#fun fact: Lazarus refers to his house as The Studio

[bartholomewillustrated]

Lazarus insists they are Gallery Pieces. Not Pets, or Companions; But Living Gallery Pieces. To be treated with Reverence and Respect and Awe. and Not babied on like the Family Hound. his actions frequently betray his admonishments. I have been waiting to draw this couch for almost the Entire two years I've had Lazarus/FaHI. This couch is such a Set Piece, so much Happens on this couch... I Gotta draw more actual scenes from Inside Laz's house/the factory ya'll are missing OUT. Anyway, this is a snippet of the sketch page I'm working on of Laz and his creations, I'm a man without control and in a slump so you're getting them as I make them and then the final page. which does mean I will probably post them at Bizarre times, just for funsies.

[paigemoonlma32]

Development within Heathers

Throughout the years of Heathers, the musical has been adapted through different performances, For example: 

"You're Welcome" from the 2018 West End Production of Heathers the Musical replaces "Blue," a song on the World Premiere Cast Recording (Heathers The Musical - "You're Welcome" (Unknown, 2018). "You're Welcome" was initially written by O'Keefe and Murphy for the High School edition, but was added to the official show beginning with the 2018 London production. O'Keefe and Murphy preferred "You're Welcome" as they had come to feel that "Blue" was a bit lazy, and had inadvertently trivialised the lead character's fears (given that Veronica is cornered by two drunk, entitled high school football stars who refused to hear the word "no"). While "Blue" contained no dialogue for Veronica, by contrast, "You're Welcome" allows Veronica to express her fears and solve her problem, defeating her assailants decisively. As well as providing a more empowering alternative for Veronica, the new song remedies the way that "Blue" was often considered as "treating date rape as a laughing matter" and presenting sexual assault or harassment as "boyish antics", due to the comical nature of the song (Heathers: The Musical, 2020). 

While researching about the change I came across a thread on the social media app Reddit titled “Removing Blue from Heathers was stupid” (deleted, 2019). Straight away this proves that some of the audience members were not pleased about the change. Other comments within the post stated “It made no sense for people to be offended by Blue, but not by literally the entire rest of the show, which presents a lot of dark/serious topics in a humorous way, because it's a Satire!” (Derp_8, 2019). “It is disturbingly rapey” and “It sounds nothing like a Heathers song. They're all supposed to sound like 80's songs but this sounds like 90's” stated another user (Goth2002, 2019).  Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy stated in a ‘PLAYBILL’ article on March 22nd 2018: “Some thought “Blue" was wonderful and all in good fun. Others were offended, feeling we were treating date rape as a laughing matter (O’Keefe and Murphy, 2018). After listening to both songs and watching multiple performances of both I personally prefer ‘Blue’. My reason is that ‘Blue’ is a very comedic song. As much as they are singing about wanting sex and how much Veronica makes their balls blue, Kurt and Rams interactions are mainly to each other. During the majority of the performances for ‘Blue’, you will find Veronica standing up stage looking whilst discussing what they are singing. However in “Your Welcome”, Veronica is stuck in the middle of the boys which is why she is thinking about getting out of the situation (Heathers, 2019). For me personally, “Your Welcome” implys more of a serious date rape senorio over two boys singing to eacher about the desire to have sex. I presume my opinion could be different if Veronia was stuck in the middle again, however, she is normally at a safe distance as previously stated (Heathers, 2017). 87 fans of Heathers the musical took to vote to say whether or not they liked the song change. 5.7% of the fans liked the change of the song, however 94.3% did not like the change and still prefer “Blue” (Thoughts On Heathers Replacing "Blue" | Heathers Amino, 2017). 

A new song for Heather Duke, "Never Shut Up Again", was also added for the London run, replacing the "Blue (Reprise)". For the 2017 workshop, there was a different song to replace "Blue (Reprise)", which became "Big Fun (Reprise)", part of which is now included in "Never Shut Up Again". Never Shut Up Again is the first time we really hear from Heather Duke and how she felt about being treated badly. Duke sings the Lyrics “I bit my tongue so long, I learned to count to ten” which gives the impression of how long she has let the anger build up inside of her due to Heather Chandler never letting her speak. In the next verse, Duke compares Heather Chandler to the ‘Wicked Witch of East’ from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ when she sings “A house dropped on her head, The witch is dead! Ding Dong!”. After research I also found that it is a reference to the line “Killing Heather would be like offing the Wicked Witch of the West. Wait East. West” which is a quote from the original 1988 film of Heathers where Veronica is writing in her diary about how she wants to kill Heather Chandler (Barry, 2019). The chorus of this song that gets repeated is “I will never shut up again”, this is because Duke from the beginning of act 1 is told repeatedly to shut up by Heather Chandler. However, now that Chandler is dead, Duke is rejoicing that she now has the power that chandler had. This is symbolised by Heather Chandler's red Scrunchie (Heathers, 2019). 

In the last week at The Other Palace, the authors added a new song after "Shine a Light (Reprise)" called "I Say No", in which Veronica finally dumps J.D. when he proposes a return to murdering. In this she tells him "you need help I can't provide" and walks out on him. The song remained in the show for the Haymarket run and was released on February 15, 2019. One audience member stated “This is EXACTLY the type of song this show needed. I am ALWAYS here for giving Veronica more backbone, and calling out JD on his shit. It gives ‘I Am Damaged’ a whole new meaning now, which it DESPERATELY needed. Now he’s like movie JD: he doesn’t actually love her. He loves her means to an end” (Alabba, 2019). Throughout this song Veronica is realising that JD has been using her emotions as excuses for what he has done. For example, she sings “But you’re still using me to justify the harm you do”, this is linking back to the scene where JD has just killed Kurt and Ram, and then he asks Veronica “Did they make you cry? Well they can’t now”. He also states “You wanted them dead” to make Veronica feel more guilty so that he can comfort her again (Rios, 2018).

With Heathers having such a teen based audience there has also been a “Heathers (High school Edition)” released. “After seeing the Off-Broadway production several times, we knew that Heathers would have a cult following among teen audiences and fans of the motion picture, due to its focus on the important issues of bullying and teenage depression.” says Samuel French executive director Bruce Lazarus. “We believe that Heathers 101: High School Edition deals with these themes in a meaningful way, which will resonate with our high school audiences” (GIOIA, 2016).  Changing songs such as ‘Blue’ to ‘Your welcome’ is one of many ways to make the musical more suited for the high school edition. However, certain songs such as Dead Girl Walking stayed just directed with a different intention. ‘Dead Girl Walking’ changed to be less about a teen girl’s final sexcapades and more about “a girl driven to say, ‘To hell with it!’ by despair and fear” - brought to light the show’s themes, which function as important lessons for the high-school students (GIOIA, 2016). An article from The Atlantic stated “Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the Broadway version really gets the genius bleakness of the original. An early preview of the musical Heathers reveals that Veronica’s monologues are now big numbers about how high-school can be suffocating. None of the songs have the film’s creative profanity, or even a tinge of satire. It’s a sad thought, Heathers turned into a mere Glee episode about suicide” (Zilberman, 2014).

Fun Facts about Heathers:

The actress who played Heather Chandler in the original film of Heathers died at the age of 32 from a brain tumor. “Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?” is one of the most famous sentences that comes from Heathers. There is a true meaning behind the sentence, and it appears to be an “unfortunate twist of fate” (Arnold, 2020).

The movie was originally supposed to end with J.D. blowing up the school and then everyone would have prom in heaven while drinking blue punch. Apparently, the studio rejected this ending because they thought it was too grim (Arnold, 2020)

The initial script featured more violence. When Waters finished his first draft of Heathers (which was the first script he'd ever written), it was 200 pages long, which would have roughly amounted to a three-hour film. The body count was higher, too; not even the editor of the school newspaper survived. Waters admits that the first draft of the script shows how Veronica was originally more twisted than she is today. The reasoning for the slight change of character is because Winona Ryder, who played Veronica, delivered something slightly different in the auditions by adding “warmth and empathy” to the character (Cormier, 2015).

Westerberg High was named after The Replacements' singer-songwriter Paul Westerberg. At one point in the film, Christian Slater's character J.D. says “color me impressed,” which references a song by The Replacements (Cormier, 2015).

J.D. tells Veronica that the “ich lüge” bullets he'll use to scare the school jocks will do just that - scare them - when, in fact, they're intended to kill them. ‘Ich luge’ is german for ‘I'm Lying’ (Cormier, 2015).

The movie of Heathers was becoming a TV series to premiere in March 2018. However, the series was shut down due to the event which took place at Parkland, Florida, which became a “challenging subject” because of the shooting and using gun violence in the series (Cormier, 2015).