by Edward Precht. @pertoltprecht.
LOS ANGELES - Earlier this morning, Universal Pictures dropped the first trailer for the movie adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen. While the teaser has gotten many Broadway fans rightfully excited, a vocal minority has drafted a petition to release a version of the film featuring exclusively what they claim is the most important song of the show: Act 2 opener “To Break in a Glove.”
“’To Break in a Glove’ is the perfect song about a dad teaching his dead son’s fake friend how to make a baseball mitt go from being kinda hard to kinda soft,” said Lana Sorrentino, whose online petition – titled RELEASE THE GLOVE CUT, YOU COWARDS – has already amassed over 5 signatures. “It’s slow, it’s from the point of view of a character we don’t really spend any time with or care about, and it reads like step-by-step instructions copied and pasted from WikiHow. That’s art.”
Sorrentino’s petition notes that the groups believes “cutting any reference to that song goes against the writers’ vision, it goes against the musical’s vision, and it goes against the vision of any fan who’s ever wanted to know how to cover a baseball glove in shaving cream or whatever. And if Universal doesn’t release a cut of the film that’s just two hours of Glove, we’ll hit ‘em right where it hurts: ticket sales.”
Teri Landau, self-described “Broadway warrior” and also Sorrentino’s roommate, agrees.
“The Glove Cut is about more than just a surface-level, momentum-ending drag of a song. It’s about giving true Broadway fans a voice, assuring us that we will be heard, that we will be found. Like from the musical.”
Sorrentino, Landau, and their fellow protestors consider themselves distinct from the regular fans of the Tony-winning musical (colloquially known as “Dear Evan Fansens”).
“We call ourselves the ‘Dear Evan Hand-sens,’ because a hand is what… a hand is what goes into a glove… a, a baseball glove. So,” coughed megafan Bradley Wuttlock, tugging at their “THAT PENNY SONG FROM ‘HELLO, DOLLY!’ IS ALSO PRETTY UNDERRATED” t-shirt.
Universal Pictures has yet to comment, save for a single-word press release they sent out this afternoon: “Really?”