Duck Dynasty Musical Headed For Las Vegas. Really.
In the greatest development for The Legitimate Theater since the boffo hit Stop the Planet of the Apes. I Want To Get Off!, the marketing geniuses who portray a family of folksy Louisiana fundamentalist Christian duck-call makers have announced plans for a big-budget musical about themselves, to play in Las Vegas, proving that H.L. Mencken was wildly optimistic about the tastes of the American public. At the very least, the whole sorry mess just left everyone in the Wonkette Sekrit Chatcave swapping lines from The Simpsons, so at least we can credit it for that. There's also this pretty good lede from the New York Times story on the impending disaster:
They’re not exactly the von Trapps trilling about edelweiss, but the Robertson family of the reality series “Duck Dynasty” wants to sing to you about faith and food, duck calls and swamp moss.
So as we say, not a total loss. It also will be titled The Duck Commander Family Musical, which, with that naked branding, should surely place it in some pantheon of terrible titles. (Yes, we know. it's no The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. Hell, it's no Manimal. )
What will the musical be about? Does it matter, since it will undoubtedly suck, deeply? The Times warns -- and really, we are getting into Lovecraft territory here in terms of Eldritch abominations -- that it will be a "90-minute show, with actors playing the family members from A&E’s “Duck Dynasty” as they celebrate the family’s long history from rags to riches." We can only assume it would be far better with some tentacles and skies drowning in blood. For that matter, it may bring about such things. The only person who's seen the book went mad, you know.
Meh, what do we know? Maybe it'll be a surprise camp classic, like the 1976-77 Brady Bunch Hour or the 1973-74 Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities.
[ NYT ]
You haven't lived til you've heard the heartrending "In Un Mondo, dove..." used as the theme in more movies than Carmina Burana.
I think that we are beginning to get a sense of where the producers want to take the whole DD franchise over the next decade.
Phase 1: Create a show for television in the "reality" show genre, in which a bunch of hired actors portray a real-life family of duck call makers.
Phase 2 : Creating a musical for the stage that is about the TV show about the fake family of duck call makers. Members of the stage cast will portray members of the TV show cast. They will be stage actors who are pretending to be TV actors who are pretending to be the duck call making family.
Phase 3: Contract with a group of writers to create a series of novelizations about the stage show. The books will tell the stories of the stage actors as they rehearse for a musical production in which they perform the roles of TV actors who are acting in the roles of duck call makers for a TV show.
Phase 4: Create a Hollywood movie trilogy that tells the stories of a group of writers who are hired to write a bunch of novels about a group of actors who are starring in a stage musical about a bunch of TV actors who are hired to portray a family of duck call makers.
Phase 5: Create a television show about a group of Hollywood script writers as they struggle to produce scripts for a series of movies that tell a story about a group of writers who have been hired to create a series of novels about a group of stage actors as they prepare for a musical production in which they will be playing the roles of actors hired for a TV show about a family of duck call makers.
The possibilities are endless. A bright future lies ahead for the whole Duck Dynasty franchise.