Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore are two of the most often-produced playwrights in the world. (“The masters of modern farce.” New York Times) They are also accomplished stage actors, producers, and writers for film and television where they’ve received Emmy nominations, People’s Choice Awards, and International Film Festival awards.
Billy Van Zandt was born and raised in New Jersey where his family has resided since the mid 1600s. A love for Lucille Ball’s brand of comedy started Billy on a career in the theater where he starred in a series of his own slapstick plays (“If you’ve never seen this clown at work, you should be ashamed of yourself.” Asbury Park Press).
The success of the plays led Bob Newhart to hire him for his “Newhart” television series. A twenty-two year career producing and writing for television has followed. Between TV assignments, Billy produces, co-writes and stars in his plays, including the acclaimed Off-Broadway productions of SILENT LAUGHTER, THE PROPERTY KNOWN AS GARLAND, and DROP DEAD!
He is married to actress Adrienne Barbeau. They live in New Jersey and California. Jane Milmore is one of the most successful living female playwrights today. She began her writing collaboration with Van Zandt with their first play LOVE, SEX, AND THE I.R.S. in 1979. After the success of the play, Jane moved to Los Angeles to write for Bob Newhart. Since that time she has created and developed television series for Brooke Shields, Martin Lawrence, Don Rickles, Richard Lewis, Jamie Lee Curtis, DL Hughley, Jean Smart, John Goodman, Olympia Dukakis, Richard Mulligan, Penny Marshall, David Krumholtz, Valerie Bertinelli, Andrew Dice Clay, Cathy Moriarty, and The Wayans Bros.
Jane is the oldest of five girls, born in Laramie, Wyoming and raised in New York and New Jersey. Jane lives in Beverly Hills, Manhattan, and Rumson.
Billy and Jane have been honored by the Red Cross for their humanitarian work, and the NJEA for working with high school theater students. They also sponsor full and part-time scholarships for students of technical theater at Brookdale College in New Jersey having put over 30 students through college since the scholarship’s 1997 inception.
See Billy and Jane in action in their play YOU’VE GOT HATE MAIL, performing on May 28 and 29, 2010 at Brookdale Performing Arts Center, in Lincroft, NJ. For more information call the box office at (732) 224-2411.
Check out Billy and Jane’s plays,
available from Samuel French
Bathroom Humor
Confessions of a Dirty Blonde
Do Not Disturb
Drop Dead!
Having a Wonderful Time, Wish You Were Her
Infidelities!
Lie, Cheat, and Genuflect
A Little Quickie
Love, Sex and the I.R.S.
A Night at the Nutcracker
Playing Doctor
The Property Known as Garland
The Senator Wore Pantyhose
Silent Laughter
Suitehearts
Till Death Do Us Part
What the Bellhop Saw
What the Rabbi Saw
Wrong Window!
You’ve Got Hate Mail
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Q & A with Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore
Q: You two have had a very successful writing partnership for many years. What brought you together, and what do you think it is that keeps your collaboration fresh and productive?
J: Sex.
B: That’s what brought Kaufman and Hart together, too, I hear. J: We were dating and wanted to write a show to star ourselves in. And out came LOVE, SEX, AND THE I.R.S.
B: And ever since then, despite an ugly break up...
J: ...a long period of hating each other’s guts... then getting back together as friends...
B: ...and ultimately dating and marrying other people... we’ve never missed one single day of writing together in 32 years. Oh, I’m not supposed to say how long we’ve been writing.
J: Just say, “since high school.”
B: “Since high school.” J: It’s ugly, and sometimes painful, but it’s always funny.
B: We are a live Noel Coward play.
J: Without the wit.
B: As for keeping ourselves fresh...working in TV for most of the year makes you want to blow your brains out sometime. So any chance we have to get back into the theater is paradise. We can do whatever we want without answering to anybody—except the audience.
J: We always jump into our shows feet first. Never be afraid to try something new. We started out doing traditional farce, but moved outside of our comfort zone after only a few years.
B: For 32 years—sorry... since high school—we’ve been debuting our plays in NJ, not far from where we grew up (Jane is from Rumson, Billy from Middletown). We try to write an original show every year, after which we either take them to New York, and/or publish them with Samuel French.
J: And we’re done all over the world now.
B: Japan, Germany, ...People send us reviews from Canada. But I don’t speak French so I don’t have any idea if they like us up there or not.
J: They have to or they wouldn’t send them to us.
B: I don’t know. People can be cruel.
J: People other than you?
B: Yes.
J: And we always try to attempt something we haven’t tried before.
B: We performed a silent movie live on stage in black and white with a live organ and title cards above the actors’ heads. (SILENT LAUGHTER). It was a slightly insane concept. But it worked.
J: Every high school in the country should do that show.
B: We’ve written musicals (A NIGHT AT THE NUTCRACKER). We did an entire play that is told in e-mail (YOU’VE GOT HATE MAIL). Anything that scares us means it’s probably the right thing to try. Those are the ones that turn out the best.
Q: As well as being successful playwrights, you are also both accomplished performers. How do you feel your performing careers have impacted your writing?
J: I’ve never written anything I wouldn’t also say and perform. They both (writing and performing) help each other tremendously. I know a lot of writers who fall in love with their words, and never give any thought to the performer. And that’s fine if you’re writing a novel but plays are a different animal.
B: I write for my own timing. We also write for specific actors when we write our shows—most of the time—whether they end up playing the roles or not. I hate shows where all the actors have the same speech patterns.
J: It’s sort of ruined acting for us, because whenever we perform in other people’s work we often ask, “Do we have to say these lines as written?”
Q: On a more practical level, as well as inspirational, how do you work together to write a new play?
B: Depends on the play. Some have been mapped out within an inch of their lives. Some have been improved. Some have taken a lot of research.
Q: Do you take turns writing and responding remotely, or are both of you in the room as you write, or some other method entirely?
B: Basically I write the whole show and just stick Jane’s name on it.
J: %#$@!
B: Sorry. Not all of them. Just the good ones. Let’s see...how do we do this? We settle on an area we want to write, then we map out the play—loosely—together. Then, depending on the show, we take turns on a first draft passing it back and forth (physical stuff is my turf, and anything with emotion Jane handles—)
J: Since he has no emotion except anger.
B: Funny. Then after we’ve rewritten each other’s work over and over until we’re happy, we go through it line by line together—over and over again. And, of course, hearing it out loud from actors is crucial.
J: Then the audience makes us adjust whatever isn’t working.
B: The director and the actors try too, but I don’t listen to them.
J: So it’s not just me?
B: Sorry, did you say something?
Q: And what inspires you to take on a new project?
J: The spark to write the plays comes from anywhere and everywhere. Sometimes it’s the genre, sometimes it’s something we want to say, sometimes it’s as simple as what actors do we want to work with.
B: There was one show which was based entirely on a hat. I had taken a girlfriend to Solvang, California and saw these hilarious horned Valkyrie helmets. So I bought three and told Jane whatever our next show was it had to have these helmets in it. So we used them in one of the sketches in DO NOT DISTURB—a scene with people filming a Viking porno movie.
Q: Your collaborative focus has often been on farce, starting with the now classic LOVE, SEX, AND THE I.R.S. and continuing up to your most recent YOU’VE GOT HATE MAIL. Is there something inherent in the nature of farce that motivates you to write this type of work?
B: We like farce because it’s tough—and hardly anyone does it correctly. Plus, it makes us laugh. I love good farce!
J: It reminds me of my own life. Believe me, we’ve both found ourselves in plenty of farcical situations—some of them we’ve used—some we haven’t.
B: A hint for anyone doing our shows: be real. And listen to each other. And speed up the pace. A good farce is like a snowball going downhill, the pace gets faster and faster as you go.
Q: Here’s a question that you can answer individually: when and/or how did you know that you wanted to create plays?
J: The first time I stepped onstage and got a laugh. I was 17 years old, playing the mother of the bride in PLAZA SUITE.
B: The first time I saw I Love Lucy I knew I wanted to make people laugh like that. And Gleason. And the Marx Brothers. And the Three Stooges. I remember doing plays in the back yard when I was a kid and smashing a clay flower pot over my friend’s head to get a laugh in the “show.” Almost killed the kid, but I got the laugh.
J: Where is he today, that kid?
B: He was president for eight years. Lives in Texas.
J: Nice one.
B: Lucy’s writers taught me to write. They were writing little plays every week, dropping seeds in their story along the way that paid off in the third act. They taught me a lot. As did Woody Allen (looking at things in a slightly left way) and Neil Simon (who taught me comedic rhythm). And comedienne Phyllis Diller taught me an important lesson about writing jokes for the entire audience versus being brilliant for only a percentage of the audience. My biggest comedy influences were Lucy and Groucho and Buster Keaton and Woody Allen. Years later came LOVE, SEX AND THE I.R.S., A NIGHT AT THE NUTCRACKER, SILENT LAUGHTER and INFIDELITIES.
Q: Have you ever come across a production that made you see one of your plays in a new or unexpected way?
J: Yes. Every time I see one, I want to rewrite every single word!
(Photo courtesy of the authors)
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