: by the Jefferson Airplane. And then she'd argue that and

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Speaker 2: and she'd pull out another eight track and she step

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Speaker 2: in and is Linda Ron's dad, you know, a long

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Speaker 2: long time or something. And by the end of it,

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Speaker 2: she was like doing the soundtrack of her breakup. But

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Speaker 2: I was thinking at the time, God, wouldn't it be

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Speaker 2: great too if you had those songs on one album. Now,

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Speaker 2: everybody under the age of one hundred, you know, look

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Speaker 2: at me now and go, what are you talking about?

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Speaker 2: That's what you know? Nobody there's no albums and you know,

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Speaker 2: everything's a playlist. Right back then, there were just albums,

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Speaker 2: right there was no compilation like that. And I thought, Okay,

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Speaker 2: let's do that for this movie. You create the emotional

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Speaker 2: arc of the story through what the songs are going

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Speaker 2: to be about before you even get into you know,

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Speaker 2: everything else. And so we pitched like ten songs to

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Speaker 2: the executive Denise Carlson at Disney, and eight of them

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Speaker 2: actually ended up in the movie. You know, written by

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Speaker 2: great songwriters, not by us. I was only involved with

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Speaker 2: creation of one song, but it that's where it started.

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Speaker 2: It started on a bus when I was in high

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Speaker 2: school in nineteen sixty nine, thinking what if the big

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Speaker 2: man on campus wanted to do something way out of

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Speaker 2: the box. So that became Troy Bolton saying I'll do

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Speaker 2: the musical. And when you're in high school, if your

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Speaker 2: girlfriend said, you know, would you do this, you do that,

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Speaker 2: You'll jump into a cauldron of burning flames for her,

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Speaker 2: you know, And so that's where it started.

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Speaker 1: That's crazy, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Isn't that? And that's it's beautiful.

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Speaker 1: It's a it's a you know, it's always such a mystery.

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Speaker 1: We were talking about like the longevity of the movie,

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Speaker 1: in the reach of the movie and crossing the boards,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's a it seems like a big mystery.

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Speaker 1: But then he starts looking at the roots of where

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Speaker 1: this came, like, that's a that's that's pretty amazing that it's.

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Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you, you know, people ask why, you know,

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Speaker 2: for anything to succeed in the entertainment business is anybody

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Speaker 2: in this room, will your twenty planets have to line up?

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Speaker 1: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: And so it something happens. Sometimes it doesn't. But I

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Speaker 2: can tell you about High School Musical is that none

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Speaker 2: of the people who made it, me, the two producers,

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Speaker 2: Bill and Barry, Kenny Ortaga, none of us are cynical guys.

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Speaker 2: We weren't going in there trying to, oh, let's do

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Speaker 2: something with a message. We were going in there to

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Speaker 2: have fun. I mean I was doing at the time.

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Speaker 2: I was writing a pilot for Lifetime Television, a one

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Speaker 2: hour pilot about my wasted youth in New York with sex, drugs, models,

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Speaker 2: rock and roll, you know, And I go, oh, this

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Speaker 2: is a can't miss thing of the century. I had

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Speaker 2: two daughters, you know, and they're watching Disney Channel every night. Well,

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Speaker 2: we're making dinner and I'm sitting there, so I'm absorbing

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Speaker 2: this tone this thing. I said, I would love to

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Speaker 2: watch some write something they could watch, you know, And

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Speaker 2: so I named all the characters. My daughter is Gabriella,

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Speaker 2: their daughter is Taylor. My you know, I have a

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Speaker 2: niece named Kelsey. I have a nephew named Jason. Those

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Speaker 2: are the characters. And I thought that'd be cool if

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Speaker 2: it gets made to get to hear their name once,

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Speaker 2: you know, then then that happened. But in terms of

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Speaker 2: the movie itself, look, we just want to make something fun,

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Speaker 2: you know, for kids. You know this and that we're

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Speaker 2: all kids at heart, you know, and you're always a

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Speaker 2: kid at heart your whole life if you want to,

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Speaker 2: you know, if it doesn't get beaten out of you

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Speaker 2: or life event out of you.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: And so there was that. But we also one thing

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Speaker 2: we consciously did. We said we don't want to make

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Speaker 2: and this is where you come in, Bart, because we

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Speaker 2: don't want to make the adults the typical idiots that

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Speaker 2: you see a lot of times the kids, well the

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Speaker 2: adults are, you know, coming in stumbling around, mumbling, you know. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: we want to make a real relationship between Troy Bolton

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Speaker 2: and his and where all these planets line up. We

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Speaker 2: got lucky with you because you brought authenticity to it.

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Speaker 2: And I remember talking to you about even the locker

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Speaker 2: room scene before their big game, and you brought a

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Speaker 2: lot of ideas to that and energy and things, and

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Speaker 2: you played it for real. One of my good friends

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Speaker 2: growing up in Hollywood, I used to play basketball again

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Speaker 2: the theme of my life at his house every Saturday

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Speaker 2: was Gary Marshall and Gary who was a you know,

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Speaker 2: fabulous guy, great director, right, but he said, the secret

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Speaker 2: to comedy and the secret to family entertainment is you

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Speaker 2: got to play it for life and death. If you

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Speaker 2: go for the joke, you're screwed. You won't get it.

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Speaker 2: Just play the reality of what's written, and it was

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Speaker 2: written as decent, then that will emerge, you know. So

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Speaker 2: we tried to make that through three movies with your character.

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Speaker 2: And again not because you're sitting here, but I tipped

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Speaker 2: my hat to you because you brought an authenticity to

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Speaker 2: that relationship between Troy and his dad that hinged our story.

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Speaker 2: None of the jokes work, none of his high school angst,

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Speaker 2: you know, where am I going to college? And am

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Speaker 2: I doing the right thing with a girl? And I

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Speaker 2: want to sing but my dad wants me to play basketball.

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Speaker 2: None of that would have worked at all if there

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Speaker 2: hadn't been an authentic relationship between Coach Bolton and his

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Speaker 2: son Troy. And you brought the game, brother.

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Speaker 1: So it's the greatest compliment in my life right now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that really you know, and you see it. We're

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Speaker 2: all geniuses in the rear view mirror. Right. And but

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Speaker 2: Steve job said something really really smart when he did

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Speaker 2: that famous Stanford commencement speech, and he says, you can't

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Speaker 2: you can only understand connect the diy of your life

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Speaker 2: in the rear view mirror.

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Speaker 1: You know all these.

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Speaker 2: Things that happen. And when I see high school Musical

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Speaker 2: and you look at the three of them, if you

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Speaker 2: go back and you just extracted the scenes between coach

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Speaker 2: Bolton and his son, you'll see sort of the emotional

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Speaker 2: it reveal it. It allowed a young actor Zach Efron

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Speaker 2: and a character Troy Bolton, to actually reveal their emotional

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Speaker 2: life in a bigger way than just I have a

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Speaker 2: crush on Gabriella, you know, and where Steph gets screwed up?

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Speaker 2: In my opinion? And I don't know, but I you know,

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Speaker 2: I just do what I do. But is where when

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Speaker 2: you're writing about young people, if you don't play their

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Speaker 2: emotional life authentically. You say, oh, he's fifteen, what does

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Speaker 2: it matter to him what he does here? What does

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Speaker 2: it matter to that his relationship with that girl? There's

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Speaker 2: going to be twenty more girls and marry somebody else?

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Speaker 2: What does it mean? But in that moment, that relationship

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Speaker 2: is the biggest thing in the world to them and

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Speaker 2: it's real and it's foundational, and so what if it

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Speaker 2: changes in morph But in that moment, if you don't

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Speaker 2: exist in the reality of that moment, you've got nothing.

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Speaker 2: And so I think if there's anything we did right

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Speaker 2: was believe in that. You know, even when you're doing

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Speaker 2: musical comedy, you know, and you know you have the

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Speaker 2: foil of Sharpey and you have all that. You know,

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Speaker 2: there's a moment in High School Musical two where Troy Bolton,

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Speaker 2: the whole their show is falling apart of course, thank god,

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Speaker 2: you know, and Trey Bolton comes into Sharpey, you know,

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Speaker 2: it says I'm gonna do your show because I said

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Speaker 2: that I wouldn't do that. And Ashley did the best

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Speaker 2: scene of her life where she played it and said,

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Speaker 2: that's so good. I wish you were doing that for me.

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Speaker 2: And in that moment, which they filmed it three in

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Speaker 2: the morning, she played it so real because she was exhausted,

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Speaker 2: and she played it for real and there and the

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Speaker 2: emotion was was there. And I'll just give you one

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Speaker 2: more example of when we did the film the film version,

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Speaker 2: and it was in theaters. We went to Me and

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Speaker 2: Bill and Barry and a couple of people went to

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Speaker 2: various theaters and we'd stand in kind of in front

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Speaker 2: in the dark to see what people reacted to. And

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Speaker 2: because they're the arbiters, the audience is, you know what

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Speaker 2: you think is hilarious. The audience stares at and then

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Speaker 2: you write a line like yeah, like a peanut butter sandwich,

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Speaker 2: and they fall out of their seats and you go,

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Speaker 2: what the hell just happened. But anyway, we're watching that

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Speaker 2: movie and there's a scene in it when Troy goes

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Speaker 2: to Stanford because that's where Gabrielle is and the problem

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Speaker 2: is going on back in Albuquerque, right, And he's up

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Speaker 2: in a tree and she goes walking by and she

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Speaker 2: sees him and she's, what are you doing here? It's

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Speaker 2: a prom and he goes, My prom is where you are.

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Speaker 2: The audience. When we looked at the audience, it wasn't

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Speaker 2: just the kids that were staring at. It was all

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Speaker 2: the moms who were sitting with their daughters saying, I

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Speaker 2: want a boy who says that to my daughter, not

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Speaker 2: a baby. Let's get in the car, you know. So

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Speaker 2: it's like those are but those are authentic and that

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Speaker 2: came from raising daughters. You know, I learned a lot

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Speaker 2: from raising daughters. It's another Jack guy, you know, Jason

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Speaker 2: girls around New York, and then I had daughters and

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Speaker 2: I learned a lot.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The kids change it all they looking

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Speaker 1: through looking through that lens.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. But that's why you know the authenticity of your scenes,

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Speaker 2: because you're a dad, you know, and you know what

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Speaker 2: it is to be a dad.

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Speaker 3: Halloween is your on the corner and your favorite podcaster

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Speaker 3: Natasha on Are You a Charlotte? And nine one one

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Speaker 3: What's Your Emergency? The new episode of Call It What

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Speaker 3: It Is? Of course nine to one one Nashville co

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Speaker 3: star Kimberly Williams Paisley joins Jessica Capshaw and Camilla Leddington

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Speaker 3: to talk about her health scare, her superstar hubby Brad Paisley,

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Speaker 3: and her memories on the set of Father of the

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Speaker 3: Bride with the legendary Diane Keaton Oscar winner Bree Larsen

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Speaker 3: is a work in progress. Sophia Bush finds out why,

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Speaker 3: has fellow Dancing with the Stars contestant Dylan Effron on

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Speaker 3: to talk about the ballroom, the leaderboard, and more. Listen

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Speaker 3: now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you

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Speaker 2: You know, it's really funny because it's it's like at

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Speaker 2: school when she, you know, it came out. She was

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Speaker 2: in like fifth grade, sixth grade, you know, went to

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Speaker 2: school over here at Campbell Hall. And when that the

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Speaker 2: week you know, it comes out on a Friday night,

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Speaker 2: Well the next week, all hell breaks loose at school,

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Speaker 2: you know, because they go, wait, the character's name gabriel

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Speaker 2: that's Gabrielle, you know, and and then it's it's funny.

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Speaker 2: Then she, you know, lived in New York line and

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Speaker 2: she's living back here now she's just got married and

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Speaker 2: time warp. But she'd be like at dinner in New

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Speaker 2: York down in the village where she lived, you know,

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Speaker 2: with her friends, you know, and they'd all be out

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Speaker 2: being big shots, having glasses of wine. You know, and

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Speaker 2: say they'd heard somebody talking about high school musical at

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Speaker 2: the next table, you know, Zach and one of her

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Speaker 2: girlfriends goes, well, there's Gabriella and what are you talking about.

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Speaker 2: That's Gabriella, that's her.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: She pulls out her phone, puts her Oh my god, healthy,

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Speaker 2: and she's like, she's pretty shot. You know. It's just

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Speaker 2: like Zach was so kind to during high school too,

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Speaker 2: you know, because it would be up filming for three

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Speaker 2: months or two months. I'd get Zach to call her

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Speaker 2: up to make her do her homework. You see, you

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Speaker 2: wouldn't listen to me, but Zach, oh, you're doing your math.

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Speaker 2: What are you working on? And she'd be like, I'm

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Speaker 2: working on you know. It's like and then and then

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Speaker 2: she do it. So there was a nice synchronicity to that.

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Speaker 2: And it's it's really kind of funny. My niece Kelsey,

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Speaker 2: she shit happened. You know. It's like, I get a

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Speaker 2: phone call one day from my sister in law says,

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Speaker 2: you gotta send me a high school musical script. I go, well,

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Speaker 2: Kelsey went to school. This is just after it was exploding,

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Speaker 2: right because their school and they were having like show

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Speaker 2: and Tell day or telling something interesting about their lives.

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Speaker 2: And well, the character Kelsey and High School Musical was

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Speaker 2: based on me. And the teacher goes, you don't have

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Speaker 2: to say something for us to think you're you know,

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Speaker 2: you're you're a very valuable person, and you know it's

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Speaker 2: really Kelsey goes, I'm crying, you know, and their mother

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Speaker 2: calls me and what you gotta be access to the

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Speaker 2: teacher and know, I go, what are you talking about?

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Speaker 2: You know? I did you know? I did?

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Speaker 1: Like that?

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Speaker 2: You know happens all the it's still it still freaking happens,

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Speaker 2: and it takes people back to just like with you.

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Speaker 2: You know you're gonna be cause you're the face. You're

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Speaker 2: a face. You know, they know you, you know. And

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Speaker 2: then I got to say hi Bart, the coach Bolton

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Speaker 2: and when you're the writer, people don't know it, you know.

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Speaker 2: And then somebody, oh, yeah, you were in high school

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Speaker 2: music got out of here right high school? Yeah, you're right,

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Speaker 2: what you know? And then it happens when you get

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Speaker 2: out into the civilian world that so.

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Speaker 1: You know, what I always loved about the character you

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Speaker 1: made was in these kind of movies that you play,

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Speaker 1: you either play the dad or you play the coach.

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Speaker 1: So it's like and the coaches, like the discipline, are

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Speaker 1: supposed to pull this stuff and be hard on and

385
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Speaker 1: you're supposed to get the love and the support from

386
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Speaker 1: the from the dad at home to a certain degree.

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Speaker 1: And I felt like it created such a conflict for

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Speaker 1: for me to have to what's the line, what's the

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Speaker 1: line you balanced between those two And I try to

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Speaker 1: keep that very visceral, And like anytime we did a scene,

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Speaker 1: I'm looking at my son, I'm internally saying, what role

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Speaker 1: am I playing right now? Like the dad that's supposed

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Speaker 1: to be pumping up my son, and I supposed to

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Speaker 1: be the coach. It's supposed to be like, yeah, pushing

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Speaker 1: them hard. And I just love I love that, like

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Speaker 1: finding the kind of the complexity of relationship.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And then Zach is playing it real. I mean, it

399
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Speaker 1: doesn't matter if this was Disney or any other movie.

400
00:22:10,280 --> 00:22:13,479
Speaker 1: He played it so real and he was really feeling,

401
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Speaker 1: feeling all the fields.

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Speaker 2: You can't lie to the camera.

403
00:22:17,240 --> 00:22:19,480
Speaker 1: You can't the camera season yeah.

404
00:22:19,359 --> 00:22:22,000
Speaker 2: One way or the other. If it's an act there

405
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Speaker 2: with the scene, if it's a singer on a stage.

406
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Speaker 2: They saw a lot of singers on a lot of stages. Yeah,

407
00:22:28,400 --> 00:22:31,800
Speaker 2: and I saw the ones that were you go, you'd

408
00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:35,600
Speaker 2: see him for the first time and you'd go, oh

409
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Speaker 2: my god. I remember I saw Elton John his second

410
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Speaker 2: show he ever did in America. He did his first

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Speaker 2: show down here at the Troubadour, and then he went

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Speaker 2: up three days later up to San Francisco, played the

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Speaker 2: film where nobody knew with him.

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Speaker 1: This fresh he was.

415
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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is when he first time he came to America.

416
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Speaker 2: And when I saw him, I didn't know who he was.

417
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Speaker 2: He was second on the bill. The headliners were a

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Speaker 2: band called the Kinks. There was four acts on in

419
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Speaker 2: those days. You go to Fillmore West before acts and

420
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Speaker 2: two sets. You could stay for both shows. But it

421
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Speaker 2: was Ball and Jack, Juicy, Lucy, Elton John and the

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Speaker 2: Kinks on the bill. And so on comes this guy,

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Speaker 2: Elton John, and he does a song called Your Song,

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Speaker 2: and I listened to it. I never heard it in

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Speaker 2: my life. Didn't know who this guy was, and I said,

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Speaker 2: I don't know what just happened, but this guy is magic.

427
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Speaker 2: There's something so real in what he's doing that you

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Speaker 2: know he might become something he did.

429
00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:40,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think it was ooda Hoggen that said,

430
00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:45,400
Speaker 1: your audience can't feel any emotions, you're not genuinely feeling yourself.

431
00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:47,639
Speaker 2: It's a great quote. That's a great quote.

432
00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:50,919
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's so true. And you know,

433
00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:53,879
Speaker 1: Kenny was it was great to create the environment on

434
00:23:54,160 --> 00:23:56,440
Speaker 1: the set to get us there and kind of hold

435
00:23:56,520 --> 00:23:59,880
Speaker 1: us to that, you know, to the authenticity. It isn't

436
00:24:00,119 --> 00:24:03,520
Speaker 1: seeing that the the authenticity seems to be like a

437
00:24:03,640 --> 00:24:07,800
Speaker 1: something that keeps coming up in in for all the actors,

438
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:11,320
Speaker 1: for how they felt like Kenny would organically get performances

439
00:24:11,359 --> 00:24:14,000
Speaker 1: out of people and even dance moves, even some of

440
00:24:14,000 --> 00:24:16,720
Speaker 1: the choreography. Lucas was telling me that he said, you

441
00:24:16,840 --> 00:24:19,720
Speaker 1: do the dance to this song the way you think

442
00:24:19,760 --> 00:24:21,480
Speaker 1: you would do it right, And they'd watch him and go,

443
00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:25,120
Speaker 1: okay that and then let me pull some like authenticity

444
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:26,960
Speaker 1: out of even your movements.

445
00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:30,520
Speaker 2: That's it. That's it, and it's you. You know, the

446
00:24:30,880 --> 00:24:35,800
Speaker 2: thing that separates the great from the one timer or

447
00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:39,360
Speaker 2: something is then being able to do that on take twelve,

448
00:24:40,080 --> 00:24:42,280
Speaker 2: you know, it's you know, you can deliver Anton and

449
00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:44,160
Speaker 2: then the drugs that I need that but our lighting

450
00:24:44,240 --> 00:24:48,639
Speaker 2: was I did Joe Peshy is a friend of mine

451
00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:51,640
Speaker 2: and he I sometimes talk to him about working because

452
00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:54,000
Speaker 2: I admired his work so much, you know, and he

453
00:24:54,040 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 2: said to when he works with Martin Scis says he

454
00:24:56,040 --> 00:24:59,560
Speaker 2: he said, Chis says, he would let you try anything

455
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:03,000
Speaker 2: for the first two weeks of rehearsal, try anything. But

456
00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 2: then when he picks a take, he said, that's what

457
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 2: he wants on the day, and if it takes twenty

458
00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:11,240
Speaker 2: three takes, he still wants that take and he wants

459
00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:14,000
Speaker 2: it to be you know, and that's where you get it.

460
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 2: I think, Kenny, it goes back to what I was saying, Kenny,

461
00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:21,920
Speaker 2: like all of us on that film, those films or

462
00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:27,000
Speaker 2: big kids, you know, we're not cynical. We're not I

463
00:25:27,080 --> 00:25:29,720
Speaker 2: think we're smarter than Hollywood or we know what kids like.

464
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:34,840
Speaker 2: You know, you know we're you're professional because you deliver

465
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 2: your stuff on time and you know, sometimes you get fired,

466
00:25:37,560 --> 00:25:41,440
Speaker 2: sometimes you get hired. But we're open to being big kids.

467
00:25:41,560 --> 00:25:45,440
Speaker 2: And that's why we liked doing that. And for anything

468
00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:51,239
Speaker 2: to work, there was there's fifty people that had their

469
00:25:51,280 --> 00:25:53,920
Speaker 2: hand in high school and just us. You know, it's

470
00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:57,800
Speaker 2: like Gary marsh the Disney Channel who was running. You know,

471
00:25:57,880 --> 00:25:59,960
Speaker 2: he gave us a lot of rope. We got a

472
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:03,960
Speaker 2: ideas here, music supervisor, the people on this head. You know,

473
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 2: there's so many people behind the curtain. You don't see that.

474
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:09,840
Speaker 2: And it's just as easy. You work just as hard

475
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:11,640
Speaker 2: to make a flop as you do to make hit.

476
00:26:12,119 --> 00:26:15,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm just as you're talking, I'm thinking about

477
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:18,879
Speaker 1: all the the different elements of this film that there

478
00:26:18,880 --> 00:26:22,520
Speaker 1: were not one dimensional, right, even even the characters. I

479
00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:24,440
Speaker 1: think maybe from the outside or someone that might want

480
00:26:24,440 --> 00:26:26,920
Speaker 1: to try writing their own high school musical, you have

481
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:29,919
Speaker 1: a tendency to write the what it appears to be

482
00:26:29,960 --> 00:26:32,840
Speaker 1: on surface, and these one dimensional like I all the

483
00:26:32,880 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: time I'm offered jobs I played like the coach and yes,

484
00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:41,320
Speaker 1: very one dimensional or the dad buffoon, you know, one dimensional.

485
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:45,840
Speaker 1: But all the characters, like pretty much all the characters

486
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:50,119
Speaker 1: in this movie had had real complexity, real real conflicts.

487
00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:53,920
Speaker 2: Yeah that either feel real or they don't. But there

488
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:57,440
Speaker 2: was this stuff out of my life, you know, half

489
00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:01,240
Speaker 2: of the you know stuff in the in those movies,

490
00:27:01,400 --> 00:27:05,040
Speaker 2: the character takes the actors take what's in the script

491
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:08,080
Speaker 2: and make it better, bring colors to it, bring you know,

492
00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 2: that's why I was talking to you about what Coach

493
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:14,879
Speaker 2: Bolton did because you found stuff in it that made

494
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:18,600
Speaker 2: it what it is. You know, there was enough in

495
00:27:18,600 --> 00:27:21,520
Speaker 2: the script for you to go, Okay, I get that. Now,

496
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 2: let me see what I can do with that, you know.

497
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 2: And that's what a script is. It's not carving something

498
00:27:28,600 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 2: into stone. You know. You have to discover it on

499
00:27:31,880 --> 00:27:35,400
Speaker 2: the day. You have to, you know. And that's why

500
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:37,280
Speaker 2: it takes a village to make a good movie. Because

501
00:27:37,359 --> 00:27:41,159
Speaker 2: Kenny was you know, and it's funny with high school musical.

502
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 2: It's the only script that I've ever written for anything

503
00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:47,600
Speaker 2: where they greenlit the first draft. You know, they got

504
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:51,080
Speaker 2: the first draft, and I didn't hear from them for

505
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:54,879
Speaker 2: like six weeks, which in Hollywood is the kiss of death,

506
00:27:55,720 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 2: you know. Then I get a phone call from the

507
00:27:58,040 --> 00:27:59,800
Speaker 2: producers saying, oh, they're going to send it out to

508
00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:04,119
Speaker 2: send it to directors. It's the first track. No, they like,

509
00:28:04,240 --> 00:28:06,520
Speaker 2: they're going to send it to the first person they

510
00:28:06,720 --> 00:28:09,240
Speaker 2: send it to is Kenny Ortega, who, at the time,

511
00:28:09,320 --> 00:28:10,840
Speaker 2: he'd be the first one to tell you, was sort

512
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:13,960
Speaker 2: of in director's jail. He was doing Gilmore Girls. This

513
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:16,640
Speaker 2: said he had done big feature films at Disney which

514
00:28:16,720 --> 00:28:21,600
Speaker 2: have since become perennials, you know, like Hocus Focus and Newsies.

515
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:25,120
Speaker 2: But he wasn't getting offered features. He got that he says,

516
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:26,680
Speaker 2: I want to put my toe back in the water

517
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:31,240
Speaker 2: of a musical and boom, you know if that planet

518
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:34,840
Speaker 2: had no lined up where you know, so there it was.

519
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, by the way, I love the character. So

520
00:28:39,360 --> 00:28:42,600
Speaker 1: grateful for the character you will for that I got

521
00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:46,360
Speaker 1: to play. But I really like when screenwriters they don't

522
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:47,800
Speaker 1: get I don't know if you see this a lot

523
00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 1: where they try to tell you all of your behavior

524
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:53,520
Speaker 1: and movements and you're supposed to look here and do

525
00:28:53,600 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 1: that and make this gesture, and it's like, let me,

526
00:28:56,720 --> 00:28:58,560
Speaker 1: let me feel my emotions.

527
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:04,680
Speaker 2: And every actor, every director, the first sometimes there's a

528
00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:07,400
Speaker 2: draft that you do for the studio executives so that

529
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:12,520
Speaker 2: they understand what the emotional component of that scene is.

530
00:29:12,840 --> 00:29:16,400
Speaker 2: And they say, Coach Bolton looks at his son like

531
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 2: he's looking at a person he's never met in his life,

532
00:29:19,600 --> 00:29:23,760
Speaker 2: you know, so that they understand this is news to

533
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:27,520
Speaker 2: him that his son sings right now. On the day

534
00:29:27,560 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 2: when you start hiring actors and stuff, first thing you're

535
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:33,520
Speaker 2: going to tell me this. But the first thing the

536
00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 2: actors they take their pen it goes through, cutting out

537
00:29:36,080 --> 00:29:38,880
Speaker 2: all the stage directions, the director couts through, cuts out

538
00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 2: the part where the writer says, and then the helicopter

539
00:29:41,080 --> 00:29:43,800
Speaker 2: shot comes in and goes underneath that. You know, and

540
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:49,120
Speaker 2: you do a reading draft for the studio. But then

541
00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 2: when you start making it, step one, cross that out,

542
00:29:53,800 --> 00:29:56,800
Speaker 2: step two. Hire a good actor and he'll make you

543
00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:01,080
Speaker 2: look good like yeah, and that's the that's the ticket.

544
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:03,600
Speaker 2: Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

545
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:06,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well yeah when they when you have the

546
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: freedom there, then then you could just you know, I

547
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:11,360
Speaker 1: just because I had kids at the time we were shooting,

548
00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:15,160
Speaker 1: and I just always looked at my son Troy, like

549
00:30:15,160 --> 00:30:16,920
Speaker 1: like Mike, like how much do I love my kids?

550
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:18,160
Speaker 1: And like put that much love?

551
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:20,120
Speaker 2: Wait, your son is Troy?

552
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:25,560
Speaker 1: No no, not no no. But a funny story by my

553
00:30:25,720 --> 00:30:27,840
Speaker 1: Uh when the movie came out and started becoming more

554
00:30:27,840 --> 00:30:30,880
Speaker 1: and more popular, by my oldest boy Bailing. He's like, hey,

555
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 1: so is Zach my brother. He was so good, Like.

556
00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:40,080
Speaker 2: Well, that's what I love when I read that. Ashley Uh,

557
00:30:40,560 --> 00:30:43,520
Speaker 2: when her daughter finally watched high school music or something,

558
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:48,680
Speaker 2: she was saying to people. My mother is shar Pay.

559
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 2: My mother's shar Pay. That name came Sharpay, came from

560
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:58,720
Speaker 2: a dog who bit me. I was trying to think

561
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:00,800
Speaker 2: of a name for that character. And there's a still

562
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:06,840
Speaker 2: annoying dog who bit me. I said, s p right, careful,

563
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 2: you get a bit Yeah, exactly.

564
00:31:17,840 --> 00:31:21,960
Speaker 1: I'm curious how the early process eater of Like, so

565
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:26,080
Speaker 1: you're having this conversation with Barrows, Bush and Billboard, yeah,

566
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 1: and about a different project, right, and then you start

567
00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 1: different because you have this hour before the executive comes along.

568
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:36,360
Speaker 1: You start spitballing these ideas and was everybody just interesting?

569
00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:38,800
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean Bill and Barry were great and they

570
00:31:38,840 --> 00:31:42,960
Speaker 2: have you know, their DNA is all over high school musical.

571
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:46,000
Speaker 1: And it's like, I know they're big basketball fans.

572
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:48,920
Speaker 2: Huge basketball fans, but they have good story instincts. We

573
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:52,560
Speaker 2: worked out, you know. And the reason Bill and Barry

574
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:55,400
Speaker 2: and I got along for three movies and maybe another

575
00:31:55,400 --> 00:32:00,320
Speaker 2: one is the best idea wins. You know, we sit

576
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:03,560
Speaker 2: in the room and it's not what are you putting

577
00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:06,720
Speaker 2: down my you know, you just get in there and

578
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:10,880
Speaker 2: let the best, let the ideas emerge. And so that

579
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:14,800
Speaker 2: that came, you know, and as a writer, you grab

580
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:21,360
Speaker 2: what whatever you hear. I heard from a a there

581
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:24,880
Speaker 2: was a Disney executive who wasn't executive on the film,

582
00:32:24,960 --> 00:32:28,280
Speaker 2: but she was a production executive. Her name was Donna Ebbs,

583
00:32:28,400 --> 00:32:30,240
Speaker 2: and I remember being in a meeting where she is

584
00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 2: reading the script for something for a budget or something

585
00:32:33,160 --> 00:32:35,920
Speaker 2: like that. Just oh, I love that. I love that

586
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:40,800
Speaker 2: Sharpey character, you know, because if she could that girl,

587
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 2: if she could play you know, Romeo and Juliet, her

588
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:44,920
Speaker 2: brother be out of a job. And I thought, hey,

589
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:47,200
Speaker 2: that's a good line. There was somebody to have, you know,

590
00:32:47,560 --> 00:32:51,560
Speaker 2: and so you just steal every I heard Woody Allen

591
00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:53,480
Speaker 2: say one time he just keeps a notebook where he

592
00:32:53,640 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 2: just write down you know that somebody says and might

593
00:32:56,880 --> 00:33:01,240
Speaker 2: use it ten years later. You know, when I said

594
00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:04,760
Speaker 2: to Lynn Swan, I said, you know, I got kind

595
00:33:04,760 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 2: of an idea from you, not for high school music,

596
00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:11,040
Speaker 2: for a concept for you know, and you did. I said,

597
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:13,920
Speaker 2: You're not getting any of the royalties, but I'm telling you,

598
00:33:13,920 --> 00:33:16,720
Speaker 2: you know, you just pick pick stuff up. So there

599
00:33:16,760 --> 00:33:19,400
Speaker 2: was a lot of job owning going around, and then

600
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:24,120
Speaker 2: for the next two movies there was a similar, you know,

601
00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:31,240
Speaker 2: similar process where like the second movie sequels are really hard.

602
00:33:31,280 --> 00:33:31,480
Speaker 1: You know.

603
00:33:31,600 --> 00:33:35,520
Speaker 2: And I was talking to John Lassiter about how he

604
00:33:35,560 --> 00:33:38,280
Speaker 2: did Toy Story Too. And I happened to run into

605
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:40,640
Speaker 2: him at a Disney event and I said, okay, here's

606
00:33:40,640 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 2: my one chance one of the masters. I said, how

607
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 2: did you come up with the idea for Toy Story Too?

608
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:53,320
Speaker 2: You're you've got the biggest animation film in history, and

609
00:33:53,320 --> 00:33:56,479
Speaker 2: and he said, I know, I couldn't. I'm working, I'm

610
00:33:56,520 --> 00:33:59,160
Speaker 2: going nowhere for six months. My kids are in my

611
00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:02,600
Speaker 2: office playing in my office, and I have all the

612
00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:05,840
Speaker 2: merchandise from Toy Story, you know. And I kept saying

613
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:09,759
Speaker 2: that don't don't take that out of the box. You

614
00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:11,279
Speaker 2: got to keep it in the box. Don't take this

615
00:34:11,320 --> 00:34:14,800
Speaker 2: one out. And he goes, wait a minute, I'm telling

616
00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:19,200
Speaker 2: kids not to play with toys, my own kids. And

617
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:22,799
Speaker 2: then that's where Toy Story two came from, when they

618
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:26,920
Speaker 2: were in the you know, cellophane boxes. And so I said, huh.

619
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:30,800
Speaker 2: So I'm going, okay, what's the best day of high school?

620
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:35,279
Speaker 2: Last day of school? So let's two. Let's start it

621
00:34:35,680 --> 00:34:38,400
Speaker 2: on the last day of school, you know, So stuff

622
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:40,840
Speaker 2: like that, you know, And then high school three it

623
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 2: kind of they're going to graduate, so you kind of

624
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:47,480
Speaker 2: you kind of you had to go there. But summer,

625
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:51,440
Speaker 2: So where did the summer come from? Okay, I as

626
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:54,040
Speaker 2: a kid, I used to be a caddie. As a kid,

627
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:57,840
Speaker 2: I used to caddy for some rich people. And you know,

628
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 2: and uh so I we saw what the country clubs

629
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:04,640
Speaker 2: were like. You know, I grew up, you know, looking

630
00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:07,640
Speaker 2: through the fence and then saw so I said, wow,

631
00:35:07,640 --> 00:35:10,719
Speaker 2: what if Sharpay's family owned a I could write a

632
00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:14,160
Speaker 2: country club because I saw a club you know where

633
00:35:14,680 --> 00:35:18,160
Speaker 2: the daughter of the owners like ran the place. I go,

634
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:22,400
Speaker 2: we got our girl Sharpai, you know, and so it started.

635
00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:25,759
Speaker 2: It started with that, and we go, how could we

636
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:30,279
Speaker 2: get them all in one place? And so we did.

637
00:35:30,560 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 2: Again the reality of them wanting summer jobs. I mean

638
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:35,880
Speaker 2: when we were kids, we all had summer jobs. Kids

639
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:40,160
Speaker 2: now get screwed because you know, there's like fifty people

640
00:35:40,200 --> 00:35:42,319
Speaker 2: lining up for what today would be a summer job.

641
00:35:42,360 --> 00:35:44,319
Speaker 2: You know, then it was a summer job. And again

642
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:46,480
Speaker 2: I grew up in no rules. You know, I was

643
00:35:46,520 --> 00:35:49,080
Speaker 2: working for newspapers when I was fifteen sixteen. You know,

644
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:52,160
Speaker 2: there were no labor laws, there was no nothing, you know,

645
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 2: and so we just worked and we thought, okay, how

646
00:35:56,239 --> 00:35:58,239
Speaker 2: do we get all the kids together? But there was

647
00:35:58,880 --> 00:36:01,719
Speaker 2: a real thing about it because at that time in

648
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:04,400
Speaker 2: my life, I'm thinking, got two girls here, we got

649
00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 2: to put through college. It's not going to be easy.

650
00:36:07,160 --> 00:36:11,000
Speaker 2: It's really expensive, you know. And so that's what they're

651
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 2: talking about in High School Musical too, you know, college

652
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:16,839
Speaker 2: is going to be We got to get jobs, man,

653
00:36:16,880 --> 00:36:18,880
Speaker 2: we got to do something, you know. And so it

654
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:22,319
Speaker 2: came from reality and then it turned into fun, you know,

655
00:36:22,520 --> 00:36:24,800
Speaker 2: to just and I knew how to screw around to

656
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:26,920
Speaker 2: the country club. You go out at night and you

657
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:28,560
Speaker 2: jump in the pool and all the stuff to get

658
00:36:28,600 --> 00:36:32,440
Speaker 2: you in trouble. And that's what you want. That's what

659
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:36,000
Speaker 2: you want in a movie. And it tests and like

660
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:40,040
Speaker 2: in high school too, again, it tests your friends because

661
00:36:40,239 --> 00:36:45,160
Speaker 2: Troy's the star, you know, in fictional world, he's being recruited,

662
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:49,360
Speaker 2: you know. And I'm sure I don't talk to the kids,

663
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:51,080
Speaker 2: the actors, you know, I don't run into them on

664
00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 2: a regular basis, you know. But I'm sure after High

665
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:56,480
Speaker 2: School Musical went through the roof, there's Zach all of

666
00:36:56,520 --> 00:36:59,440
Speaker 2: a sudden, you know, I saw him there in London.

667
00:37:00,080 --> 00:37:02,080
Speaker 2: Our first trip, we're on a little bus going to

668
00:37:02,120 --> 00:37:04,520
Speaker 2: a little screening. On the second trip, we're at the

669
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:07,600
Speaker 2: Soho Hotel and there's four hundred girls pitching tents outside

670
00:37:07,640 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 2: our hotel hoping to get a glimpse of Zach.

671
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:11,040
Speaker 1: You know.

672
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:13,040
Speaker 2: So, what's it like, all of a sudden he's being

673
00:37:13,040 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 2: offered million dollar movie and there another kid that was

674
00:37:15,719 --> 00:37:18,560
Speaker 2: in there. What's happening there? Was just like in high school,

675
00:37:18,600 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 2: if you're the star athlete, some of your best friends

676
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:24,280
Speaker 2: aren't the star athlete, and so how do you manage

677
00:37:24,320 --> 00:37:27,440
Speaker 2: that territory? And so we had some meat on the

678
00:37:27,480 --> 00:37:28,399
Speaker 2: bone there to.

679
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:32,480
Speaker 1: Play with you again, authenticity, like this is the real

680
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:33,200
Speaker 1: things to happen.

681
00:37:33,360 --> 00:37:38,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, And because you can't force the joke. Everybody who

682
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:42,719
Speaker 2: watches anything immediately knows when the joke is forced, you know,

683
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:45,440
Speaker 2: and you're saying, oh, they're trying to be funny, or

684
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:48,120
Speaker 2: here's an old guy trying to make young people funny,

685
00:37:48,200 --> 00:37:49,040
Speaker 2: you know, and it.

686
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 1: Never works so funny.

687
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:55,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So you just have to take something that's real,

688
00:37:55,920 --> 00:37:58,000
Speaker 2: throw the dice and take your chances.

689
00:37:58,200 --> 00:38:02,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. People love number two, they love it. And

690
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:05,480
Speaker 1: I've always found that to be interesting in trying to

691
00:38:05,520 --> 00:38:08,360
Speaker 1: explore why they love it. I think just the idea

692
00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:10,719
Speaker 1: of you've established the school and now the kids get

693
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: to leave, and I think get to go stay on

694
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:15,680
Speaker 1: the road with other parents. Of this like magical Summer

695
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:17,520
Speaker 1: country Club pretty much.

696
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:20,240
Speaker 2: Did you ever see the South Park High School Musical episode?

697
00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it.

698
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:26,359
Speaker 2: Oh, my god, You've got to see it. You're in it. Well,

699
00:38:26,360 --> 00:38:28,520
Speaker 2: they in the South Park High School Musical. They did

700
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:32,360
Speaker 2: a whole thing where the dad is furious that his

701
00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:34,840
Speaker 2: son doesn't want to try out for the school musical.

702
00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:39,239
Speaker 2: My dad is a coach with the Whistle Way and

703
00:38:39,239 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 2: he says, I don't want to do what you know,

704
00:38:41,160 --> 00:38:42,839
Speaker 2: and it plays it a whole different. You know, they

705
00:38:42,840 --> 00:38:45,800
Speaker 2: do a South Park version of it, but it's hysteric.

706
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:46,719
Speaker 1: Oh that's great.

707
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:48,719
Speaker 2: There, you got to see it.

708
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:49,319
Speaker 1: It's so good.

709
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 2: It's very funny.

710
00:38:50,600 --> 00:38:51,000
Speaker 1: Yeah.

711
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:53,440
Speaker 2: Well, you know what movie played in the White House

712
00:38:53,960 --> 00:38:57,480
Speaker 2: on the night of the inauguration Obama's two thousand and

713
00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:02,080
Speaker 2: eight inauguration. It was High School Musical three. Because Michelle

714
00:39:02,120 --> 00:39:04,800
Speaker 2: wanted something that the girls could watch in their friends,

715
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 2: but they were going to all the inaugural balls, and

716
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:11,040
Speaker 2: so she calls her office calls Disney and said, could

717
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:14,399
Speaker 2: we have a copy of High School Musical three? They go, yeah,

718
00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:16,799
Speaker 2: maybe so yeah, and so that played in the White

719
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:20,440
Speaker 2: House the night of Obama, and she went to the

720
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:25,080
Speaker 2: play in Chicago, took her Michelle took her girls, Sasha

721
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:28,920
Speaker 2: and Wellah to the play. It got in line, went

722
00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:32,560
Speaker 2: to the show in Chicago. They were big. They're big fans,

723
00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:33,400
Speaker 2: so they would know you.

724
00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:40,640
Speaker 1: Well, that's wild. Yeah, those kind of situations still totally

725
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:43,359
Speaker 1: shocked me. Yeah, I don't know if you heard all

726
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:46,040
Speaker 1: the Do you know about all the movie stars that

727
00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:50,840
Speaker 1: wanted my part for High Schools three? No, Bill won't

728
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:53,720
Speaker 1: tell me. Bill Borden, he said, oh, you wouldn't believe

729
00:39:53,760 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: who's breached out and said, hey, I want my kids

730
00:39:56,560 --> 00:39:57,160
Speaker 1: love this movie.

731
00:39:57,200 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 2: I want to be Oh, I have some idea then yeah,

732
00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:05,600
Speaker 2: but oh yeah, I mean that was again. You can't

733
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 2: you can't fake kids. You can't. You know, everybody says, oh,

734
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:12,920
Speaker 2: the Disney marketing machine, d da da, da da da.

735
00:40:13,960 --> 00:40:17,640
Speaker 2: They didn't. When High School Musical premiere, nobody had any

736
00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 2: idea on the first It was just that era. It

737
00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 2: was the first hint of texting was happening in two

738
00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:31,839
Speaker 2: thousand and six, right, and the big carriers actually contact.

739
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:35,680
Speaker 2: We're trying to figure out what happened that night because

740
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:40,480
Speaker 2: our texting thing went like insane. People. There was like

741
00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 2: millions of which has never happened. What is what's happening?

742
00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:47,040
Speaker 2: Was there a nuclear holocaust? And it was a bunch

743
00:40:47,120 --> 00:40:51,400
Speaker 2: of kids going turn on Disney channels acts cute, you know,

744
00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 2: and so it was they weren't. You can't make them

745
00:40:56,160 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 2: like something. You can't, you know, you just put it

746
00:40:58,120 --> 00:41:01,360
Speaker 2: out there. They either go for it or they don't.

747
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:04,240
Speaker 2: But the big win for Disney was they got Boys,

748
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:09,680
Speaker 2: And the biggest win was after a full week of

749
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:16,000
Speaker 2: it playing, they won the night of all cable and

750
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 2: all broadcast networks. In women eighteen to forty nine, we're

751
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:26,920
Speaker 2: watching it. And then in college, like my daughter went

752
00:41:26,960 --> 00:41:30,160
Speaker 2: to Barnard, Gabrielle went to Barnard and Columbia and I

753
00:41:30,200 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 2: went back there, you know, moving or in one time,

754
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:37,560
Speaker 2: and they were having once a month they had high

755
00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:41,200
Speaker 2: school musical nights in the dorms where everybody'd come in

756
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:44,480
Speaker 2: as a character, and I'm going, God, damn, this is

757
00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:48,600
Speaker 2: crazy stuff, you know, but it sort of embraced it

758
00:41:48,640 --> 00:41:52,719
Speaker 2: and then another generation, you know, took it on. I

759
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:57,120
Speaker 2: mean it's still like the school version of it because

760
00:41:57,160 --> 00:41:59,560
Speaker 2: it doesn't have a lot of bad language like I do,

761
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:05,759
Speaker 2: holding myself back, but it plays. Schools are constantly doing it,

762
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:11,479
Speaker 2: and so it's found another generation out there.

763
00:42:11,640 --> 00:42:14,280
Speaker 1: Yeah. I hear a lot of people say, I'm raising

764
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:17,040
Speaker 1: my kids right. They're watching the movie like I did.

765
00:42:17,600 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 2: It's it's amazing, and you know the part that where

766
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:24,160
Speaker 2: I got, they still get teared up when I get

767
00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:29,080
Speaker 2: a letter. I remember getting a letter from a drama

768
00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 2: teacher at a school in Pennsylvania that said when they

769
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:36,640
Speaker 2: would do their school musical, and this is two thousand

770
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:41,160
Speaker 2: and six, they'd get sixty kids to sign up, you know,

771
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:44,600
Speaker 2: for tryouts and this and that. After high school musicale

772
00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 2: when they did their next musical that spring, they got

773
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:55,120
Speaker 2: nine hundred kids to sign up, and like boys felt

774
00:42:55,160 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 2: it was okay to go out because again this is

775
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:01,479
Speaker 2: two thousand and six, you know, there was no boy.

776
00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:04,000
Speaker 2: Then they go in musical theater. It's all gay. You're

777
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:06,360
Speaker 2: gay if you want to be in a high school musical,

778
00:43:06,440 --> 00:43:10,360
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, then that changed. High school musical changed

779
00:43:10,400 --> 00:43:13,000
Speaker 2: that for a lot of kids. I got so many

780
00:43:13,840 --> 00:43:18,439
Speaker 2: letters from kids who said, oh, you saved my life.

781
00:43:18,440 --> 00:43:20,239
Speaker 2: You know, you guys saved my life. I got because

782
00:43:20,280 --> 00:43:22,280
Speaker 2: I love doing this and I felt like I should

783
00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:25,640
Speaker 2: keep it a secret, and you know, and so it

784
00:43:25,640 --> 00:43:28,759
Speaker 2: it opened the door for a lot of kids to

785
00:43:28,840 --> 00:43:33,000
Speaker 2: be and just that concept of getting out of your

786
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:35,560
Speaker 2: little because well, you know, high school and the clicks

787
00:43:35,560 --> 00:43:38,960
Speaker 2: and you know, look out brilliantly. You know, brilliantly Tina

788
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:42,520
Speaker 2: Fey did it in Mean Girls, and you know that's

789
00:43:42,520 --> 00:43:44,560
Speaker 2: a big component of high school. You know, all the

790
00:43:44,600 --> 00:43:46,680
Speaker 2: clicks and this and that. But be able to step

791
00:43:46,719 --> 00:43:50,440
Speaker 2: out of that and then to maybe, you know, it

792
00:43:50,520 --> 00:43:52,839
Speaker 2: sounds cornball, but the letters that I've gotten from people

793
00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 2: over the years made me make a different career choice.

794
00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:58,680
Speaker 2: When I was twenty was twenty five, having seen high school,

795
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 2: I wasn't scared to get out of my lane and

796
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:05,279
Speaker 2: try something else. Yeah, and so that's cool that that

797
00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:06,719
Speaker 2: made us feel good.

798
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:09,600
Speaker 1: Yeah. I get a lot of probably the most, I

799
00:44:09,640 --> 00:44:12,399
Speaker 1: get a lot of really fun letters like that too,

800
00:44:12,440 --> 00:44:14,600
Speaker 1: but probably the best one of saying some people say

801
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:18,080
Speaker 1: like I didn't have a dad, yeah, and I just

802
00:44:18,120 --> 00:44:20,440
Speaker 1: like you you're you're my dad, And I listened to

803
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:22,319
Speaker 1: what you said. I'm like, oh my gosh, man make

804
00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:24,920
Speaker 1: me so emotional by like wow, yeah, like they didn't

805
00:44:25,040 --> 00:44:27,239
Speaker 1: like my or my dad wasn't present, or you never

806
00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:29,719
Speaker 1: talked me. You didn't care what I what I did.

807
00:44:29,800 --> 00:44:32,680
Speaker 2: And that's the bonus, you know, because for all the

808
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:35,120
Speaker 2: crap you take in the entertainment business, because the entertainment

809
00:44:35,120 --> 00:44:36,880
Speaker 2: business is, you know, as an actor, I know, as

810
00:44:36,920 --> 00:44:39,560
Speaker 2: a writer, anybody who works in it knows ninety percent

811
00:44:39,600 --> 00:44:42,680
Speaker 2: of what you hear is no, you know, no, whatever

812
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:44,880
Speaker 2: you want me, your idea, no, no, no, you know.

813
00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:48,960
Speaker 2: And then when something works and that it actually has

814
00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:54,239
Speaker 2: some ripple effect in a positive way, that's just such

815
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:56,799
Speaker 2: a bonus, you know, because you can't the people who

816
00:44:56,920 --> 00:44:59,959
Speaker 2: plan for that and the people that try and create show,

817
00:45:00,280 --> 00:45:03,840
Speaker 2: Oh we're going to do the positive influence musical, you know,

818
00:45:04,440 --> 00:45:07,400
Speaker 2: it falls flat, like because kids smell a rat from

819
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:07,799
Speaker 2: a mile.

820
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:11,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't tell me something positive.

821
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 2: Exactly, no way, exactly exactly.

822
00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:18,399
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was always kind of intrigued with how well

823
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:22,719
Speaker 1: the message seemed to land because the songs and the

824
00:45:22,760 --> 00:45:26,319
Speaker 1: points they're making are beautiful and they're they're so good

825
00:45:26,360 --> 00:45:29,719
Speaker 1: and they're so meaningful, but it almost is like, yeah,

826
00:45:29,719 --> 00:45:32,320
Speaker 1: they're not presented in an overly serious way. They're presenting

827
00:45:32,360 --> 00:45:34,480
Speaker 1: really fun kind.

828
00:45:34,280 --> 00:45:40,399
Speaker 2: Of musical comedy. But when when you do Breaking Free,

829
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:44,920
Speaker 2: if you're a girl or a boy or anything combination thereof,

830
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:50,240
Speaker 2: don't you want somebody in your life who will lift

831
00:45:50,280 --> 00:45:53,560
Speaker 2: you up and pull you, pull the best part of

832
00:45:53,600 --> 00:45:58,480
Speaker 2: you out into the open. I mean that's you know,

833
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:02,600
Speaker 2: as you the path through life, you know, that's the

834
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:04,879
Speaker 2: biggest win you can have in your life, whether it's

835
00:46:04,920 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 2: a spouse and family and who you can't be the

836
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:13,200
Speaker 2: best version of yourself without them in your life. Well,

837
00:46:13,239 --> 00:46:16,279
Speaker 2: if you can do that in a story, you know,

838
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 2: and in Breaking Free in the song, when you see

839
00:46:21,800 --> 00:46:26,640
Speaker 2: Troy pull Gabriella into the into her spotlight, you know,

840
00:46:27,040 --> 00:46:29,239
Speaker 2: once that lab coat comes off, there's no hold in

841
00:46:29,239 --> 00:46:34,120
Speaker 2: her back. But it's like you want that this subliminal message.

842
00:46:34,360 --> 00:46:38,839
Speaker 2: You know, it's never the scene's never about what it's

843
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:42,040
Speaker 2: about the scenes. You know, if you have two people,

844
00:46:43,400 --> 00:46:48,120
Speaker 2: if you have Gabriella dumping chili fries on sharpey, it's

845
00:46:48,600 --> 00:46:51,440
Speaker 2: what is that scene about. It's not about, oh, you've

846
00:46:51,480 --> 00:46:55,360
Speaker 2: made a mess of my blouse. It's about uh oh,

847
00:46:55,440 --> 00:47:00,319
Speaker 2: my supremacy at the school is now in jeopardy. That's

848
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:04,200
Speaker 2: what it's about. Yeah, you know. And there's a scene

849
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:05,879
Speaker 2: that gets quoted back to me a lot when they're

850
00:47:05,880 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 2: on the rooftop and and Troy is saying too and

851
00:47:09,560 --> 00:47:11,760
Speaker 2: she's saying, wow, it must you know, you're like everybody

852
00:47:11,840 --> 00:47:15,200
Speaker 2: in school's you know, bowing and scraping to you. And

853
00:47:15,520 --> 00:47:17,919
Speaker 2: he says, yeah, you know, but sometimes I don't want

854
00:47:17,920 --> 00:47:21,000
Speaker 2: to be the basketball boy. I just want to be

855
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 2: a guy. Yeah, you know, And that is the Scene's

856
00:47:25,920 --> 00:47:30,600
Speaker 2: not you know, about anything other than oh, there's layers

857
00:47:30,640 --> 00:47:34,560
Speaker 2: to ourselves that we know in our private life.

858
00:47:34,680 --> 00:47:34,880
Speaker 1: You know.

859
00:47:35,320 --> 00:47:38,279
Speaker 2: He goes, anybody seen that layer, you know, other than

860
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:41,640
Speaker 2: me and my private moments. And if you meet someone

861
00:47:42,239 --> 00:47:46,560
Speaker 2: who will unleash that layer, hold on to them.

862
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:51,600
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah yeah, real real friend, real true friend.

863
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:54,319
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's why we go to shows, you know. It's

864
00:47:54,320 --> 00:47:57,000
Speaker 2: why people went in Shakespeare's time, you know, would go

865
00:47:57,239 --> 00:48:00,759
Speaker 2: because they got to see the king being made fun of,

866
00:48:01,200 --> 00:48:03,920
Speaker 2: and you know, and they said the royalty, you know,

867
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:06,560
Speaker 2: because they're all getting squished down to the ground, you know,

868
00:48:06,880 --> 00:48:08,840
Speaker 2: and they get to see those people made fun of

869
00:48:09,080 --> 00:48:12,200
Speaker 2: just like that they have the same foibles as I do,

870
00:48:12,360 --> 00:48:15,239
Speaker 2: you know. And so that's why we go to we

871
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:18,520
Speaker 2: go to shows. You get to test things out. Would

872
00:48:18,560 --> 00:48:22,279
Speaker 2: I have the right stuff under pressure? Well, you see

873
00:48:22,320 --> 00:48:24,880
Speaker 2: it in the movie, and we love to see it tested.

874
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 2: Most people, most people fear the rejection, and that's why

875
00:48:30,800 --> 00:48:34,040
Speaker 2: they don't make it in show business because you're kind

876
00:48:34,040 --> 00:48:36,600
Speaker 2: of here, no ninety five percent of the time. Yeah,

877
00:48:36,640 --> 00:48:39,240
Speaker 2: you know what, I know. I've heard you know, five

878
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:44,000
Speaker 2: thousand no's and twenty yeses, you know. But it's if

879
00:48:44,040 --> 00:48:46,960
Speaker 2: you can take that and you don't make it the

880
00:48:47,040 --> 00:48:51,400
Speaker 2: definition of your self worth, then you might get somewhere.

881
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:53,719
Speaker 2: And that's what high school is. When you're in high school,

882
00:48:53,760 --> 00:48:57,200
Speaker 2: you're a very vulnerable age, you know. And if somebody

883
00:48:57,239 --> 00:49:01,840
Speaker 2: says to you, you know, oh you know, no, I

884
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:04,480
Speaker 2: won't go to the prom with you, you go, oh,

885
00:49:04,480 --> 00:49:05,400
Speaker 2: what's wrong with me?

886
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:05,839
Speaker 1: You know?

887
00:49:06,239 --> 00:49:09,520
Speaker 2: Now that girl might be Katie Perry who then became

888
00:49:09,560 --> 00:49:12,720
Speaker 2: a big star and went back to her high school

889
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:14,840
Speaker 2: and said, you know, all you people said I was

890
00:49:15,440 --> 00:49:19,560
Speaker 2: nobody hi, you know. And so some people use it

891
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 2: as a you know, an engine to do somewhere else,

892
00:49:22,600 --> 00:49:25,480
Speaker 2: you know, something else. But that's what high school is.

893
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:30,279
Speaker 2: A very famous casting director once said to me, you know,

894
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:32,960
Speaker 2: when she's doing readings, and she discovered a lot of

895
00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:37,440
Speaker 2: great people as you discovered, you know, Kevin Costner, Kathleen Turner,

896
00:49:37,920 --> 00:49:41,560
Speaker 2: she cast a lot of great movies, Wallace Asita. And

897
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:44,680
Speaker 2: she said, when I get an actor in there in

898
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:49,960
Speaker 2: a room and they're playing, they're acting instead of just

899
00:49:50,040 --> 00:49:51,959
Speaker 2: reading the line, so I can see who's in there,

900
00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:55,600
Speaker 2: she said, I'll interrupt them and say, hey, tell me

901
00:49:55,600 --> 00:49:58,560
Speaker 2: about your life in high school. And they start typing,

902
00:49:58,640 --> 00:50:00,840
Speaker 2: and that waterworks come out out and then they go

903
00:50:00,960 --> 00:50:03,319
Speaker 2: out and it says, okay, now I get you, Now

904
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:06,279
Speaker 2: I get you, and I see the real person in there. Yeah. Yeah,

905
00:50:06,560 --> 00:50:09,200
Speaker 2: So I think that's why high school comes back over

906
00:50:09,280 --> 00:50:11,960
Speaker 2: and over and over, and you know a lot of movies.

907
00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:14,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we got some scars.

908
00:50:14,719 --> 00:50:18,040
Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, if you've lived a life, you've got scars.

909
00:50:18,440 --> 00:50:22,000
Speaker 2: And sometimes sometimes people never get past the scars of

910
00:50:22,120 --> 00:50:25,680
Speaker 2: high school, you know, but if you if you do,

911
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:28,759
Speaker 2: and then you can reflect on it and sometimes we

912
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:31,839
Speaker 2: see it in good you know, and we can laugh off.

913
00:50:32,160 --> 00:50:35,560
Speaker 2: And I love this show English Teacher that's on Hulu

914
00:50:35,640 --> 00:50:38,720
Speaker 2: right now, where you know, you see the the kids

915
00:50:38,719 --> 00:50:41,800
Speaker 2: there because I get a window into that generation of

916
00:50:41,880 --> 00:50:44,319
Speaker 2: high school because that's pretty funny.

917
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:47,359
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, I've heard that expression that when you

918
00:50:47,400 --> 00:50:50,120
Speaker 1: go when you watch a movie, you watch yourself, like

919
00:50:50,160 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 1: you always put yourself as the lead. And I think like,

920
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:55,640
Speaker 1: as a screenwriter a lot of times, I mean, obviously

921
00:50:55,680 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 1: you've put so much personal experience in your character. Right,

922
00:50:59,360 --> 00:51:02,000
Speaker 1: do you see your elf is one of one or

923
00:51:02,040 --> 00:51:02,840
Speaker 1: more of those characters.

924
00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:07,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were certainly parts of me in a bunch

925
00:51:07,160 --> 00:51:11,120
Speaker 2: of those characters, you know, in this thing. Because in again,

926
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:17,120
Speaker 2: in uh high school, I was a jock. But then

927
00:51:17,160 --> 00:51:20,759
Speaker 2: I played music. I wanted to go see music, you know,

928
00:51:21,239 --> 00:51:24,800
Speaker 2: and there were some people that I liked some of

929
00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:27,000
Speaker 2: the music that I like. My friends said, oh, you're

930
00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:30,279
Speaker 2: such a girly boy. You like Joni Mitchell, you like

931
00:51:30,520 --> 00:51:32,400
Speaker 2: you know this and that. I kind of like that, so,

932
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:36,880
Speaker 2: you know, and so you there was that push me

933
00:51:36,960 --> 00:51:39,359
Speaker 2: pull you about it. I liked theater. I like, I

934
00:51:39,360 --> 00:51:41,360
Speaker 2: thought that was God. I'd like to get up on

935
00:51:41,440 --> 00:51:45,439
Speaker 2: stage and try that, you know, But I didn't have

936
00:51:45,600 --> 00:51:48,759
Speaker 2: the I said fit. You know, all my teammates would

937
00:51:48,760 --> 00:51:52,080
Speaker 2: think I was you know, I'd lost my mind or

938
00:51:52,120 --> 00:51:54,640
Speaker 2: something like that, and so stuff like that would show

939
00:51:54,719 --> 00:51:59,759
Speaker 2: up in different parts of characters, you know, would show

940
00:51:59,840 --> 00:52:03,560
Speaker 2: up in the part of Gabriella, who just wanted to

941
00:52:03,560 --> 00:52:05,719
Speaker 2: do a reset in high school, you know, she was

942
00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:07,799
Speaker 2: I was like the brainiac little girl, and you know,

943
00:52:08,480 --> 00:52:11,600
Speaker 2: I want to try out being somebody else, you know,

944
00:52:12,320 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 2: And I think I think that's why we love rock

945
00:52:16,560 --> 00:52:20,280
Speaker 2: stars and things like that, because they go they're playing

946
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:23,439
Speaker 2: out the fantasy, you know, then it goes to full

947
00:52:23,520 --> 00:52:25,960
Speaker 2: arc to where it becomes you know, camp, you know,

948
00:52:26,200 --> 00:52:29,400
Speaker 2: but you see somebody, we go see a great performance,

949
00:52:29,680 --> 00:52:32,520
Speaker 2: you know, and you go, God, do I have the

950
00:52:32,560 --> 00:52:34,799
Speaker 2: guts of Billie Eilish to get up in front of

951
00:52:34,840 --> 00:52:39,000
Speaker 2: eighteen thousand people in Madison Square Garden by myself, whether

952
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:42,440
Speaker 2: my brother on a piano and talk about my crush,

953
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:44,799
Speaker 2: you know, and not have people laugh at me and

954
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:47,800
Speaker 2: think I'm an idiot, but pay two hundred and fifty

955
00:52:47,800 --> 00:52:50,680
Speaker 2: dollars to listen to me, you know, And those that's

956
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:53,080
Speaker 2: what we gravitate to those people because we want to

957
00:52:53,280 --> 00:52:57,760
Speaker 2: discover those parts. And there's part of you in every character,

958
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:02,080
Speaker 2: you know, and there's part of Sharpay in me. I

959
00:53:02,239 --> 00:53:06,120
Speaker 2: wish I could, you know, just have that agency to

960
00:53:06,200 --> 00:53:08,960
Speaker 2: tell everybody, go do this, go do that, go do this,

961
00:53:09,160 --> 00:53:14,560
Speaker 2: you know, And that's the that's the fun of writing,

962
00:53:14,719 --> 00:53:16,880
Speaker 2: you know. The pain, the pain in the part is

963
00:53:16,920 --> 00:53:21,440
Speaker 2: the writing. But when you do have the actual fun

964
00:53:21,680 --> 00:53:24,279
Speaker 2: is when you do discover something. I didn't know that

965
00:53:24,400 --> 00:53:30,560
Speaker 2: about myself until I wrote that. And that's that's the only. Yeah,

966
00:53:30,600 --> 00:53:33,799
Speaker 2: if you if you're lucky enough, if lightning strikes, and

967
00:53:33,800 --> 00:53:36,479
Speaker 2: you're lucky enough to make a living doing it, you're

968
00:53:36,640 --> 00:53:39,279
Speaker 2: a lucky cat, you know, because you know, it's like

969
00:53:39,320 --> 00:53:41,799
Speaker 2: with acting, how many actors are out there, how many

970
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:45,600
Speaker 2: can make a living doing it? Well, if but that

971
00:53:45,719 --> 00:53:51,040
Speaker 2: moment of discovery, you know, the great choreographer Agnes Demil

972
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:55,399
Speaker 2: once said, and she was talking about ballet dancers, there's

973
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:58,680
Speaker 2: being an artist of an again, there's no satisfaction of

974
00:53:58,719 --> 00:54:02,799
Speaker 2: any kind what soever. Anytime. You're just a little more

975
00:54:02,800 --> 00:54:07,239
Speaker 2: alive than the rest. And that's what that's what you

976
00:54:07,360 --> 00:54:09,920
Speaker 2: get for all the no's and people you turn in

977
00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:12,160
Speaker 2: a script and say, well that sucks. What else you got,

978
00:54:12,200 --> 00:54:14,920
Speaker 2: you know, or something like that, Oh, bart, try it,

979
00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:18,399
Speaker 2: just give me anything but that, you know. And yeah,

980
00:54:18,440 --> 00:54:21,880
Speaker 2: but when you have that moment of elation, You have

981
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:25,000
Speaker 2: a moment of elation that you can't explain to anybody,

982
00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:28,160
Speaker 2: and that almost no one gets to feel. So it's cool.

983
00:54:28,560 --> 00:54:34,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. That's amazing. Well it's a I

984
00:54:34,640 --> 00:54:38,040
Speaker 1: just you know, I almost feel like this podcast is

985
00:54:38,080 --> 00:54:40,560
Speaker 1: turning into deconstructing the mystery of like why was this

986
00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:43,879
Speaker 1: movie so successful? You know? And then you hear these

987
00:54:43,880 --> 00:54:46,040
Speaker 1: stories like the all the ones you brought, like calling back,

988
00:54:46,120 --> 00:54:48,960
Speaker 1: like pulling stuff from Janis Joplin. You're pulling things from

989
00:54:49,040 --> 00:54:52,160
Speaker 1: so much out of you and so many real, honest,

990
00:54:52,840 --> 00:54:56,160
Speaker 1: authentic moments, and it's like, well, these are the pieces,

991
00:54:56,239 --> 00:54:58,480
Speaker 1: these are the pieces that have made it so special,

992
00:54:58,480 --> 00:55:01,120
Speaker 1: and it's yeah, yeah, okay, yeah it was lightning in

993
00:55:01,160 --> 00:55:04,120
Speaker 1: a bottle bat. When you start having these like longer

994
00:55:04,120 --> 00:55:07,400
Speaker 1: conversations about it, it's like, well, these are pieces of

995
00:55:07,880 --> 00:55:09,680
Speaker 1: why it's you.

996
00:55:09,920 --> 00:55:12,919
Speaker 2: You can deconstruct, you know. Again, as Steve's Jobs said,

997
00:55:12,960 --> 00:55:14,440
Speaker 2: you can see it in the rear view mirror. You

998
00:55:14,440 --> 00:55:17,399
Speaker 2: can connect the dots in the rear view mirror and say, oh,

999
00:55:17,440 --> 00:55:19,640
Speaker 2: that's where that came from. You know, when I was

1000
00:55:19,640 --> 00:55:23,319
Speaker 2: writing high school musical, I wasn't thinking about Linn Swan

1001
00:55:23,440 --> 00:55:24,920
Speaker 2: or that moment, and I'm saying I want to be

1002
00:55:24,920 --> 00:55:27,480
Speaker 2: a ballet. But then when I start thinking about it afterwards,

1003
00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:29,640
Speaker 2: I go, oh, that sort of.

1004
00:55:29,760 --> 00:55:32,120
Speaker 1: Happened, you know, they felt it in here.

1005
00:55:32,200 --> 00:55:35,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you have the you know, the emotion comes

1006
00:55:35,520 --> 00:55:40,480
Speaker 2: from somewhere, you know, and then you discover it. And

1007
00:55:40,520 --> 00:55:44,840
Speaker 2: it's no different than I Writing is like being in

1008
00:55:44,880 --> 00:55:48,720
Speaker 2: a relationship. You know, say you get in an argument

1009
00:55:48,760 --> 00:55:53,239
Speaker 2: with your significant other and you go, what the hell

1010
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:55,680
Speaker 2: why did we get in an argument about that? And

1011
00:55:55,719 --> 00:55:58,440
Speaker 2: you know, three weeks later, you're driving in a car

1012
00:55:58,840 --> 00:56:03,520
Speaker 2: and you're going, yeah, I remember that afternoon when she

1013
00:56:03,719 --> 00:56:06,320
Speaker 2: was talking to her old boyfriend and they seem so connected.

1014
00:56:07,360 --> 00:56:10,399
Speaker 2: That was like three months ago, you know, and you go, oh,

1015
00:56:10,400 --> 00:56:12,680
Speaker 2: that's where that came from. It didn't have anything to

1016
00:56:12,719 --> 00:56:16,120
Speaker 2: do with the pasta being cold, you know. Yeah, so

1017
00:56:16,320 --> 00:56:19,799
Speaker 2: and that's what that's what writing is. It's like kind

1018
00:56:19,840 --> 00:56:24,399
Speaker 2: of sort of panning for gold and seeing what occasionally

1019
00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:27,799
Speaker 2: might might pop up there and those characters, you know,

1020
00:56:28,280 --> 00:56:30,880
Speaker 2: I don't I don't know that there there's a lot

1021
00:56:30,880 --> 00:56:32,600
Speaker 2: of people that want to know what happened to them

1022
00:56:32,640 --> 00:56:33,399
Speaker 2: twenty years later.

1023
00:56:33,600 --> 00:56:35,640
Speaker 1: Oh a lot of people asking that I hear that

1024
00:56:35,719 --> 00:56:36,200
Speaker 1: every day.

1025
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:38,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll get my head handed to me if I

1026
00:56:38,239 --> 00:56:39,440
Speaker 2: say anything, but stay tuned.

1027
00:56:39,520 --> 00:56:52,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Peter, you you wrote these characters that has

1028
00:56:52,480 --> 00:56:57,759
Speaker 1: given so people so much healing and peace and allowance

1029
00:56:57,880 --> 00:57:01,480
Speaker 1: or or the confidence to be themselves or who they are,

1030
00:57:01,960 --> 00:57:06,320
Speaker 1: or you know, explore things that maybe they were raised

1031
00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:09,799
Speaker 1: to be of a lot of my kids now are

1032
00:57:10,200 --> 00:57:13,680
Speaker 1: picking careers and I see their friends. A lot of

1033
00:57:13,719 --> 00:57:15,440
Speaker 1: the friends are doing just what their dad does. Right,

1034
00:57:16,200 --> 00:57:18,000
Speaker 1: my boy, I'm my boys graduate right now, and all

1035
00:57:18,200 --> 00:57:20,080
Speaker 1: those friends are like, well my dad does this, I'm

1036
00:57:20,080 --> 00:57:24,400
Speaker 1: gonna do this. And there is this thing you've created

1037
00:57:24,480 --> 00:57:27,720
Speaker 1: in this the culture of high school musical where it's

1038
00:57:27,720 --> 00:57:30,880
Speaker 1: like explore, go, go explore. It's okay, it's okay to

1039
00:57:30,960 --> 00:57:34,960
Speaker 1: do something else. And now I see parents seem to

1040
00:57:35,000 --> 00:57:37,360
Speaker 1: be affected by this. And when I raise my kids,

1041
00:57:37,680 --> 00:57:39,160
Speaker 1: I want them to know, like, you don't have to

1042
00:57:39,160 --> 00:57:41,640
Speaker 1: do what I do. You could go do look inside

1043
00:57:41,720 --> 00:57:44,800
Speaker 1: and go find your own passion. And it's it must

1044
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:46,880
Speaker 1: be amazing to write a movie like this. It's like

1045
00:57:46,920 --> 00:57:49,360
Speaker 1: having a cultural influence on a next generation.

1046
00:57:49,480 --> 00:57:51,800
Speaker 2: I've done a lot of speaking at schools and stuff

1047
00:57:51,840 --> 00:57:56,240
Speaker 2: like that. And when you ask kids who's your favorite character,

1048
00:57:56,960 --> 00:58:01,040
Speaker 2: about eighty percent of the time they say Sharp And

1049
00:58:01,200 --> 00:58:05,120
Speaker 2: it's and the reason they say that, in my humble opinion,

1050
00:58:05,560 --> 00:58:09,680
Speaker 2: is not because they want to be Sharpey. It's because

1051
00:58:09,720 --> 00:58:12,600
Speaker 2: they want to have agency in life, you know. And

1052
00:58:12,640 --> 00:58:16,880
Speaker 2: so that's what they really mean when they say that.

1053
00:58:17,080 --> 00:58:19,120
Speaker 2: You know, they know they don't want to be, you know,

1054
00:58:19,240 --> 00:58:23,520
Speaker 2: dressed in pink, driving a pink Mustang, you know, flitting around,

1055
00:58:23,560 --> 00:58:25,840
Speaker 2: you know, but they do want to have agency that

1056
00:58:25,880 --> 00:58:29,760
Speaker 2: they feel empowered to be themselves. And so that you

1057
00:58:29,840 --> 00:58:34,280
Speaker 2: see that beneath the hood, you know, that's what they mean,

1058
00:58:34,720 --> 00:58:38,240
Speaker 2: you know. And because it's hard to say I want

1059
00:58:38,240 --> 00:58:41,480
Speaker 2: to be you know, it's like when you say, what

1060
00:58:41,520 --> 00:58:43,400
Speaker 2: do you want to do? I want to be Lebron James.

1061
00:58:43,760 --> 00:58:46,400
Speaker 2: You know, well, you're five foot five, so that may

1062
00:58:46,440 --> 00:58:49,160
Speaker 2: not happen, you know, just have a backup plan.

1063
00:58:49,440 --> 00:58:49,640
Speaker 1: You know.

1064
00:58:50,280 --> 00:58:55,240
Speaker 2: And but what's underneath, you know, Lebron James is somebody

1065
00:58:55,560 --> 00:58:59,000
Speaker 2: who with all the skills and six foot nine and

1066
00:58:59,360 --> 00:59:02,040
Speaker 2: is somebody who works harder than anybody in the NBA. Yeah,

1067
00:59:02,280 --> 00:59:04,440
Speaker 2: while you're still playing. Yeah, And so if you really

1068
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:08,400
Speaker 2: want something from Lebron James take that work ethic, you know,

1069
00:59:08,720 --> 00:59:10,120
Speaker 2: and apply it to whatever.

1070
00:59:10,320 --> 00:59:12,680
Speaker 1: Well, that's interesting you should say that because you know

1071
00:59:13,240 --> 00:59:17,560
Speaker 1: Sharpey as flawed of a character. She is like everyone

1072
00:59:17,600 --> 00:59:22,280
Speaker 1: should be. She's passionate, like she's driven. Yeah, and I

1073
00:59:22,320 --> 00:59:24,840
Speaker 1: will I'm just thinking, like, is she the most driven

1074
00:59:24,960 --> 00:59:28,040
Speaker 1: character in the movie, because she obviously think she goes

1075
00:59:28,160 --> 00:59:31,320
Speaker 1: well beyond what she needs to, like for the audition,

1076
00:59:31,400 --> 00:59:34,040
Speaker 1: She's right, theyhood work they put together, you know, they did,

1077
00:59:34,440 --> 00:59:38,080
Speaker 1: they did a way beyond what normally you do. So

1078
00:59:38,120 --> 00:59:42,680
Speaker 1: she's like, she's yeah, she's like strong headed, independent, very aggressive,

1079
00:59:42,840 --> 00:59:48,960
Speaker 1: and very like passionate. She's very like very maybe she's

1080
00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:50,920
Speaker 1: the most passionate. Is she the most passionate character?

1081
00:59:51,000 --> 00:59:53,880
Speaker 2: Well, in some ways, you know, And it would be

1082
00:59:53,920 --> 00:59:56,919
Speaker 2: interesting to see where she is twenty years later, and

1083
00:59:57,000 --> 01:00:04,280
Speaker 2: it's like there is someone she's also the most vulnerable

1084
01:00:04,680 --> 01:00:08,920
Speaker 2: in a way because under you know, you know, from everybody,

1085
01:00:08,920 --> 01:00:14,440
Speaker 2: who's the the in life. I'm sort of stammering because

1086
01:00:15,120 --> 01:00:19,000
Speaker 2: but you find out, you know, you look at the

1087
01:00:19,000 --> 01:00:22,560
Speaker 2: most blustery person ever you know, and they're full of

1088
01:00:22,600 --> 01:00:25,800
Speaker 2: the you know right away after you've lived a little

1089
01:00:25,840 --> 01:00:30,560
Speaker 2: bit what they're worried about themselves, what aspect of them.

1090
01:00:30,600 --> 01:00:30,800
Speaker 1: You know.

1091
01:00:30,960 --> 01:00:33,480
Speaker 2: It's like the guy who wants to come to high

1092
01:00:33,480 --> 01:00:36,600
Speaker 2: school and beat up all the gay kids. Oh, because

1093
01:00:36,600 --> 01:00:39,240
Speaker 2: he's uncertain about his masculinity. So he's got to go

1094
01:00:39,320 --> 01:00:43,200
Speaker 2: hit somebody in the face who's out, you know. And

1095
01:00:43,400 --> 01:00:45,560
Speaker 2: it's not because he's a tough guy. It's because he

1096
01:00:45,600 --> 01:00:48,480
Speaker 2: can't come to terms with his own sexuality, right, you know.

1097
01:00:48,720 --> 01:00:52,200
Speaker 2: And so you'd see that time and time and time again.

1098
01:00:52,520 --> 01:00:56,840
Speaker 2: And you see it a lot of times with performers,

1099
01:00:57,080 --> 01:00:59,000
Speaker 2: you know, you see it a lot of times where

1100
01:00:59,040 --> 01:01:04,680
Speaker 2: they day. Look, I grew up worshiping the Beatles, you know,

1101
01:01:04,840 --> 01:01:09,360
Speaker 2: to the extent that I took my daughters and my

1102
01:01:09,480 --> 01:01:13,360
Speaker 2: wife all we went to Liverpool because I wanted my daughters,

1103
01:01:13,920 --> 01:01:17,640
Speaker 2: you know, they were Beatle fans, because they didn't have

1104
01:01:17,640 --> 01:01:20,320
Speaker 2: a choice, you know, because I was playing all this music. Okay,

1105
01:01:20,360 --> 01:01:24,000
Speaker 2: fast forward to me taking them to Liverpool and in

1106
01:01:25,840 --> 01:01:28,080
Speaker 2: they have John Lennon's house where he grew up as

1107
01:01:28,120 --> 01:01:31,160
Speaker 2: a little kid, as part of the National Trust, and

1108
01:01:31,200 --> 01:01:34,480
Speaker 2: it's restored to exactly how it was when he was

1109
01:01:34,520 --> 01:01:36,680
Speaker 2: a kid, in his little room, in his little radio,

1110
01:01:37,200 --> 01:01:39,720
Speaker 2: and I took and they only let like twenty people

1111
01:01:39,760 --> 01:01:42,400
Speaker 2: a day in there, right, And so we got in

1112
01:01:42,440 --> 01:01:45,840
Speaker 2: there and we went up to John's room, you know,

1113
01:01:45,960 --> 01:01:48,880
Speaker 2: and it was set like when he was fourteen years old,

1114
01:01:48,920 --> 01:01:53,320
Speaker 2: fifteen years old. And I saw the girls looking at

1115
01:01:53,400 --> 01:01:57,120
Speaker 2: it and going around, and I go why they had

1116
01:01:57,160 --> 01:02:00,000
Speaker 2: a surfa weird? I couldn't. They were like confused almost,

1117
01:02:00,240 --> 01:02:04,800
Speaker 2: you know, And I later on figured out that it

1118
01:02:04,920 --> 01:02:08,360
Speaker 2: was the first time they'd see, you mean, somebody that famous,

1119
01:02:08,440 --> 01:02:13,360
Speaker 2: that great could that's how they started. And just a tiny,

1120
01:02:13,680 --> 01:02:17,680
Speaker 2: barely turnaround room, the little transistor radio and old beat

1121
01:02:17,760 --> 01:02:21,240
Speaker 2: up guitar. You can start from there and end up

1122
01:02:21,800 --> 01:02:25,360
Speaker 2: being the biggest music star in you know, at the time,

1123
01:02:25,600 --> 01:02:30,720
Speaker 2: in history. And they really saw that, you know, they

1124
01:02:30,760 --> 01:02:34,680
Speaker 2: saw that thing that it starts from somewhere, you know,

1125
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:38,360
Speaker 2: And that's just an interesting theme to me, you know,

1126
01:02:38,600 --> 01:02:41,520
Speaker 2: of where you know when you see And I'll give

1127
01:02:41,560 --> 01:02:44,400
Speaker 2: you one secret to writing. If you're going to write something,

1128
01:02:45,040 --> 01:02:47,680
Speaker 2: it's the anybody wants to write a movie, you write

1129
01:02:47,680 --> 01:02:52,680
Speaker 2: a thing. If you have your ending, that's where you start.

1130
01:02:53,000 --> 01:02:57,680
Speaker 2: Because if you have your ending, you are Everybody's got

1131
01:02:57,720 --> 01:03:01,040
Speaker 2: like twenty good pages in their drawer. Somewhere where they

1132
01:03:01,040 --> 01:03:03,680
Speaker 2: started writing something, but they got to page forty and stop.

1133
01:03:04,240 --> 01:03:08,280
Speaker 2: But if you have your ending, then you work backwards

1134
01:03:08,640 --> 01:03:13,400
Speaker 2: from that and going how far from this great love story,

1135
01:03:13,440 --> 01:03:17,200
Speaker 2: this great ending where boy kisses girl? How far from

1136
01:03:17,280 --> 01:03:23,040
Speaker 2: that could I start to make it interesting to get there?

1137
01:03:23,360 --> 01:03:23,600
Speaker 1: You know?

1138
01:03:23,960 --> 01:03:28,960
Speaker 2: And that's the secret of thinking of things in reverse.

1139
01:03:29,800 --> 01:03:33,680
Speaker 2: And so I think for our characters, you know that

1140
01:03:33,720 --> 01:03:37,920
Speaker 2: we're talking about knowing where they sort of would end

1141
01:03:38,000 --> 01:03:41,680
Speaker 2: up at the end, you know, where it's we're all

1142
01:03:41,720 --> 01:03:45,120
Speaker 2: in this together, you know, Okay, how far away from

1143
01:03:45,160 --> 01:03:47,960
Speaker 2: that could we get in the first act? And you

1144
01:03:48,000 --> 01:03:51,640
Speaker 2: try that for each movie. You know, if Troy and

1145
01:03:51,680 --> 01:03:54,280
Speaker 2: Gabrielle in high school three are going to kiss and

1146
01:03:54,360 --> 01:03:57,560
Speaker 2: you know, go to colleges near where, how can we

1147
01:03:58,560 --> 01:03:59,640
Speaker 2: make that impossible?

1148
01:04:00,080 --> 01:04:00,280
Speaker 1: You know?

1149
01:04:00,800 --> 01:04:04,120
Speaker 2: And so that's the that's the fun of exploring characters,

1150
01:04:04,440 --> 01:04:08,520
Speaker 2: and that's the sometimes why kids like it because they

1151
01:04:08,600 --> 01:04:12,000
Speaker 2: get to see they get to test out their emotional

1152
01:04:12,040 --> 01:04:15,360
Speaker 2: life in a story. You know, what if I went

1153
01:04:15,440 --> 01:04:18,200
Speaker 2: up to that girl and said, can we you know,

1154
01:04:18,880 --> 01:04:20,720
Speaker 2: can we go to a dance? Can we do that?

1155
01:04:20,960 --> 01:04:22,200
Speaker 2: People still go to dances?

1156
01:04:22,240 --> 01:04:28,120
Speaker 1: I don't know, not my kids.

1157
01:04:28,160 --> 01:04:30,680
Speaker 2: I don't know about that. My kids are thirty two

1158
01:04:30,760 --> 01:04:31,480
Speaker 2: now thirty one.

1159
01:04:31,960 --> 01:04:39,400
Speaker 1: Wow.

1160
01:04:41,880 --> 01:04:47,040
Speaker 2: The High School two premiere was at Disneyland, right, and

1161
01:04:47,440 --> 01:04:50,680
Speaker 2: they took over the whole California Hotel. They had this

1162
01:04:50,720 --> 01:04:53,520
Speaker 2: thing and they closed Disneyland for us to have a

1163
01:04:53,560 --> 01:04:56,040
Speaker 2: party that night, you know, at the thing. And so

1164
01:04:56,120 --> 01:05:00,960
Speaker 2: we're going down the red carpet and all these people.

1165
01:05:01,080 --> 01:05:04,160
Speaker 2: I take my daughter, you know, she's there, and all

1166
01:05:04,200 --> 01:05:07,480
Speaker 2: these people are like Peter Man sign this sign that

1167
01:05:07,560 --> 01:05:10,600
Speaker 2: you know, and my daughter. He says, why do they

1168
01:05:10,600 --> 01:05:14,440
Speaker 2: want you? And then we go in the theater and

1169
01:05:14,480 --> 01:05:18,920
Speaker 2: we sit down and we're waiting for the thing to start,

1170
01:05:19,200 --> 01:05:22,600
Speaker 2: and this guy taps me on the shoulder and he goes,

1171
01:05:23,080 --> 01:05:26,840
Speaker 2: do you think do you think you could, you know,

1172
01:05:27,000 --> 01:05:32,400
Speaker 2: get my kids to meet sharp ash sharpey Ashley. I could, Oh, probably,

1173
01:05:32,480 --> 01:05:35,080
Speaker 2: it's been so much of it be everything, you know.

1174
01:05:35,360 --> 01:05:39,360
Speaker 2: And I turn around and it's Beckham and his wife

1175
01:05:39,800 --> 01:05:43,320
Speaker 2: and it's there, you know, and so that kind of

1176
01:05:44,440 --> 01:05:47,400
Speaker 2: that's when you realize it's big. You were shocked to

1177
01:05:47,480 --> 01:05:50,760
Speaker 2: find out who the fans were, just like you were saying, guys,

1178
01:05:50,760 --> 01:05:53,000
Speaker 2: I wanted to play that, you know, and then you'd

1179
01:05:53,000 --> 01:05:56,840
Speaker 2: see Beckham and then you'd see some big Kobe Bryant.

1180
01:05:56,920 --> 01:06:03,439
Speaker 2: You know, wait, high school music. My girl loves get

1181
01:06:03,440 --> 01:06:05,400
Speaker 2: over Erica. You gott to meet the guy, you know.

1182
01:06:05,760 --> 01:06:09,240
Speaker 1: And so I've had some professional basketball players. Oh say,

1183
01:06:09,240 --> 01:06:11,160
Speaker 1: that's because they obviously they go they.

1184
01:06:11,080 --> 01:06:11,840
Speaker 2: Do the triple type.

1185
01:06:11,880 --> 01:06:13,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were kids when the movie came out. Now

1186
01:06:13,520 --> 01:06:14,760
Speaker 1: they're like now the pros.

1187
01:06:14,840 --> 01:06:20,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's Michelle Obama, you know, and you know

1188
01:06:21,920 --> 01:06:25,640
Speaker 2: former President of the United States, Barack Obama. You go,

1189
01:06:26,240 --> 01:06:29,600
Speaker 2: if I hear those goddamn songs one more time, you know,

1190
01:06:29,960 --> 01:06:36,560
Speaker 2: and we're all like you. But it's it's really it's

1191
01:06:36,600 --> 01:06:39,240
Speaker 2: really fun because you don't think of famous people as

1192
01:06:39,240 --> 01:06:41,840
Speaker 2: being fans. I think they're more interested in being that

1193
01:06:41,840 --> 01:06:46,440
Speaker 2: famous person. But when something that connects with people's kids,

1194
01:06:47,040 --> 01:06:48,120
Speaker 2: they get real interested.

1195
01:06:48,520 --> 01:06:50,920
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, because you'll do more for your kids than

1196
01:06:51,600 --> 01:06:51,840
Speaker 1: you know.

1197
01:06:52,960 --> 01:06:56,080
Speaker 2: You know. It's like everybody in that theater wanted to

1198
01:06:56,120 --> 01:06:58,560
Speaker 2: take a selfie with Beckham, and all he wanted to

1199
01:06:58,600 --> 01:07:03,560
Speaker 2: do was meet Sharpey, you know. And it's just I

1200
01:07:03,720 --> 01:07:05,880
Speaker 2: can't imagine, you know, at the actor and you know

1201
01:07:05,960 --> 01:07:07,640
Speaker 2: what it was like for all you guys, you know,

1202
01:07:08,200 --> 01:07:14,080
Speaker 2: but the prime minister. Tony Blair was a prime minister.

1203
01:07:14,200 --> 01:07:17,040
Speaker 2: His wife asked us if we could do a screening

1204
01:07:17,080 --> 01:07:19,480
Speaker 2: for her. We're in London, you know. So we go

1205
01:07:19,560 --> 01:07:22,840
Speaker 2: and there's you know, I'm talking to Tony Blair's wife,

1206
01:07:22,920 --> 01:07:25,680
Speaker 2: you know, and she's going, so, where did you get

1207
01:07:25,720 --> 01:07:30,360
Speaker 2: the idea? Gabriello is so she's so shy and she's

1208
01:07:30,600 --> 01:07:34,360
Speaker 2: so composed, and I'm going, she is okay, you know,

1209
01:07:34,720 --> 01:07:39,280
Speaker 2: And it's just funny to see people out of their context.

1210
01:07:40,000 --> 01:07:44,560
Speaker 2: And a show like that that touches people in some

1211
01:07:44,680 --> 01:07:49,240
Speaker 2: way takes them, takes them out of their content, and

1212
01:07:49,560 --> 01:07:52,000
Speaker 2: we all want that to some extent. We want to

1213
01:07:52,040 --> 01:07:54,360
Speaker 2: be taking We want to see the world through a

1214
01:07:54,400 --> 01:07:58,520
Speaker 2: different lens, you know, just to see what happens. And

1215
01:07:58,640 --> 01:08:01,120
Speaker 2: you get that a lot with high school musical, and

1216
01:08:01,160 --> 01:08:05,440
Speaker 2: it's also dancing. Everybody wants to dance, you know, And

1217
01:08:05,480 --> 01:08:07,800
Speaker 2: I go, if I could have danced like that in

1218
01:08:07,880 --> 01:08:10,720
Speaker 2: high school, my whole life would have been I would

1219
01:08:10,720 --> 01:08:15,360
Speaker 2: have never written high school. Yeah, so it was. That's

1220
01:08:15,400 --> 01:08:19,120
Speaker 2: that's been a fun enterprise from my point of view,

1221
01:08:19,160 --> 01:08:23,920
Speaker 2: just to get allowed into other people's lives because of

1222
01:08:24,000 --> 01:08:25,439
Speaker 2: that that show.

1223
01:08:25,800 --> 01:08:28,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, yeah it is amazing. Did you have

1224
01:08:29,200 --> 01:08:33,000
Speaker 1: alternative endings or did you was it the story? Did

1225
01:08:33,000 --> 01:08:33,919
Speaker 1: you make some choices?

1226
01:08:34,120 --> 01:08:40,360
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean we didn't have that ending in the script.

1227
01:08:40,840 --> 01:08:44,479
Speaker 2: I well, give myself any credit. I came up with

1228
01:08:44,520 --> 01:08:47,960
Speaker 2: that ending, you know, at crunch time, right before you

1229
01:08:47,960 --> 01:08:49,560
Speaker 2: know we're filming, because we how are we going to

1230
01:08:49,680 --> 01:08:53,599
Speaker 2: end this? And then I said, okay, what about if

1231
01:08:53,640 --> 01:08:57,559
Speaker 2: you had the kids, because they want to do the audition,

1232
01:08:57,920 --> 01:09:00,760
Speaker 2: but we have the basketball game and we have the

1233
01:09:01,479 --> 01:09:04,320
Speaker 2: you know, the brainiacs in there doing their you know,

1234
01:09:04,439 --> 01:09:08,320
Speaker 2: Jempardy challenge or academic to Kathlan. How can we do it? Well,

1235
01:09:08,360 --> 01:09:11,120
Speaker 2: we could have them shut off the power in the

1236
01:09:11,200 --> 01:09:15,240
Speaker 2: gym so they could come in there. And then Disney says, says, oh,

1237
01:09:15,920 --> 01:09:20,120
Speaker 2: that's pretty malicious. We can't have students thinking they can

1238
01:09:20,200 --> 01:09:23,639
Speaker 2: shut down the power in the school like that. Icho

1239
01:09:25,120 --> 01:09:28,519
Speaker 2: can we just do a you know, we can't. We

1240
01:09:28,560 --> 01:09:31,120
Speaker 2: won't show them pulling the thing. You just see him

1241
01:09:31,120 --> 01:09:33,519
Speaker 2: tap on a keyboard, because they're supposed to be And

1242
01:09:33,560 --> 01:09:35,880
Speaker 2: so they led us to we kind of came up

1243
01:09:35,920 --> 01:09:39,840
Speaker 2: with that ending, and the two hail Mary's of the

1244
01:09:39,960 --> 01:09:43,400
Speaker 2: ending were breaking free because it was so good that

1245
01:09:43,479 --> 01:09:48,080
Speaker 2: you go, oh my god. And then Kenny Ortega took

1246
01:09:48,200 --> 01:09:53,120
Speaker 2: that back in the gym. That's Kenny Ortega, Kenny Ortega,

1247
01:09:53,200 --> 01:09:57,040
Speaker 2: Kenny Ortega. You know, uh, we're all in this together.

1248
01:09:57,280 --> 01:09:59,600
Speaker 2: But we didn't have that title for the song. No

1249
01:09:59,680 --> 01:10:03,519
Speaker 2: one had that title. It was called something else. And

1250
01:10:03,560 --> 01:10:06,759
Speaker 2: we kept going. You know, there was like four songs

1251
01:10:06,760 --> 01:10:10,719
Speaker 2: that weren't working. They were figuring out, and Gary Marsh

1252
01:10:10,920 --> 01:10:15,479
Speaker 2: kept on the songwriters. You just needed, we need a

1253
01:10:15,600 --> 01:10:18,000
Speaker 2: kind of we're all in this together kind of song

1254
01:10:18,160 --> 01:10:22,679
Speaker 2: for that guy. And the songwriters go, hello, there.

1255
01:10:22,520 --> 01:10:25,240
Speaker 1: We go and sometimes on the noses.

1256
01:10:25,560 --> 01:10:28,920
Speaker 2: Sometimes you just say it and then but it's got

1257
01:10:28,960 --> 01:10:31,080
Speaker 2: to be good, you know, it's got to be good.

1258
01:10:31,720 --> 01:10:35,200
Speaker 2: And you know people that say, oh, how can you

1259
01:10:35,240 --> 01:10:38,559
Speaker 2: go wrong with good looking kids singing and dancing, Well,

1260
01:10:38,720 --> 01:10:42,360
Speaker 2: try it sometimes, you know, try it without Kenny Ortega. Yeah,

1261
01:10:43,200 --> 01:10:47,680
Speaker 2: and uh yeah. And it's as I say, there were

1262
01:10:47,720 --> 01:10:50,479
Speaker 2: a lot of everybody every writer has got their you

1263
01:10:50,520 --> 01:10:55,439
Speaker 2: know flap story about studios destroying the soul creative. There's

1264
01:10:55,479 --> 01:10:59,200
Speaker 2: creative soul, you know, and everybody's had something. But in

1265
01:10:59,280 --> 01:11:03,200
Speaker 2: that prod, everybody that put their hands on it made

1266
01:11:03,200 --> 01:11:06,840
Speaker 2: it a little better. All the people at Disney that

1267
01:11:06,880 --> 01:11:10,120
Speaker 2: we worked with, Denise Carlson and Michael Healy, but it

1268
01:11:10,240 --> 01:11:13,719
Speaker 2: was really we were left alone. We were left alone

1269
01:11:13,720 --> 01:11:18,000
Speaker 2: for the first movie. They shot the script, and Kenny

1270
01:11:18,200 --> 01:11:22,200
Speaker 2: and the songwriters you know, and choreographers and the actors

1271
01:11:22,280 --> 01:11:26,640
Speaker 2: came in and raised the level of everything that was

1272
01:11:26,680 --> 01:11:28,439
Speaker 2: on the page. And I'm the first one to say it.

1273
01:11:28,640 --> 01:11:31,759
Speaker 2: You know, it's like we really were all in this together.

1274
01:11:33,040 --> 01:11:35,920
Speaker 1: I love that. Love that. Did you have alternative names

1275
01:11:35,920 --> 01:11:37,880
Speaker 1: for the movie? Yeah.

1276
01:11:38,000 --> 01:11:41,320
Speaker 2: The way the name happened is Disney wanted it to

1277
01:11:41,360 --> 01:11:44,680
Speaker 2: be middle School Musical. They not the title, but they

1278
01:11:44,680 --> 01:11:49,080
Speaker 2: wanted to be about middle school. And I'm saying, my

1279
01:11:49,240 --> 01:11:52,320
Speaker 2: daughters don't want to see middle school. They want to

1280
01:11:52,320 --> 01:11:55,519
Speaker 2: see where they're going, not where they're at, you know.

1281
01:11:56,360 --> 01:11:58,439
Speaker 2: And They're looking at me like what you know, you know,

1282
01:11:58,680 --> 01:12:02,120
Speaker 2: and I'm going telling you that's what my daughter they

1283
01:12:02,120 --> 01:12:05,519
Speaker 2: want to And so all I did was they said, well,

1284
01:12:05,520 --> 01:12:07,360
Speaker 2: it's going to be middle school and we're gonna call it,

1285
01:12:07,400 --> 01:12:10,680
Speaker 2: you know, jump and Twist or something like that. And

1286
01:12:10,720 --> 01:12:13,519
Speaker 2: so I kept putting on the treatments and the drafts.

1287
01:12:13,560 --> 01:12:17,439
Speaker 2: I just kept writing High School Musical Project, High School

1288
01:12:17,560 --> 01:12:23,160
Speaker 2: Musical project, high school musical project on everything, and at

1289
01:12:23,160 --> 01:12:26,920
Speaker 2: one point they still they was up to them, you know,

1290
01:12:26,960 --> 01:12:30,400
Speaker 2: they're the boss. But then at the end they couldn't

1291
01:12:30,400 --> 01:12:32,160
Speaker 2: come up with a better time, so they just took

1292
01:12:32,200 --> 01:12:35,479
Speaker 2: project off. They said, what, you know, what about if

1293
01:12:35,520 --> 01:12:37,679
Speaker 2: we call it high school musical. So I'm sure somebody

1294
01:12:37,720 --> 01:12:40,400
Speaker 2: I don't know who which was Rich Ross or which

1295
01:12:40,439 --> 01:12:44,599
Speaker 2: boss said high school, I'm sure they're saying. Well, I

1296
01:12:44,640 --> 01:12:46,360
Speaker 2: was sitting in my office one day and I thought

1297
01:12:46,720 --> 01:12:49,400
Speaker 2: we should call it high school Musical, you know. But

1298
01:12:49,479 --> 01:12:55,160
Speaker 2: we'd been chumming those waters for months to Bill and Bury,

1299
01:12:55,400 --> 01:12:58,360
Speaker 2: you know, and I have been chumming those waters for

1300
01:12:58,439 --> 01:13:02,519
Speaker 2: months to try and put that into the zeitgeist so

1301
01:13:02,560 --> 01:13:05,479
Speaker 2: that every piece of paper somebody saw at high.

1302
01:13:05,280 --> 01:13:08,479
Speaker 1: School that's so good. I remember when I got involved

1303
01:13:08,479 --> 01:13:09,680
Speaker 1: with the project, they said, oh, it doesn't have a

1304
01:13:09,720 --> 01:13:10,719
Speaker 1: name yet, we're just called.

1305
01:13:12,080 --> 01:13:16,920
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I'm not lying. And so that's, you know, again,

1306
01:13:17,040 --> 01:13:22,080
Speaker 2: that's something that's become iconic. You know. It happened in

1307
01:13:22,160 --> 01:13:27,000
Speaker 2: a very you know, sort of shifty way. You know,

1308
01:13:27,080 --> 01:13:29,439
Speaker 2: we were trying to be so close. Let's just keep

1309
01:13:29,479 --> 01:13:32,639
Speaker 2: calling it high school Musical project so they'll think high school, high.

1310
01:13:32,479 --> 01:13:35,280
Speaker 1: School, high school. Did anybody float any bad names at

1311
01:13:35,320 --> 01:13:35,880
Speaker 1: you anymore?

1312
01:13:36,160 --> 01:13:38,920
Speaker 2: Yes, there was some. I don't remember them, you know,

1313
01:13:39,000 --> 01:13:41,200
Speaker 2: I don't because I blocked them out of my consciousness,

1314
01:13:41,400 --> 01:13:43,840
Speaker 2: like please know. Yeah, but I go, oh, you gotta

1315
01:13:43,880 --> 01:13:46,160
Speaker 2: be kidding me. You know, I had no power.

1316
01:13:46,240 --> 01:13:46,439
Speaker 1: You know.

1317
01:13:46,479 --> 01:13:50,840
Speaker 2: It was the Walt Disney Company, you know. And but then.

1318
01:13:50,920 --> 01:13:52,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're going to take your movie, They're going to

1319
01:13:52,400 --> 01:13:53,320
Speaker 1: market it, They're put.

1320
01:13:53,360 --> 01:13:56,840
Speaker 2: There, it's going to be the Walt Disney Company. And

1321
01:13:56,880 --> 01:13:59,600
Speaker 2: this is you know, me and my gym shorts and

1322
01:13:59,640 --> 01:14:04,439
Speaker 2: a t're studio city writing a movie. And it's but

1323
01:14:04,600 --> 01:14:07,200
Speaker 2: that that's like, that's something that worked out, you know.

1324
01:14:07,479 --> 01:14:10,160
Speaker 2: But again the shock to me was how big it

1325
01:14:10,200 --> 01:14:12,840
Speaker 2: got in other countries because they at first they told

1326
01:14:12,920 --> 01:14:15,160
Speaker 2: us it's never going to play in the UK because

1327
01:14:15,240 --> 01:14:17,559
Speaker 2: they don't have high school like we have it here.

1328
01:14:17,760 --> 01:14:20,599
Speaker 2: You know, we okay, we get to the UK, it's

1329
01:14:20,600 --> 01:14:25,799
Speaker 2: like bigger in the UK. It's like exploded in Israel.

1330
01:14:25,840 --> 01:14:29,920
Speaker 2: It exploded in South America, so huge, and soul exploded

1331
01:14:29,960 --> 01:14:33,400
Speaker 2: in China. In fact, the Chinese made their own version

1332
01:14:33,439 --> 01:14:36,160
Speaker 2: of it. And if you want to see something amazing,

1333
01:14:37,360 --> 01:14:39,640
Speaker 2: look at the Chinese you can see it on you

1334
01:14:39,640 --> 01:14:43,160
Speaker 2: know YouTube, the Chinese version of High School Musical. They said,

1335
01:14:43,520 --> 01:14:46,120
Speaker 2: they got in touch with me, and they said, well,

1336
01:14:46,120 --> 01:14:50,479
Speaker 2: they want to make a couple of big changes. And

1337
01:14:50,520 --> 01:14:53,120
Speaker 2: I go, okay, well why they're asking me the you know,

1338
01:14:53,240 --> 01:14:55,960
Speaker 2: the Walt Disney company calls the tune here. But so

1339
01:14:56,000 --> 01:14:57,639
Speaker 2: they get in touch with it and they said it's

1340
01:14:57,680 --> 01:15:03,360
Speaker 2: too sexual, and I go, whoa, wait, what did you

1341
01:15:03,400 --> 01:15:05,160
Speaker 2: read the pilot I wrote at the same time I

1342
01:15:05,200 --> 01:15:09,240
Speaker 2: was writing, And they go, it's too and they go yeah,

1343
01:15:09,280 --> 01:15:14,519
Speaker 2: and they said, and in China, the girl would never

1344
01:15:14,640 --> 01:15:17,920
Speaker 2: have a crush on the most popular athlete. She'd have

1345
01:15:18,000 --> 01:15:22,880
Speaker 2: a crush on the smartest boy in class. And they

1346
01:15:23,080 --> 01:15:28,240
Speaker 2: changed the first song. It's like they changed get your

1347
01:15:28,280 --> 01:15:32,240
Speaker 2: Head in the Game to a song about the glories

1348
01:15:32,240 --> 01:15:33,840
Speaker 2: of investing in the stock market.

1349
01:15:35,560 --> 01:15:36,479
Speaker 1: Is that in the movie?

1350
01:15:36,560 --> 01:15:38,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's in the movie. Wow, you can see it.

1351
01:15:38,520 --> 01:15:41,000
Speaker 1: You can write that, does she have a crush on

1352
01:15:41,040 --> 01:15:42,000
Speaker 1: the smartest boy?

1353
01:15:42,160 --> 01:15:45,799
Speaker 2: Yeah? It was just different. So, yeah, there were different

1354
01:15:45,880 --> 01:15:49,000
Speaker 2: versions of it. Is an Indian version, you know, there's

1355
01:15:49,040 --> 01:15:53,000
Speaker 2: more Bollywood. Yeah, I haven't even seen that. But there

1356
01:15:53,120 --> 01:15:59,080
Speaker 2: was a Mexican a Mexican production company made a version

1357
01:16:00,320 --> 01:16:03,320
Speaker 2: from Mexico. Yeah, and then there's a Brazilian I think

1358
01:16:04,360 --> 01:16:05,320
Speaker 2: version of it.

1359
01:16:05,520 --> 01:16:09,439
Speaker 1: And I hear a lot from Brazil Argentina. Yeah. Yeah,

1360
01:16:10,120 --> 01:16:11,479
Speaker 1: it's tons from the UK.

1361
01:16:11,600 --> 01:16:13,519
Speaker 2: Because they knew how to dance in high school, unlike

1362
01:16:13,600 --> 01:16:16,000
Speaker 2: me down in Argentina and Brazil.

1363
01:16:16,240 --> 01:16:16,479
Speaker 1: You know.

1364
01:16:16,760 --> 01:16:21,960
Speaker 2: But yeah, there it but it connected globally. I mean

1365
01:16:22,000 --> 01:16:25,320
Speaker 2: there are this I do know that there have been

1366
01:16:28,160 --> 01:16:33,120
Speaker 2: close now close to a billion unique viewers of High

1367
01:16:33,160 --> 01:16:37,479
Speaker 2: School Musical. How many people are on the planet even billion?

1368
01:16:37,640 --> 01:16:41,840
Speaker 2: Eight billion? Okay, they've had because they had fifteen ten

1369
01:16:41,920 --> 01:16:46,000
Speaker 2: years ago, six hundred million unique views of High School Musical.

1370
01:16:46,800 --> 01:16:50,720
Speaker 2: I mean on the night the second movie debuted, it

1371
01:16:50,880 --> 01:16:56,040
Speaker 2: was the biggest cable audience ever for a movie because

1372
01:16:56,080 --> 01:16:58,800
Speaker 2: at Disney said, well, the rating will say there was

1373
01:16:58,840 --> 01:17:04,280
Speaker 2: eighteen million people, but there were twelve million slumber parties.

1374
01:17:04,840 --> 01:17:06,800
Speaker 2: So they say that is kind of as I say,

1375
01:17:06,880 --> 01:17:10,360
Speaker 2: we think eighty million people watch that night.

1376
01:17:10,600 --> 01:17:13,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, I can't believe how many people tell me

1377
01:17:13,080 --> 01:17:15,559
Speaker 1: they had a viewing party slumber party.

1378
01:17:15,720 --> 01:17:18,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, so imagine how many people are going to go

1379
01:17:18,680 --> 01:17:20,160
Speaker 2: to High School Musical four?

1380
01:17:20,640 --> 01:17:24,200
Speaker 1: Anyway, So well I saw that I saw the local

1381
01:17:24,720 --> 01:17:27,080
Speaker 1: theater production, and I was kind of surprised, like how

1382
01:17:27,080 --> 01:17:29,439
Speaker 1: many unique things they put in the stage.

1383
01:17:29,560 --> 01:17:35,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, they Disney controlled the stage versions of it, you know,

1384
01:17:35,680 --> 01:17:38,360
Speaker 2: and the home team gets a little taste of that.

1385
01:17:38,479 --> 01:17:43,200
Speaker 2: But it's like, it's amazing that the schools, because the

1386
01:17:43,240 --> 01:17:47,360
Speaker 2: schools a sometimes they have a hard time finding something

1387
01:17:47,479 --> 01:17:52,640
Speaker 2: that the parents won't object to, you know, so that

1388
01:17:52,840 --> 01:17:56,760
Speaker 2: helps us, you know. Yeah, and Hollywood, Look, it was

1389
01:17:56,800 --> 01:18:00,759
Speaker 2: a global hit, but Hollywood, there's a very family friendly audience.

1390
01:18:00,760 --> 01:18:05,000
Speaker 2: Everythings of Disney as family friendly, but there's a whole audience.

1391
01:18:05,000 --> 01:18:08,439
Speaker 2: Didn't he Disney didn't even know how family friendly. People

1392
01:18:08,600 --> 01:18:11,080
Speaker 2: were looking for entertainment that they could watch with their

1393
01:18:11,160 --> 01:18:15,680
Speaker 2: kids and not be embarrassed. Because adults, believe it or not,

1394
01:18:15,920 --> 01:18:18,800
Speaker 2: can stomach high school musical. They can watch it and

1395
01:18:18,840 --> 01:18:21,599
Speaker 2: they can have fun with it, you know, and they

1396
01:18:21,680 --> 01:18:25,000
Speaker 2: don't have to oh my god, the kids taking the

1397
01:18:25,040 --> 01:18:27,880
Speaker 2: girl's bra off, you know. Or I watch, you know,

1398
01:18:28,000 --> 01:18:31,320
Speaker 2: watch Ginny and Georgia and you know, summer I turn

1399
01:18:31,400 --> 01:18:35,000
Speaker 2: pretty and stuff like, you know, like that, and it

1400
01:18:35,080 --> 01:18:37,040
Speaker 2: gets a lot of young audience. But when I look

1401
01:18:37,040 --> 01:18:39,720
Speaker 2: at the audience for Ginny and Georgia, congratulations of the

1402
01:18:39,720 --> 01:18:42,240
Speaker 2: people for making it their success and all that, but

1403
01:18:42,320 --> 01:18:45,679
Speaker 2: I'm going, Wow, if I'm a parent and I see

1404
01:18:45,720 --> 01:18:51,320
Speaker 2: that my daughter having sex with a boyfriend in her room,

1405
01:18:52,240 --> 01:18:55,639
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that's for me. Maybe when I'm out

1406
01:18:55,680 --> 01:18:56,439
Speaker 2: of the house, you know.

1407
01:18:56,960 --> 01:18:57,320
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1408
01:18:58,600 --> 01:19:00,599
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that's where High School Musical a big win

1409
01:19:01,160 --> 01:19:06,439
Speaker 2: because it wasn't lecturing anybody on anything. It just wasn't are.

1410
01:19:07,000 --> 01:19:08,960
Speaker 2: What we were trying to do is we were trying

1411
01:19:08,960 --> 01:19:12,240
Speaker 2: to have a relationship that was more crush oriented. And

1412
01:19:12,280 --> 01:19:13,519
Speaker 2: in fact, we made a thing out of it in

1413
01:19:13,600 --> 01:19:16,000
Speaker 2: the first movie that they never kiss. They never kiss

1414
01:19:16,040 --> 01:19:19,000
Speaker 2: in the first movie. They don't kiss until the end

1415
01:19:19,040 --> 01:19:21,960
Speaker 2: of the second movie, and it was like a big moment,

1416
01:19:22,280 --> 01:19:25,240
Speaker 2: you know, and because it was Disney Channel at the time,

1417
01:19:25,280 --> 01:19:27,720
Speaker 2: you know, well, we don't really have people making out,

1418
01:19:27,800 --> 01:19:30,920
Speaker 2: you know, we go they gotta kiss, you know, there's

1419
01:19:30,960 --> 01:19:34,479
Speaker 2: sixteen sixteen year olds are kissing, trust me, you know,

1420
01:19:35,240 --> 01:19:40,960
Speaker 2: And so that came into it. But it wasn't like

1421
01:19:41,000 --> 01:19:44,760
Speaker 2: a forced thing. We just cast the actors, you know,

1422
01:19:44,800 --> 01:19:45,360
Speaker 2: who were good.

1423
01:19:46,560 --> 01:19:49,120
Speaker 1: Did you write any scenes for the movie that you

1424
01:19:49,400 --> 01:19:51,679
Speaker 1: were sad to see not make it in the movie?

1425
01:19:51,920 --> 01:19:54,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was stuff, you know, there was you know,

1426
01:19:54,439 --> 01:19:57,880
Speaker 2: extended parts of scenes. You know that you go, oh,

1427
01:19:57,960 --> 01:20:00,120
Speaker 2: there was some pretty good stuff there, you know, But

1428
01:20:00,760 --> 01:20:03,439
Speaker 2: when you add in forty five minutes of music or

1429
01:20:03,560 --> 01:20:06,439
Speaker 2: for you know, and then you have you have a

1430
01:20:06,520 --> 01:20:08,479
Speaker 2: ninety minute movie. You know everything.

1431
01:20:09,120 --> 01:20:11,240
Speaker 1: It's kind of be hard for a screen press because

1432
01:20:11,240 --> 01:20:11,560
Speaker 1: you want it.

1433
01:20:11,600 --> 01:20:16,080
Speaker 2: You want your a pressed class of Hollywood screenwriters. Our

1434
01:20:16,120 --> 01:20:18,439
Speaker 2: genius is rarely shared with the rest of the world,

1435
01:20:18,920 --> 01:20:23,960
Speaker 2: but it's yeah, you get sometimes the fun the most

1436
01:20:23,960 --> 01:20:25,640
Speaker 2: fun thing is when you go to test screenings and

1437
01:20:25,680 --> 01:20:27,800
Speaker 2: like I was saying before, what you think is some

1438
01:20:27,880 --> 01:20:31,160
Speaker 2: great line somebody the audience stares at, and when something

1439
01:20:31,200 --> 01:20:34,559
Speaker 2: out of the blue they react to. That's very That's

1440
01:20:34,560 --> 01:20:37,559
Speaker 2: where you go. You know, that's why there's so many

1441
01:20:37,600 --> 01:20:40,760
Speaker 2: bad movies. Nobody knows, nobody knows anything. There's you know,

1442
01:20:40,800 --> 01:20:43,479
Speaker 2: William Goldman, the famous screenwriter. So then nobody knows anything.

1443
01:20:44,120 --> 01:20:46,040
Speaker 2: You put it in front of an audience and you

1444
01:20:46,080 --> 01:20:48,000
Speaker 2: get shocked.

1445
01:20:48,400 --> 01:20:50,840
Speaker 1: You know, what was your reaction when you saw the

1446
01:20:50,880 --> 01:20:51,720
Speaker 1: movie for the first time?

1447
01:20:52,880 --> 01:20:57,320
Speaker 2: My reaction was, you know what, I kind of like this?

1448
01:20:57,360 --> 01:21:01,599
Speaker 2: Will anybody else like it? You know, because you go

1449
01:21:01,800 --> 01:21:04,240
Speaker 2: you don't know, you know, when you turn you don't

1450
01:21:04,280 --> 01:21:07,240
Speaker 2: know what a scene when you write, you know, the

1451
01:21:07,360 --> 01:21:11,360
Speaker 2: Vanessa's doing the song when there was me and you

1452
01:21:11,720 --> 01:21:15,320
Speaker 2: and she's coming down the staircase and it's very dramatic,

1453
01:21:15,479 --> 01:21:17,880
Speaker 2: and you know, I go, are people going to think

1454
01:21:17,920 --> 01:21:22,919
Speaker 2: this is corny? Or will they be invested in the character?

1455
01:21:23,360 --> 01:21:25,519
Speaker 2: And the one line when I saw it that I

1456
01:21:25,600 --> 01:21:29,680
Speaker 2: was happy that people laughed at that I put it

1457
01:21:29,720 --> 01:21:34,479
Speaker 2: in just for me was when they see that there's

1458
01:21:34,560 --> 01:21:39,280
Speaker 2: gonna be callbacks, you know, and Sharpay screams callbacks where

1459
01:21:39,320 --> 01:21:42,160
Speaker 2: they they didn't even try it, and Ryan goes, maybe

1460
01:21:42,160 --> 01:21:45,519
Speaker 2: they're being punked. Maybe maybe Ashton, you know, we're gonna

1461
01:21:45,520 --> 01:21:49,080
Speaker 2: meet Ashton because I used to watch Punked, so I

1462
01:21:49,160 --> 01:21:51,400
Speaker 2: put it in an Ashton Cultchier Raver didn't think anybody

1463
01:21:51,400 --> 01:21:52,960
Speaker 2: would get it, and that guy one of the biggest

1464
01:21:53,040 --> 01:21:56,519
Speaker 2: laughs of the move. All the kids watch Punked. So yeah,

1465
01:21:56,600 --> 01:22:00,360
Speaker 2: my reaction was, you know, I actually kind of kid

1466
01:22:00,840 --> 01:22:04,880
Speaker 2: you know, but will other people anybody else like it? Yeah,

1467
01:22:04,920 --> 01:22:06,160
Speaker 2: that was my honest reaction.

1468
01:22:06,200 --> 01:22:07,960
Speaker 1: It was early screening, I guess with you then.

1469
01:22:07,880 --> 01:22:10,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I first saw you know, first saw a

1470
01:22:10,520 --> 01:22:12,479
Speaker 2: cut and then the first time I saw it with

1471
01:22:12,560 --> 01:22:16,320
Speaker 2: the audience, you know, I saw all the There were

1472
01:22:16,360 --> 01:22:19,479
Speaker 2: a bunch of music people there and they all laughed

1473
01:22:19,520 --> 01:22:24,120
Speaker 2: when Sharpay says to Kelsey, listen, my sought off Sondheim,

1474
01:22:24,439 --> 01:22:26,080
Speaker 2: and I got kids are never going to get that

1475
01:22:26,160 --> 01:22:28,120
Speaker 2: joke because I put that in for me. I'm not

1476
01:22:28,120 --> 01:22:30,439
Speaker 2: going to hoo Stephen Sondheim is, you know. But then

1477
01:22:30,479 --> 01:22:32,680
Speaker 2: all the music and sometimes you write a line just

1478
01:22:32,680 --> 01:22:34,920
Speaker 2: for yourself in case the movie gets me. And that

1479
01:22:35,040 --> 01:22:37,080
Speaker 2: was it because I was a big admirer of Stephen Son.

1480
01:22:37,760 --> 01:22:40,719
Speaker 2: And then that's become a popular line from the movie,

1481
01:22:40,800 --> 01:22:43,280
Speaker 2: you know, so you never know.

1482
01:22:43,520 --> 01:22:44,080
Speaker 1: That's great.

1483
01:22:44,200 --> 01:22:47,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll write you Kats.

1484
01:22:47,160 --> 01:22:50,519
Speaker 1: Well, Peter, thanks so much for your time, Peter Barsky.

1485
01:22:51,920 --> 01:22:53,479
Speaker 1: This is where it all, this is where it all began.

1486
01:22:53,600 --> 01:22:57,759
Speaker 1: It's so great to hear these stories. Thanks for sharing everything.

1487
01:22:58,080 --> 01:22:59,120
Speaker 1: Twenty years later.

1488
01:22:59,640 --> 01:23:02,639
Speaker 2: Well, we're we're connected. We're connected for life. I think

1489
01:23:02,720 --> 01:23:06,000
Speaker 2: for life for sure. Yeah, and it's great, you know,

1490
01:23:06,080 --> 01:23:08,639
Speaker 2: and it's great. And I said, then let me again say,

1491
01:23:09,760 --> 01:23:12,520
Speaker 2: you know, with High School Musical, you're such an integral

1492
01:23:12,680 --> 01:23:16,759
Speaker 2: part of its success, and you know that as the writer.

1493
01:23:17,320 --> 01:23:19,760
Speaker 2: You know it more so than oh everybody like High

1494
01:23:19,760 --> 01:23:23,400
Speaker 2: School Musical because Zach Efron's cute and you know, and

1495
01:23:23,439 --> 01:23:26,439
Speaker 2: I go, none of that works if that, if you

1496
01:23:26,560 --> 01:23:32,559
Speaker 2: didn't see the dimension of his emotional life raised by

1497
01:23:32,600 --> 01:23:36,200
Speaker 2: his relationship with his father, that's what made people care

1498
01:23:36,320 --> 01:23:39,719
Speaker 2: about that character. They don't know why they care about

1499
01:23:39,760 --> 01:23:42,760
Speaker 2: that character. I know why they did after, you know,

1500
01:23:43,280 --> 01:23:49,000
Speaker 2: but that's you brought a very magic paintbrush to three movies.

1501
01:23:49,080 --> 01:23:53,080
Speaker 1: So thank you, nicest complixens over that. I appreciate that.

1502
01:23:53,160 --> 01:23:55,439
Speaker 1: Now the movie means a great deal to me. So

1503
01:23:55,439 --> 01:23:59,400
Speaker 1: so words like that like you know a lot, so

1504
01:23:59,720 --> 01:24:01,040
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you for that.

1505
01:24:01,439 --> 01:24:02,920
Speaker 2: You never know, you never know?

1506
01:24:03,280 --> 01:24:06,400
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, and and twenty years by what will

1507
01:24:06,520 --> 01:24:08,600
Speaker 1: will you do anything when the on the on the

1508
01:24:08,760 --> 01:24:13,639
Speaker 1: night we we celebrator have any plans? Yeah?

1509
01:24:13,960 --> 01:24:19,639
Speaker 2: All right, all right, Peter, Yeah, stay tuned, stay tuned.

1510
01:24:19,680 --> 01:24:22,599
Speaker 1: All right. I like that. Thanks your time, Thanks for

1511
01:24:22,600 --> 01:24:25,640
Speaker 1: giving my pleasure so much for our fans that we

1512
01:24:25,680 --> 01:24:26,320
Speaker 1: love so much.

1513
01:24:26,479 --> 01:24:29,040
Speaker 2: So let's uh until next time

1514
01:24:29,160 --> 01:24:30,920
Speaker 1: Until next time, okay, Thanks Peter,