DIARY OF A WIMPY KID WEEK: ALAN SCHMUCKLER AND MICHAEL MAHLER (Part 2)

Rewrites and a Deep Dive into "The Fregley Song"

Before we get into the second part of my conversation with Wimpy Kid composing team Alan Schmuckler and Michael Mahler, which began yesterday with a discussion of the origins of the work, I need to set a scene.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid tells the story of Greg Heffley, a middle school kid who wants to be popular. And over the course of the musical, his attempts go further and further awry, until he’s even alienated his BFF Rowley.

At this point another kid at school, a strange little guy known only as “Fregley,” invites Greg to come hang out at his house. Having really nowhere else to go, Greg agrees.

What follows is a hilariously weird scene and song that I have been obsessed with ever since seeing it performed. You can hear the song below, and you really should listen to it before reading on.

Also, as noted both by Alan and Michael and book writer Kevin del Aguila earlier this week, Wimpy Kid director Rachel Rockwell, the original shining light for this show and many others, sadly died in 2018, while the show was being rewritten.

In March of 2020 it was announced that a new version of the show would be performed, once again at the Children’s Theatre in Minneapolis. The pandemic delayed that production until the summer of 2022.

Michael, Rachel, and Alan during the initial development of Wimpy Kid.

Was that new version of Wimpy Kid in 2022 radically different from the original?

Alan Schmuckler: Define radically.

Were there major changes in structure, story, or song?

AS: The short answer is yes. The slightly more thorough answer is: Zoomed all the way out it was still a musical adaption of Diary of a Wimpy Kid and structurally it was still the story of Greg Heffley and his trials and tribulations, and his friendship with Rowley being one thing, then being challenged, and becoming another thing.

Zoomed further in, but not much further in, there were some big changes. There were a bunch of new songs written. Especially in the second half there were some important structural changes to help clarify the storytelling. There were new orchestrations.

Michael Mahler: We moved the act one finale from Halloween to the winter talent show so that it would feel more like intermission was winter break. Screws were tightened and things were we hoped improved from what we learned from the first production.

But like Alan said, the heart of it was basically the same.

There’s a moment in the second act that changed my whole experience of the show: “The Fregley Song”. We’re deep into the story at this point, and out of the blue, we’re brought into this whole new world, with such a different and weird point of view. We’ve met Fregley before, so this isn’t an introduction, per se, but it is like, all of a sudden, his “I Want” song.

And in addition to the music and lyrics, which I want to talk about, what impressed me is that it fits perfectly with where Greg’s at in his journey; he’s screwed up so badly, he has no one left to hang out with. But at the same time it is its own unique and wonderful little episode, too.

AS: I think we were all really proud of that moment. Marrying the episodic nature of the source material with a satisfying two act musical structure that holds your attention from beginning to end has been one of the important parts of getting it right. It’s something we worked really hard at.

Where did you start in conceiving that song?

Sam Mandell and Huxley Westemeier as Fregley and Greg in the 2022 Minneapolis production.

AS: Let me try to answer that by telling you the brief history of how that song came to be in that spot.

In the first draft, which again, we wrote very quickly, there was another song there called “Tickle Fight” which came from, Okay so the moment is there’s a tickle fight, so the song’s called “Tickle Fight”, and maybe it sounds like this.

It worked alright. But I think it was actually cut before the original Minneapolis production.

MM: That’s right. The original production didn’t have a song for Fregley. Just a scene.

AS: The song was kind of a solid B effort; it was alright, it wasn’t quite landing. And we knew Kevin could write a scene that would work, because Kevin’s the best. So he wrote a scene that accomplished what the moment needed to accomplish. In the original Minneapolis production that scene was there, no song was there, it worked fine, we went on.

Usually you develop a show for years and then you get a production. We kinda got a production and then developed the show for years.

*Mike laughs*

So after that first production, in fact while that first production was running, we went back to the drawing board, knowing that we wanted something that felt different from the rest of the show, that felt weird. I think we’re both always drawn to a kind of Sondheim/Kander & Ebb pastiche kind of thing—something like that always feels familiar and fun and weird and intuitive to the two of us.

So we wrote a first draft of “The Fregley Song” and tried it out with the original Minneapolis cast during their run, during the day before they then went back and did the show that they had rehearsed.

MM: The OG Fregley, this kid named Soren [Thayne Miller], totally killed the song. We were like, Oh, this is good.

So did that song ever go into the original production, or were you just testing it out for later?

AS: Testing it out for later. The rehearsal bandwidth did not exist to change the 2016 production of the show beyond opening night for its run.

Wow.

AS: It was a testament to Peter Brosius and the folks at Children’s Theatre at the time, including first and foremost the cast itself, who were asked essentially to workshop some new material with us concurrently with doing the show that they had rehearsed. They were all game and really kind.

So the fun of the song is the constantly escalating weird and creepy details that we get about Fregley’s world—There are cobwebs on the walls of his house; he has only bugs for friends; and because he doesn’t have sisters he keeps a long blonde wig around.

Did you pull those details from the books?

MM: Some of it is a lift and some of it is our own twisted creation. Really it just came down to us trying to make each other laugh. I think when we’re working together the stuff that we laugh at the hardest stays in the show usually. We knew the character and we knew the kind of extremes he goes to in the books, and the weird things that  Jeff Kinney allowed to be possible, and we just tried to crack each other up.

AS: That’s totally it. A good example of that is “You wanna see my room, or look at my blisters.” I think that is a lift from the book. Lyrically, my brain tends to want to know the back rhyme first and then work backwards. I want to know what it feels like to land at the satisfying rhyme and then look back to see what I have to do to set it up.

But “sisters” rhymes with blisters, [which got to] “I haven’t got sisters, just a long blonde wig.” And the implication of that is hilarious and disturbing, so, great, on we go.

I tend to not like working lyric-sequential like that, it seems a little more exposed and unsure. But when you’re served up something, you kind of find your way to the other side, and that can be its own version of delightful.

Another line that I so admire is the opening: “Would you like to come inside?” It’s the normal thing a nervous kid might ask when he’s having someone over, but then it’s also very much the introduction to so many creepy horror stories, a great set up for what is to come.

Were those dual layers with you from the start?

AS: If memory serves, I think it was, the song has to start somewhere, and it must have made us laugh to even start the song there with that music in that kind of tone.

Again, I get squirrelly to start at the beginning because I never know where to go next. It feels much safer to me and reliable to me to drive toward the middle and then build outward. But I think we probably wrote that near the beginning and it was like, Well, that seems creepy, sure let’s go there and see. 

By the time we get to his bedroom about halfway through the song, it’s hard to imagine how things could possibly get weirder. But then not only are his shelves filled with ventriloquism dolls, the dolls speak and tell Greg to run.

AS: That’s a good example of how shows develop tiny decision by tiny decision. That line with the dolls saying to Greg “Run Greg Run” was Greg saying it to himself up until maybe the most recent production in Minneapolis. Or maybe there was a demo when something decided on a whim to give it to the dolls?

I say this to remind myself when I get discouraged, if there's anything that you’re delighting in, it is highly unlikely that it sprang fully formed from nothingness into What a delightful idea. It probably took a couple of years and a couple of iterations and on a whim someone had an idea that took it from like, B+ to A-. And that can make all the difference.

Were there any ideas that you came up with that actually seemed too disturbing?

MM: Probably. *laughs*

We had a lot of fun with him. He is super excited, but he’s also got these weird archaic formalities, like he wants to introduce his mother. He’s a kid who this has never happened to, and doesn’t really understand like, social cues or what is done. And so being able to play in that and find the juicy bits was really fun.

And I guess we probably were pulling from our own deep-down middle school insecurities and feelings of being an outcast and slightly awkward.

AS: In the midst of all the bananas-ness of that song, the lyric I’m probably most proud of in the whole show is “I get lonely at school ‘cuz nobody likes me,” which he belts at the top of his lungs in the middle of that song and all of a sudden is the most honest thing that anyone says in the show. And it resonates in a BIG way with little middle school Alan and little middle school Mike, too.

It’s not played for pathos, it’s just Fregley-honesty. And I think having him say that, or “Loneliness strikes me, but I shrug no big” and he just kind of moves on, again, it’s not meant to be dramatic, but it is meant to be as honest as the rest of it, and there’s something about that that I think hopefully leavens “I haven’t got sisters, just a long blonde wig.”

MM: Right. He has no artifice. Everything he is saying is just his truth. He’s not doing a thing, he’s not like, setting a trap, he’s literally just speaking his truth and asking for what he wants.

Which is what Greg needs.

MM: Yeah. Greg is constantly gaming and trying to say the right thing or saying the thing that will get him ahead.

AS: Fregley is my favorite character in the show.

Musically there’s so much going on in the song. Early on you can hear Addams Family and Beetlejuice, but also like, the Partridge Family with that keyboard sound?

MM: Yes.

And there’s that muted trumpet, which is almost like a soft-shoe.

AS: Mm-hmm.

And then there are these other sections where the orchestra swells as Greg pours himself out. It’s like he’s suddenly in the spotlight, which feels pretty different musically and yet it all works so well together.

MM: That’s sort of the joy of musicals. It was really gratifying.

I think all of those references you point to were part of the primordial stew of the number. There’s Addams Family, there’s Partridge Family, and there’s, like, “Rose’s Turn.”

“Rose’s Turn,” oh my God, that’s it.

MM: Those are all sort of living in all the little bits and ideas that make up Mike and Alan, and they kind of get squeezed through the Mike-and-Alan filter and turn into our own ideas.

AS: Yes.

In the opening section you have the muted trumpet and that weirdly delicious keyboard. Were there other works or composers you were drawing on for inspiration?  

AS: For me it’s Kander and Ebb and it’s Sondheim and it’s their orchestrators from that work, mixed with kind of the vibraphone? And there’s a lot of old Looney Tunes in there. Who’s the Looney Tunes composer?

MS: Carl Stalling. 

AS: Thank you, Carl Stalling. There’s a lot of Carl Stalling. 

MM: Oh yeah, all over the score.

AS: You know where it comes in really clear, it’s a tiny nothing thing but it really delights me: In the song when Fregley sings “And when I feel blue, there’s not much to do here,” there’s a solo bass clarinet that goes buh buh buh buh buh that feels very Carl Stalling.

The muted trumpets are like, Sondheim doing pastiche, and Kander & Ebb doing themselves.

Ah yeah, there’s a Mr. Cellophane element, isn’t there?

AS: 1000 percent.

MM: Totally. He’s like the Child Cellophane. *laughs*

Not to tell Alan how he wrote, but there’s also little sprinkles of old sci-fi movies.

AS: Oh yes.

MM: It was sort of all the things that tickled us about the moment.

AS: There are a couple of definite horror movie gestures, too. Something interesting is that Mike adores horror movies and I like, physically can’t tolerate them. That contrast probably works in our favors. There are a couple of string stabs--

MM: The Psycho run.

AS: Yes, the Psycho run string stabs. There’s a bunch of horror movie gestures. The effect on Jessie’s vocal when she says “Stay out of the baseMENT” is silly but also meant to be a genuinely scare-you horror movie effect on her voice. And there’s the sound of glass smashing. Yeah, there’s a bunch of stuff.

MM: There’s also a little soupçon of Billie Eilish, totally-weird-out-of-place-in-a-music-piece sounds that take your ear to somewhere where you go This is not right, something is amiss.

If I could circle back to one thing: Carl Stalling.

MM: He was the composer for all of the Looney Tunes music. So every Looney Tunes cartoon that ever existed, being orchestrated within an inch of its life to the action on the screen, that’s all him.

It’s funny, this is a tangent, but I have a 6-year-old now, and he’s big into the Looney Tunes. And you don’t really notice it when you’re just watching them as a child and laughing your face off, but oh man, the work it was to literally musicalize every movement on a screen, not only to write it but then to time it out, it’s just amazing what that guy did.

AS: You should check out the album compilation of the recording sessions for Looney Tunes tracks.

One of the recordings from that album.

AS: There was no Pro Tools, there is no multitracking, it’s Carl or Carl’s conductor and all of them on a sound stage with literally a metronome going click click click before they roll to give them the tempo. And they just do it.

And when someone messes us, they go hang on hang on hang on and they back it up and they do it again. It’s wild. So cool.

It’s amazing, in the cartoons the music is so precise and seems so error free that you don’t even notice it.

MM: Exactly. The amount of work that it takes to be unnoticed.

*They laugh*

AS: That’s right.

Tomorrow, in the final part of our conversation, we talk tips and traps in writing compelling work for and with children.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Week: Book Writer Kevin Del Aguila

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Week: Composer/Lyricists Schmuckler and Mahler, Day One