Writers David Hornsby and Chris Hoch Are Reimagining The Lost Boys for Broadway

David Hornsby and Chris Hoch first met at a high school speech and debate competition. Hornsby remembers being struck by Hoch’s fearlessness as a performer, a feeling that only intensified when they unexpectedly became freshman-year roommates at Carnegie Mellon.

Their paths diverged in adulthood. Hoch became a mainstay on Broadway, appearing in shows like Spamalot, Shrek, Matilda, and War Paint. Hornsby, meanwhile, gravitated toward the screen, primarily television, and is best known for playing Rickety Cricket on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where he also serves as an executive producer.

The pandemic era brought their paths back together. Hornsby had an idea for a musical and called Hoch for advice. Through a friendship with the producers, they managed to pitch themselves as the book writers for the new musical The Lost Boys, and won the job. Hoch’s enthusiasm helped. He’s both a devoted fan of the 1987 cult film about two brothers moving into a vampire enclave and a veteran of Broadway’s own vampiric flop, Dracula the Musical.

Of course, The Lost Boys is more than a teen vampire story. At its core, it’s about a family coming together under a threat. And that’s the among the themes Hornsby and Hoch are eager to explore as their new musical begins its Broadway run at the Palace on March 27.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How far back do you go as friends?
David Hornsby: Unlike The Lost Boys, we started in the ’90s, not the ’80s. Chris and I were college roommates, sort of an Oscar/Felix situation. Weirdly enough, we actually had a chance meeting in high school. I’m from Houston, Chris is from Chicago, and we were both part of the National Forensic League.

In the Dramatic Interpretation round, Chris did this piece that was bold and audacious and I was clutching my pearls. He went over in time and was disqualified, but he kept going. I had to know why he went over, and he was like, “Because I wanted to finish.” And that just struck me. And then, so first day, freshman year, there’s this guy again, and we became fast friends.

Was The Lost Boys a mutual favorite?
Chris Hoch: No, David had not seen it. When I was in grade school, I misbehaved a lot and used to get kicked out of the house, so I would walk to West Coast Video. This was back in the day when they had screens that would play movies. One of the movies was The Lost Boys, and I would watch it. By the time I was 18, I probably had seen it 20 times. I knew it word for word.

David: Chris is a fanatic for films. He watches a thousand movies every year. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of both movies and theater, which has been very helpful. Back in college, we would take trips to New York, and we’d find ourselves searching through Colony Records.

Chris: I was into getting these import albums. We’d go to Colony all day and it was worth it for the Australian Secret Garden with Anthony Warlow.

How did the idea of a Lost Boys musical come about?
David: Around pandemic time, I had some idea for a musical and I asked Chris a bunch of questions and we started working on it together. In parallel, they had started working on Lost Boys; I think they were taking a stab with a different writer. We knew Marcus Chait and the producers; I think we asked him for notes. I guess it didn’t work out with whatever they were doing because an opportunity presented itself. I got a chance to hear a song that was already written, and it pulled me in.

Chris: It was very quick. I know they were casting their net wide and needed someone fast. We pitched hard for it.

David: We probably knew that we were unlikely candidates with minimal theater-writing experience, but we threw our hat into the ring pretty aggressively.

What does your background as performers bring to the writing table?
David: They certainly inform each other, and it definitely helps with dialogue. It brings you back to the tenet of, “What does this character want?” Also, you’re going to have an actor ask you, “What am I doing here?” You have to think through each character’s point of view, how they speak, and how that can come across clearly, even on a stage where things happen fast.

Chris: It was absolutely essential, even for things like my annoyances as an actor. “We’re going to make this guy do this costume change all the way over there? He’s going to be pissed.” David and I moved back in together when we got hired. I flew to L.A. and lived in his guest room for eight months. We would drive the 40 minutes to Burbank to work with the Rescues. Being a musical-theater actor, I was like, “Guys, this is such a great lyric, but I can’t act this.”

David: Chris knew a lot of the ins and outs of like, “No, it has to be this, because there’s going to be an entrance and a costume change.” Even some of the technical things were, thanks to Chris, helping out the director who was going to get the script and be asking the same questions.

Chris, knowing the movie as you do, could you imagine it singing?
Chris: What’s interesting is that I saw how it could be a musical, and also the danger we were in. I was in Dracula the Musical.

I was a groupie for Dracula. I saw it six times in the few months it ran.
Chris: Well, thank you. You were half our box office.

Not at the rush price I was paying.
Chris: There was a lot of great stuff in it, and there was no way to see that it didn’t work in a rehearsal room. But the audience had this preconceived notion of vampire musicals. I remember talking about the vampire musical traps during our first pitch. The big one that we still follow today, that [director] Michael Arden is a proponent of, is that this is not about vampires. This is about a family. That was something I really learned from Dracula. As opposed to being about blood and fangs, it was very important to us that we make it about a family and what it means to be a man in society.

David: Hopefully we can counter any doubters, including ourselves, to make sure that this musical sings about the right things.