A 2004 comedy TV show that starred—deep breath here— Amy Poehler , Fred Armisen, Paul Rudd, Tina Fey, Will Arnett, Michael Ian Black, Rachel Dratch, Ken Marino, Jack McBrayer, and Maya Rudolph? And never saw the light of day? What was VH1 thinking?
The pilot was called Soundtracks Live, based on a stage show created by the Upright Citizens Brigade. “It was a really cool thing where Amy Poehler and Amy Miles ran it,” Fey told Complex in 2013. “It was this thing where they take a movie like Sixteen Candles and act the movie out on a stage and a band would play the soundtrack live and people would sing the music.”
The VH1 pilot was a more or less faithful recreation of the John Hughes teen comedy. “I had a few different parts,” Rudd told Complex . “I sang a song at the end with the steamers called ‘Turning Japanese.’
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“And I played one of the grandmothers,” Fey added.
“You and Will Arnett were two of the grandparents,” Rudd replied. “Amy Miles was Molly Ringwald. John Glaser was Anthony Michael Hall.”
Had the pilot run, a Live Soundtracks series would likely have followed the stage show’s lead, which reveled in other teen hits like Fast Times at Ridgemont High . He enjoyed other Hughes films as well, like the Molly Ringwald feature Pretty in Pink .
Performing straight-to-the-point comedy on stage was a popular concept at the time. The Real Brady Bunch Live was a popular show in the 1990s at Chicago’s Irrance Theatre, featuring future comedy stars like Andy Richter and Jane Lynch reenacting Brady Bunch episodes word for word.
Indeed, the unexpected triumph of The Real Brady Bunch Live is credited with inspiring the 1995 The Brady Bunch Movie, essentially a mash-up of the sitcom’s old installments in modern-day California.
The success of this film makes live soundtracks seem like a natural fit. So why didn’t VH1 air the pilot for the show, based on Sixteen Candles ? According to IMDB, the original film’s director, John Hughes, refused to approve the use of the film’s dialogue and music.
Rudd confirmed this, per Vulture : “We shot it, we did everything, it was amazing,” he said. “And then John Hughes said no.”
“He said he didn’t like it,” Fey noted. “And it was like… okay, great.”
It all raises two questions: 1) Why didn’t Poehler and company get Hughes’ permission before shooting the pilot? And 2) will we see the All-Star comedy release live soundtracks ?
Don’t hold your breath, though, the pilot lives right across the street. “It exists in Amy Poehler’s living room,” says Fey. “On VHS.”
