FacebookWhere were you when you first heard about Blue Man Group?
Were you in the audience of a performance of Stomp, wondering how the heck any stage show could attempt to outperform the power of a group of people banging on trash cans? Were you holed up in your apartment reading The New Yorker, wondering what's happening to our society that grown men painting themselves from head to toe was making more money than, like, books? Were you hunched over your candy-colored iMac fretfully trying to buy tickets for your family's next trip to Times Square?
No matter what Blue Man Group has meant to you, one thing is certain: They have been around for way too long. We were on board in the beginning, but nothing needs to be around that long.
This month marks a quarter-century of shiny cerulean men doing the robot, and to celebrate the current members of The Group spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about what it feels like to terrorize a country for two-and-a-half decades. There are lots of fun anecdotes about splattering paint, building instruments and getting to be in that Intel commercial, but it really just serves as a reminder that we'll never understand why this show has lasted so long.
Just think about it: America has stood idly by while all sorts of great cultural contributions to our society have been shunned to the wayside. Friday Night Lights was given only five seasons (actually, it's more like four, considering the travesty that was season two). Arrested Development was cancelled, while The Blue Man Group thrived. Thrived!
Cats, which held the title of the longest-running Broadway show for a good stretch, only performed from October of 1982 to September of 2000. Seinfeld and Friends, arguably two of the 90s' greatest works of art, screened for less than half the length of the current Blue Man Group run. The Simpsons has been on air longer than Blue Man Group, sure, but we can all agree that The Simpsons is the one cultural contribution that will never go out of style.
And for even more context here, let's all think about the fact that Blue Man Group has been performing for longer than Harry Style, Justin Bieber and Kendall Jenner have been on this earth.
The citizens of this country continually ignored some of our most precious cultural resources while embracing what has essentially been the exact same show for 25 years. Sure, they've added in a few new musical numbers and have adapted with the times pretty well all things considered, but we'll never stop marveling at the fact that audiences continue to turn out for this:
And while we may be a bit harsh here (it probably stems from our bitterness towards the cancellation of Friday Night Lights—almost everything in our lives can be emotionally traced back to Coach Taylor), we are certainly not the first to say it. Popular culture has been riffing off the bizarre reign of Blue Man Group for as long as Blue Man Group has bizarrely reigned.
All the way back in December 2003, Will & Grace made a point to joke about how long the show had been on Broadway. Picture a New York City restaurant, where guest star Candice Bergen is checking in with a maitre d' and says "I know I booked a table for five, but the other four crapped out on me. They had to go see Blue Man Group. Apparently it's only playing another four more years."
Zing! And to think that was 13 years ago! What would the writers say now knowing that it was not, in fact, only four more years?
And just this past year, in the critically-acclaimed and Golden Globe-nominated Spy, was Melissa McCarthy's brilliant jab at the show's target audience:
"Hey, I'm a crazy lady! Where's the buffet? I'm from the Midwest! Where's Blue Man Group?"
Where are they, Melissa? They're capturing the hearts and souls of a brainwashed nation for another 25 years, that's where they are.