I did musicals from about age 10 to 18.
I like musicals a lot. I think probably 'Jesus Christ Superstar' is my favorite. I love Andrew Lloyd Webber for the most part. It's rare that I'll find a musical that I don't like.
When I switched to screenplays - 'cause I had done musicals and plays - the first assignment in film school was, you have to write a silent film. And it's tremendously helpful to learn how to do that because dialogue can be a crutch. If you can master a silent film, you're golden.
I never pursued voice hard enough. I've done musicals here and there, but I was never dedicated to really being one of these fantastic, operatic kind of singers that you have to be in some of these musicals.
I saw some musicals at dinner theaters where I grew up. But I didn't go to a big theater to see one until probably after I graduated from high school when I took myself to see 'Tommy' when it was on tour. I absolutely loved it.
I had done quite a bit of stage when I was younger, local stuff, musicals. Then I started professionally, I suppose, when I was 11, in London, in the West End, which was already huge for me.
And, I'd never done Tennessee Williams, and I had done Broadway musicals, so it was a challenge.
If you know what you want to do, as I always loved musicals, and then to have been lucky enough to be successful with them, I think that's all you can ask isn't it? I think I don't really think too much about it. I am a bit shy socially, yeah, I admit that.
Corny answer is of course is that everyone who wants musicals are children in different ways, aren't they? So you think of them in different ways. There are things of mine I'm sorry haven't come here.
I'm going to take the kids away over Christmas but I don't, I've written 14 musicals now, I don't want to rush into doing something just for the sake of doing it. I want to do it when I find a story.
