Essays

Winner of a Disgruntled Writers shirt!

The following is an excerpt from a Letter to the San Francisco Chronicle Datebook written by Marshall Brickman in response to quotes from an interview with Des McAnnuff which stated, “When writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice approached McAnuff with the idea for ‘Jersey Boys,’ there was no script, just the idea. ‘I helped them with the structure.’”

BRICKMAN’S RESPONSE:

“We can finally put to rest any lingering doubts about who is responsible for the success of our little offering, “Jersey Boys…” It is, of course, the director.

…Twice we offered him the crown and twice he refused it… Sheer modesty. We offered it to him 139 times. Only after we doused ourselves with gasoline and lit a match did he agree to interrupt his restructuring of the book for “Dracula, the Musical,” to heed our pleas and, as a bonus, instruct us in the niceties of the musical theater: how to arrive fashionably late, how to humiliate the cast, how to create an atmosphere of collegiality rivaled only by a board meeting at Hewlett-Packard, how to give interviews that, for sheer fantastic invention, rival anything out of Lewis Carroll.

But why be churlish? I owe the man. He wrote our show, ate my dinner, married my wife and fathered my children. For all I know, he may have even written this letter.
MARSHALL BRICKMAN, co-author of “Jersey Boys”

Why be churlish, indeed?