We Asked ... Peter Barsocchini , "High School Musical" Series

Disney is synonymous with family-friendly fare. And what could be more fun for the whole family than the Mouse House’s High School Musical franchise? Peter Barsocchini, screenwriter for High School Musical 1, 2 and 3, shares with StoryLink his experiences writing the small and big screen trilogy. He also offers tips for writing in the family and musical genres, and much, much more.

Barsocchini began his professional writing career while still attending high school in the San Francisco area, chronicling for newspapers the explosion of the American rock scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Upon graduating from the University of California, Santa Cruz, he went on to win two Emmy awards as a television producer, before transitioning into screenwriting. His first screenplay, the Action/Thriller Drop Zone, was produced by Paramount.

Currently, Barsocchini is writing a major musical for DreamWorks Animation, collaborating with Tony Award-winning composer and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights); a coming-of-age story for Mandate Films, to be directed by Debbie Allen; a film about the mods and rockers of the 1960s for HBO; plus television pilots for Nickelodeon and Fremantle (American Idol). He is also consulting with the Disney Channel on High School Musical 4, which presents a new cast and will return to television.

How did you transition from Action/Crime films (Drop Zone/Shadow Ops) to High School Musical? Was it a conscious pursuit or the path you ended up taking?
The opportunity to write family entertainment, so to speak, came in the usual show-business form of a happy accident. In 2003, I was rewriting a massive Sci-Fi Action script for Beacon Films called Legion. The producers of that project, Bill Borden and Barry Rosenbush, were part of half a dozen meetings with the studio, as we discussed the complex structure of the film. However, we all usually arrived early for the meetings, and sat around talking while we waited for the studio executives to arrive. As we got to know each other, Barry and Bill learned that my background was filled with music and sports...and that set the stage for High School Musical, because Bill mentioned one day that Disney Channel was looking for a break-into-song musical for kids that would involve both sports and, of course, music. My daughter was ten years old at the time, and I thought how fun it would be to write something she could watch and enjoy. HSM was a love letter to my daughter.

Did you create and then pitch High School Musical? Or did you write it as a staffer in-house?
High School Musical began as a pitch to Disney Channel. As mentioned above, the Executive Producers of HSM, Bill Borden and Barry Rosenbush, became friends of mine from another project. And just from jawboning, they felt I may be the right writer to take a crack at a sports-themed, musical project, since I had been a gym rat in high school, and I also had a deep background in music, having covered the music scene for newspapers ever since I was 15 years old. Barry and Bill gave me the challenge of developing a pitch that would be a sort of Romeo and Juliet set in high school, wherein instead of rival families there would be rival cliques. And I began thinking about the question, “What if the biggest jock in school decided he wanted to sing in a musical?” It wasn't any revolutionary idea, since Shakespeare set the template, but it was an opportunity to have some fun with the conventions of high school. And obviously we didn't set out to take a realistic look at high school...we set out to have some fun with the clichés and cliques of the usual high school experience. So we pitched both a story and a playlist of songs that could be in the movie. Of the eight song ideas we pitched, at least five ended up making it into the film. So, yes, it started with a pitch to a Disney creative executive, then we pitched again to her boss, and from that point, they ordered a script.

How long was the process between when High School Musical was pitched and when it hit the screen?
We began discussing the idea in 2003, then the producers and I pitched to Disney in early 2004. I turned in the first draft of the script in December 2004. In March of 2005, Disney greenlit the first draft of the script. Kenny Ortega was the first director to read the script and he said “yes” immediately. The film was shot in the summer of 2005 and aired on January 20, 2006.

What's it like to write for Disney? How does it compare to your other work experiences?
The first two HSM films were for Disney Channel, and High School Musical 3 was for Disney Studios. First of all, Disney Channel has very specific awareness of its audience, so they are quite hands on when it comes to speaking to that audience. Gary Marsh, president of the Channel, knows exactly what he wants and will put any writer through his or her paces in service of the specific audience they are trying to reach. As it turned out, HSM hit a much larger audience than any previous Disney Channel film. I think the difference between DC and other work experience is the hands-on aspect; however Mr. Marsh has very good creative instincts and offers specific ideas, and Michael Healy, who is in charge of original films for the channel, has developed something like eighty films, so writers working there benefit from a lot of experience.

Other television and film work I've done has been left more in the writer's hands ... but, again, Disney Channel has a very specific audience and expertise in reaching that audience. Anyone going there to pitch a project without understanding the marketplace is wasting their time. Doing the feature film conclusion to the HSM trilogy was similar to doing any other feature film for a major studio. We got input from Oren Aviv and Jason Reed at the studio, both experienced and quality executives, but they felt we knew the brand by then and basically just stepped in when we were stuck. It sounds like ass-kissing to say it was a great collaboration with the studio, but it's the truth. Jason and Oren had excellent ideas. It was the opposite of development hell. And, let's face it, by then I was part of a billion-dollar brand for Disney, so folks tend to be nice to you.

How do you make the High School Musical movies different while keeping the conceits of the brand?
The secret is don't pretend to know what works. Just try to tell the truth. There's still a lot of kid in me, so when I was writing about Troy and Gabriella (Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens), I just went to the truth of my own youth. Obviously it's a different world today than when I was a teen in the late ‘60s, but the emotional truths are the same. I'm not a cynical person, neither are Kenny Ortega nor the producers. So some of the simplicity of HSM comes from the fact that we're not trying to be too hip for the house. The best songs of The Beatles or Bruce Springsteen, in my opinion, came when they were writing about girls and the simple but hot emotions of teenagers. They wrote what's true, without trying to have a “message.” Obviously, we know there are boundaries in terms of language and activities in our franchise, but I write what's interesting to me, and that seems to work. If you write what you THINK will appeal to young adults, you will fail. Write what appeals to you, and that will be better than writing to some non-existent but imagined formula. Your own life is a limitless well of ideas ... trust that it's there. It's the same thing I tell young actors when they audition from something I'm working on ... don't go for what you THINK we want, just trust yourself. It's one of the hardest things for a writer to do. But successful writers do it more often than not.

When writing for a potential audience that can range from 5 to adult, what age do you target or try to relate to?
Again, be wary of 'targeting' an audience. The Holy Grail is the “Pixar” tone: stories that are immediately appealing to kids, but have layers of resonance that also connect with adults. I think that comes from just telling the truth. A film like Stand By Me works for kids, but the activities of the kids in the story are recognizable to a young audience, while adults relate to the emotional ripples created by those activities. Or look at Toy Story 2, one of the finest family films ever: toys outliving their purpose is amusing to kids, but hits adults on an entirely different plane, the loss of youth, outliving your purpose in life. Those are universal themes, played out in comedic form. Kids like toys coming to life. Adults like that too, but respond to the emotion expressed by the characters. John Lassiter told me that the story came from him telling his kids not to play with the merchandising toys from Toy Story 1 ...then he realized he was telling his own children NOT to play with toys. The simple moment started a chain of storytelling. In High School Musical 3, I wrote about kids realizing they might be saying goodbye to their high school friends forever. Kids relate to that, and so do adults. But I wasn't trying to send a message to any particular age group. Writing about friends is just looking inward to your own experience. I wasn't writing for a “potential audience,” I was writing for myself.

How did you prepare to write a musical? Did you learn new skills or do you have a background in music?
I do have a background in music. From age 14 onward, I wrote about music for newspapers. Covered rock-and-roll in my home town of San Francisco. I played in a garage band. The first concert I ever saw was The Beatles at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The power of that event impacted my future. The power of music to galvanize people excites me. With High School Musical, the executive producers and I conceived musical numbers when we pitched the story, then worked with the studio and, in particular, Kenny Ortega, in developing and expanding the moments in the story that were music driven. The key to successful musicals is having the song and dance feel seamless, part of the story telling. Bad musicals feel like stop/start: story, then music video, then more story. Musicals that succeed tend to draw you in to the point where the musical numbers are simply another aspect of storytelling. If you're thinking about writing a musical, just make sure that your “playlist” has a story arc, that the musical numbers tell a story within the story. But it's not enough to have great music. People don't care about the songs unless they care about the characters. Guaranteed.

To what do you attribute the popularity of High School Musical? What advice would you recommend for someone looking to break into the genre?
The success of High School Musical comes from the fact that kids still want to be kids. And so do adults. Kids are bombarded with the dark side of life: drugs, STDs, bad economy, etc. The escapism of HSM appeals to the kid in all of us. Again, we're not saying this is what High School is like, we're saying here's a fun version of high school layered with true emotions. The people who criticize HSM for being too squeaky clean reveal more about themselves than they do about the franchise. We're not TRYING to be wholesome; we're trying to be fun. There is a world-wide appetite for material that doesn't force kids to grow up too fast. I like Gossip Girl, it's a fun, well-written show. It's available to the audience. But I do think kids feel pressured by shows that require them to focus on sex, drugs, and alcohol. They want a break from all that. Fun is the best thing to have, and we've learned that there is a big audience for it. And if there is any secret to HSM's success is that we weren't TRYING to write a kids' franchise. We were just trying to create a fun musical for kids, and the chips fell in our favor. Yes, our main characters are archetypal, but they express emotions true to my life, so I guess people felt that. If you write down to a young audience, you're sunk from “Fade In.”

Do you use a different approach when writing for TV as opposed to film? Are there similarities in your writing and creative processes?
I think the big difference with TV is that things have to happen quickly. I'm writing two television pilots right now, and four feature films. The television pilots require economical scenes, while the features can develop slightly more lyrically. The creative process itself is the same. I do a lot of planning, and a lot of rewriting. I think what separates a professional from a wanna-be is the stamina to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite until you get it right. William Faulkner told young writers to “kill all your darlings.” Meaning, be ruthless and objective about what works and what doesn't. A famous painter once told me she throws out eighty percent of her paintings. That's her version of rewriting. Be prepared to roll your sleeves up and slog it out. Features or TV, it's the same process. The specifics of creating arcs for television series are a skill set different from features; developing characters over an entire season, rather than one film, is certainly a skill set. But I see no reason for a writer not to do both.

Cuba and the Night is a departure from your current audience. How did that project come about?
Cuba and the Night has been in development at various studios for a decade, or longer. I'm fascinated by Cuba as a country. The project started with a book by Pico Iyer, and morphed into a very different story than the book. It's about an American journalist who goes to Cuba for a tan and simple baseball story, then gets embroiled in the politics and change of power from the old Fidel government to a new order. And it all happens because of a girl. The success of High School Musical naturally makes people think I'm a 'family entertainment' writer. But my roots are in adult drama, and I've got several projects in that genre. The fact is, being a professional writer requires that you constantly prove yourself. If you want to write adult dramas, you write one to prove you can do it. Same with family entertainment. Just do it, and don't allow yourself to get boxed in. Write what you believe is common advice, but always produces the best material. What you believe in at any moment might change, so allow yourself to change. Don't expect the studios to encourage you to jump genres. You have to prove to them that you can do it. Being a proactive writer isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. Cuba and the Night is a passion project that producer Wallis Nicita and I will pursue until we finally get it made. So the truth is, it is not a departure for me. High School Musical was the departure. But it's all just writing. People will label you. Ignore that and just write.

Does your High School Musical experience make it easier or more difficult to pitch new projects?
High School Musical is a worldwide, two billion-dollar franchise. So if you make money for people, doors open. An awful lot of doors opened to me because of High School Musical. But once you get in those doors, you have to prove yourself all over again. It's exciting to have opportunities. But it's like making the starting five of the Lakers. It's cool, but you have to put up or shut up every game. Same in show business. Some people are surprised I didn't kick back and take time off because of the success of HSM. But HSM meant it was time to pursue opportunities that will only present themselves for a short while. I'll kick back some other time. I'm still a hungry fighter, but it's just a little easier to get my chances now than before.