"Coming Out of Their Shells: The Impossible Story"

[oldmanwinters]

Insightful post over at Gamespot today:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ni.../1100-6475327/

The surprising story of how "two punky little kids" Bob Bejan and Godfrey Nelson were able to turn their fan-project into a multi-million dollar Radio City Music Hall production!

Excerpt:

"We literally cold-called Eastman and Laird and just went, 'Hey, we've got an idea. Can we pitch it to you?'" Bejan admitted. Then in January 1990, two months before the movie debuted in theaters, the two traveled to North Hampton, Massachusetts for their first meeting with the two men that created the Turtles.

"Bob and I drove up there and told them the concept we had and played them the songs and they said, 'Wow, this is great. Let's do it,'" Nelson said. Little did he or Bejan know that seven months later, their musical would be debuting onstage at New York's Radio City Music Hall.

Before that they had to secure the rights. "We were going to have this deal. Surge Licensing, who did all the licensing for the Turtles, told us it was going to be $50,000 for the licensing rights," Bejan said. "And we didn't have that much money laying around."

Thankfully, a solution presented itself. "I read an article in the Wall Street Journal [about] Steven Leber, who was going to ultimately be my partner on the producing side," he remembered. "But I read the Wall Street Journal [that] he was bringing the Moscow Circus to Broadway and to the United States, and I literally cold-called him."

One call and a short meeting later, Bejan secured the funding from Leber--as well as a seasoned producing partner to help bring their vision to life. "He wrote a check for $50,000 [and] we signed the licensing rights and got the rights to all live touring, music, video exploitation, merchandising," he said. "It was unbelievable." ...

"We called up the heads of marketing of Pizza Hut, Little Caesars, and Domino's and said, 'We have the rights to do this show, we want to come and talk to you about it,'" Bejan said. By this point, the movie had now released and suddenly the popularity of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had shot through the roof. So, together, Bejan and Nelson traveled the country, meeting with the marketing departments of the three pizza chains. 10 days later, the duo struck a deal with Pizza Hut.

"They bought three million records upfront and them buying it before we'd even really done the master recordings. They brought them on the demos. They bought three million records at $3 apiece," Bejan explained. That gave Bejan and Nelson $9 million to record their album and produce the show. And that's not all Bejan added, "They also committed to, at that time, an astronomical $20 million advertising campaign and that they would do a broadcast primetime television commercial."

Also note the last minute costume changes to keep the actors from passing out on stage. Good thing they didn't burn the place down!

However, as Bejan revealed, there was a reason for the last-minute change. "[There's] a night very early on in the tour before we got to Radio City, that's known amongst everybody that's involved with the show, as 'Shell Night.' You know, kind of as a take on Hell Night," he said.

He continued, "Originally, the neoprene costumes were built kind of at the level of articulation of the film almost. More articulated in the joints of course, cause we wanted them to dance. But they had full-blown rubber shells that were part of the costumes and the first evening performance [rehearsal] they had kind of done it without the heads on and all the suits and everybody thought it was going to be okay."

However, when the first full-costume performance took place, two of the turtle actors passed out halfway through the show. "[They were] just over overheating inside the suits," Bejan explained. "And so then we had to go through this kind of radical redesign phase of like, 'How could you sustain a two-hour performance if you have dancing and moving, and not kill these people?'"

The answer was to replace the heavy shells with the vest/sweater combination, which Bejan thought would serve another purpose. "We're obviously trying to kind of respond to the criticism that we knew we could get, which is like, 'Where the hell are the shells if they're really turtles?'" he said. A potentially unintended outcome was that the new design gave the show--and its turtle stars--a unique feel that set it apart from previous incarnations of the franchise.

Once the costumes were set, it was on to New York City. The third show of the tour's residency at Radio City Music Hall was the one broadcast on pay-per-view, which also saw some changes from how the show was originally intended.

"The night before, we're doing a run-through and final dress rehearsal, in front of the fire marshals, with all the [pyrotechnics] and everything," Bejan recalled. Part of the pyrotechnics saw sewer lids shoot off the stage, revealing elevators in the floor the turtles would appear through.

"That rehearsal in front of the fire marshals, there was too [many] fireworks in one of them and the sewer lid catches on fire and goes through the ceiling where the big red Radio City Music Hall curtain is. And the fringe of it starts to catch fire," he said. "That was a very auspicious right before opening."

See also: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-P_2bnJaUe/

[sdp]

So that explains the costumes for COOTS without their clothes in some behind the scenes interviews. Very interesting read.

[Voltron]

I'd pay just to see their faces when the sewer lid flew through the ceiling and lit the place on fire.

[pferreira]

Ah so now we know who to blame...

[AquaParade]

I have to admit I enjoyed these as a kid. At one point, I was pretty much down with anything turtles. Now it's a fun relic of the franchise. Glad to be far away from it, but glad it happened.