RS: You're making a show in Canada but set in the US…
Michael Perlmutter: Yes.
RS: Musically how is that, is that difficult or are you able to
get an accurate reading of the US clubs, being in Canada?
Michael Perlmutter: You mean clubs in terms of what music is being played?
RS: Yes.
Michael Perlmutter: Well we read charts, we speak to DJs, we have a
DJ consultant that we work with.
RS: Is that Paul Grace?
Michael Perlmutter: Yes, he's been fantastic. We speak to all the
labels and find out what's coming out, you know, from J Records to
Star 69, to Distinctive, to, you know, I think we've even used an
Almighty track out of England, so we stay on top of everything going
on. A lot of the songs that are charting on the Billboard dance
charts in the US, a lot of them come across the border here so we see
what's going on, and all the top DJs in the world play here. So we
check out their list, we go online and check-out all the different DJs
and their set lists, we read magazines, so we do a lot of research
whether we were in Bolivia or we were in Toronto, it really didn't
matter that much. I mean they're shooting here for a lot of different
reasons and so it really hasn't affected whether we're on top of the
game or not.
RS: I notice the first two soundtracks were in the BMG family,
and in the third year you moved to Tommy Boy.
Michael Perlmutter: Yes.
RS: Did that affect the music you were able to use to the soundtracks?
Michael Perlmutter: No, it didn't actually. BMG had a really great
catalogue of songs and a bunch of dance songs and it was really great
to be able to work with them, to look through their catalogue and see
if there was some stuff that we could use. But ultimately we want to
find the best music for the show, no matter who's got the soundtrack.
When Tommy Boy came onboard they were a little more dance-oriented
than BMG was and we were able to use a few different tracks of theirs,
plus, part of what Tommy Boy does is they'll license tracks from all
over the world and release them in the US. So we were able to work
with them and they worked with us really closely on saying OK, we're
just about to license this new track, it's not going to come out for
three months, we've got the rights to it, let's put it in the show.
And that was awesome and we did that a bunch of different times over
the last couple of years. So I think it was, you know, the two
different kinds of relationships, one's a major label and one is an
independent label, and they both worked well and they both, you know,
all four soundtracks are selling pretty well. I think they both had
great street teams, I know that Tommy Boy's obviously been around on
the dance floor for quite a long time so they certainly have those
really great connections to do marketing and promotions and publicity
and all that stuff, and BMG did a great job with that also. I also
think that it might be a little harder to sell a third and fourth
soundtrack than it is the first two, you know, like any show, you
know, there are very few shows that sustain a very, very huge audience
over four or five years.
RS: And Will and Grace is in their tenth year or whatever, and
they're following their first soundtrack.
Michael Perlmutter: That's exactly it, and so we… but we also
believed that we had a really important market. We had a really
groundbreaking show that believed that the music was extremely
important to their audience, not just the story lines, not just how
great the acting was going to be and how great the set would look and
how it was going to be photographed and all that, but the music was
important. So we believed that we should put out a soundtrack because
they'd put out DVDs, beautiful DVDs, and put out great soundtracks,
the soundtracks looked, you know, really nice, so it was really
important to keep up the level of professionalism of the show and the
culture of the show.
