Director's Notes: 235 - Book Club (Patreon)

I always meant to read Les Miserables, but I never did. It's an important-seeming book, and all, and so I doubt my life would be worse for having completed that task. But for now, Victor Hugo's most famous epic is in the pile of To-Reads, along with Moby Dick, Sense and Sensibility, Invisible Man, and the manuscript you spent your whole life working on and that you asked me to read, like, 4 months ago, and I will (I will!) but it's been a really busy summer.

That said, I have seen the musical of Les Miserables, several times. Not the movie, not all the way through, anyway. I tried to watch it on a plane, and it was fine, but it was a long flight and I get antsy during in-flight movies if there's not super heroes blowing shit up.

I love musicals. They're stupid and weird, and I think they're great. My college roommate, Anand, and I used to drive from College Station, TX to Austin, Dallas, and Houston to watch tours of big productions, and we'd pop the Cast Album into the CD player and pick parts and sing along to the whole dumb thing all the way there.

Anand liked to sing Valjean and Eponine, and I liked to sing Javert and Marius, but honestly it switched up pretty frequently because, i don't know, there are a lot of parts in that show, I guess. It should be said that neither of us had any theater or musical training, so if there are specific notes or pitches or tempos, then we did not know about them. We just sang the fuckin' songs.

Sometimes other people on the highway would stare at us as they passed us by. One time we were singing Frank Wildhorn's Jekyll & Hyde (the song at the end where Jekyll/Hyde sings a duet WITH HIMSELF!) and a car full of girls are age pulled along side us at 65 miles per hour. They rolled down their window and shouted "What are y'all listening to? And I said "Jekyll & Hyde! The Musical!" And their faces went blank and they quietly rolled up their window and sped off.

Since I'm talking about musicals, you might have the questions: Ever considered a Night Vale musical? The answer is yes. I have considered it. That's the limit though of actions we have taken toward this endeavor. Maybe some day, if I ever learn how music works.

In the meantime, I can at least bring musical theater into Night Vale episodes by blindly butchering a literary classic. Enjoy!

Jeffrey Cranor

October 1, 2023