Exclusive: How Rick Elice Found the Heart of WATER FOR ELEPHANTS

Are you ready

It's the Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon. Broadway World, I'm back. Happy Friday, everybody

Robert Bannon here and welcome to this Broadway World exclusive edition of the Roundtable

And we have a good one for you. Do you know what it takes to write a musical

Do you know what it takes to take someone's life story or a movie or book that we love and turn it into the stage

Well, one of the best people to do at Rick Ellis is here. Rick Ellis has turned some of our favorite shows

Do you remember the first time you saw Jersey Boys or heard that Adam's family was going to be adapted for the screen or sung along to the share show

How does Rick do it? How does he take these shows and flip them around and turn them into something great

Well, he's going to be here to talk about Water for Elephants, the beloved novel and movie. is now playing at the Imperial Theater

And we're so excited to have him here exclusively on, boom, Broadway World

Bapabur, you're here. Did you check out last week, our second edition with Dorian Harewood of The Notebook

He was here to tell us all about his epic career. And our first ever edition of the show

was with the Muses of Lampica, Ida Espinoza, Beth Level, and Ambrian with the co-writer, Matt Gould

Thank you for all the love and support and sending all of your haze and out there's

and you saw it and you watched it and you shared it. And I'm so grateful that you did

Thank you so much for being here. We are always around. You can check me out at Robertbanon.com or follow me at Robert M. Bannon on Instagram

Or you can listen to us on the Broadway podcast network every single day. We have content

But this is the only place to catch these Broadway World exclusives every single Friday

Well, Rick Ellis is smart. He's probably too smart to be chatting with this jersey boy

We're going to find out all about Water for Elephants and what it's like. to write a musical

One of the best to do it on the roundtable. You ready? Here we go

All right. So he's written some of the greatest shows that we've seen. Look, I'm a Jersey boy myself

So I have a lot to say to Rick. Come on, Jersey. And now, as someone who went to clown school

I'm ready for Water for Elephants as well. I just saw Rick on the red carpet of Water for Elephants

and we're so happy to join him here on the Broadway World exclusive chat with Rick Ellis

Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Step right up

Let's go. Let's go. We're here right now, Water for Elephants is playing on Broadway

at the beautiful Imperial. You can go get your tickets and see the show

And before we even get started, tickets are available at WaterforElefencethamusical.com. Rick, how did this show come to you

And what made you say, yes, this is the next one? Oh, well, I was really, really lucky

I kind of answered the phone one day, and it was my friend and colleague, Peter Schneider, saying he had the rights to a novel, and would I be interested in adapting it

And the novel was Water for Elephants, which was actually a novel that I had read, I don't know, I guess maybe almost 20 years ago now

I was in a book club, and I read it, and then I talked about it with my book club cohorts

And this, I got the call. I had worked on a play that was adapted from a novel called Peter and the Starcatcher

And I think maybe that's why he thought I would be a good person to call. And I was interested in understanding adaptation a little bit more because it's an interesting assignment to adapt a novel, a 500-page novel

to something that could be two hours of entertainment on the stage

Because you don't read a novel, obviously, in one sitting. You see a show in one sitting

You can put a novel down for a week. You can come back to it after a month, whatever. You can reread certain parts of it if you want to recall

And a show has to start and get all the way to the end. And therefore, you have to figure out, as you're looking at it, in terms of adapting it

how do you figure out what to include and what to exclude or what characters to

conflate, what characters to eliminate, which themes you're going to bring out and which, you know

which things you'll never have time to do. So it's a fascinating assignment and it's different

every time because obviously the underlying novel is different every time. The author's intention

is different every time. So I thought it would be interesting to take a question

to take another crack at adaptation. And I had just done a workshop with this theater collective

of seven guys who called themselves Pigpen Theater Company. And we were sort of flirting with the idea

of doing a real grown-up project. And so I said to the producers

I will definitely be interested in doing it. And I'm definitely interested in doing it

with these seven guys. And they said, well, how would that work

It's eight people, you know, that's a lot of people to collaborate on writing a show. And I said, yeah, I mean, I'm interested in that too

I'd written shows by myself. I'd written shows in collaboration with another book writer

I'd written shows in collaboration with composer lyricists. Sometimes that's one person, sometimes it's two people

But this was going to be eight of us in the room, eight, eight, you know, unruly children in a room

trying to beat out a story and figure out how it would sing, as they say. And I thought it would be

I thought that would be an interesting experience too, because while I'm an old man

I'm really only like 20 years old as a writer. So I want to have different kinds of experiences

and see if I can not just do the things that are similar to things that I've done before

And I was, I had gone to see the pig pen guys had done a show called the Old Man in the Old Moon, and I became kind of obsessed with them in their music

And so I was, I was very, very excited when they accepted the challenge of writing up to this point

They had only written for themselves to sing and perform. And I lured them with the opportunity to write for women and write for, on

ensemble, right for duos and trios and, and, and, uh, right for, uh, a, uh, you know, jazz that would

be played with, you know, accompanied with by a horn section and, and, and, because they, they play

they, um, they play guitar and harmonica, you know, basically banjo string, string instruments

like that and harmonica and, uh, accordion. I'm showing off my mime skills because I went to the album school

Um, and, uh, and, uh, luckily. for me and for for theater goes everywhere they said yes and uh eight years later here we are

eight years later well we got to when we were on the red carpet with you the other day we met the

the folks of pig pen and i asked them collaboration amongst so many people is it is it is it

is it always pleasant are there discussions how do you make a final decision what in a professional

setting where it's art and heart and you're so vulnerable to be a writer it's so vulnerable to

share lyrics and music um how how was it in the room

How did you make choices? How did you whittle things down to tell this story

Well, you know, the novel has, you know, some major themes, I guess

which are the guideposts for writers and super interesting characters, which are also handy

I give Sarah Gruen the author of the novel, all the major props for that

But, you know, the themes of what she wrote are, let's say

what is family, what is home, is their life after loss. The title, I think, Water for Elephants

is predicated on a circus sort of in joke, which is it's impossible to carry water for elephants

because they, it would require, it would take you the rest of your life

because they drink and drink and drink and drink their capacity for drinking is gigantic So you never want to be the person who carries water for elephants But for me that became a metaphor for um not to sound fancy about it but it became a metaphor for the the burden that we carry

and um our show um was written um to be a reminder that that burden is more easily carried when

it's carried together and that it's the people who help us with our heavy burdens who are in fact

our home. And at the time that I was asked to start on this project, I had also been through

some, you know, very personal upheaval and, you know, the loss of my spouse and dealing with bad

after 33 years together. And I was very broken and sad and feeling as if there wasn't much

reason to put one foot in front of the other. Those things that survivors

tend to think, I guess. And this is a story told by an older man about what happened to him

50 years before when he was a young man, a young man who suddenly woke up and had lost everything

His family suddenly had, you know, were killed in an accident. And the bank repossesses the house

And he has to drop out of school because he can't, he has no job

to the depression, everybody's out of work. His whole world is turned upside down and he jumps

perhaps about to jump under a train. He decides at the last second to jump onto the train

bound for he knows not where. And it turns out to be a circus train. There were many criss-crossing

the country in the 20s and 30s and 40s. And it just happens to be a circus train. And because it's a

circus train, it changes the trajectory of his life. Then 50 years on, the man who's telling that

story, who has lived his entire life, has now just recently suffered the loss of his spouse and being

sort of parked by his kids in an assisted living facility or someplace like that. And, you know

he thinks it's all over for him. And he takes himself to a performance of a small one-ring circus

that's coming through town and stays afterwards and starts chatting to the people who are

running the circus. And because he decided that day to not stay at the home, but to pick himself up

and go and remind himself of this experience, this life-changing experience that happened to him

50 years before, one particular experience at this circus, he is, he ends up getting

another crack, another chance, you know. I think that, you know, it seemed to be very, it's

it was easy to make it very, very personal. It's my long, winded answer to your question. It was

very, very personal for me writing this, although, of course, I've obviously never worked at a circus

but I have my version of it very, very foremost in my mind as we, as we set down to write this

Well, it is a very heartwarming and touching story. And if you have, there's so many themes that are, that throughout this whole entire piece, Jessica Stone and this cast putting it up on its feet

We were speaking before we came on to this about the performers and the life, the life threatening literally circus accent and the amazing art they perform eight shows a week on the stage

What was it like either in Atlanta when you were out of town or now on Broadway

What was it like to see this come to life with the actual characters and the actual actors

Well, I mean, it's been a bear because it's not just, it's not like your ordinary musical

It's, yes, of course, there are actors playing characters, but there is also a company of circus performers who are engaged in a first-person way

in the telling of their telling of the story through what they do

There is also a cohort of puppets that portray the animals of the circus and, of course, our title character, Rosie

And everybody, it's not like having a, there's, okay, you're the singers and you're the dancers and you're the acrobats and you're the actors and you're the puppeteers and you're the puppeteers and it's six different groups of people

Jess Stone, our director, who has done such a wonderful job of sort of field marshalling this production

It's like, you know, it's like not like a sailboat this show. This is like a battleship of a show

And she has made us into one company where everybody does everything

There's a real feeling of community. And I think the thing that's most special about Waterford Elephants, this person

production, the Jessica Stone production of Water for Elephants, is that the play, the story of the

play, and the production of the play, the presentation of the play are in sync. You can't, as it were

leap off of a platform into the air unless you know, as a circus performer that the person

on the other trapeze or on the ground is going to catch you. And it's not that you think they might

You must know, you must trust that they are going to catch you or else you're simply going to die

And you only take that leap because you know that that person will catch you

That kind of trust, that kind of community, that sense of being part of something bigger than yourself is not just what our story is, but it's also what our presentation is because you are watching people hurling themselves off of, you know

ladders and flying through the air because they know they're going to be caught. So the story and the

presentation are beautifully in sync. And I think that's incredibly moving to watch, very, very powerful

and thrilling. And it really was hard as hell. And so every chance I get, I tell everybody that

Jessica Stone is, you know, she is it. I mean, amazing job she's done. Amazing

These actors are a miracle. They're amazing. These performers are amazing, and it is a edge of your seat

with the story and edge of your seat with the circus. And they're also young, and they're so, you know

there's 17 Broadway debuts in this company of 23 people. 17 of them have never been on Broadway before

And, you know, one of them, one of them is, you know

65 years old, Stan Brown who's making his Broadway debut. One of them is Grant Guston, are

our lead actor making his Broadway debut. All the acrobats are making their Broadway debut

They are, and they are young and gorgeous and amazingly gifted and they work so hard

and they do four hours at the gym every day. They are, you know, glamorously beautiful

and they're from all over the world and some of them barely speak English

and we've all gotten to figure out ways that we can all communicate with each other and love each other

and respect each other. But these, I mean, these circus people are, you know

there's already, you know, 100 people every night outside the stage door screaming for another

one more glimpse of them, because they're, I think collectively and individually gonna be

amazing Broadway celebrities this season. They're so, because they're, you know, it's just not like anything we've ever seen before

They sure are. Grant and Isabel. are stunning their relationship. Oh my God, yeah

And I mean, Izzy Macalla is genius. Grant is like incapable of being false on stage

Paul Alexander Nolan or Paul Nolan, as I like to call it

Is it's, you must see this performance. It's just a performance that demands to be seen

Greg Edelman, Sarah Gettelfinger, Wade McCollum, I mean, these sort of like great Broadway feet folks

are in the cast and then a remarkable a remarkable phalanx of people that will be part of our Broadway history I think in our Broadway future because they also great

It's a really special group of people. It sure is. So please get your tickets

Come on down, spend the night and come see a show. Support art, support this work

You, Rick, have such an interesting story. When I spoke to you about with the Jersey Boys over the pandemic, we had a virtual chat

And I didn't even get a chance to really go into your journey to Broadway is so unique and so interesting

From New York to Yale as an actor to teaching at Harvard to working for Disney and being a publicist or putting it

What a journey. No, it was in advertising. I wasn't ever a publicist, but I was creative director at an advertising agency that handled in its day the lion's share of Broadway plays

musicals as you know we're part of our client list. We specialize in selling products with

no shelf life and of course a theater ticket is is a product with no shelf life. You have to buy it

today and if that seat goes unsold, it's lost forever. It's not like a can a can of Coke that can

sit on the shelf. If you don't buy it today, you can buy it tomorrow. So my expertise if in

to the extent that I had expertise was in getting people to buy every single day, something that

had to be sold every single day. And my secret was I was working on Broadway to keep shows

running longer and working off Broadway to keep shows running longer. And so everything, all my

careers, because I've sort of bounced around like, you know, I kind of the Ben Franklin of

show business, you know, I've just like sort of held every single job you can have because all I

ever wanted to do was work in the theater. So any job I could get in order to work in the

theater I would take, whether it was, you know, sweeping the stage or stage managing, or choreographing or directing or acting or, you know, doing advertising or writing shows

I never, I didn't have a plan other than to try really, really hard to work in the theater

Maybe it's because I was born here in New York and grew up here

And I was taken to see my first Broadway musical when I was three years old and tickets were 90 cents

And, you know, when you sat in the last row of the last part, of the balcony and the ceiling was right right just over your head. And my mother, I think

recognized she tells me, of course, that it was the first time in my three, my long three-year

life that I had ever shut up. So she kept taking me because 90 cents for a ticket was cheaper

than a babysitter. So she said, we would just go to the theater and it was great because you

just sat there with your mouth open. And so I guess she knew before I did that it was going to be the

theater for me. And it has been ever since. It's been a checkered career, I think, would be fair to say

But it's a fascinating career, and it's a career that has twists and turns and keeps growing and

going. When you're writing, you seem to me, at least, on Broadway, at least, you have, you're the

go-to person if you're either going to make a bio-musical like you did with Jersey Boys, like you did with

share where you're taking somebody's life and you're telling their story in two and two and a half

hours or and then you are the person that takes novels and and public very famous pieces like

Adam's family or Peter and the Starcatcher and you put them on stage as well and these shows are

done everywhere all over the world every community regional theater is doing Adam's family or

Peter and the Starcatcher paper mill playhouse announces jersey boys comes back to Jersey

I saw that. Isn't that wild? What is it like to see these different iterations, your words being spoken in different languages, in different places, literally all around the world

At any night, there's a Rick Ellis show being put up somewhere. Well, that's probably an exaggeration, but thank you. I like it. I like it

What is it like? Look, you know, all joshing aside, it seems to me that I, it's, it's, it's

If I exist, and I think I do, if I actually am not just a hologram of myself

which sometimes feels like it might be the case, it's only to demonstrate to everybody who's watching this

that if you have an urge to write, let's say, a show

then go ahead and do it because, folks, if I could do it, so can you

I never trained to do it. I never wrote anything longer than, you know, than a 30-second commercial or a 60-second commercial or a three-minute trailer for a movie

And, you know, and one day when I left advertising, I was offered a job as creative consultants at Walt Disney Studios

And the phone rang. A former client of mine said, oh, you know, I got the rights to, Mama Mia had just opened, right

So this guy said, I got the rights to the Four Seasons music

Do you want to, you know, do you think you could be, would you be interested in writing a show

And I said, well, I love Vivaldi, but, you know, do you think there's a whole show there

And he said, not Vivaldi, you idiot. He didn't say idiot, but, you know, I'll say idiot so that, you know, everybody can keep it G-rated

And he said, no, Frankie Valley in the Four Seasons. And I went, well, why

why would you do that? He said, just meet with them and see. And I had, I owed a certain amount of money to a friend of mine from Poker Night, who happens to be a legendary Academy Award winning screenwriter, Mr. Marshall Brickman. And I said, hey, Marshall, you want to write a Broadway musical with me? And he said, I've never written a Broadway musical. I said, neither have I. Let's go and have lunch with Frankie Valley and the principal

songwriter and part his principal songwriter and partner bob gaudio and and see you know let's have

lunch and see and i i guess part of me thought the lunch would never end up happening um as so as is so often

the case but it did happen and so there were there were the two of us these sort of two new york

overyzed overeducated overprivileged new yorkers sitting with these two jersey boys um and uh in the back of a dark restaurant on 46th street italian restaurant natd

And as we were waiting, I guess, for the schoonjili to arrive

just by way of making conversation, we said, you know, what was it like to be you

And they started to talk. And they described things that happened, and they told us anecdotes

And it was, you know, suddenly I looked at Marshall and then I looked at myself and I realized we were both sort of leaning forward

You know, we were like an audience hearing a really interesting story

Now, of course, theater is always about, is there a good story? Are the characters compelling? Do you care what happens to them? Do you care how the story turns out? Well, suddenly, there we were. And I said, listen, I mean, I remember a lot of your songs from when I was a kid, but how come I don't know any of these things? And they said, well, we were never written about because we didn't have long hair. We didn't have exotic accents. We didn't come from across the pond. We came from across the river. The culture elite never thought we were

cool so we were never written about. And then the two people, you know, Marshall and I looked at each

other and, you know, and heard that thing. You mean like this isn't not just a good story

and it's not just a true story, but it's an untold story. Oh, okay, well, we're storytellers

If we're going to write a musical, let's try to be storytellers and tell their story. So it was

absolutely accidental that I ended up having that opportunity. And because musical biographies hadn't really been done at that point

we just we just didn't want to do the Mamma Mia gag of retrofitting a story to a song list

Instead, we treated the four-season songs as sort of milestones along the way of their lives

the path that their lives took. If they'd made automobile tires, we would have had a good story

but it would have been about guys who made tires. This way, it was a good story about a guy who made songs

So there was a score. And without realizing what we were doing

we made a show and Des McEnough directed a show brilliantly that you know kind of combined the high art of the theater

with the low art of pop music from the 60s, and people dug it because it was a story

they didn't know either. So I absolutely just backed into it. That's why I say anybody can do it

It's not like I have some special skill, and I don't think I'm a great writer

and there are obviously great writers. But I think that I'm, I think I'm a good writer

and I think I'm smart and I love big ideas and I love sort of the game of it, the puzzle

of figuring out a structure and a conceptual thinking. I really like that a lot

but I know a lot of the people watching this are going to feel the same way

and that's why I say, write a show. Because if I can get one on, anybody can

anybody can. Oh, write a show. Like I said before, as a Jersey boy who grew up listening to Frankie Valley

I remember going to August Wilson. I remember the second that Sherry starts. I remember the audience

literally cheering like a concert. And I was at a show that Clive Davis was at, and he went into the

men's room, and I was in the men's room, and he looked at me at the York, swear, and said

this is a good show. And I said, oh, damn, that's, it sure is, Mr. Davis. It's really weird

because I think I was there that night. I seemed to remember being there the night

Clive Davis was there because we were all a little bit, I was standing in the back with Gaudio

and he said, you know, he said, you know, we really want Clive Davis to like this show

because he can talk about it and got a lot of people to come to see it. And I thought, Clive Davis

Like, Clive Davis is going to come? Jersey Boys was a crazy thing because it was, you know

people thought we were nuts. And then people dug the show. and of course love the songs

So suddenly it became a hot little hit and it was exciting to be at the theater

because one night the president would be there and then one night the Senate leader

from the other party would be there and one night Clive Davis would be there and one night Paul Schaefer would be there

or Diana Ross came one night. It was very, very exciting in Jersey woods

Well, I don't, you should give yourself more credit than just being a good writer

I want people to know that you brought up, it's personal, but you brought up your

your husband and you brought up roger you wrote a book that's available you can get it on amazon

right now um it's available and and you can check it out and as someone who has a beautiful partner

myself i love your story and i love your love your love story and thank you for sharing because

that's the most personal probably most uh meaningful story you could ever share and you shared it with

us so thank you roger would be mortified he you know he was a brit and of course um

It was not in his nature to talk about himself ever. Because he was, because he worked all over the world

and everybody loved him, he was well known and he did some great things and but very, very shy

and self-effacing person. And so when he wasn't around anymore, I just wanted people to know about him

as a way to sort of help me through the awful process of learning to live without him

And so I'm glad that you, I'm glad you responded to the book

It was really just a way for people to have an idea of what he was really like

as opposed to the sort of public face of someone, especially someone from Great Britain

who is, you know, very much a stiff upper lip kind of presenting, you know

keep calm and carry on sort of British subject to, of the crown, but who, you know, in real life was, you know, just a lovely, lovely guy

great person to spend your life with. I'm very lucky. Well, thank you for sharing the story

and thank you for telling it. And your stories make us, my future, my future marriage

my future partnership gives us, we have a couple goals right there, couple goals for short

The last, in water for elephants, the, the, the, the, the, the, uh, as the

man who's telling the story, the very, very end of the play, sort of conjures up one last image of his wife

and remembering the last moment that he had with her. And he says, oh, she put her hand on my face

and she said, and then Isabelle says, aren't we lucky? And those were the last three words that

Roger said to me and that's why they're in the play. You know, it's also kind of wonderful to be able to

share something that personal with, you know, with 1,400 people every night, they'll never know

how personal it is. But to be able to put that in there as something that is meaningful

oh, really only to me and the people in my family that were there at that moment

moment is very, very special. And another beautiful thing about the, you know

being able to craft the theater as opposed to just going to see it

is a, you know, is a real privilege when you can make it personal

Oh, Rick, that is the most beautiful, beautiful tribute. And it's going to mean a lot to a lot of people because we see

ourselves through this story and your story. So thank you. Thanks, Robert. That's very sweet

You have all sorts of rumors. about things that are to come, I'm sure you're not done writing, Rick

I'm sure there's shows and movies and original works and things that may be coming down the pike

Well, I don't usually do these on-camera things because if people see what I look like

they might actually lose some of this work. But I am engaged, as they say

on a couple of other things that are exciting to me indifferent and working with people who were extraordinary

One of them actually will be directed by Jessica Stone. One will be directed by Susan Stroman and one will be directed by Alex Timbers

the great Alex Timbers, and who was a, who co-directed Peter and the Starcatcher with Roger Rees

And I should probably, you know, just leave that there because, you know, I don't

want to talk about things out of turn, you know, they don't like it. They don't, they don't, they don't

you know, there are people who want to manage how things are, are talked about. So I probably should

just shut up. But, but, I'm going to be, I'll be busy for a while. So if you want to come over

you know, we can have a cup of coffee and, and, you know, I'm always sitting here at my

my little desk. I'll bring you a sandwich and a cup of coffee. And, uh

I have to make sure that Rick is watered and fed so we could keep making the art that we love so much

I love it. I love it. Come on over. I got a piano. I got a couple of comfortable chairs

And, you know, and we can sit and talk about the theater until the cows come home

That would be my pleasure. And it's my pleasure to have you here. Thank you for sharing this afternoon with us on Broadway World

Thank you for creating art. Thank you for putting these stories that have given so much joy to, you know, I saw Jersey Boys with

my family. I saw Water for Elephants with my best friend. You give us nights out. You give us

a community and camaraderie. And we get to go out and have a purpose to share some time together

with people we love. And that's as holy as you can possibly be. So thank you so much

You're very, very kind. And I'm very, very grateful. Thanks, Robert. Go get your tickets. Waterfor Elephants, The Musical.com. Go check it out

Imperial Theater, 45th Street. How fantastic is he? How beautiful is Rick Ellis. How beautiful is his story

Anyone could do it. Broadway world. If you're here on Broadway World, that means you have a little artistic bug in you

So get on up and do something, write something, sing something, something, dance a little something, something, something

And join us every single Friday right here on Broadway World. My name is Robert Bannon. I thank you so much for being here

I always like to say there is more good than there is bad. There's more love than there is hate and the best is always yet to come

So until next time, I hope to see you here next Friday and see me every single day somewhere

Enjoy some art. Go support Broadway. Go support Broadway. Go support regional theater, go support your local community theater, and show some love today to the actors and artists and performers and creatives that put it up

Until next time, bye everybody