Old friends reunite to create wacky ‘Plan 9 from Outerspace’

Old friends reunite to create wacky ‘Plan 9 from Outerspace’

Film originally directed by Ed Wood to land in Los Angeles as a
musical

By Jennifer Richmond

Daily Bruin Staff

Caffé Luna was bright in the unusual winter sunshine on
Friday afternoon. Chris Mills, a UCLA theater alumnus flagged down
a Bruin reporter looking like he just walked off the cover of J.
Crew. The clean cut actor flashed a boyish grin that belied his
sharp, matinee-idol appearance he presented throughout most of the
interview.

His companion, playwright David Smith, waved a hand from his
rumpled blue T-shirt and revealed his white teeth from behind an
unkempt beard and black-rimmed glasses.

These two complete opposites make the perfect pair as they
finish each other’s sentences and take little jabs whenever the
moment permits. It’s now perfectly clear why Mills and Smith have
been friends for the past 16 years and are reuniting for Smith’s
musical version of Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Although Mills and Smith have known each other a long time and
have previously worked together in the theater as playwright and
actor, it’s only now that the two are working together in a company
outside of the classroom.

"But it’s not weird at all," Mills says. "It’s awesome because
here I am down in L.A. and now, I get to spend hours with my good
friend David, listening to him sing and work on something he
wrote.

"I probably wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for David," the
actor says. "I only would have known Ed Wood (the C-rate filmmaker
of the ’50s) through the movie, like anybody else. But I’ve known
about it for so long. I had my Plan 9 T-shirt from high school.

"When I first got involved in it, David sent me a tape of him
singing all the songs."

"Because I don’t write music," Smith explains.

"And you can’t for the life of you read David’s hand writing,"
Mills laughs.

Despite these drawbacks, Mills says he was blown away by Smith’s
musical. "When we sung ‘Saucers,’ I went ‘My God. David is really
good,’" he says laughing. "But I don’t want to tell him that
because then he’ll get a really big ego," he whispers with a
grin.

But the musical wasn’t always as neat as the production they’ve
been working on here. The musical started as a joke and has
continued as a work in progress that’s always changing.

Mark Knolls, the director, and Smith have been working on the
show since 1982 when they saw the film and decided to make the
musical which originally opened in Salt Lake City. "We did it in
Salt Lake as a kind of joke, really. I mean, just to see if we
could do a musical version of Plan 9 and because it’s pretty bad,"
Smith says.

But Smith originally had no intention of making Plan 9 into a
musical. "I wanted to do just a straight version of the movie on
stage," he explains. "Then Mark said ‘why don’t you make it a
musical?’ and I was like ‘Yeah right.’ Then I went home and I sat
with the guitar and pounded out this song, I mean it took me (I’m
embarrassed to say) it took me about an hour to write this
number."

"Grave robbers from Outerspace" is the number in question. "It’s
the opening number of the show and it has never changed," the
playwright says. "It’s the same number and it’s great. But all the
rest of the numbers in it now are great too."

They’re so great, Mills says, that they’re addictive. It’s full
of songs "that people will hum when they leave the theater. They’re
catching. I sing them in the shower. Songs I don’t even participate
in, I sing in the shower."

"They are pretty addictive," Smith added. "I mean of course they
would be for me because I wrote them, but they become a part of
your life pretty quickly."

"But if you play them backwards they’re very satanic," Mills
joked.

"And we do that at intermission," Smith laughs.

The songs may be funny and addictive, but Smith says he wrote
them specifically to comply with the film. "There’s some sort of
’50s rock ‘n’ roll numbers and some sort of Latin-kind-of-feel
numbers like real ’50s genres because that’s when the film is.

"I mean, I think people will find it funny, but I also think
people will be entertained by it on another level," Smith
continues. "It’s supposed to be a comedy, we’re always concerned
with it being a comedy, but we’re really more interested in it
being a play.

"The version we did in ’82 was more like a musical revue. These
songs would come out of no where, they were funny, but they really
didn’t do anything to further the show. You could pull them out of
the production and it would still be the same show, it just
wouldn’t have any music," Smith says with a chuckle.

"Most of these songs, if you pull them out of the (musical) you
really wouldn’t know what was going on in the play, you know?
They’re songs that actually take people somewhere and actually
travel some place and actually move the characters along somewhere
and actually make you know something about the characters. I mean
that’s the intention." And Smith hopes his intention will be
understood and approved.

But considering the musical has already received great reviews
in Salt Lake City and Kansas City, it sounds like Smith’s
intentions have not only been understood, they’ve been audience
approved.

STAGE: Plan 9 from Outer Space. Written by David Smith. Directed
by Mark Knolls. Running through March 11 at the Hollywood Moguls
theater. Performing Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. TIX: $15.
For more info. call (213) 660-8587.