Life Partners Cory Krueckeberg and Tom Gustafson Discuss Their Indigo Girls Jukebox Musical 'Glitter & Doom'

EDGE: There are moments in "Glitter & Doom" that remind me of another jukebox musical built around the catalogue of a single act: "Across the Universe." Some of the moments even seem inspired by the style of that Julie Taymore-directed movie. Was this something you set out to do, or something the genre invites?

Cory Krueckeberg: That's one of our favorite jukebox musicals.

Tom Gustafson: With a jukebox musical, the challenge is obviously keeping the story on track and having it be coherent, which is a challenge of forcing the narrative with the songs. But even from a script level, before we even had songs, Cory already had some of the magical realism moments in it. And then, when you start adding music and choreography and everything, your world can kind of explode. "Moulin Rouge" is another jukebox musical which [was an influence on this project].

Cory Krueckeberg: The chaos in the musical storytelling in our movie is probably more borrowed from "Moulin Rouge," and the poetry is probably more borrowed from "Across the Universe," with a little hint of "Rocket Man" here and there, because that is my most recent favorite jukebox musical. I think they just did an incredible job of telling a musical story with [Elton John's] music.

Tom Gustafson: What's great about "Rocket Man" is it uses every type of musical storytelling, whether it's performance, or magical realism. I love that you can kind of go the whole range of musical storytelling within it.

EDGE: What went into the casting?

Tom Gustafson: We had thousands and thousands of people submit. They had to sing an Indigo Girls song and then do a scene. We had a thousand amazing versions of "Galileo."

Cory Krueckeberg: Our casting director and Tom had gone past Alan's video and not been interested in him. I randomly was watching it late at night, just trying to get through watching the videos. I saw him, and I was immediately like, "This is the guy. He has the musical talent, he has the vocal chops, he's charismatic and interesting and unusual." I emailed Tom in the middle of the night with that video and was like, "This is Doom."

Tom Gustafson: And then Alex... we actually had cast somebody else as Glitter, who then had to leave the project because of a conflict.

Cory Krueckeberg: We had cast an Asian American actor in the role, and then we cast Ming-Na Wen as the mom. When the other actor didn't work out, we got, like, 100 videos, and I saw Alex's video and I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is totally him." It was the best accident that ever happened.

We had talked about Ming with our casting director. She responded personally by sending us a video of her singing an Indigo Girls song. She's such a fan; she really wanted to be in it.

EDGE: The film has so many fun cameos: Peppermint! Lea Delaria! Missi Pyle! Tig Notaro! What went into rounding them all up?

Tom Gustafson: I think Tig was one of the first people [we cast]. Tig is a big fan of the Indigo Girls and has worked with them.

Cory Krueckeberg: She was first because we wanted agents and managers and reps to take it seriously. She said yes very quickly and very easily, and she's been insanely supportive of the movie. She came to the premiere. She has canceled comedy stand up tour dates so she can go to screenings. She loves the movie. She loves Amy and Emily.

All of the other characters, other than Glitter and Doom, are female or female identifying, and we wanted to bring in as many people from the queer community as possible. We're extremely happy with all the people that we ended up with.

EDGE: What's your process for making films with your life partner... or is the word I want "husband?"

Cory Krueckeberg: I mean, we just had our 25th anniversary so I feel like at some point getting married seems silly, because we've been together for so long. We're not married. Like, are we just trying to conform to this weird patriarchal contract of subjugation? Why are we trying to do that kind of thing? But also, we just never decided to do it. We should probably do it for legal reasons.

EDGE: So, anyway, working together?

Cory Krueckeberg: At first, he didn't really want to work together. It was kind of me pushing him to write a script and then for us to produce it, and then for the first couple of projects he was very much like, "We're not talking about business when we're having our own personal time." That went out of the window very quickly. People will say, "I don't want the business to affect our friendship, our relationship," but it's a social business. It's all-consuming. It's impossible to separate [business from the personal], so now we're kind of the opposite, in not necessarily the best way, where it seems like all we talk about is our work. We need some balance.

Tom Gustafson: That is true. We need some balance.

"Glitter & Doom" is in limited release. For a full list of theaters where the film is playing, follow this link.

Watch the trailer for "Glitter & Doom."