Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2007

Thanks to iTunes, songwriter is loony about ‘Juno’

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Chris Rossi⁄The Gazette
Barry Louis Polisar of Burtonsville has gone Hollywood with his recording ‘‘All I Want is You,” used in the opening scenes of the newly released ‘‘Juno.”
This guy has some kind of rap sheet. For a time in the early 1990s, singer-songwriter Barry Louis Polisar was banned from performing in Anne Arundel District Schools. The school system’s bigwigs feared children might take his songs ‘‘too literally.”

Later, a church group who misread the word ‘‘satirical” on his concert poster, labeled him ‘‘satanic.” Once they heard him perform, members realized Polisar hadn’t gone to the devil and even shook his hand.

Plus he made national headlines when he performed at the White House during the Anne Arundel ban. Finally, with a host of librarians and the ACLU on his side, the county finally relented and admitted him back into the fold.

After all, it’s hard to understand how anyone can get worked up about a guy who writes children’s songs with titles like ‘‘I’m a 3-Toed, Triple-Eyed, Double-Jointed Dinosaur” or ‘‘I’ve Got A Teacher, She’s So Mean.”

Fortunately, during his three-decade career, Polisar has learned to take some of this silliness in stride, keep working and use it all as inspiration.

And now his hard work is paying off. ‘‘All I Want is You,” a song he recorded 30 years ago, is in the opening scenes of the new film ‘‘Juno. Its director Jason Reitman is best known for his 2006 film ‘‘Thank You For Not Smoking.” This happy-go-lightly love song, written when Polisar was just 23, concludes that no matter who or what the object of his love evolves into — including an ocean or a log — the love was last. The lyrics seem fitting as the filmmaker turns the scene into a fantasy illustration of the young girl strolling through her suburban neighborhood. The song and the illustration stops abruptly when the 16-year-old walks into a drugstore and real life proceeds with her purchase of a particular testing kit.

Since the songwriter isn’t hooked into Hollywood, how Reitman even heard the song can be chalked up to dumb luck — or serendipity, as the upbeat Polisar likes to think. It seems that while Reitman was doing an iTunes search for the song ‘‘You Can Have It All” by Yola Tango, he mistakenly typed in ‘‘All I Want is You.” Listening to Polisar’s song, Reitman decided it would work better in the movie.

While the $5,000 paycheck for the song won’t make him worthy of a stint on ‘‘Cribs,” the ‘‘potential street cred is money worth its weight in gold.”

Polisar can’t complain. He and his wife are living large on their 16-acre Burtonsville property, which abuts the Patuxent River.

Polisar, who has produced CDs, written books and performed in nearly every state in the union, says he ‘‘never expected to do this,” let alone make a living, back in the early 1970s when was an education major at University of Maryland. His wife attributes his success to his ‘‘basic sense of immaturity,” he confides.

From his earliest jobs performing in local schools, he liked telling stories in his songs. His popularity rose after Polisar wrote ‘‘I’ve Got A Teacher, She’s So Mean,” soon he was receiving calls from teachers requesting he come to their school and sing that particular song. Writing and performing became his profession. He began writing more songs; one of his earliest was recorded by ‘‘Sesame Street’s” Big Bird in 1979.

But after a 10-year singing career in the 1980s he started to get a little bored with songwriting. Fortunately he was asked to write books for the publishing company Harper Collins. Polisar created his first story about a children’s haunted house party. Invaded by real ghosts, the children asserted themselves to banish the troublesome intruders.

‘‘I was always bothered by ‘Cat and the Hat’ [Dr. Seuss’] and the passivity of the kids. I wanted them to be proactive,” he explains.

While still writing books, Polisar also had to rethink his lyrics in his later career.

‘‘Parents are different [now], more conservative. They shelter their kids,” he says, sticking to their own ‘‘party line” and avoiding anything out of the mainstream.

One funny set of lyrics he changed revolved around a dog who runs off with the milkman and spends his ‘‘days in a darkened bar, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. Thirty years ago, everyone laughed at the words,” Polisar recalls.

In the revised version, the dog still runs away, but this time with a bus driver, and spends his time getting fat watching TV and growing old.

Although Polisar says he remains steadfastly ‘‘politically correct on tour,” he ‘‘pushes the envelope” on his CDs.

One of his biggest successes also became one of his greatest disappointments. In 1995, he served as host of ‘‘Field Trip,” a nationally syndicated television show for children. Designed to take the audience to locations like the Smithsonian Museums or Plymouth Rock, it had all the potential of being deadly dry. Within 15 minutes of taping, Polisar couldn’t help but joke with the cameraman, figuring it would be edited out.

It turned out that the kidding was a ‘‘great” addition to the scripted lines and helped ‘‘punch up the show.”

But then the financial side of show business took over. When the Emmy Award winning program was sold, Polisar was let go. He wasn’t paid for much of his work, and it took eight years in court to settle the case.

Often the composition of his audiences is what surprises Polisar most. Traveling throughout the country, this Jewish guy’s best audiences are in the southern Bible belt. He recalls preparing for a show in a poverty stricken area of rural Florida. While setting up his equipment, with swarms of teens and adults milling around, he was told a group of children were coming for the performance and lunch. He expected a mix of disinterested adults, cynical teens and hungry kids.

‘‘It turned out to be one of my best shows. They gave me the warmest, most effusive response,” he proudly proclaims.

Still, unlike past generations, Polisar observes, contemporary youngsters are ‘‘media savvy.” They ask him if he does ‘‘rap, country music, whatever music they are most familiar with,” he says.

‘‘But I have never pandered. I don’t dumb down my song lyrics.”

Despite the highs and lows, Polisar considers himself fortunate.

‘‘I gripe a lot about my career plateaus. My last album received few reviews, none in the local area. And I don’t tow the political line. I do my own thing.”

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