from 12, a song cycle
As promised, here’s the proposed Finale for the ill-fated 12 Angry Men project. (Last week I posted the opening, for those of you tuning in late.)
So the jurors have been going back and forth about the potential guilt of the Hispanic kid on trial for murder – seriously, is there anyone out there who isn’t already familiar with this play/movie? Well anyway, the last juror holding out for a guilty verdict/death sentence has just enjoyed his last desperate rant, and so the one guy in the group who has emerged as the voice of reason sings this number. (He’s the one who sang about fathers and sons earlier.) At the moment that the last angry juror breaks down and caves in (silently; you’re welcome), the other jurors, who have left the room, segue into the Epilogue – which is sort of the Prologue Written Sideways. I wanted to see what a lullabye to the city of New York circa 1959 might sound like if the Hi-Los and e.e. cummings had been forced to collaborate with me (if I had been alive, that is. Which I wasn’t). Our hero helps the last juror up and exits with him, in a final act of human compassion/connection. I mean, they’re jurors, not wannabe producers.
Oh, yeah: spoiler alert.
Music & lyrics ©2012 Michael Holland, ASCAP