“Newsies” is a musical based on a flop movie.
When, like Alan Menken, you have eight Academy Awards (and seven Golden Globes and 11 Grammy Awards, among many others), you tend to be revered as an inspiration by a younger generation.
That’s certainly true of Julian DeGuzman, an Alameda native who made his Broadway debut in the musical “Newsies,” which features a Tony Award-winning score by Menken.
“Alan Menken’s music is melodic and catchy and wonderful and amazing,” says the 28-year-old DeGuzman. “If you’re a certain age, you grew up with his music from ‘The Little Mermaid’ and all those Disney movies. It’s so amazing that my first Broadway show was an Alan Menken show.”
First national tour
“Newsies” has provided DeGuzman with another first: his first time on a national tour. He’ll be part of the highenergy ensemble when the musical rolls into San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre this week as part of the SHN season.
The fact that this musical made it to Broadway, let alone won two Tonys (best score for Menken and Jack Feldman and best choreography for Christopher Gattelli) and is now on tour is nothing short of astonishing. Disney has an established track record of turning hit movies into Broadway shows (“The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Mary Poppins”), but “Newsies” marks the first time Disney allowed a flop movie to make that transition.
Released in 1992 as a liveaction musical, “Newsies” told the story of the real-life 1899 New York newsboy strike that upset the journalism empires of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. The musical, which starred a young Christian Bale, never found its audience in theaters. But on home video, the show became a cult favorite.
Menken had originally planned to create the show with Howard Ashman, his partner on “Little Shop of Horrors” and the landmark Disney trio of “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aladdin.” But Ashman, who died of complications from AIDS in 1991, wasn’t feeling up to it, so he gave Menken his blessing to move forward without him.
“I think that was pretty painful for Howard, but it was what it was,” Menken says. So Menken turned to lyricist Jack Feldman, an old friend and a co-composer of Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana.”
“I remember on the first day of filming ‘Newsies’ everyone was so high on the medium,” Menken says. “We had done a lot of animated musicals, but people were falling in love with a live-action film musical. And we didn’t have a big budget.”
When the movie tanked, Menken remembers having breakfast with then-Disney film executive Jeffrey Katzenberg. “I asked Jeffrey if we should be doing more to promote the movie,” Menken says. “Jeffrey said he could take $10 million and throw it in the air on Doheny Drive and it would do just as much. That movie was DOA.”
Many requests
But then something interesting started to happen. Menken began receiving requests from all over the country — schools, summer camps, community theaters — to perform “Newsies” live. “They had transcribed the dialogue from the movie and wanted to do it on stage. This went on and on until it reached a point where Tom Schumacher at Disney Theatricals realized we’d have to put out an amateur stock version for anyone who wanted to do it,” Menken says.
When Tony-winning writer Harvey Fierstein (“La Cage aux Folles,” “Kinky Boots”) came aboard to revise the book, the sights were set higher. Menken and Feldman began writing some new songs to fit into Fierstein’s revisions and reworking their previous songs. “There isn’t anything in that score that didn’t go through major changes,” Menken says.
When the revamped and revitalized “Newsies” opened at the Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey in 2011, Menken says he was feeling the pressure of every young “Newsies” fan not to screw up the movie they loved. “Well, audiences just ate it up,” Menken says. “The show just exploded on that stage.”
A move to Broadway was inevitable, and what was originally intended to be a limited run lasted for more than two years. The Broadway production closed in August, and the tour kicked off in October.
The Bay Area’s DeGuzman is the only member of the Broadway company on the road with the show. He was 5 when the movie came out, but now that he’s a high-flying newsboy himself, he sees the appeal.
“Of course the music is great,” he says, “but it’s every- thing. There’s no other show that portrays rough-and-tumble boys who move in masculine, athletic ways like this. The energy the show exhibits is so infectious. People come up to me after and say they broke into a sweat just watching me. The production itself doesn’t have a lot of flash and bang. The newsies provide all of that. We’re like human fireworks on stage.”
Feels blessed
Menken, whose recent projects include the TV musical series “Galavant” and upcoming musical adaptations of “A Bronx Tale” and “Mrs. Doubtfire,” says the whole unexpected journey of “Newsies” from film flop to stage hit has made him feel blessed, and ultimately, he says, “What we did for the Broadway show is so much better.”