Tim Minchin On Why ‘Matilda The Musical’ Is Worth Making A Song And Dance About

The movie adaptation of the acclaimed and wildly successful Matilda the Musical is perhaps the best iteration of author Roald Dahl’s classic story so far.

Although it is landing on Netflix in the US after a limited theatrical release, it has been a commercial hit in the UK, where it has secured the majority of its $15.6 million gross to date. Distributed there by Sony Pictures, it premiered at the London Film Festival. It held onto the box office top spot for three consecutive weeks, only being knocked out of pole position by Avatar: The Way of Water.

The Matilda the Musical movie reunites the trio of creators of the West End stage musical, director Matthew Warchus, writer Dennis Kelly, and Tim Minchin, who wrote the songs.

I caught up with comedian, actor, musician, and songwriter (among other things) Minchin to discuss the movie, the evolution of the musical, and what it was that made him realize it needed a new ending.

Simon Thompson: I saw you introduced the screening here in Los Angeles recently, and I loved the comment you made about many kids in the audience not being born when you wrote the songs for this.

Tim Minchin: It’s true, and there’s this incredible advantage with film that you can be so up close and personal to the characters. The sound mix can also be perfected in post, allowing the film to deliver the songs so beautifully and on a whole new level. It feels incredibly special. Matilda always feels special to me, but it is the most incredible stroke of luck that I got to be involved, and my sense of pride in Matthew and the whole team for this is overwhelming. I didn’t make this film. I had to have faith in Matthew, which I always do, that he’d deliver it. He did, and the more I watch it, the more incredible it is.

Thompson: People talk about elevating a piece of work, but this feels so closely connected to the musical and very much of its own thing. That genuinely surprised me.

Minchin: Yeah, and I didn’t know how he would do it. You generally don’t get to see the book writer and director of a stage musical do the film adaptation because, usually, it’s a different skill set. Even if you do know how to make films, if you’ve made a theater piece, you’ve got attached to it, and you need to throw everything out and start again. That’s what is so incredible about Dennis and Matthew. They could do whatever was required and step back. Film is such a literal medium, whereas theater is a metaphorical medium. It could go so wrong, especially because it’s a story about two people who had abusive childhoods and found each other. It’s a love story about two people who find each other, who need each other, and two incredibly strong female leads who have overcome their terrible childhoods and trauma in different ways. If you start being literal about that shit, it can get super heavy. I don’t watch all the musicals ever made, but it feels to me like there have been very few musicals made with such huge choreographic pieces this century. They’re rare. The whole thing is based in music, and there are more songs in the second half than in the first half. It is deeply musical. I can’t think of anything like that other than my brain going back to Oliver.

Thompson: The vision here is incredible. I’ve read the book and watched the original movie, and I’ve seen the stage production multiple times, and they all have very different styles. This took that to another level. Visually it swings from influences like 1984 and Brazil through to the bright primary colors and use of lines and edges that felt like early Tim Burton, for example. That’s not easy to do and have it work. If you could see a visualization of your songs, would this be what they would look like?

Minchin: It’s a really good question, and I’m not sure. I don’t have the film knowledge that you do, but I get a few of those references. I hadn’t thought of it like that, but you’re right. When we start with Miracle, we’re seduced into the story by these gurgling babies, primary colors, and sparkly jackets, and it’s such a profoundly eccentric musical number. Miracle is where you’re seduced into a world where rules are broken, and you immediately say, ‘This is a musical,’ and there’s no shame in that. I get the sense these days that people make film musicals, hoping the audience won’t notice they are musicals, almost apologize for being what they are, and the songs are like opens you’d hear on the radio. The only way I know how to write songs is through an obsessive dedication to the moment in the story and the tone of the piece. I don’t write songs that are meant to be heard the other way, with the exception, I guess, of When I Grow Up. There is an eccentricity and multi-layered thing where the lyrics are constantly saying stuff to adults about the world we live in while entertaining kids, as well as all the playfulness with language. With Miracle, it requires you to lean into the eccentricity visually and make sure you support it. The lyrics are a nod and wink to the reality of life and parenthood; some kids are s**tty, and the most common thing in life is life, but parents all think their kids are miracles. And that’s ridiculous. Mark leaned into that sparkly, slightly winky, fourth-wall-breaking thing. When you get Revolting Children, which is so profoundly rhythmic, get 200 kids to stomp on desks. I’m not sure I’ve done much justice to your question, but there’s an element of just leaning into what is required by the story and the cinematic visuals and influences that help that play out.

Thompson: There is something different about this version that hits differently. You mentioned When I Grow Up, and I must admit that this version made me burst into tears when that came on in the movie. It touched something in me that the stage production didn’t.

Minchin: Firstly, thank you for being so engaged in this through the years. I asked people when they’ve seen this film if they cried and, if so, when because I’m doing a straw poll. People cry for different reasons. Kids don’t like crying so much, but adults love a cry, and I love writing stuff that makes me cry as I write it. If it makes me tear up, it’ll probably do the same for them when I listen to it. I didn’t know how Matthew was going to solve When I Grow Up in the movie because it sits in a curious place in the stage musical because it’s the second act opener. It seduces you back into the story from your Maltesers, and I didn’t know how that would work. I know that song makes adults emotional, and my working theory with Matilda and how it affects people is that it puts in a child’s world and reminds you of the sort of moral clarity. What When I Grow Up specifically does is make adults feel like they’ve let their childhood self down, which is very Freudian. It’s like realizing you’ve forgotten what mattered to you, which happens to people when they hear Quiet too. All of this I’ve learned over the years with the amazing feedback I get. A lot of people find themselves sobbing when she goes up into the balloon, and I think that’s because the child in us is just so fucking tired of all the noise, of all the inputs, of all the anxiety, and all the stuff we’re meant to care about and be able to solve. I’m not a Freudian person, but there’s something about being reminded of your childhood wants and having that juxtaposed against how much chaos our world is in.

Thompson: There is a new song in this. Is that one you had sitting on the side, played around with initially or over the years, or was it something brand new?

Minchin: It was very much bespoke, and it came because when you make a movie adaptation, there’s always talk of whether there is a new song to be written. As you know about this sort of thing, it’s really about awards and s**t, and I think you know me, we’ve spoken enough, you can imagine how amused I am by that. I’m like, ‘F**k off (laughs). There are a lot of songs, we’re not going to need new music, and if the story doesn’t need it, I’m not going to write it.’ I was stubborn about that, and everyone knew I’d be stubborn about that. When Dennis and Matthew were sending me drafts but only out of politeness, really, I wasn’t giving Dennis notes on his new script and that not my place, but I would if I felt it was being helpful, but I was watching the process happen and thinking, ‘Wow, these guys are clever.’ Eventually, Matthew said, ‘We can’t finish this film. Can you please fix this?’ When Matthew proposed that maybe we needed to close with a new song, it was the clearest moment of revelation I’ve ever had, and I was like, ‘Of course we do because there’s no curtain call.’ You don’t get to bring on the scooters and repeat When I Grow Up and have a bow in a way that we need. The show ends with a cartwheel. You can’t end the film with a cartwheel because it doesn’t have the same impact. The simplicity of that cartwheel on stage is a profound moment of subtle theatrical genius, but there’s no way that’d work in a film. We need to thrust forward a bit and do a little montage. The script in the stage show says, “And the new headmistress was Miss Honey, and it was often said it was the most beautiful school in all the land,’ but we’re not talking to camera in the movie, we need to show that. Anyway, I sat down with Dennis and Matthew and said, ‘We need to end on a song. What are we talking about?’ We chatted, I wrote two pages of notes, and I realized we needed to grab all these themes, musical themes, thematic themes, existential themes, and so on, and we get to tie them up, so the new song has all this stuff in it. I also felt strongly that there was something left over musically. I wrote it quickly and sent it and said, ‘What about this?’ and everyone just went, ‘Holy s**t. That’ll do, pig.’ I’m very proud of the song; it’s very simple, and you take it out of the context of the musical, and someone else could have written it, but within the context of the musical, it does its job well.

Thompson: Was it nice to make tweaks and little amendments here and there, shorten or remove songs, and reshape the lyrical narrative a little? Have you wanted to do it since you first worked on it?

Minchin: It is 14 years since I started writing this. I love this opportunity, but I’m not as good as Matthew and Dennis at throwing stuff out. I write in a quite mathematical way. I’m like, ‘I solved this problem 14 years ago, so it’s solved and that’s how the song goes.’ It’s traumatic. Miracle is almost half the length of the stage show version, which was hard. We also cut things out of Bruce, but I was very aware that we were serving a different genre and that songs in a movie do sit differently. I did enjoy it too. I love working with Matthew; he’s a brilliant chap and a very dear friend; I miss him and England, so I’m just getting to work with him and Dennis, another dear friend. We’re very lucky with Matilda because, very often, if you have huge success with something, relationships get strained for all sorts of s**t reasons, but we’re all incredibly close. Perhaps the biggest thrill of all is Chris Nightingale’s work on this film because Chris is credited as orchestrations and additional music on Matilda The Musical and tends to be under-credited for the stage musical because of how he took all the themes I created and spread them throughout. He’s taken a whole other step with this score. He is just brilliant. It’s not just that he’s pimped the f**k out of the orchestrations with the songs, what he’s done with the interstitial stuff, and the actual score, which is built on my themes, but it goes off into Chris Nightingale land in a profound way. The score is just incredible, and I can maybe take 15 percent of the credit for that. The difficult work of cutting down songs and choosing what to leave out, things like Telly, Loud and Pathetic, in the end, was quite adamant about a couple of them, and I was like, ‘No, it has to go. I can see that now.’ That’s tough, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The more I watch it, the more I think Matthew brilliantly threads a needle with a very f**king tiny eye. It’s incredible.

Thompson: You talk about working with people, and I would love to see you team up with Pink Martini again.

Minchin: (Laughs) Woah.

Thompson: The show you did at Kew Gardens in London is something we still talk about, and we have seen Pink Martini numerous times since.

Minchin: That’s the only time I have ever worked with them. I didn’t tour with them, but I like their stuff. Storm Large was singing with them that night, and I like her and knew her a bit. That show was the only time I’ve ever intersected with them. I would have loved to have actually played with them. They’re amazing.

Thompson: You should consider partnering again and playing the Hollywood Bowl together.

Minchin: That’s interesting. I was talking about that the Kew Gardens gig a few days ago. It made me realize that I hadn’t really thought about touring with them. However, touring with that many people is an excellent way to avoid making money (laughs), and I should know. I’ve done a two-bus four truck tour of the United Kingdom with a 55-piece symphony orchestra, so I can not make money on my own, thank you very much (laughs).

Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical lands on Netflix on Sunday, December 25, 2022.