For Your Emmy Consideration: The Industrial Musicals of "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"
Prime Video’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel took the world by storm in 2017. The series was created by Amy Sherman-Palladino who had gained a cult following of sorts from her creation of Gilmore Girls and Bunheads. All of her shows are known for their fast-talking, witty, reference-laden dialogue and endearingly eccentric characters. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is no different.
credit: gene reed
The show centers on Midge (Rachel Brosnahan), a devoted and loving housewife to Joel (Michael Zegen). He is an executive by day, but wants to be a stand-up comic despite being horribly untalented. The real stand-up comic in the family is Midge, but it’s a talent she discovers accidentally.
Now in its fifth (and final) season, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has grown in scope and scale. Midge’s comedy career has introduced audiences to Lenny Bruce (Luke Kirby), another female comic (Jane Lynch), and a Sam Cooke-inspired singer (Leroy McClain). Palladino-Sherman has spared no expense in immersing the audience into Midge’s life as a 1960s housewife turned comic. That’s where two-time Emmy nominated songwriter duo Thomas Mizer and Curtis Moore come in.
credit: gene reed
For the final season, Palladino-Sherman wanted to center an episode around the forgotten world of industrial musicals: a bizarre form of marketing where companies would put on full-blown musicals to promote their new products. Mizer and Moore were given the keys to the kingdom and created three different musicals that each showcased a style of musicals from that era. They wrote a rockabilly number about kitchens, a champagne musical about gardening, and, as the grand finale, a Bob Fosse-style number about trash collection. Mizer and Moore lovingly refer to the final song as their “trash musical.”
Mizer and Moore sat down with Beyond the Cinerama Dome to talk about the research that went into their songs for this season of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, their collaboration process that goes back to their college days, and the contemporary product they love that they’d write a musical about.
Listen to the full interview with Thomas Mizer and Curtis Moore below:
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