The myth of The Morlan Musical

Cast gathers in Morlan Hall. Photo courtesy of Harold Fulillove III and Adam New.

The citizens of Morlan live like paupers. While the aristocrats of Sandhu enjoy the fine dining of steak and lobster in the Caf, the Morlanites have rags for clothes, gruel for food and a suspiciously milky supply of water. The territory of Glass is riddled with violent gang activity, and the ruins of Henley have crumbled to nothing but a pile of smoking rubble. 

The relatable experience has united Chapman freshmen across residence halls and time, and in 2023, an inspired group of collaborators embarked on a perilous journey to tell the tale. Described by screenwriter Harold Fulillove III as an amalgamation of “freshman hunger, ambition and drive,” “The Morlan Musical” is a self-reflexive epic about uniting people across the lawless land of residence halls. But three years after its notoriously large-scale psychosis fever dream production, the elusive movie musical seemed to be indefinitely scrapped, twisted from fact to fable… or so we thought. 

Co-Director and Editor Eric Shachal has confirmed that “The Morlan Musical” will be released this winter as a fundraising campaign for the reunited key crew’s Dodge College thesis. 

“Adam (New) mentioned how he wanted this film to feel like a snapshot. Like a picture frame of his freshman year, which I think kind of came across in the final film,” said Shachal. 

In a perfect storm of creative producing majors in close quarters and none of Dodge College’s usual filming restrictions, the Class of 2027 churned out 60 pages and 10 songs at the height of development. Creators Adam New and Fullilove crewed Co-Directors Shachal and Ben Tinsley, Director of Photography Jackson Flemming, Producer Marilia Yunis and First Assistant Director Wednesday Peck, among many others. New managed to mobilize an estimated 70 freshmen to fuel his preconceived magnum opus. 

“It was literally just us all waking up one day and being like, ‘Holy shit, we're surrounded by the most talented people we've ever been surrounded by.
Let's do something as big and insane as we can,’” said Fullilove. “It just felt like we were getting away with something.”

New describes the moment his vision struck as “lightning in a bottle.” With little knowledge of production protocols, the pair’s creativity ran recklessly high in a series of 4 a.m. writers’ rooms in the Morlan Lounge. The film originally opened with a scrapped scene of a Morlanite stealing from the Caf and being subsequently shot in the head by the dystopian law enforcement. 

This first draft set the precedent that the creators were unwavering in their vision of the project’s shock value, and anyone on board was along for the ride of obscenities. The film underwent a change of ownership in January 2023, when original Director Ross Corman-O’Reilly stepped down in a formal resignation letter, citing creative differences. The role was picked up by Director Ben Tinsley. After his emergency wisdom teeth surgery, Tinsley decided to partner with Shachal. 

Although the scrapped opening scene was replaced by composer Ignacio de Cardenas’ original track “Welcome to Morlan,” the comedic critique of disparities in freshman housing remained  a central theme. It was the perfect pitch to expand the team.

Cast gathers on the top of Jim Miller parking structure. Photo courtesy of Harold Fulillove III and Adam New.

“We were all just freshmen and we wanted to be involved in stuff. Everyone wanted to be part of something. We were literally just grabbing people out of the dorms, like, ‘You want to be in this? Just come with us!’” said Cardenas. “It was really word of mouth. People started talking about it. People seeing other people that they knew involved also helped that out.”

Starring Caiden Falstrup-Finney, Harold Fullilove, Alec Home, Siena Currid and James Nation as King James Nation of The Pralle Kingdom, an extensive ensemble cast brought the script to life. The production relied heavily on the participation of wide-eyed freshmen, under-the-table negotiations with resident advisors and guerrilla-style tactics.

But the naive disregard for production guidelines was a double-edged sword. At its best, it was the April 20 midnight rap battle on the top of the Jim Miller Parking structure. At its worst, a five-hour turnaround time for the next morning’s call time.

“North Glass’ top shooter, 1st AD, I’m calling shots / My gang don’t need permission numbers, we enroll up on your block / Bullet holes in your windows, we make it look like a fenestra / You gon’ have to roll the credits when we slaughter all your extras,” wrote New and Fullilove in “The Great Jim Miller Rap Battle.”

“It’s a reflection of who we were as well. We were so ambitious about this…Really, we had no idea what we were doing. We had no idea what to expect. We were all coming from different backgrounds as well. Nobody understood a production to the full extent,” said Cardenas. 

With jam-packed shooting days and endless drive, members of the crew showed up through thick and thin. 

“There was also a time where I sprained my ankle really bad and I needed crutches…I remember waking up hella early before my Spanish class to film a scene and just hobbling around,” Shachal said. “But the show goes on.” 

Inflamed egos only caused tensions between crew members to rise as creative differences and strong personalities clashed.

“Freshman year, you're all ambition and have zero tact,” said Fullilove. “We brought in people we thought were super talented, and expected them to 100% buy in the same way we bought in. As we know now, creatives are very specific and you're gonna come at things in a very different way. Everyone was so inexperienced with handling productions of that size, but also interpersonal conflict and separating personal feelings from your art.”

Lasting six months, the production was an all-consuming force. New now reflects on how the scale of the production caused perfectionist-driven anxieties.

“I don’t think I was a good collaborator during the process. I loved the idea so much. I’d committed my entire life to it,” New said. “I approached it from a place of not only ego, but trying to achieve something that was perfect…like a magnum opus. And I was 18!”

Despite the anticipated fall 2024 release date, the public still has not seen a cut of “The Morlan Musical.” After a semester of residents coming together, the inevitable shift to sophomore year separated the collaborators by new housing arrangements. Much of the crew naturally drifted apart, as they became preoccupied with the academic demands of sophomore year.

The heavy expectation of cobbling together a cut fell on Shachal and Co-Editor Jonathon Lau. With terabytes upon terabytes of footage, it became difficult for any of the creators to engage with the material. Wrapping production had caused spiked adrenaline to plummet, followed by severe burnout and reflection of egos.

“(I thought): ‘What's next? I have to build on this momentum or everyone's gonna think I'm a fraud.’…I had soured these relationships because of the way I acted while we were making (the film). I just started to resent the film a little bit…I saw it as something that ruined my life a little bit, honestly. Or at least my sense of self,” said New. 

A completed 45-minute rough cut was shown to a select few on the crew in September 2024. 

“It was an out of body experience. This was an idea that I had for so long, that so many people knew about, that caused so much joy and so much suffering in my personal life. I gained a lot of friends over it. I lost a lot of friends over it. And then just watching it was really anticlimactic. Like wow, it was just all for this,” said New. “Seeing what it was staring back at me really humbled me. Which I think was very important.”

New’s quest for perfection continuously delayed the release date, but the curiosity towards the project only grew. New’s reputation began to precede him when it came time to collaborate on Dodge College’s larger-scale productions. His work being known before his identity caused him to distance from the “persona” that had created the film.

But with a concept so rooted in a unique Chapman experience, whispers of the film inevitably reached a fresh demographic of incoming freshmen. 

“I did have one freshman come up to me this year, like, ‘I heard that there was this musical done about Morlan in your grade!’” said Fullilove. “I refused to tell them that I was the writer, I just felt old. I was like, goddamn. It's a legend. It's hard for me to speak about it because it feels like another person did that.”

The folklore of “The Morlan Musical” lived through the tradition of oral storytelling, passed down through four generations of Morlanites. In that time, the creators remastered the original soundtrack, outlined three sequels and even discussed a potential animated sequence. Endless rumors swirled about what the abandoned musical film might really be.

“The mystique is what adds to it, you know? It's less about what it actually is, or how good it is or even what the plot is,” said New. “It became a mythology. It’s a kind of nebulous world that people can make up their own ideas in.”

“The Morlan Musical” proved to be a tactical rehearsal for more advanced productions in the future of the creators, allowing them to develop their individual crafts and collaborative rhythms. 

Photo courtesy of Harold Fulillove III and Adam New.

“Adam and I's relationship, personally and artistically, is based in positive conflict. We're both very stubborn people. We're both very precious people, and we're also very sensitive. So having that first experience, where it was just a massive clash, made us kind of realize: this isn't how you collaborate,” said Fullilove.
“ At the end of the day, we looked at the script and we had a product that we were really proud of. It was a working relationship forged in fire.”

The collaborators created a time capsule of a classic freshman experience — both in narrative and execution. Until now, that time capsule has remained hidden in a file on someone’s hard drive. 

New, Tinsley, Yunis, Shachal, Flemming and Peck have decided to reunite and apply their strengthened creative producing efforts towards their upcoming thesis “Ditch Killer.” The Morlan Musical will be exhibited as a production fundraiser, anticipated to premiere in early 2027. (Let’s hope the team doesn’t get filming in Morlan banned again.) 

It’s taken four years to send, but after an academic tenure of strengthened talents and camaraderie, the lost love letter to the freshman experience will finally be delivered.