Steve Martin only had one edition. He was all for singing this absurd, twisted, joke-filled song about three babies who are all suspects in the murder of his mother, but he hesitated on the line: “Should they fry a baby for matricide?”
“Guys,” he said from the recording booth, “I don't know if we should talk about sending babies to the electric chair. Maybe we could just do 'In case a baby has tried For matricide?'”
The “boys” were award-winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who co-wrote the song “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” for the third season of “Only Murders in the Building.”
“We thought, 'Wait, not only did you solve something with exactly perfect rhyme, but it means we don't have to electrocute babies.' and Can we turn it into a murder trial?'” Pasek says. “'That's why you're Steve Martin.'”
Pasek and Paul didn't know it, but among his many other talents (comedian, actor, banjo) it turns out that Martin is a big fan of “The Music Man.” At one of Martin Short's legendary Christmas parties in Hollywood a few years ago, Martin performed that show's fast-paced song “(Ya Got) Trouble” and made it “word perfect,” says multi-Oscar and Emmy nominee Marc Shaiman. . composer, who was there. “So we knew: Oh, yeah, he's going to pull this off.”
The final season of the murder mystery comedy series gave Short's character, Oliver Putnam, the opportunity to turn his murder mystery play into an outrageous Broadway musical called “Death Rattle Dazzle!”. Martin's character, veteran TV actor Charles-Haden Savage, plays a police officer investigating the murder of the triplets' mother, and a plot thread of the season is whether he can finish the intricate song without going into a wild fugue state on stage.
“And the harder it was to perform,” Paul says, “and the more alliteratives or explosives there were, the more twists and turns or the rhythm of the song, the greater the reward for you as an audience. . You wonder, 'Can he really do it?'”
Charles (Steve Martin) and Loretta (Meryl Streep) star in the outrageous Broadway musical “Death Rattle Dazzle!” in the season 3 finale of “Only Murders in the Building.”
(Patrick Harbron/Hulu)
Showrunner John Hoffman brought Pasek and Paul, the songwriting team behind “Dear Evan Hansen” and “La La Land,” into the “Only Murders” writers room to create this faux musical. They wrote a lullaby for Meryl Streep's character and several other stage numbers, working with carefully selected collaborators, including Sara Bareilles and Michael R. Jackson.
For the “Pickwick” song, they reached out to Shaiman and Scott Wittman, the theater veterans who scored “Hairspray” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” and who really gave Pasek and Paul their big break in Season 2 of TV series. “Smash” in 2013. This was the first time they all worked together, and it was like having “a second marriage with younger people,” says Shaiman, 64. “They're really like…”
“…trophy wives,” Wittman chimes in.
The two duos hit it off instantly and met in a room with laptops to play in the sandbox of a shared Google document.
“Who would have thought that four people writing lyrics could work?” says Shaiman. “But it flows.”
“It was like we were playing a board game,” says Wittman, the goal of which was “how fast you could type to make the other person laugh.”
“The harder it was to perform,” says Justin Paul, right, … the greater the reward will be for you as an audience.”
(Annie Noelker / for The Times)
It became a comedy writers room for songwriters, and everyone was looking for the best rhymes that combined words about babies with words about murder.
“Someone would come up with 'crib/fatal,'” Paul says, “and then Scott would jump up and yell, 'NEONATAL!'”
“And we'd all just howl,” Pasek says.
When Charles first attempts the manic word salad, it sends him to the “white room,” a panicked void where stage performers go when they forget their lines. He discovers that making tortillas, his relaxing practice, helps him get through the song, but it is an unsustainable crutch. Oliver brings in Matthew Broderick, playing himself with exaggerated smarminess, who effortlessly delivers the song.
“What can I say?” Broderick says. “I am a vessel.”
Finally, during the musical's sitzprobe (orchestra rehearsal), Charles has to perform the entire song for an additional reason: to create a distraction and help his fellow detectives, Oliver and Mabel (Selena Gomez), in their investigation into the murder. from The Character of Paul Rudd. So it's really exciting to see if he can navigate this incredibly dense and complex tightrope that's been tripping him up all season.
It was like that on set too.
“Everyone was done and everyone stayed,” says Wittman, who was at the Washington Heights theater where the scene was being filmed. “The day had gotten away from them and they only had two hours to film the actual number.
“But Steve, not a drop of sweat. She achieved it every time. “It was exciting.”
