“By the morning, I realized there was so much more to the emotional life of the characters that, put into song, would deepen the story.” Rubin became so excited that he wrote 20 lyrics for the show before director Matthew Warchus basically told him to stop. “Colin and David Garfinkel came to my place in upstate New York, and we talked so long they missed their train back to the city,” recalls Rubin, whose film was inspired by his time in a Tibetan monastery, which left him thinking that life might well continue after death. About six years ago, after the producer Tony Adams suggested doing the show, it fell to Ingram to persuade Rubin to climb aboard the “Ghost” express. He loved the special effects, the drama and action.
Ingram’s “Gone With the Wind: The Musical” blew away after 79 London performances.)Īs a college student in Edinburgh, Ingram saw “Ghost” with his girlfriend, but never considered it a chick flick. “It’s very Shakespearean, actually.” (Then again, the formula isn’t foolproof.
“ ‘Ghost’ has all the big scenes a musical should have: comedy, revenge, tragedy,” he says. “You have to choose a movie that’s inherently theatrical,” says the man who helped turn “Billy Elliot” into “Billy Elliot: The Musical.” “My biggest fear,” he says, “was that they’d sing some strange little ‘Ditto’ song that would make my skin crawl!”Įnter Colin Ingram, a producer with no such qualms about putting big-screen triumphs on the stage. It also made half a billion dollars and won an Oscar for Whoopi Goldberg as a sassy psychic pressed into playing a go-between for the couple after Sam - a shy guy who mutters “ditto” whenever Molly says she loves him - is murdered.Įven so, “Ghost” writer Bruce Joel Rubin was in Harper Lee’s camp: He wanted to leave a good flick alone. One look at Broadway tells you Lee’s in the minority, especially in a season that brings us “Once,” “Newsies,” “Leap of Faith” and “Ghost: The Musical.” The last just materialized at the Lunt-Fontanne, where it opens April 23 following spirited reviews from London’s West End.Īs anyone who’s seen the 1990 weepie can tell you - a show of handkerchiefs, please! - the film pretty much had everything: special effects, star-crossed lovers (a strapping Patrick Swayze and a pre-Ashton Kutcher Demi Moore as Sam and Molly), a great Righteous Brothers song (“Unchained Melody”). There are two kinds of people: those who want to leave a classic movie alone - Harper Lee and the 1962 film of her “To Kill a Mockingbird” spring to mind - and those who want to turn it into a musical.
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