Yesterday we brought you part one of our interview with Corey Lubowich. In part two, we learn more in-depth details about his new web-series, World’s Worst Musical, and Corey gets profound about “the business of art” and what makes someone an inspiration in this day and age. Plus, we’ve got pics of Team StarKid filming World’s Worst Musical, and a bonus tidbit about what went down when a large group of StarKids visited a certain buddy of theirs on Broadway last winter.
Natalie Fisher: What has been most different or difficult working with the medium of film to make this, on this scale, compared to working in production for a show?
Corey Lubowich: It’s both a frustrating and liberating thing where you put so much time into it then you do it for a couple of hours and then never do it again, if that makes sense? It’s this cool thing where you just have to get it right once or twice for the camera and then you’re done, but sometimes it’s frustrating because you put all this work into it. We come from a theatrical background so we’ve had to adapt to this film medium, and most of our performers come from a theatre background so we’ve sort of approached it in that way. I think that we’ve typically rehearsed or choreographed a scene and we block it and choreograph it and run it a couple of times to get people used to it, and then in terms of the filming it’s like, “You’re going to do this six times now and we’re going to film it from six different angles.”
NF: So it is just a one camera production?
CL: Yeah.
NF: Cool. And have you had anything like – you’ve run into things like location permits, that sort of thing?
CL: Yep. And insurance, yep. There have been some… for the first episode, and it’s frustrating because it’s like, 30 seconds of this first episode, we need a very specific type of location and we’ve struck out many times, either people telling us we can’t do it or we need a permit or it’s going to be $5,000 a day… and then we say, “We can’t afford that. Let’s find some way to be creative about it.”
NF: You ended up finding another option?
CL: Exactly. We had to be a little more creative and figure out something else, which I think is going to be really funny. One thing that happened with the second episode is, for some reason, we decided that the musical number for the second episode needed to take place on a train.
NF: That’s why I asked about the permits, I saw the pictures you tweeted and thought you’re on a train. I see train poles… is this just in the process of travelling somewhere or are you filming on a train?
CL: Well, we looked into filming on the actual CTA but that was like, $5,000. So this was actually on a vintage train car at the Illinois Railway Museum, which was perfect. It was a little hard to get hold of them because they’re old school, they don’t have an email address and their phone number has no answering machine, but we got into contact with them and they were really great about hooking us up with this really cool train car that was built in 1959 and just let us have free reign over it. Because that number is sort of, it’s in the style of the beginning of The Music Man.
NF: Yeah, I was going to say, the outfit looks exactly like Harold Hill from The Music Man.
CL: That’s what that song is inspired by, which is probably why we had written it to be on a train.
NF: Is there anything that you think StarKid fans watching it will be unexpected to see, maybe one of the guys or girls in it in a situation or character that they wouldn’t expect from them?
CL: Lauren plays a girl!
NF: That would be my first go-to about that!
CL: I think obviously we’re not Matt and Nick, so the roles that we write are very different stylistically from the StarKid roles. I think there’s been a lot of opportunity for people to do a different kind of work – maybe the roles aren’t super-unexpected but it’s a different style, people working in a different capacity. Which has been really fun for me, to work with people, but I think also fun for them as well.
NF: Are the musical numbers usually one per episode or more than one?
CL: It’s one per episode.
NF: Are they very different stylistically from episode to episode?
CL: Episode two is very classically musical theatre – sort of a pattery-type song. Episode three is this sea-shanty sort of thing. Episode four has more of a modern rock musical feel to it. It varies a lot.
NF: For the Kickstarter people you are putting this out on DVD. Is that still available or is it a limited edition thing that’s finished now?
CL: Until we launch we’ll put up a Paypal link and if you want to contribute now and you weren’t able to on the Kickstarter, at whatever level of Kickstarter reward, we’ll still give you those rewards. If not, eventually we will have it for sale online.
NF: With your involvement in all of this production, have you ever been involved on the acting side?
CL: In high school I actually primarily performed on stage, that’s really how I got into it, and the theatre programme at my high school was really great in that it emphasised all aspects of it so people working backstage were encouraged to take the acting classes and audition for plays, and people who were in the plays were encouraged and sometimes required to work backstage as well. I performed more but I did backstage stuff and really enjoyed it, so when it came time for college I thought, maybe I should look into this.
NF: I was going to ask what inspired you to get so involved behind the scenes with creative productions, be that “make it happen” man as opposed to the “front-line actor” man.
CL: I would not consider myself an actor by any means, but that is the door I came in to the theatre from. I also was in a vocal group and the orchestra in high school, so I have a decently strong background in music as well.
NF: Is there anything you wanted to tell us about World’s Worst Musical that we might not already know, or anything you want to hint at for people to be excited about that you wanted to inform people of?
CL: We’ll probably be starting to be a little less secretive about some of the plot points as we get closer. I will say, though, in all of our written updates on Kickstarter there are hints. There are some very carefully worded passages! But I hope, I think that it’s something that people online, and especially StarKid fans, are going to connect with. So many of the fans are so creative, in fanart and all the different things they pursue, that I think they’re really going to identify with the series and connect with it. I guess my hope is that, especially these StarKid fans, will be able to hear about it and find it from our StarKid community – find it through StarKid, but stay for the content.
Jaime Lynn Beatty filming episode 1
NF: What would you say to people who are really interested in supporting these kinds of things? There are hundreds of people with independent artist careers, they just didn’t happen to put a Harry Potter musical on YouTube so they don’t have that built-in support. If people wanted to find good quality independent stuff, what would you suggest?
CL: I think the internet is the big equaliser for everyone because it reduces that geographical dependance that a lot of art was bound by. I think sites like Kickstarter are really great to find both work wherever you are, in addition to other places as well. I guess it’s good old-fashioned word of mouth. It’s that sort of thing where, as an artist, if you’re inspired by a particular artist, the best way to learn from them is to find out who they’re inspired by, who their idols are, and then go read about them; go look into their art and build your family tree of creative likes and influences. That’s what I would say. It’s a start. And that’s an easy thing with StarKid, “I like StarKid, I like this person in StarKid…what do they like?” That’s a really easy way to start delving into that.
NF: That’s a really cool concept. How has that applied to you? What kinds of things do you draw from inspiration-wise, or what kind of career trajectory would you like to end up having based on where you are now?
CL: What’s cool with StarKid and all the different sorts of projects like World’s Worst Musical or Charlene and how she produced her album, we’re living in an age where, it sounds cheesy, but anything is possible. There are a lot of people I admire for different reasons, and not-so-specific things. Steve Jobs, for his vision, obviously. Every person has pros and cons to their personality, but I read his bio and it really got me thinking about things. Julie Taymor is someone I really respect and am interested in… Tim Gunn. It has nothing to do with what they are actually doing but in terms of…
NF: How they do it?
CL: Exactly. How they follow those passions. It ranges from that stuff to the Gregory Brothers or even Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who has worked with the Gregory Brothers but started off as a child actor, doing the Hollywood thing, but has been able to use that in such an interesting way with his website, HitRECord, a sort of online collaborative art project.
NF: You’re singing my song there. His career in the industry is one that is probably the person in that “celebrity” world that I most admire because he has been able to take fame – that he may not have necessarily wanted, I know he quit acting after receiving too much hype as a child star – and was able to go away and come back to handpick what he wanted to do and how to use his power to pursue what he cared about. I love that and I have a lot of HitRECord stuff, I saw a live event in London this year. That’s a good inspiration.
CL: It’s that level of creativity and collaboration. There’s a programmer in Baltimore who writes this software to run sound cues for theatre – his name is Chris Ashworth – and he vlogs occasionally, but he is also an incredibly fascinating person. Obviously not a famous person, but just in the way he runs his business. It’s not in the traditional sense, and there’s that art to business and the business of art. That’s what’s cool on the Internet. You can connect with people like that even though they’re not famous.
NF: The Internet makes it very easy to become a fan of someone’s work, regardless of fame.
CL: It ultimately boils down to – do it. I know there are a lot of people who think, “Oh, I’m not a creative person, I’m not an artist,” and I think that’s sort of bullshit. I think everyone has that capability, everyone has ideas, and that we live in an age when you can act on them and you can find an audience. If you feel passionate about it you should just do it.
NF: That seems like a good end note! Thank you so much for talking to us and best of luck with everything in the next few months with this series coming out and the tour. Will World’s Worst Musical come out while you’re on tour?
CL: I think so. The first couple of episodes, we have to film a little more next weekend, but I think they’re almost done. So yeah, I think it’ll start coming out on tour, and if people see me during tour probably I’ll talk their ear off about it.
NF: That brings up one more thing about the StarKid lifestyle: is it strange that people are approaching you in a fannish way as a member of Team StarKid even though you’re not a performer? When did that start happening for you?
CL: That probably started happening at Infinitus, but not for that reason – mostly because I was running the merch, so I talked to all the moms. That was funny and cool. It’s a strange feeling. It’s a cool feeling because especially as a designer you’re not expecting to be recognised for your work. If you’re doing it right you’re adding to the story, you’re helping the actors and the work they’re doing with the director, and it’s not standing out on its own. You don’t want to be like, “Oh my god, that’s a cool set.” You want to be like, “Oh my god, this story is cool.” At the end of the day, it’s about the people, it’s about the story. It is really cool and I feel very lucky that people notice that sort of work, and hopefully they’ll take that away and apply it to other things they see as well to realise how many other people it takes to bring these collaborative projects – be it a film, a play or a musical – to life. That is the really cool thing.
BONUS FEATURES:
We’ve got a couple of tangential little fandom-y snippets that didn’t quite fit the flow of the transcript, but we thought you might want to read them anyway!
CL: By the way, the C2E2 day was a strange day because we filmed on the train in the morning.
NF: Oh, that was that day?
CL: That was all that day. So it’s like “This morning – which was a million years ago – we were filming on a vintage train car in Union, Illinois, and now, Sean Astin is sitting on our panel. What is going on right now?”
NF: Do you wanna talk for a second about how that happened?
CL: He was at the booth next to ours, and he came over and started talking to us! He was super-nice, and he recognised Nick from his little clip of Lord of the Rings, where he’s Gollum.
NF: I find that so incredibly impossible to believe. I mean, I believe you! But what was Nick’s reaction to that?
CL: Nick was just smiling and being like “Oh…cool!”
NF: It’s just insane that he would sit on the Internet, looking for Lord of the Rings fan videos…
CL: He was super-nice and super-cool, but it was just really random.
—
CL: In terms of strange, surreal moments, How To Succeed was definitely one of them.
NF: Oh yeah, you were there that night, weren’t you, the night when it all went weird?
CL: The night we all went? Yeah.
NF: What exactly happened there? All I know is that you guys went, [Darren Criss] tweeted about you all coming out, you tried to come out, and it didn’t go very well.
CL: It was fine. What happened was, after the show, they wrangled us backstage and we were waiting to see Darren. We saw him and then everyone went outside to do signings. They were just getting anxious of the crowds. There were people in the street and basically the police shut it down. They were just like, “Okay, this is no longer safe.” And I think the neighbors were complaining about noise. Nothing really major happened, it was just a big crowd of people. The staff at How To Succeed was also nervous about people’s safety.
NF: It’s interesting, I was there later in the month and I think it gave a pretty strong impression. I spoke to some of the people working there – they’d originally thought that a lot of the people coming and obsessing were because of the Glee thing, and when that happened they realised that most of the people who had come to support Darren were not there because of Glee.
CL: Yeah, it was funny. The staff at the theatre, everyone was so nice and accommodating, but there was this thing where you could tell that they knew, they’d been told that they had to treat us, the group, in this way, but they didn’t understand why.
NF: I sort of vibed that a bit, with the people I was speaking to, they were like, “This thing happened… I don’t really understand the thing with his friends…”
CL: It was such a silly thing, that they were treating us at this level. Before the show, we were sitting in this room, in the lobby, and the head usher was like, “Oh here, sign the guest book,” and we’re flipping through the How to Succeed guestbook and it’s like oh, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Prime Minister of Canada… and then Meredith drew a picture.
Joe Walker, Dylan Saunders, Meredith Stepien, Corey Lubowich, Brian Holden, Darren Criss and Joey Richter backstage at How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
Watch the trailers for World’s Worst Musical:
Follow Corey: @coreylubo
Follow Team StarKid: @teamstarkid
Follow World’s Worst Musical: @worstmusical
You can hang out with Corey at Apocalyptour for the next few weeks: tickets here.
You can check out more updates about World’s Worst Musical on their website or their Kickstarter. If you donate to the Support page on their site, they’re still honoring the Kickstarter rewards. The web-series premieres on YouTube on June 1.
Thanks so much to Corey for talking to us and we hope you enjoyed hearing from him!