Earth Girls Are Easy
Just before Kristin Chenoweth crossed over into superstardom playing a starring role in the Broadway play "Wicked," she stepped into another existing movie role, one originated by Geena Davis in the cheesy '80s flick "Earth Girls Are Easy." In 1999, the film's writers Charlie Coffey and Julie Brown were approached by Australian fan Michael Herrmann, who proposed the idea of transferring the film to the stage. In 2001, there was finally a production put together for potential investors. Although reaction to the play was positive, the timing was bad. The first production was staged on September 16, 2001 -- five days after the 9-11 attacks. In 2002, there was another staging, but again the play failed to get financial backing.
The play followed the film's story fairly closely, but there was a lot of new dialogue and few new twists. Several characters were dropped (Woody, Zeebo, nosy neighbor Mrs. Merkin, etc.) and the cops' parts were beefed up and diversified, with them now appearing as bumbling security guards. As with the same year's "Moulin Rouge!," '80s pop songs were injected into the story along with two '70s hits by Blondie ("Heart of Glass" and "Atomic") and Brown's original songs from the film ("Brand New Girl," "I Like 'em Big and Stupid," "'Cause I'm a Blonde"). The stagings were what they call "workshop" productions -- sets, props and effects were minimal and the actors carried their scripts -- it was just to give potential investors a rough idea of what a full-blown production would be like.
Chenoweth didn't look to Geena Davis for inspiration, instead she made the role of Valerie completely her own, injecting her own patented brand of cuteness into the part. Marc Kudisch seemed to be channeling the spirit of the late Charles Rocket (which was quite an accomplishment considering Rocket was still alive at the time), playing Valerie's sleazy boyfriend Dr. Ted with gusto (Kudisch later did the same when he took over Dabney Coleman's role in the stage version of "9 to 5"). Hunter Foster ("Little Shop of Horrors") played alien leader Mac a little softer than Jeff Goldblum, looking like he'd just stepped out an episode of "Miami Vice." As Wiploc, Deven May seemed to be riffing on Jim Carrey's wacky antics from the film (with a little bit of Stovitz from "Voyage of the Rock Aliens" thrown in). And Julie Brown reprised the role of Valerie's loopy Valley Girl best friend, Candy -- who was given more opportunities to shine. Weirdly they omitted the character who was "like totally black."
Home video of the September 2002 L.A. production has shown up on You Tube and other sites around the internet. The video is clear and there's no blackouts... but following Candy's arrest, the opening of the next scene is missing (probably the result of a dead battery), and the video cuts off right before the curtain call (2 hour mark, so the tape probably ran out).
Much like the subsequent "Xanadu: The Musical," "Earth Girls Are Easy" pokes fun at the source film and veers off on its own path. Really kind of a shame that a full-blown production didn't emerge, but it's great that someone preserved it on video and shared it with the world.
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Pointless factoid: "Earth Girls Are Easy" is the first DVD I ever bought... but it was nearly a year later before I bought my first DVD player. Yes, my life is really that sad.