IT’S A MUSICAL COMEDY FOR STAGE AND SCREEN (AND HBO AND NETFLIX, WHO DON’T

WORRY ABOUT LOSING DRUG ADS)

Carrie, the daughter of cheesy Pillzer Pharmaceutical's sleazy CEO Marty Martin, has just become engaged to kind, aspiring Tennessee songwriter, Bobby. She gets her fiance to join Daddy's Cincinnati company as a TV commercial writer. He's good, and he'd love to bring some integrity to this money-mad outfit. Can he and Carrie survive here? The answer is about love and laughs…a scary lawsuit…and songs people can actually sing.

Jay Taylor Tucson 520-299-3860 cell 520-419-5833 laffbiz@aol.com

The show opens with an older man with a cane walking out in front of the curtain. He sings the song that sets the tone and attitude for “Big Pharma.” (He’s Bobby’s very funny dad, Ed.)

SONG: “THE SYMPTOMS AND SIDE EFFECTS BLUES”

CURTAIN OPENS

MORNING, BOARD ROOM PILLZER PHARMACEUTICALS

Marty Martin, middle-age CEO of Pillzer, stands at the head of a giant table. Seated all around is his product development team. Martin BOOMS out:

MARTIN: It’s Monday! New drug day!

Lots of smiles and nodding heads.

MARTIN: I’m feeling scientific this morning. Let’s start with a super-meaningful and irresistible scientific name. Scrabble tiles, please.

A young team member spreads out the tiles. Martin moves them around, with great flourish.

MARTIN: Okay…D…I…P…H…L…O…

The team is very excited, leaning forward, following the process, murmuring.

MARTIN: …G…E…N…A... DIPHLOGENATE!

He “inhales” the tiles. Excited applause and loud murmuring.

MARTIN: Oooo, that smells like so…much…money!

SONG: “IF WE SHOULD HELP SOMEONE, NO HARM DONE”

MARTIN: Now, what can Diphlogenate…

AMY: …cure?

MARTIN: (GASPS) Don’t ever utter that hateful word in this room again.

She’s puzzled.

FREDDY: The word is “treat.” There’s no money in cure.

LOUIS: We’ve been working on a condition that affects millions, but they don’t know it.

MARTIN: A new drug and a new illness in the same day? This is from God.

LOUIS: We call the condition SPT. Stunted Pinkie Toenail.

Martin jumps back. (Mouths WOW) We can treat that? What are our side effects?

FREDDIE: The usual. Rash, nausea…leprosy…left-handedness…

MARTIN NODS, ACCEPTINGLY

AMY: …treason…purple nose hairs.

FREDDIE: And sir…we even have the TV commericial.

He punches a button, giant screen appears. Funny “NAIL B LONG” commercial plays.

MARTIN: Stunted Pinkie Toenail! Nail-B-Long! I LOOOOOVE my job!!!

A man walks in, hands Martin a SUBPOENA. Carrie’s alarmed, Martin’s stunned.

One of Pillzer’s law firms is Jackson Hoffman. They have a big singing dance number:

SONG: “GET IN LINE.”

Ed sings about old-age initials.

SONG: “THE INITIAL STAGE”

A little more about Mr. Martin. Very smart, very rich, majorly clueless about how the rest of the world lives. When he hears a minion says he can’t afford something, Martin looks genuinely puzzled. His secretary whispers, “He doesn’t have any money.” Martin whispers, “What happened to it?” “He’s never had any.” “Fascinating.”

MARTIN SINGS WITH HUGE DOLLAR BILL BEHIND HIM

SONG: “MONEY CANNOT SUCK”

Martin’s in the lab one day and the scientists ask him to let them do something good.

SONG: “HEY, MISTER MARTIN”

The lab guys make up “body part” songs. “I Left My Pancreas in San Francisco.” An obese man sings, “I’ve Got Goo Under My Skin.” Then looks demonic and sings, “You gotta have SPLEEEEN! All you really need is SPLEEEEN! I know you’re feeling kinda wussified now, but I’ll show you how to be MEAN!” A lady is their star, with Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Sphincter.” There’s a dramatic poem, “If hemorrhoids could talk.” Ed actually does standup, heavily senior-related. “I just had lab work done. Old guy lab work.Two minutes for the blood, an hour and a half for the urine.” Ed and Bobby occasionally do“singing and standup.” They were working in a beat-up club in Covington, Kentucky…near Cincy…Bobby was backstage, shooting video of Ed’s set, and also shot some video of the worst man-and-wife dance team in the the world. They watched it later, laughed their butts off.

Of course, Pillzer has production facilities. A high-energy musical number performed intheir factory is called “The Pillzer People.”

SONG: “THE PILLZER PEOPLE”

YOU GET THE IDEA. HERE ARE A FEW OF THE KILLER SCENES.

Carrie sees Bobby’s unhappy here, tells him “home” is wherever they are.

SONG: “I’M RIGHT THERE.”

Bobby loves playing with “drug songs,” like “Humira, I just met a girl on Humira,” sung to melody from “Maria.” His big drug song is sung to “Galveston.”

SONG: “GAVISCON”

Bobby works hard, but he really wants Carrie to move back home with him. One day he’s At the piano, writing a jingle when he becomes wistful about his and Carrie’s life.

SONG: “PROZANNA/COUNTRY LOVING”

Bobby goes home, plays in clubs, sings romantic songs and funny ones.

SONG: “BEVERLY HILLS STARBUCKS”

Carrie is sad that Bobby left, and blames herself.

SONG: “THE THINGS I NEVER SAID”

There’s another funny TV spot with a doctor talking to the camera. “Are you suffering

from an illness you can’t pronounce? Call The Diction Doctors at one, eight hundred ONOMOTOPAEIA.” And a TV spot for stomach med called LOG-JAM. Yikes! Martin and Pillzer’s analgesic division DO get sued very big-time, by a woman who became a paraplegic invalid from taking a pain killer that “went wrong.” Big, scary court case, in the national news. Martin is facing financial ruin, and maybe jail time.

THEN…remember that video Bobby shot of the awful dance team? Holy shee-it! Bobby, back in Tennessee, sees the TV coverage of the trial, whips out that video…and there’s the “invalid,” tapping and leaping with her husband, who’s NOW wheeling her in and out of court every day and lifting her into the witness chair.

Bobby and family fly into Cincinnati, he shows the video and saves the day for everyone. And Martin, amazingly, becomes a better man. (Dodging prison can do that.)

Martin’s wacky, super creative son Richie created POBD, Pissed Off Bowel Disease… RLS newsletter, “What’s Shakin’?” Used Catheter Exchange. “Why pay big for new ones?” “Solar-powered IUD.” (Great birth control; re-charging isn’t pretty.)

He produces a TV spot for Pillzer’s E.D. medicine, “Vinogla.” It’s about a townnamed VinoglaVille, where there’s a WOODY parked in every driveway. He’s recommended opening a chain of discount OB/GYN clinics called THE PAP BOYS.

His HUGE idea. “Travel Condoms.” Order on your smart phone and a tiny drone flies a tiny package into your hotel, hovers inside the elevator, delivers them to your door, signals your phone. TV Spot. “WHERE THE RUBBERS MEET THE ROAD.”

Bobby’s mom Peggy wants Carrie to come live in Tennessee.

SONG: “OUR SWEET TENNESSEE HILLS.”

Carrie may be softening to the idea. Yep. She joins Bobby in Tennessee.

Martin loves the lab’s E.D. creation, “Lightning Rod Quickie,” sings his show-stopper.

SONG: “THE NOONER IS BACK”

Ed comes out in front of the curtain, with a mattress on his back and sings finale.

SONG: “NAPTIME”

He falls back on the mattress and says, “Catch you later.” Holds up a sign that says, “WILL WORK FOR METAMUCIL.”

THE END