Saturday 7 March 2009

Leno- Now on dvd and vhs.

Hi, Nathan "Dr Music" Forester here. Back in summer 2007 me and my brother premiered our hit musical Leno on broadway. A musical autobiopic look into the life of Tonight Show host Jay Leno. I played the part of Jay Leno and his various characters from his tonight show sketches- It was a little rough getting through the makeup proccess but it was worth it. Here's a list of "tropes" asscioated with the production courtesy of our good friends at tvtropes (which is the best site ever):
  • Cut Song (we originally had a song titled "You Don't Stand A Chance" it was supposed to be Letterman's villain song, but we decided to cut it out of the production, it's on the extended soundtrack though, also there a few lyrics cut out of Carnac's Mystic Melody)Crowd Song ("Jay", "Leno" and "We'll Miss You Johnny")
  • Dark Reprise (The Executive's "Jay" Reprise)Fanfare (Johnny Carson's numbers start with a few of these, and some of Jay's do too)
  • Final Love Duet ("Don't Leave Me" by Jay and Mavis)
  • I Am Song (Jay has a number of these including ones his tonight show sketch characters sing such as "I Am Iron Jay" "Great Beyondo" "The Amazing Mr Brain" and Evil Jay's "I am Evil Jay!", Johnny Carson gets one as Carnac titled "Carnac's Mystic Melody")
  • I Want Song (Jay's I Want Song "Lights, Camera, Fame".)
  • Love Song ("Oh Lovely Mavis")Opening Chorus (The Crowd song "Jay")
  • Solo Duet (Johnny Carson has "Carnac's Mystic Melody")
  • Villain Love Song (subverted with Helen's song "Get that Boy")
  • Villain Song (Helen Kushnik has "Bad To The Bone" , the Executives have "Take No Prisoners", Evil Jay as "I am Evil Jay")
  • The Villain Sucks Song ("Cold Hearted Woman" , "Those Darn Executives")

  • The crowd song/I am song Leno is a satire of the Gaston song from Disney's Beauty And The Beast, I Am Iron Jay is a satire of Iron Man by Black Sabbath, Beyondo's I Am song is a satire of Holy Diver, Evil Jay's I am song/villain song is a satire of This Is Halloween, Billy Tuttle's is a satire of Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves. The motion picture version of this musical has "special thanks to Andria, ChuckyG, Red Ant, Guy, Annie Are You Okay, Jason and all the genius editors who've made Amright what it is today". In fact, Andria and quite a few other Amiright alumni appear in the big Crowd Song number "Jay". Also Annie Are You Okay's Nightmare Fuellerific song parody Leno was the inspiration for the character of Jay's evil twin Evil Jay, the song kind of creeped me out and it did give me nightmares but her version of Jay had enough darkness and dept to inspire the character of Jay's evil twin. We gave Jay's evil twin Evil Jay a vamprish quality and villainous Tim Curry-like charm and charisma. I wore basically the same makeup I wore to play Jay, but I had my face painted greyish, had red contact lenses and vampire teeth to make him look evil- the vampire teeth and red eyes were my brother's idea. Evil Jay's wardrobe consisted mainly of outfits that were black, blood red or purple. The special effects were done using my brother's sfx master machine (which makes extremely realistic special effects). We were originally going to make Johnny Carson a bad guy in this but it didn't work out so we made him one of the supporting characters instead. We made Helen Kushnic, David Letterman and the NBC Executives the villains of the piece. Dave originally had a villain song but we cut it out of the final product because it was too long. Our friend Sam Leno helped with the production. Me and my brother wrote and produced it, I starred in it as Jay the title character. Like my good friend Tyrone the terrible, when it comes to theatre productions i'm always cast as the bad guy. This marks as the second time i've played a non bad guy part in a production, the first was when I was Erik in my company's production of Phantom. I recently played Gaston in my company's production of beauty and the beast.

    Jay's song at the end Lead With Your Chin is a satire of True To Your Heart from Mulan and gets it's name from Jay's autobiography Leading With My Chin. This was inspired by a comment Agrimorfee said about me taking a page out of a book. He is one of the amiright alumni who make cameos during the big crowd song.

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