MuggleNet Talks with StarKid at Quidditch World Cup VI!

Transcribed by Katie Hynes

Noah Fried: So are you guys Harry Potter fans?

Joe Moses and Joe Walker: Yeah.

Noah: Okay, great. What are some of your favorite books? If you just go down the line that would be great.

Joe M.: [You] just want [us] to go down the line? We'll just pass it down? Of the Harry Potter books, I was one of those kids that would read them all the first night. I would get them and then stay up all night reading the entire book. And I know it's really unpopular, but I think my favorite book is Book 5. Because I like the moody, emotional, emo [books].

Brian Rosenthal: I actually don't consider myself a huge Harry Potter fan and I've read them all seven times. Just comparatively to people who have read them a million times. But I would say it's a tie between the fourth and the fifth. Honestly, [it's] because I can't differentiate, in my mind, all the different things in both books, but I love that section of the Harry Potter story.

Joey Richter: I remember not liking the fifth one, and it took me so long to read it because I read like a child until about Book 5 or Book 6. And then at Book 6, I went to the midnight book thing and I read it all night long; it was probably my favorite just because it was the [midnight premiere] that I went to. It was the one where I first went, “I'm ready for it on day one," and was there. [I] also had to finish Book 5 very quickly to get to [Book] 6, so I was in the mindset.

Joe W.: This one’s easy for me. I think that the fourth book is easily my favorite because it's got a nice big turning point, and it's got the biggest cliffhanger ending because you know things. It leaves you with so much expectation - which ultimately may or may not be fulfilled - but the feeling of expectation by the end of the fourth book was unrivaled by any other emotion I've ever felt.

Noah: You guys obviously play these fictional Harry Potter characters in the musicals. If you could meet these characters, what would you say to them?

Joe W.: Meet the fictional characters that we play, but not as they are written in the book? Because they're different people. Dolores Umbridge from the book is different from Dolores Umbridge in A Very Potter Musical.

Noah: No, no. I mean the character in the actual books.

Joe W.: In the book, I see. Oh, holy-moly, I don't know, that's a really tough one. I guess if I had to say something to Voldemort it would be, “Die!” And then I just would try to kill him and then probably die myself.

Joey: I would probably tell book Ron to just chill out and be the best friend to Harry as he could possibly be. Because that was the one thing [that annoyed me about] book-Ron. I was like, "He's trying too hard to be Harry. No one will ever be Harry but Harry, so just be his best friend because you're his number two and there's nothing wrong with that." I think [I would tell him] to chill out and be a good friend.

Brian: I'd like to talk to Seamus. I guess he seems pretty chill. We’d just hang out. I don't know, he seems really cool. He's not Harry, he's not Ron, it's just the guy who has fun and slips under the radar. He seems like a cool guy fooling around.

Joe M.: I would tell Nearly Headless Nick that he should just get it over with. Snape is actually [a] really tough one because he ended up being a really, really deep character with a lot of different levels so it would be hard to tell him anything. I would probably just tell him, “Hey, man. I like you. Somebody likes you.” Maybe that would cheer him up. But he'd probably hate me because I told him I liked him. He’d probably be a dick.

Kat Miller: Leakey News asks, “Have you ever seen Quidditch being played before, and if you were going to play, which position would it be?”

Joe M.: I haven't played Quidditch. We know how it works and we've seen it played. You guys haven't seen it played live yet, have you? I saw it played live last year. It's really intense. If I could play any position, I would probably be a seeker because I'm small. Actually, I would love to be a snitch. That would be mine.

Brian: I've never played, but I probably want to be a chaser. [It] seems [like it would be] really fun just darting in and out and trying to score offensive. Go blue!

Joey: I've never played either, but I would probably want to be a keeper just because I hate running. I hate running so much and it makes me wheezy, so I'd probably want to just hang out by the goal and occasionally get hit by a ball and go, “Ooh!” But, I don't know, I think I can cover some surface area when I need to keep up that goal.

Joe W.: I would be a beater because I play defense when I play lacrosse. I used to almost exclusively play defensive line back when I played football. I don't think I've ever not played defense in any sport I've played. So, yeah, I’d just definitely be [a] beater. It sounds like fun too. I love playing dodgeball and hitting people and seeing the disappointment cross their faces when they get hit; it's great.

Noah: Do you guys support any of the teams?

Joe W. and Joey: Go blue!

Brian: Because we went there!

Joe W.: Because we went to school there.

Joe M.: We really just want to see a nice, clean game of Quidditch.

Joe W.: Well played Quidditch all around.

Noah: I remember during Senior Year in the courting, I heard through the grapevine that there were many, many rehearsals. This was, of course, at LeakyCon last summer - I was privileged enough to be there - [and] I just wanted to know, what were those rehearsals like? Just how hard was it? And of course, Senior Year was risqué. I was wondering if there [were] any very risqué scenes that just got cut [or] just didn't make it to the final version?

Joe W.: Holy-moly. You saw the clean version that works because so much of it was mean [and] bizarre. It might have been really funny if we had had another month to rehearse it. But trying to tell a four-hour story and… Well, I was going to say, trying to tell a joke that's a dirty joke - or risqué, as you put it - and not telling it well is really a different thing from telling a risqué joke and really laying it out. I think that probably the weirdest scene is the scene with the Riddles; tons of things from that scene were cut. I'd say what remains of that scene is probably 50 percent of what was originally in that scene. In the scene, the grandmother is a horrible person, [but] she just comes across as mean in the final version. She's just a nasty old woman.

Brian: The joke was, as the scene went on, she started off as this nice person and she just ended up being this terrible woman.

Joey: And the joke in the setup there is also that they're so awful and such terrible people, that you don't feel bad when Voldemort kills them. You should go, “Yeah, thank God he kills them!” Because they're so awful, and they're racist and…

Joe W.: They're racists, they're bigots, they're homophobic; they're terrible.

Joe M.: It's funny because I feel like with Senior Year, a lot of it did get cut, but a lot more ended up than usually does in our shows. Because the previous two were not clean. The version you've seen online is cleaned up. But the original one, if you guys remember, A Very Potter Musical was quite dirty when we did it live. Because it was done for college students at night.

Joe W.: I think thematically this one was darker.

Joe M.: Darker. Yeah, definitely, I would agree with that.

Joe W.: The part that I was always curious to see how people were going to react to was the Gilderoy Lockhart parts. The Gilderoy/Hermione part. That's the weird part.

Joey: When he gives his monologue.

Joe W.: When he's like, "It's fake, you idiots! It's fake!" It's like, "Oh my God."

Brian: Some people reacted very poorly to that and you're like, [awkwardly] "It's supposed to be funny."

Joe W.: It's kind of funny, right? And you go, “Oh my God. I thought that was dark." I was like, "That's dark." I thought that was dark. Have you read Fifty Shades of Grey? That's what it's making fun of. That is vile stuff or kind of hot, I don't know.

Audience Member: You guys have material that you've never released. Will it ever be put into some form that Harry Potter fans - or StarKid fans - could enjoy? [Maybe] extended cuts?

Joey: Well, the whole script was released online. The whole script was completely unedited, right? As far as I know, [it] was all released online so you can read it and you can imagine what those in-between bits would probably be like.

Joe W.: Nick Lang is the editor, more or less. The Langs edit it. Matt and Nick Lang edit it and they cut stuff for content, [they also] often cut stuff for quality. I think a lot of [cuts are just because] we just have a lot of goof-ups. Even if, say, a line was really well-delivered but there's a microphone issue - if someone is coughing over it and you just can't get rid of it - [the scene] was out. A lot of it is just unwatchable, actually. People say, “Oh, we love to see that stuff,” and then you watch it and you're like, “I don't love to see this stuff; this is bad. I'm glad that it didn't get in there.” That's what happened with 80 percent of the cuts, there [was] a goof-up or someone just didn't say their line in time, and everyone's just kind of going, “Uh…” and it ruins the pacing of the show.

Joey: Sometimes on [the] DVD I'll go and watch the deleted scenes and if it's an unfinished, crappy deleted scene I'll go, “Cool, more scenes,” and then I'll watch it and go, “Ah, I'm glad this wasn’t in the movie,” or, “I'm going to stop watching this now.” And we don't want that to happen. We're goofs.

Audience Member: What can you tell me about the upcoming Twisted production?

Joe W.: There's not really much to say. The writers are keeping it pretty close to the chest. We’re still in pre-production. And when I say “we” I mean they just happen to be my roommates, so that's why I can talk about it; I'm not on the production team.

Noah: Joey and Brian, the Kickstarter for the Judas revamp kicked off. How's it going?

Joey: It's going really well. We met our goal, thank God. All the projects that got released within a week of each other that were done through all of our friends met their goals, which was fantastic. You guys are unbelievable for helping us and supporting us there. It's going [well]. It's pretty detailed on the Kickstarter page as to what is going on right now, and I think right now Julia's just in the process of casting and figuring out where she wants to place people and in what parts and whatnot. The rehearsal for that won't start until the end of July, anyway, so [we've] got a lot of time, but it's just all that pre-production figuring-out. [It] is the first time Brian and I have been on the production end of a show, so it's just a lot of head-work and legwork to make sure [you've] got all your bases covered before the actual production starts. It's exciting.

Brian: It'll be fun because there'll be lots of StarKid-related people and also just lots of new faces for you guys to meet which will be awesome.

Audience Member: And Joe, when's the next One Man Shows Us?

Joe M.: I don't know yet for sure; we're still working on that. I'm hoping to get a tour going, so that's next on my docket. Hopefully, I can come to all those places I’ve been wanting to go to but haven't been able to yet. [It] might be in July, but who knows.