Rachel Bloom, star and co-creator of the CW show, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” reveals how she took her love of musical theater and made it into a modern day commentary on sex and the single woman; Plus, electronic music rules at Coachella this year. We'll hear a wrap-up of the first weekend and a review of some wearable tech aimed at audiophiles.
Rachel Bloom uses 'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' for her own style of musical theater
Rachel Bloom has always been a fan of musical theater and comedy. But she didn't start to combine the two until she was in college. As a musical theater major and comedy writer-director, she searched for audition songs for female vocals that were also funny, but found few.
As she told The Frame: "The Golden Age for musical theater was in the '50s [and] '60s, and comedy has evolved since then." She "felt a real gap" — and particularly in songs written for women.
So Bloom started to fill the gap. With the 2010 release of her music video "F--k Me, Ray Bradbury" — in which she sings lustily about her admiration for the science fiction writer, then 90 years old — she earned a Hugo Award nomination and a cult following.
In 2013, she released her first full-length album of musical comedy. And in 2015, CW picked up her pilot for a musical comedy TV show, complete with elaborate ensemble choreography, "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend."
"Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" got an extra boost in attention when Bloom won both a Golden Globe and Critics' Choice Award for best actress in a comedy.
When The Frame's John Horn met with Bloom, he began by asking her about the intent behind one of the show's songs, "Heavy Boobs."
"Because women are so sexualized in pop music, what I like doing is using my own sexuality to explore the unsexy side of sexiness," Bloom said. "With 'Heavy Boobs,' it's taking, Oh yeah, look at my body, this objectification, and then exploring the flip side."
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
You're working within a comedy. But do you step back and say, What is it we're trying to say in the bigger idea? About women, about relationships? Do you find yourself making sure that — even in this genre — what you're saying is constructive in some way?
Yes. For "Heavy Boobs," for example, I was really worried it would still be sexy. And so we got a solo shot of me bouncing around in the most uncomfortable, bad-looking ways, like with a grimace on my face. I really always try to make sure that we're keeping in line with the genres we're doing, but we're also deconstructing them. Because that's what the show's about. It's about deconstructing stereotypes and looking at gray areas and nuance.
Musical theater, historically, is light comedy. Was there an epiphany in your mind, when you grew up loving musical theater, that it didn't have to be superficial and clever, but that there could actually be meaningful comedy through song?
Yes. That's such a great question. When I was in school, I was a musical theater major and a comedic performer, and I was looking for audition songs. I noticed there were so few good comedic audition songs for women because the Golden Age for musical theater was in the '50s [and] '60s, and comedy has evolved since then. I felt a real gap in music comedy. I could count on one hand: It was like, "Avenue Q," "Urinetown," the "South Park" movie — because this was before "Book of Mormon" — and that, combined with the fact that I'd just started writing sketch comedy and saw what comedy could be — that inspired me to combine the two.
When you're working on a show like this, are there certain composers musically, not lyrically, that you think about in terms of the way in which you'll craft your songs?
It depends. Any time we do a song, it's mimicking the genre we're going for. For instance, in "Settle For Me" in episode four, that's a Cole Porter-type song. So you want to mimic his musical style, but also his lyrics. He has these like, sugar-pie, shmoopie-poo — you want to take the tropes of that genre and then flip them, and find some way to make them comedic.
Of course, you look at the hard comedy of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, or what Mel Brooks has done, and I want to emulate that edginess. Which is also what [Stephen] Sondheim does. That was actually the first composer where I realized that musical theater could be truly on a deeper level, when I heard "Assassins," which is a show that takes all these different genres and every song is a dark pastiche of those genres.
I want to talk about the title of the show. A lot of people who haven't seen the show hear the title and say, Well, why isn't it crazy ex-boyfriend? What's your defense of the title?
That's actually the point. The title is supposed to be a stereotype that's somewhat inflammatory, that we will then go on to deconstruct. [Co-creator] Aline [Brosh McKenna] and I . . . never pictured that people would take it at face value. If we were on a darker cable [channel], it would be more obvious. Because we're on the CW, people aren't really sure of what it is.
One of the love interests in the show, Josh Chan, is a Filipino. To have any Asian-American on a television show is rare. To have an Asian-American as a love interest is non-existent. How important was it in putting together the cast that it looked and felt like the rest of the nation and not just Los Angeles?
It was really important. When we were thinking about this love interest we knew we wanted him to be a bro. Because that's the opposite of what Rebecca is. And Aline said, "I just keep picturing him as Asian." And I [thought] that was so smart because I grew up in Southern California with a lot of Asian bros. And I'd never really seen that on television.
I think that the whole show is trying to find interesting characters with specificities that are true, but that we hadn't really seen. It was only later that I was like, Oh, it's interesting, the emasculation of Asian men and the fact that they aren't sexualized. That stuff came later than the initial impulse of, I haven't seen this before, and I don't quite know why.
Why West Covina?
We knew we wanted the show to be in suburbia. And it was much more interesting for the show to be set in Southern California suburbia because . . . it's diverse. It's something like 50 percent Hispanic, 25 percent Asian, one percent Native American. And so, you get this diversity which stands for what America is, which is a bunch of immigrants. The Judaism in the show leaning into that [is] included. A big part of identity is cultural background. And so when you get specific with characters you need to get specific about their cultural background.
The show has just been renewed for a second season. Does that give you license to try things? Do you have a bit more leeway now?
The show always was what it was. Because we experimented so much the first season, there's now so much more we want to do, and so many more expectations we're excited to subvert. And now there's a real trust with the network. There always was — CW has been so supportive of what this show was from the beginning, but now even more so. And now that we have this fan base that we know will stay with us, there's a lot that we're planning where you have to have known the characters in the first season to get what we're doing now.
So you have to go back and watch them all.
Yes. And buy them on iTunes!
The season finale of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" airs April 18 on CW.
Coachella 2016 recap: It's not an alternative festival anymore
Tens of thousands of people are making the trek back home from the desert oasis known as the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. On the event's first weekend, scores of artists played throughout the day and night. And it will continue Apr. 22-24.
The festival started in 1999 and was mainly known as a massive rock festival. For instance, the headliners for Coachella’s inaugural fest were Beck, Rage Against the Machine and Tool.
This year, the lineup took a noticeable turn away from rock music and more into the world of electronic dance music. Still some classic rockers did appear, such as Guns N' Roses, but they didn’t draw the biggest crowds.
The Frame's John Horn spoke with Lorraine Ali, who is a senior culture writer at the Los Angeles Times. She attended the festival this past weekend and talked about how Coachella has shifted its musical focus:
We like to call it the EDM fest with the classic rockers playing at the top of the bill, because that's essentially what it is now. So, for instance, this year Guns N' Roses headlined. There was a crowd there, but they thinned out pretty fast. Yesterday, when [EDM artist] Major Lazer played — and they weren't even headlining — a Coachella representative estimated it was the biggest crowd they have ever seen at that stage in Coachella's history. That sort of tells you something about what the crowd at Coachella is looking for, and essentially EDM is party music so they're looking for a party.
As music changes — you know, because rock is no longer a thing — it's much of an alternative thing now. Alternative is not what Coachella is about anymore. So EDM is mainstream party music, and I would say that the crowd is college-age, early 20s, and that is their music, that is what speaks to them. It's not that alternative music that Coachella started out in.
Was there any acts that stuck out for you at the festival?
I would say that there was a lot of redundancy. There were a lot of EDM acts and a lot of it can start to sound the same. The other thing is that a lot of these bands that are in the festival circuit— Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza — it's the same set that goes around. So you've seen a lot of these before if you've gone to Coachella before. I do have to say that one of the great shows was Courtney Barnett. She was excellent and she's doing something that nobody is doing right now, which essentially is rock n' roll.
The Frame was also at Coachella this past weekend. One of our producers, James Kim, endured some of the event, and his ears are still intact because he was testing out some new earbuds called Here Active Listening. The earbuds are operated through a phone app that allows the user to customize the sound mix at each stage.
The Frame's James Kim spoke with Noah Kraft — the CEO and co-founder of Doppler Labs, the company behind Here Active Listening — about the target audience for the $200 ear buds.
This product was not meant for the mass consumer. We really created it as a relatively niche product that was meant for audiophiles and people who we call "discerning" listeners. Luckily, we know a lot of people at Coachella are interested because we sold over a thousand units, but that was really the important part in this, which is really understanding who this is targeting and how we're targeting it.
The second weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is April 22 - 24.
Correction: The interview with The Frame's James Kim states the reservation list is at 10,000 for Here Active Listening. The number is actually at 80,000 people.