--- title: 10 Questions for Robert Lopez, Composer of 'Mormon' and 'Pooh' | TIME description: Robert Lopez, co-creator of the controversial, award-winning Broadway musical ‘The Book of Mormon,’ also wrote songs for the latest Winnie the Pooh movie. He chats about working with the South Park duet and his personal connection to Pooh. canonical: https://time.com/video/XH7Jyw9V/ og:title: 10 Questions for Robert Lopez, Composer of 'Mormon' and 'Pooh' og:description: Robert Lopez, co-creator of the controversial, award-winning Broadway musical ‘The Book of Mormon,’ also wrote songs for the latest Winnie the Pooh movie. He chats about working with the South Park duet and his personal connection to Pooh. og:url: https://time.com/video/XH7Jyw9V/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/XH7Jyw9V/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 10 Questions for Robert Lopez, Composer of 'Mormon' and 'Pooh' twitter:description: Robert Lopez, co-creator of the controversial, award-winning Broadway musical ‘The Book of Mormon,’ also wrote songs for the latest Winnie the Pooh movie. He chats about working with the South Park duet and his personal connection to Pooh. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/XH7Jyw9V/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 10 Questions for Robert Lopez, Composer of 'Mormon' and 'Pooh' > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 10 Questions for Robert Lopez, Composer of 'Mormon' and 'Pooh' [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions for Robert Lopez, Composer of 'Mormon' and 'Pooh'](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/XH7Jyw9V.m3u8) (4:48)  _Published 2011-07-15. Robert Lopez, co-creator of the controversial, award-winning Broadway musical ‘The Book of Mormon,’ also wrote songs for the latest Winnie the Pooh movie. He chats about working with the South Park duet and his personal connection to Pooh._ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:15 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Winnie the Pooh Is in Trouble With the Chinese Authorities Once Again](/video/J1f3YKcy/) ### Winnie the Pooh Is in Trouble With the Chinese Authorities Once Again [TIME Raw: Watch Trump Question If Romney Is A Mormon](/video/q3Gacd2a/) ### TIME Raw: Watch Trump Question If Romney Is A Mormon [10 Questions for Robert Redford](/video/97CgxKNv/) ### 10 Questions for Robert Redford --- ## Transcript Hi, I'm Belinda Eskam I'm an editor at large at Time Magazine and today's 10 questions are gonna be answered by Robert Lopez who is somewhat implausibly one of the creative forces behind Book Of Mormon and Winnie The Pooh. Mr. Lopez, welcome. Thanks. How do you get inside Pooh's head? That's pretty easy for me because I am, I am the type of guy that likes to kind of pad about the apartment and just look for things to eat. So [ LAUGH ] and it's actually, it's funny because I play the part of the tummy on the the uvular trail that, that makes Pooh's tummy growl. He was so distracted by his rumbly tummy, [ NOISE ], that he didn't notice that he was walking onto the next paragraph. We actually wrote a song between Pooh's real voice and the voice of his tummy. A full duet. Is that your first movie appearance, the tummy? I think so. Now, do you buy into the theory that comedy is actually pressure valve for all the things that are actually causing, stress to us really in society. Well I think that you know one of the things that, that makes, Pooh funny, and as well as as well as Book of Mormon is that they're about things that people tend to stifle in their lives people don't talk about. In Winnie the Pooh all the characters, you know, you can look at them as a bunch of cuddly friends, and you can look at them as stuffed animals, and oh isn't childhood cute? But really, a lot of them have these serious flaws. Like Winnie the Pooh is sort of a little food addict, they way I feel like I am sometimes, and Rabbit is sort of OCD and, and Al was kind of a compulsive liar in a way. And, and all of these things are, are things that we, you know, don't talk about in our own lives, and, and don't you don't admit to. So, you co- wrote The Book of Mormon, which is extremely profane and some of the songs for the new Winnie the Pooh movie, which is extremely wholesome. Which was harder? You know, the Book of Mormon was harder but not for the reason of it being profane. I think it was harder because I was writing the book as well, and, and it was an original story that I had to work on and develop with the South Park guys. And that took, you know, years and years of a lot of work. Matt Stone and Trey Parker are now becoming one of comedy's most lasting and successful duos. What's it like working with them? I here that Matt's the kind of free floating crazy pirate and Trey's the one that makes the trains run on time or the ship get in shape. Hm, it's hilarious working with them. There's a lot of just moments of being doubled over. And making each other laugh which is just the best way to work and that's the way we worked on Winnie the Pooh too. As far as the difference between the two of them. I, I don't know. I'd say that Matt has definitely a, you know, the head for business between the two of them and that Trey is more of the song writing guy. but, but they're both so smart and so funny and head spinningly brilliant. So in, in the musical, let me just run through this. You, you compared Jesus to an action hero and you compare a baptism, you the musical, to a sort of deflowering. There's a sort of a parallel thing going on there. And as I said you have the song which uses profanity, and God in the same sentence. Were you expecting more protests? Have you had much? And were you expecting more? Well the the way you just took those things out of context, was the thing the that we were worried about. That people would take certain lines out of context, and and, and react badly to them. But I think anyone who saw the show would realize that it's not about those things. We're not trying to make fun of religion or make fun of anybody's religion in particular. We're actually celebrating faith and the good qualities that faith has. And people walk out of the theater not going oh my God, I can't believe yeah know, how profane that was. They usually walk out of the theater saying, wow, that was sweeter and more touching than I thought it would be. How many times have you seen Star Wars? Oh, it's gotta be in the hundreds. I'm a huge. Hundreds? Yeah definitely. I mean, I saw the movie when I was, it came out when I was two, and my parents took me like ten times. When you hit the big time, wasn't a proper lightsaber one of your first purchases? Yes. And, and I expanded my collection to five. Different colors? Different colors. Different, you know, each Jedi, has their own. Right. Right. Lightsaber and their design differently and. Different handles. Yeah. You're gonna get a little bit, [ CROSSTALK ] obsessive about it and [ LAUGH ]. I don't know. So, I, I got into this a little bit of you know, collector's phase and, and I've since given, several of them away. We have to let go a bit of the whole Star Wars thing. Well, Kristen made me. They were too big. [ LAUGH ] They were getting in the way of our life. Robert Lopez, thanks very much. Thank you. 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