Steve Franks Mega Post!
The wonderful creator of Psych has been making the media rounds...looks like interest is high! Here are some of the interviews to tide you over until the musical airs:
The Hollywood Reporter
Psych: The Musical was years in the making, with the musically-inclined series creator Steve Franks -- he penned and performed the bright Psych theme -- having intentions of doing a full-fledged musical early on in the USA Network comedy's run.
"We talked about it for so long -- from the pilot, even! It was one of those things where I wanted to do it but I kept putting more and more work on my own shoulders," Franks tells The Hollywood Reporter. "It became about me finding time to do it, and I was also learning how to run a television show at the same time, so it was one of those cases where I never had the time to make it happen. When I finally had the time to make it happen, it was season seven."
In Psych: The Musical, Shawn (James Roday) and Gus (Dule Hill) track down escaped playwright mad man named Z (Rent's Anthony Rapp), who six years earlier was deemed criminally insane after locking a critic in a back room of the theater that he burned to the ground. Shawn and Gus are forced to consult with the one person Z confided in while in the institution, a dangerous villain from Shawn's past. Filmed last October, the songfest also features guest turns by Ally Sheedy and Jimmi Simpson.
Franks talks to THR about bringing the musical to the small screen, how they pulled a casting coup in securing Rapp and whether he foresees a future beyond the forthcoming season eight.
When did you sit down and actually take the time to write the script and the songs?
At the beginning of season seven. I said, "Enough is enough." I'm surprised that we're still on the air; every year we come back I'm surprised. The clock is ticking. We called the writers and we sat in early and wrote four stories. Once we had those stories done, "Alright, the show can run itself for a little while." I went in my office and finally was able to break a story [for the two-hour musical]. It was two to six weeks before I had anything of any sort of substance. It was always too large in scale -- at one point [in the original script] they went to London in the second hour. To me, it was checking off two things from my bucket list, one of which was I was finally going to do a musical. But most importantly, I finally get to do the Psych movie. It was one of those instances where biting off more than one person should chew actually benefited me because it's so overloaded. I feel like I would love this episode even if the songs weren't in it, and the songs just became the gravy on top of the whole thing.
You mentioned that in the original script, Shawn and Gus go to London. How much did you have to take out to make it a feasible shooting script?
I joke that I didn't take out nearly enough to make it a shootable script. We still had more than we should've done. I was also operating on the assumption that we were going to get extra shooting days, which wasn't the case. I ended up sending the London idea into its own episode and it is the season eight premiere on Jan. 8. It was one of those situations where I was producer, writer and director. We had one shot at it, so we had to swing big. If we failed huge, then that's fine. We've never shied away from taking a big chance on this show.
For the songs, how challenging was it to write all that in a short period of time? Were the melodies and lyrics sitting in the back of your mind?
The songs to me were the fun of it. I was excited to be able to go in my office and get my guitar out and play. I've written songs -- never show tunes per se -- but a lot of the same principles apply; it's almost along the same principles of dialogue because there are arguments within the song and I love playing with words. I waited to the last possible second to bring in Adam Cohen, our composer, because I thought, "Okay, this is as far as I can get them done at this point. I'll bring in Adam and he'll do his approach to the songs." To my dismay, Adam was more enthusiastic than I was. He's like, "This has to go bigger!" He pushed me to make it on an even larger scale, but for a while I felt like it could possible cause me to have a nervous breakdown.
You also got Rent's Anthony Rap to appear in the musical. How did that come about?
We would have never made him audition. If he wanted in, he was in. I didn't meet him until the day he showed up at Ocean Ways Studio, this great facility where Frank Sinatra used to record, where we recorded the vocals. Anthony showed up took the red-eye to fly in -- he had a concert the night before -- to these over-the-top, kind of ridiculous songs. It was interesting to see Anthony, this very serious Broadway star, go down the rabbit hole of what we do. It was a coup on our part to be able to bring him into our hole.
What was the most challenging part for you in terms of getting all the moving pieces for this special ready? What did you find most difficult?
Oddly enough, the thing that I was most worried about was the lip-synch, because I've watched a lot of musicals beforehand and the one thing that really took me out of them was if someone was just a mediocre lip-syncher, then it takes you out of the movie completely. We were going to find out on Day 2 when we shot the first musical production ["Santa Barbara Skies"] if it worked or not. There were a hundred extras, dancers -- it was something I wasn't allowed to worry about, it just had to work. There was no fall back. I never prepared so much for anything; I story-boarded as many things as I could imagine doing and then the rest of it I left to the creative impulses on set.
Is there a favorite performance or song or moment from the musical that sticks with you?
Jimmi Simpson and Ally Sheedy's moment might be my favorite in the history of the show because it's one of those things that encapsulates everything about the show. It's ridiculous, silly and heartbreaking at the same time. It's beautiful to me in a very strange way of how silly it is and it was one of the few times that the entire cast -- including James and Maggie -- came down to watch us shoot that sequence even though they were done for the day.
What is your plan for Sunday evening when the musical airs?
About a week ago, I finally said, "Alright, we need to have people over," so we put out an Evite and we're going to have a handful of friends over to the house. I've never done that in the history of the show. The great thing about doing this and doing the press is we finished this a year ago and the network said, "We like this a lot. We're going to give it its own special night." Now we're mastering the soundtrack album. I'm almost a fan of it myself because it's so far in the past that I'm getting to enjoy it on my own. This show is the gift that keeps giving for me.
Are there plans to release the soundtrack?
It's definitely going to happen. I think it's going to be released [on iTunes after] the East Coast airing -- a short period after, like an hour.
In less than a month, Psych is back for its eighth season. Are there discussions of continuing the show beyond that?
I'm shocked every year that the show continues. I always think that the network has forgotten that we're on and we're like that charge to the gym you're paying every month that is auto-debited and at some point someone's going to look at the books and realize we're still on the air. What's coming up in season eight is we're doing the London episode, which has a Harry Potter theme. I don't want to ever stop doing it, and if that announcement is officially made then I'll be the first person to sign up when they want to make anything more -- TV movies or feature films -- and, by the way, not just one feature film, I'm talking six to eight of them over the course of years.
So you're open to continuing Psych?
We've shot out season eight and if season eight is it, that's what it was meant to be. If it can live on in any other capacity, let's talk Broadway.
What can you say about the season eight finale? Is it a cliffhanger or neatly tied in a bow?
The season eight finale is one of my favorite episodes of the show. It certainly has a degree of closure that will be satisfying and has one of the most-talked about guest appearances in the history of the show. I'm hoping that everyone loves the end of season eight as much as I do.
Source
Los Angeles Times
"Psych: The Musical" is at long last ready for its curtain raiser.
Creator Steve Franks and his writing crew are no strangers to bringing the kooky to the long-running USA Network series--who could forget the re-enactment of "Clue"?
Now, ahead of the launch of its eighth season (which rolls out next month), fans who have long anticipated hearing their favorite fake psychic detective (James Roday) and his best friend/pharmaceutical salesman (Dule Hill) belt out ditties, can now rest easy.
"Psych" will air a two-hour musical episode/movie this Sunday at 9 p.m.-- in which the cast plus guest stars including Ally Sheedy and Anthony Rapp will sing and dance their hearts out.
It's a labor of love for Franks, who moonlights as a musician (and who wrote the show's theme song). He wrote and directed the episode, plus penned the 14 songs with "Psych" music director Adam Cohen.
We talked to Franks about the special.
Some might say you’re giving “Sound of Music” a run for their money. Early reviews are really liking what you’ve come up with here.
Well, we certainly aren’t going to get the numbers that “Sound of Music” did. Wouldn’t that be something?
And it’s fun that it’s being billed as a movie, not just an extended episode.
I am so calling it a movie because for as long as the show has run, I have always-we have a meeting at the end of the year, with the executives at Universal and they always say, "Hey, what are we doing for next year? What is your plan for next year?" and I always pitch a “Psych” movie. I was always hoping it’d be a feature film, but at the very least I thought if we stick around after a season is done and shoot two back-to-back episodes and make it a movie. So, this was sort of my way to do the “Psych” movie without having USA Network pay anything else extra for it.
I’m sure they were all for that. And it comes on the coattails of NBC’s “Sound of Music,” which got big numbers but was largely panned by critics and those active Twitter users. Are you happy about the timing, feel like people are in the mood for it?
It’s really funny because we shot this over a year ago. And [USA] liked it so much they called me and said they were going to make a special night out of it. I was so excited and then they said, "Yeah, we’re going to air it next year.” And I was like, “Whattt?” There's a big, huge plot point that this was supposed to betting up in the middle of Season 7, that now are built-in continuity errors-or, as I like to say, the basis for a really awesome drinking game. Although, technically, when you get to the very end, there is a way to sort of backwards explain how it could possibly be happening within this time frame in the show.
And it was something that had been brewing for a while in your mind, right?
It was one of those things. I wrote the theme song. When I sold the show, I had said, "Hey, I’m also doing the theme song.” And they were like, “Yeah, yeah, sure you are.” And we went in and we put it together and we recorded it. And they said, “Alright, this is fine. We’ll let him do it.” Fortunately, people seem to like the theme song, so from there it was like, “I want to do a whole musical.” This is from the pilot!
So we talked about it for so many years that we all collectively knew that it was going to be so difficult, but that it meant so much to us that we wanted to get it right, at least within our world. There’s so much effort and joy put into it at the same time because we’re all sort of fulfilling childhood memories, childhood bucket list with this project. Everybody really wanted it to be as great as it could possibly be. I hope we did it right. I know that I love it so much and am so happy with it. I can't stop listening. I can't stop singing the songs. I just got the mixed soundtrack that we’re going to release digitally the day-of…
Yes, “Psych” fans would riot if the songs weren’t made available.
I’ve had to, for the last six months, beat the drum of “are we going to release this?” I was like, “There needs to be a soundtrack. It needs to be this big thing.” I almost felt like I was pestering them to death to do it, but it’s so cool. It’s in my car now and I’m embarrassed because I can’t stop listening to it. It’s so weird because they were these songs that I wrote on acoustic guitar and brought in Adam Cohen, our composer, and months later we’re on the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Bros. with a 50-piece orchestra and all I’ve kept thinking along the way is “this can’t possibly be happening.”
Let’s talk about the story. I assume there needs to be a rhyme or reason to the plot to make it work for a musical element, or can you just take a regular story idea and add some songs to it?
I watched a lot of these television musicals and many of them were, let’s say, less satisfying than I had hoped. Sometimes they never even bothered to explain why people were singing. At least with ours, there is a reason. It was always, ‘What was the device.’ There was actually a much more ambitious device that I started with that was a little bit-it wasn’t like mind-blowing, but it took a lot of explaining. So I sort of pared it down to make it easier to be digested. But it was always: I want to explain what’s going on. I don’t want to do cover songs-that was the No. 1 that I didn’t want to do. And I wanted to be sure that like any good film musical, any good Disney musical, any good Broadway show, the songs are about propelling a story forward in a big way and giving you the spirit and emotion of each scene.
I knew that the songs would be fun and funny just because of what our show is. So crafting the story, I thought, “this is the first time we’re going to do two hours.” So I needed it to not feel like it at the 50-minute mark to not have folks thinking, “oh, God, there’s another hour?” So the story itself is probably one of the most complicated and darkest mysteries we’ve done just because I needed to be able to prove people-because I’ve been saying, “Let’s do a ‘Psych’ movie for all these years-that this does stretch to two hours. I spent almost two months at the very beginning of the season-also running the show at the same time and developing the other four episodes that should have been shooting-and I spent every moment that I could building this story and making it more ambitious and consequently less ambitious one I realized we weren’t going to get any extra days or extra money, it was all just coming out of our budget. It was a tremendous and exciting creative endeavor to say, “OK, you’re going to get this much time, and it’s going to come within the regular run and we’re going to shoot 13 episodes before this and then we’re going to shoot the musical and then we’re going to shoot another musical after that.” I couldn’t run the tank down to zero with the cast.
And so you shot what is essentially two back-to-back episodes in the same amount of time it takes to film one episode. Are you insane?
Yes. I know. I know. It was the one thing that M-K Kennedy, who oversees production and basically writes our checks for us, asked us. When she finally found out that I was going to do the movie, she immediately took me to lunch. She sat down and said, “OK, how do you expect to pull this off?” And I thought so much about it because we talked so much about it and I realized that the only way we could do it was to make it the two-hour because then we could do this thing called cross-boarding, where the extra time we would get is because we’re not moving the trucks, we’re staying in the same location. For every location I used, I wrote it twice. You shoot all your police station scenes for two episodes in one day-you’re locked into one place each day and that gave us enough of a buffer with time and it saved us enough money to put on these elaborate numbers. There’s 14 songs in this thing, if you count the reprieves and the little asides, so it was one of those things that even cross-boarding and doing the two hours, every day was an adrenaline rush from the day I stepped out of the car.
And how about Dule and James-what was there whole initial reaction to rumblings about doing a musical?
I had done the exact same thing at the beginning of season 6. I said, “I’m closing my door and I’m writing this musical.” And then we got five episodes into the season and I just knew there was no way I was going to finish the musical. So when I said, “We’re doing the musical this year,” I think there was a certain degree of skepticism. And people had been like, “You don’t have to write it and direct it and do the songs, you know?” But that’s the fun of it! Why would I give that away to someone else? So it was a matter of me sufficiently carving out time, and luckily our writers were so good that I was able to escape the writers room for a while. Once they saw I was actually in my office and I pitched the entire episode to the writers with them all sitting around, with my acoustic guitar there singing the pieces of songs that I had-that was the moment they were like, “Oh, wow, you’re really going to do this.” I stopped being the boy who cried wolf.
I remember bringing James in. I had all the episode on my whiteboard in my office, and I pitched out the whole thing to him, and his face lit up. He was so excited. I thought, “If we fail, at least we’ll fail together with the same level of excitement.” He was in. And Dule has always been in. The dude tap dances on set. Kirsten Nelson called me up and said, “If you’re doing this, please put a song in there for me.” She was certainly the one who surprised me the most because she has such a tremendous range. I wish I had written more for her. And Tim Omundson, we always knew he had a good karaoke voice. And then we brought him into the studio and his rich baritone is filling up the room. He really stood out. Even Maggie [Lawson] was better than I expected her to be.
Musical episodes have been these weird sort of traditions of some sorts. Why do you think that is?
I don’t know. I guess because they’re fun to do. It’s a way to do something different without-gosh, I wish I knew the answer. Carlos Jacott said the best thing about our show once I showed him the script. After he saw the script, he said he realized that “Psych" has all along been a musical, just without the songs. So we naturally just transitioned into it. Our show just has that sort of kooky vibe.
And I wanted the episode to stand alone so that someday when someone turns it on, I don’t know where-maybe in a high school theater or maybe on Broadway-I want it to be fully contained. We set it up to be a full-on musical, not just a television musical. A few times that people have pulled it on to a tremendous effect and maybe that’s why people are open to it. They see what “Buffy” did with it. What “Scrubs” did with it.
Well, and people are already saying it stands alongside those. Does that make you feel compelled to do more? There are rumors the upcoming season might be its last.
I would absolutely would want to do another. I actually came from features and I wonder if anyone would buy an original musical straight to movie because it was so unbelievably terrifying, but life-changing at the same time. I would do it on this show in a heartbeat, I would do this as a feature version of this show as well because whenever they pull the plug on you, I think this show naturally transitions to not only being a feature film-maybe even six to eight features in the future.
When will you know the fate of the show?
We try to give a little bit of closure at the end of every season. We already shot all of season eight and there’s a little bit of closure there. I;m never going to kill off the entire cast because I love doing the show so much. We’ve always done the same number. It’s so strange. Our show just chugs along at the same pace. When that’s no longer good for USA and they say they want to move on to something else, we will gracefully bow out. The announcement could come at any time, or in between this year and next year. But we will have walked away with a smile on our face. We’ve gotten so much attention on this musical episode, it’s kind of a nice way to go out if we have to.
Is there a show out now, or even from the past, that you think would lend itself to a fun musical episode?
Sometimes it’s fun when you go the opposite direction-like a musical episode of “Breaking Bad.” That would probably be some drug-induced hallucination. But it’s done and there’s no way they can top what they’ve done! I don’t think they are going to reconvene to put a musical together.
I, personally, would have loved to see the “Magnum P.I.” musical. I think that would have been mind-blowing.
Article & picture source
Huffington Post
I had off-handedly promised a musical episode while we were a few days into shooting the pilot of Psych. It was a day when I was probably feeling full of myself, sure that my fifteen-plus years of fronting an Orange County rock band would sufficiently prepare me to write show tunes in multiple genres, stage massive production numbers and stretch a one-hour quirky detective comedy into a two hour movie.
I was ignorant.
Stubbornly ignorant.
But I always am.
And that is my secret to my success. (I should note here that by "success" I mean working on cable television. Basic cable. On a show that gets a noticeable ratings bump when we stunt-cast a wrestler.)
But the idea of the musical was out there and it seemed like the kind of impossible that either makes for a great adventure or the development of a hiatal hernia near the esophagus. Either one was fine with me, because I had discovered Prilosec years before and acid reflux was generally in my rear view mirror. Nothing could stop me. I was armed with my optimism and my ignorance.
Years of refusing to acknowledge the limitations of my network, my budget and my own suspect vocal range had enabled me to carry a silly little detective show past 100 episodes, dwindling down my bucket list with directing assignments, and even writing and performing the theme song. A few musical numbers in the middle of the story couldn't possibly be that difficult.
It had to be two hours. Because, when it comes down to it, all I really wanted to do was make a Psych movie. And doubling the length of a show, as odd as it seems, was the only way to make our budget work. They call it cross-boarding. Often, you can do amazing things just by keeping the trucks and the crew in the same place. So now, my initial plan of five songs turns to 10. Or more. (I should once again note that reprises and medleys count so that number is inflated, but there are 18 songs on the soundtrack so, in some circles, I'm being modest.)
I spent two months on the story. If we were going to finally do the movie we had begged the network to make for years, we were going to go big. The initial draft took the characters to London, sported big action pieces, and had twice as many scenes as a usual episode, and I hadn't even started on the songs. Cuts were made. Not as nearly as many as I should have but I am rarely one to let reality spoil a good daydream.
Then, the greatest thing in the world happened, I closed my office door, started noodling on my guitar and did not have to feel the tiniest bit guilty because I was actually working. This euphoria was almost immediately followed by my door quickly re-opening because the rest of the challenges and duties of shooting a TV series in another country were not going to go away because I finally restrung my guitar after years of forced dormancy.
I finished exactly one song during the story phase, the opener "Santa Barbara Skies." I had titles, snippets, lyrical ideas and a lots of voice memos on my phone of me singing gibberish melodies in bathrooms and malls around the state. Writing three-minute pop songs with my band Friendly Indians was worlds away from the scale and scope a musical required. I had to call upon my history.
Fortunately, I learned everything I needed to know about making a musical from the Sherman Brothers. No, I never met the legendary songwriting duo that defined Disney music for decades. I went a different route: I worked at the Tiki Room.
I wrote my first feature film, Big Daddy in the Tiki office while I was supposed to be sitting in the show, making sure the fountain didn't malfunction and nobody was getting to third base in the dark corners beyond the birdmobile. But even through the thick bamboo door, there was no escaping the melodies of the Shermans, especially the signature "In the Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room." All the things I love about music are present in their theme park songs: big hooks, interior rhymes, alliterative phrases, syllables packed to the breaking point and most importantly, a sense of fun. I now had a template to work with, and from there, the numbers began furiously materialize.
"When You're Making Up a Song" owes as much to the songs of Disney and the Muppets as it does to composer Adam Cohen, who I begrudgingly allowed into my office guitar party of one, not realizing it was he who would carry and elevate these ideas to the level that they needed. The simple call-and-response of "I've Heard It Both Ways" became a sprawling tango at Adam's insistence. The island ridiculousness of "Jamaican Inspector" was composed almost as a dare from Adam after I had put the lyrics in the script, intending only to have a character sing it a capella.
By the time we hit the legendary Ocean Way studios to record the vocals and the actors began to bring the songs to life and make them their joyous own, I realized that I did not have a monopoly on ignorant optimism. Either that, or it's contagious.
So with the writing completed, I left for Canada to start pre-production, conceive dance numbers, plan storyboards and to test the limits of the phrase "biting off more than you can chew." I had in hand a script and catalogue of songs that would change my life (I should note here that I'm not saying that because they were that good although I am a big fan of my own work, primarily because, as a writer I really speak to me.) I now had an experience under my belt that made my case of optimism a little more severe and left me feeling that, with the right people, there isn't much reason not to aim high, because in the end, that's where all the fun is.
Source
....okay I know three interviews isn't really a mega-post but I got lazy and I thought these were really good.
The Hollywood Reporter
Psych: The Musical was years in the making, with the musically-inclined series creator Steve Franks -- he penned and performed the bright Psych theme -- having intentions of doing a full-fledged musical early on in the USA Network comedy's run.
"We talked about it for so long -- from the pilot, even! It was one of those things where I wanted to do it but I kept putting more and more work on my own shoulders," Franks tells The Hollywood Reporter. "It became about me finding time to do it, and I was also learning how to run a television show at the same time, so it was one of those cases where I never had the time to make it happen. When I finally had the time to make it happen, it was season seven."
In Psych: The Musical, Shawn (James Roday) and Gus (Dule Hill) track down escaped playwright mad man named Z (Rent's Anthony Rapp), who six years earlier was deemed criminally insane after locking a critic in a back room of the theater that he burned to the ground. Shawn and Gus are forced to consult with the one person Z confided in while in the institution, a dangerous villain from Shawn's past. Filmed last October, the songfest also features guest turns by Ally Sheedy and Jimmi Simpson.
Franks talks to THR about bringing the musical to the small screen, how they pulled a casting coup in securing Rapp and whether he foresees a future beyond the forthcoming season eight.
When did you sit down and actually take the time to write the script and the songs?
At the beginning of season seven. I said, "Enough is enough." I'm surprised that we're still on the air; every year we come back I'm surprised. The clock is ticking. We called the writers and we sat in early and wrote four stories. Once we had those stories done, "Alright, the show can run itself for a little while." I went in my office and finally was able to break a story [for the two-hour musical]. It was two to six weeks before I had anything of any sort of substance. It was always too large in scale -- at one point [in the original script] they went to London in the second hour. To me, it was checking off two things from my bucket list, one of which was I was finally going to do a musical. But most importantly, I finally get to do the Psych movie. It was one of those instances where biting off more than one person should chew actually benefited me because it's so overloaded. I feel like I would love this episode even if the songs weren't in it, and the songs just became the gravy on top of the whole thing.
You mentioned that in the original script, Shawn and Gus go to London. How much did you have to take out to make it a feasible shooting script?
I joke that I didn't take out nearly enough to make it a shootable script. We still had more than we should've done. I was also operating on the assumption that we were going to get extra shooting days, which wasn't the case. I ended up sending the London idea into its own episode and it is the season eight premiere on Jan. 8. It was one of those situations where I was producer, writer and director. We had one shot at it, so we had to swing big. If we failed huge, then that's fine. We've never shied away from taking a big chance on this show.
For the songs, how challenging was it to write all that in a short period of time? Were the melodies and lyrics sitting in the back of your mind?
The songs to me were the fun of it. I was excited to be able to go in my office and get my guitar out and play. I've written songs -- never show tunes per se -- but a lot of the same principles apply; it's almost along the same principles of dialogue because there are arguments within the song and I love playing with words. I waited to the last possible second to bring in Adam Cohen, our composer, because I thought, "Okay, this is as far as I can get them done at this point. I'll bring in Adam and he'll do his approach to the songs." To my dismay, Adam was more enthusiastic than I was. He's like, "This has to go bigger!" He pushed me to make it on an even larger scale, but for a while I felt like it could possible cause me to have a nervous breakdown.
You also got Rent's Anthony Rap to appear in the musical. How did that come about?
We would have never made him audition. If he wanted in, he was in. I didn't meet him until the day he showed up at Ocean Ways Studio, this great facility where Frank Sinatra used to record, where we recorded the vocals. Anthony showed up took the red-eye to fly in -- he had a concert the night before -- to these over-the-top, kind of ridiculous songs. It was interesting to see Anthony, this very serious Broadway star, go down the rabbit hole of what we do. It was a coup on our part to be able to bring him into our hole.
What was the most challenging part for you in terms of getting all the moving pieces for this special ready? What did you find most difficult?
Oddly enough, the thing that I was most worried about was the lip-synch, because I've watched a lot of musicals beforehand and the one thing that really took me out of them was if someone was just a mediocre lip-syncher, then it takes you out of the movie completely. We were going to find out on Day 2 when we shot the first musical production ["Santa Barbara Skies"] if it worked or not. There were a hundred extras, dancers -- it was something I wasn't allowed to worry about, it just had to work. There was no fall back. I never prepared so much for anything; I story-boarded as many things as I could imagine doing and then the rest of it I left to the creative impulses on set.
Is there a favorite performance or song or moment from the musical that sticks with you?
Jimmi Simpson and Ally Sheedy's moment might be my favorite in the history of the show because it's one of those things that encapsulates everything about the show. It's ridiculous, silly and heartbreaking at the same time. It's beautiful to me in a very strange way of how silly it is and it was one of the few times that the entire cast -- including James and Maggie -- came down to watch us shoot that sequence even though they were done for the day.
What is your plan for Sunday evening when the musical airs?
About a week ago, I finally said, "Alright, we need to have people over," so we put out an Evite and we're going to have a handful of friends over to the house. I've never done that in the history of the show. The great thing about doing this and doing the press is we finished this a year ago and the network said, "We like this a lot. We're going to give it its own special night." Now we're mastering the soundtrack album. I'm almost a fan of it myself because it's so far in the past that I'm getting to enjoy it on my own. This show is the gift that keeps giving for me.
Are there plans to release the soundtrack?
It's definitely going to happen. I think it's going to be released [on iTunes after] the East Coast airing -- a short period after, like an hour.
In less than a month, Psych is back for its eighth season. Are there discussions of continuing the show beyond that?
I'm shocked every year that the show continues. I always think that the network has forgotten that we're on and we're like that charge to the gym you're paying every month that is auto-debited and at some point someone's going to look at the books and realize we're still on the air. What's coming up in season eight is we're doing the London episode, which has a Harry Potter theme. I don't want to ever stop doing it, and if that announcement is officially made then I'll be the first person to sign up when they want to make anything more -- TV movies or feature films -- and, by the way, not just one feature film, I'm talking six to eight of them over the course of years.
So you're open to continuing Psych?
We've shot out season eight and if season eight is it, that's what it was meant to be. If it can live on in any other capacity, let's talk Broadway.
What can you say about the season eight finale? Is it a cliffhanger or neatly tied in a bow?
The season eight finale is one of my favorite episodes of the show. It certainly has a degree of closure that will be satisfying and has one of the most-talked about guest appearances in the history of the show. I'm hoping that everyone loves the end of season eight as much as I do.
Source
Los Angeles Times
"Psych: The Musical" is at long last ready for its curtain raiser.
Creator Steve Franks and his writing crew are no strangers to bringing the kooky to the long-running USA Network series--who could forget the re-enactment of "Clue"?
Now, ahead of the launch of its eighth season (which rolls out next month), fans who have long anticipated hearing their favorite fake psychic detective (James Roday) and his best friend/pharmaceutical salesman (Dule Hill) belt out ditties, can now rest easy.
"Psych" will air a two-hour musical episode/movie this Sunday at 9 p.m.-- in which the cast plus guest stars including Ally Sheedy and Anthony Rapp will sing and dance their hearts out.
It's a labor of love for Franks, who moonlights as a musician (and who wrote the show's theme song). He wrote and directed the episode, plus penned the 14 songs with "Psych" music director Adam Cohen.
We talked to Franks about the special.
Some might say you’re giving “Sound of Music” a run for their money. Early reviews are really liking what you’ve come up with here.
Well, we certainly aren’t going to get the numbers that “Sound of Music” did. Wouldn’t that be something?
And it’s fun that it’s being billed as a movie, not just an extended episode.
I am so calling it a movie because for as long as the show has run, I have always-we have a meeting at the end of the year, with the executives at Universal and they always say, "Hey, what are we doing for next year? What is your plan for next year?" and I always pitch a “Psych” movie. I was always hoping it’d be a feature film, but at the very least I thought if we stick around after a season is done and shoot two back-to-back episodes and make it a movie. So, this was sort of my way to do the “Psych” movie without having USA Network pay anything else extra for it.
I’m sure they were all for that. And it comes on the coattails of NBC’s “Sound of Music,” which got big numbers but was largely panned by critics and those active Twitter users. Are you happy about the timing, feel like people are in the mood for it?
It’s really funny because we shot this over a year ago. And [USA] liked it so much they called me and said they were going to make a special night out of it. I was so excited and then they said, "Yeah, we’re going to air it next year.” And I was like, “Whattt?” There's a big, huge plot point that this was supposed to betting up in the middle of Season 7, that now are built-in continuity errors-or, as I like to say, the basis for a really awesome drinking game. Although, technically, when you get to the very end, there is a way to sort of backwards explain how it could possibly be happening within this time frame in the show.
And it was something that had been brewing for a while in your mind, right?
It was one of those things. I wrote the theme song. When I sold the show, I had said, "Hey, I’m also doing the theme song.” And they were like, “Yeah, yeah, sure you are.” And we went in and we put it together and we recorded it. And they said, “Alright, this is fine. We’ll let him do it.” Fortunately, people seem to like the theme song, so from there it was like, “I want to do a whole musical.” This is from the pilot!
So we talked about it for so many years that we all collectively knew that it was going to be so difficult, but that it meant so much to us that we wanted to get it right, at least within our world. There’s so much effort and joy put into it at the same time because we’re all sort of fulfilling childhood memories, childhood bucket list with this project. Everybody really wanted it to be as great as it could possibly be. I hope we did it right. I know that I love it so much and am so happy with it. I can't stop listening. I can't stop singing the songs. I just got the mixed soundtrack that we’re going to release digitally the day-of…
Yes, “Psych” fans would riot if the songs weren’t made available.
I’ve had to, for the last six months, beat the drum of “are we going to release this?” I was like, “There needs to be a soundtrack. It needs to be this big thing.” I almost felt like I was pestering them to death to do it, but it’s so cool. It’s in my car now and I’m embarrassed because I can’t stop listening to it. It’s so weird because they were these songs that I wrote on acoustic guitar and brought in Adam Cohen, our composer, and months later we’re on the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Bros. with a 50-piece orchestra and all I’ve kept thinking along the way is “this can’t possibly be happening.”
Let’s talk about the story. I assume there needs to be a rhyme or reason to the plot to make it work for a musical element, or can you just take a regular story idea and add some songs to it?
I watched a lot of these television musicals and many of them were, let’s say, less satisfying than I had hoped. Sometimes they never even bothered to explain why people were singing. At least with ours, there is a reason. It was always, ‘What was the device.’ There was actually a much more ambitious device that I started with that was a little bit-it wasn’t like mind-blowing, but it took a lot of explaining. So I sort of pared it down to make it easier to be digested. But it was always: I want to explain what’s going on. I don’t want to do cover songs-that was the No. 1 that I didn’t want to do. And I wanted to be sure that like any good film musical, any good Disney musical, any good Broadway show, the songs are about propelling a story forward in a big way and giving you the spirit and emotion of each scene.
I knew that the songs would be fun and funny just because of what our show is. So crafting the story, I thought, “this is the first time we’re going to do two hours.” So I needed it to not feel like it at the 50-minute mark to not have folks thinking, “oh, God, there’s another hour?” So the story itself is probably one of the most complicated and darkest mysteries we’ve done just because I needed to be able to prove people-because I’ve been saying, “Let’s do a ‘Psych’ movie for all these years-that this does stretch to two hours. I spent almost two months at the very beginning of the season-also running the show at the same time and developing the other four episodes that should have been shooting-and I spent every moment that I could building this story and making it more ambitious and consequently less ambitious one I realized we weren’t going to get any extra days or extra money, it was all just coming out of our budget. It was a tremendous and exciting creative endeavor to say, “OK, you’re going to get this much time, and it’s going to come within the regular run and we’re going to shoot 13 episodes before this and then we’re going to shoot the musical and then we’re going to shoot another musical after that.” I couldn’t run the tank down to zero with the cast.
And so you shot what is essentially two back-to-back episodes in the same amount of time it takes to film one episode. Are you insane?
Yes. I know. I know. It was the one thing that M-K Kennedy, who oversees production and basically writes our checks for us, asked us. When she finally found out that I was going to do the movie, she immediately took me to lunch. She sat down and said, “OK, how do you expect to pull this off?” And I thought so much about it because we talked so much about it and I realized that the only way we could do it was to make it the two-hour because then we could do this thing called cross-boarding, where the extra time we would get is because we’re not moving the trucks, we’re staying in the same location. For every location I used, I wrote it twice. You shoot all your police station scenes for two episodes in one day-you’re locked into one place each day and that gave us enough of a buffer with time and it saved us enough money to put on these elaborate numbers. There’s 14 songs in this thing, if you count the reprieves and the little asides, so it was one of those things that even cross-boarding and doing the two hours, every day was an adrenaline rush from the day I stepped out of the car.
And how about Dule and James-what was there whole initial reaction to rumblings about doing a musical?
I had done the exact same thing at the beginning of season 6. I said, “I’m closing my door and I’m writing this musical.” And then we got five episodes into the season and I just knew there was no way I was going to finish the musical. So when I said, “We’re doing the musical this year,” I think there was a certain degree of skepticism. And people had been like, “You don’t have to write it and direct it and do the songs, you know?” But that’s the fun of it! Why would I give that away to someone else? So it was a matter of me sufficiently carving out time, and luckily our writers were so good that I was able to escape the writers room for a while. Once they saw I was actually in my office and I pitched the entire episode to the writers with them all sitting around, with my acoustic guitar there singing the pieces of songs that I had-that was the moment they were like, “Oh, wow, you’re really going to do this.” I stopped being the boy who cried wolf.
I remember bringing James in. I had all the episode on my whiteboard in my office, and I pitched out the whole thing to him, and his face lit up. He was so excited. I thought, “If we fail, at least we’ll fail together with the same level of excitement.” He was in. And Dule has always been in. The dude tap dances on set. Kirsten Nelson called me up and said, “If you’re doing this, please put a song in there for me.” She was certainly the one who surprised me the most because she has such a tremendous range. I wish I had written more for her. And Tim Omundson, we always knew he had a good karaoke voice. And then we brought him into the studio and his rich baritone is filling up the room. He really stood out. Even Maggie [Lawson] was better than I expected her to be.
Musical episodes have been these weird sort of traditions of some sorts. Why do you think that is?
I don’t know. I guess because they’re fun to do. It’s a way to do something different without-gosh, I wish I knew the answer. Carlos Jacott said the best thing about our show once I showed him the script. After he saw the script, he said he realized that “Psych" has all along been a musical, just without the songs. So we naturally just transitioned into it. Our show just has that sort of kooky vibe.
And I wanted the episode to stand alone so that someday when someone turns it on, I don’t know where-maybe in a high school theater or maybe on Broadway-I want it to be fully contained. We set it up to be a full-on musical, not just a television musical. A few times that people have pulled it on to a tremendous effect and maybe that’s why people are open to it. They see what “Buffy” did with it. What “Scrubs” did with it.
Well, and people are already saying it stands alongside those. Does that make you feel compelled to do more? There are rumors the upcoming season might be its last.
I would absolutely would want to do another. I actually came from features and I wonder if anyone would buy an original musical straight to movie because it was so unbelievably terrifying, but life-changing at the same time. I would do it on this show in a heartbeat, I would do this as a feature version of this show as well because whenever they pull the plug on you, I think this show naturally transitions to not only being a feature film-maybe even six to eight features in the future.
When will you know the fate of the show?
We try to give a little bit of closure at the end of every season. We already shot all of season eight and there’s a little bit of closure there. I;m never going to kill off the entire cast because I love doing the show so much. We’ve always done the same number. It’s so strange. Our show just chugs along at the same pace. When that’s no longer good for USA and they say they want to move on to something else, we will gracefully bow out. The announcement could come at any time, or in between this year and next year. But we will have walked away with a smile on our face. We’ve gotten so much attention on this musical episode, it’s kind of a nice way to go out if we have to.
Is there a show out now, or even from the past, that you think would lend itself to a fun musical episode?
Sometimes it’s fun when you go the opposite direction-like a musical episode of “Breaking Bad.” That would probably be some drug-induced hallucination. But it’s done and there’s no way they can top what they’ve done! I don’t think they are going to reconvene to put a musical together.
I, personally, would have loved to see the “Magnum P.I.” musical. I think that would have been mind-blowing.
Article & picture source
Huffington Post
I had off-handedly promised a musical episode while we were a few days into shooting the pilot of Psych. It was a day when I was probably feeling full of myself, sure that my fifteen-plus years of fronting an Orange County rock band would sufficiently prepare me to write show tunes in multiple genres, stage massive production numbers and stretch a one-hour quirky detective comedy into a two hour movie.
I was ignorant.
Stubbornly ignorant.
But I always am.
And that is my secret to my success. (I should note here that by "success" I mean working on cable television. Basic cable. On a show that gets a noticeable ratings bump when we stunt-cast a wrestler.)
But the idea of the musical was out there and it seemed like the kind of impossible that either makes for a great adventure or the development of a hiatal hernia near the esophagus. Either one was fine with me, because I had discovered Prilosec years before and acid reflux was generally in my rear view mirror. Nothing could stop me. I was armed with my optimism and my ignorance.
Years of refusing to acknowledge the limitations of my network, my budget and my own suspect vocal range had enabled me to carry a silly little detective show past 100 episodes, dwindling down my bucket list with directing assignments, and even writing and performing the theme song. A few musical numbers in the middle of the story couldn't possibly be that difficult.
It had to be two hours. Because, when it comes down to it, all I really wanted to do was make a Psych movie. And doubling the length of a show, as odd as it seems, was the only way to make our budget work. They call it cross-boarding. Often, you can do amazing things just by keeping the trucks and the crew in the same place. So now, my initial plan of five songs turns to 10. Or more. (I should once again note that reprises and medleys count so that number is inflated, but there are 18 songs on the soundtrack so, in some circles, I'm being modest.)
I spent two months on the story. If we were going to finally do the movie we had begged the network to make for years, we were going to go big. The initial draft took the characters to London, sported big action pieces, and had twice as many scenes as a usual episode, and I hadn't even started on the songs. Cuts were made. Not as nearly as many as I should have but I am rarely one to let reality spoil a good daydream.
Then, the greatest thing in the world happened, I closed my office door, started noodling on my guitar and did not have to feel the tiniest bit guilty because I was actually working. This euphoria was almost immediately followed by my door quickly re-opening because the rest of the challenges and duties of shooting a TV series in another country were not going to go away because I finally restrung my guitar after years of forced dormancy.
I finished exactly one song during the story phase, the opener "Santa Barbara Skies." I had titles, snippets, lyrical ideas and a lots of voice memos on my phone of me singing gibberish melodies in bathrooms and malls around the state. Writing three-minute pop songs with my band Friendly Indians was worlds away from the scale and scope a musical required. I had to call upon my history.
Fortunately, I learned everything I needed to know about making a musical from the Sherman Brothers. No, I never met the legendary songwriting duo that defined Disney music for decades. I went a different route: I worked at the Tiki Room.
I wrote my first feature film, Big Daddy in the Tiki office while I was supposed to be sitting in the show, making sure the fountain didn't malfunction and nobody was getting to third base in the dark corners beyond the birdmobile. But even through the thick bamboo door, there was no escaping the melodies of the Shermans, especially the signature "In the Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room." All the things I love about music are present in their theme park songs: big hooks, interior rhymes, alliterative phrases, syllables packed to the breaking point and most importantly, a sense of fun. I now had a template to work with, and from there, the numbers began furiously materialize.
"When You're Making Up a Song" owes as much to the songs of Disney and the Muppets as it does to composer Adam Cohen, who I begrudgingly allowed into my office guitar party of one, not realizing it was he who would carry and elevate these ideas to the level that they needed. The simple call-and-response of "I've Heard It Both Ways" became a sprawling tango at Adam's insistence. The island ridiculousness of "Jamaican Inspector" was composed almost as a dare from Adam after I had put the lyrics in the script, intending only to have a character sing it a capella.
By the time we hit the legendary Ocean Way studios to record the vocals and the actors began to bring the songs to life and make them their joyous own, I realized that I did not have a monopoly on ignorant optimism. Either that, or it's contagious.
So with the writing completed, I left for Canada to start pre-production, conceive dance numbers, plan storyboards and to test the limits of the phrase "biting off more than you can chew." I had in hand a script and catalogue of songs that would change my life (I should note here that I'm not saying that because they were that good although I am a big fan of my own work, primarily because, as a writer I really speak to me.) I now had an experience under my belt that made my case of optimism a little more severe and left me feeling that, with the right people, there isn't much reason not to aim high, because in the end, that's where all the fun is.
Source
....okay I know three interviews isn't really a mega-post but I got lazy and I thought these were really good.