LAZY TUESDAY: I LOVE A PIANO STYLE

The Back Story

"Lazy Tuesday: I Love A Piano Style" is a spoof on Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg's "Lazy Sunday," which premiered on SNL. (If you haven't seen Lazy Sunday, do yourself a favor and log onto the NBC website and watch it.)

When I first saw the SNL sketch I thought it would make for a perfect musical theatre "spoofing" seeing as it was about two guys doing very non-hardcore activities to a very hardcore rap. Musical theatre is about as non-hardcore as you can get, so I shelved the idea till the right topic came along.

While in rehearsals for the St Paul version of White Christmas I started writing some lyrics that I thought could work, but didn't have the hook (refrain) yet. Finally, one day when we were running "I Love A Piano," it finally came. I ran it by Kevin Worley and Erin Crouch (my girlfriend), we reworked some lyrics for improvement and we had our song. We thought if we could get it filmed in time it might be a funny gift to send to the Detroit Company of White Christmas.

I started screwing around on Garage Band and came up with the underlying instrumental track. (By the way, this whole project was done by a computer novice (me) on my Mac ibook G4. That's saying something about the ease of working with a Mac.) When we got to St Paul I asked Michael Creason, our Sound Designer, for some help with the recording of the vocal tracks, as my computer microphone was not really hacking it. He came through big time recording the vocal tracks through the sound system at the theatre.

Kevin, Erin and I started filming on Monday the 4th (after we opened the show) and we finished filming on the 9th. Take that, Peter Jackson. Now mind you, none of us had ever done anything like this before. I'm sure if we had taken more time, we could've gotten better shots, edited better, or what have you. But the purpose was to get the video to Detroit before Christmas, not win a Sundance Award. So if you see little mistakes here and there, please forgive.

With Erin behind the camera, me directing, and Kevin coming up with one awesome idea after another, we filmed during the days, grabbing location shots of St Paul and footage at the Mall of America, etc. The cast, crew and orchestra at the Ordway all pitched in. We filmed something almost everyday at intermission for five days; running around like idiots, trying to get the enough good shots within our ten-minute time frame. I generally stayed up into the night and played with all the footage that Erin had gotten during the day. Then I'd show Kevin what we put together the night before. Everyone contributed. It was crazy fun. I think we almost had more fun putting this thing together than anyone will actually get out of watching it.

By Monday the 18th, the whole thing was done, credits, outtakes and all - one week exactly. Not bad. Note to any Hollywood producers out there: We work VERY quickly.

For those wondering what the
heck White Christmas is:

White Christmas is a stage musical that has been playing during the holiday months for the last three years. It started in San Francisco in 2004, played Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles in 2005 and spread to St Paul and Detroit in 2006. Kevin and I have been in it from year one. Erin joined last year in Los Angeles. There is a great sense of family surrounding the show thanks to its producer, Kevin McCollum and its creators, Walter Bobbie, Randy Skinner, David Ives and Paul Blake. Each year that we get together to do the show again is like a return to family. This video is a gift from the St Paul company to the Detroit company.