For This Songwriter, the Political Is Musical

Most of the jokes in the Internet video “Prop 8 — the Musical,” a comedic song-and-dance diatribe about the California ballot initiative defining marriage as existing only between a man and a woman, are in its lyrics.

Playing a black-suited religious conservative, John C. Reilly intones, “People, listen to our plea/They’ll teach our kids about sodomy.” Neil Patrick Harris, playing a flamboyant figure trying to reconcile the proposition’s supporters and opponents, sings, “Every time a gay or lesbian finds love at the parade/There’s money to be made.”

But there is one visual gag that is particularly bittersweet to Marc Shaiman, the creator and composer of the video: a credit that says Mr. Shaiman conceived and wrote this three-minute musical skit “six weeks later than he shoulda.”

As popular as “Prop 8 — the Musical” has been — it has been viewed more than 1.9 million times since it was posted on Wednesday on funnyordie.com — it is also a reminder to Mr. Shaiman and like-minded colleagues of how events might have turned out if they had been vocal and organized before Proposition 8 was approved by California voters last month.

“We stupidly allowed ourselves to be lulled into a sense of ‘everything’s fantastic now,’ ” Mr. Shaiman said in a recent telephone interview. “ ‘Everything’s changing, and this couldn’t possibly be voted into law.’ ”

The proposition passed on Election Day with 52 percent of the vote, including strong support from religious conservatives. On Nov. 20 the California Supreme Court said it would consider whether a voter-approved ban on same-sex unions was constitutional.

Mr. Shaiman, 49, an openly gay, Tony Award-winning songwriter whose résumé includes the stage and film musicals “Hairspray” and some of the bawdier songs in “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,” came to create “Prop 8 — the Musical” somewhat inadvertently.

After the passage of the ballot initiative, he learned that Scott Eckern, the musical director of the California Musical Theate

See For This Songwriter, the Political Is Musical
New York Times, United States