Rupert Holmes Quotes

A musical is really one of the most complicated beasts. It's a play, and there's music... and there's dancing... it's unbelievably satisfying to get something up out of your brain onto a piece of paper ... and start the process and then see it on the stage.

I have thought about some kind of musical involving my music. That would be kind of interesting. I have thought of it in that way, as a creator of something, not so much a performer. So that's in my head.

From its inception by Michael Bennett, 'Dreamgirls' has always been an epic story with an ensemble cast. I didn't change that. The screen version remains, really, a group story.

When I was writing 'Shotgun,' it's one of the first songs that's come to me as an image.

I never have used any other artist as a model for a sound or a song. It always has to come from an emotion, and capturing the essence of that emotion in a song.

'Evita' was four pieces of slick paper and a record album. It's the most scary, to sit down and dictate a musical scene by scene. It was a musical unlike anything I'd ever seen before myself.

I love plays that have musical moments. I'm not a big fan of musicals per se, but I love straight plays that have musical edges to them. I don't know if I will ever be able to structure a musical, but 'Finer Noble Gases' is as close as I've gotten.

You have to realize that when I started to work on 'Aladdin', Disney Theatrical wasn't in existence. I suppose I had always hoped that 'Aladdin' would be somewhere on the runway.

My first project was 'Hunchback of Notre Dame'. I co-produced that.

I always had an eye toward the stage for the story of Hamilton's life, but I began with the idea of a concept album, the way Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Evita' and 'Jesus Christ Superstar' were albums before they were musicals.

With a musical, you kind of have to do a mind-meld with the book-writer, the lyricist, the composer, the director - sometimes the producer. I think that's a reason why musicals are the hardest form.

Two years ago I hadn't even thought of the Woman in White, and I was doing a television show and I said I hadn't found a story and the next day somebody rang me and said have you ever thought of the Woman in White.

I wonder what would have happened if automation and computers had existed when 'Oklahoma!' was having its out-of-town try-out, and three days before closing in Boston, when it was still called 'Away We Go,' they added a new song called 'Oklahoma!' I don't think that could happen today. It's almost impossible to change musicals on the go now.

Normally when I do an album, I have a concept behind it.

When I am writing music, I sometimes envision a video playing alongside.

When we work on a new theatre piece, we improvise a lot. But it's the opposite in opera, where everything is fixed.

Before 'Memphis,' I had never considered working on a musical. But when Joe DiPietro sent me the script, I heard the entire score in my head.

The think that we hung the film version all on was 'Hedwig' on tour. On stage, it's one theatre, one show. It just seemed natural to change it. In the film, we were able to go to flashback rather than have her talk to the audience. And we had the play to practice and to see where we had made mistakes.

When I go in the studio with Post, I have a really good idea of what he's going to gravitate to, what we can work with.

I work off of my early demos. I'll keep adding on top of that, but I usually gravitate towards whatever that original idea was.

Artists have always been my biggest source of inspiration.

I'm writing a musical. I am. I was able to buy the rights to 'The Preacher's Wife,' which starred Whitney Houston... I'm writing a whole new score and all the lyrics for it.

When Peter Schneider first approached me about adapting 'Sister Act' for the stage, it wasn't a slam dunk to say yes.

Specific music starts feeding my imagination and gives me a landscape that corresponds somehow, in some abstract way, to the world I'm just starting to imagine.

Creativity has a lot to do with the main idea. Inspiration is what comes when you are dealing with the idea. But inspiration won't invite what's not there to begin with.