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Musical theatre careers are punctuated with collaborations that are as intense and robust as any love affair, filled with heat and promise, yet often resulting in a project that hits a dead end: schedules begin to clash, the producer doesn't "get it," money falls through, and so on. The writers move on to other shows and other collaborators, hoping for a hit. The project's pile of scripts, demos and notes gets locked in a trunk, a memento of what might have been. The magic mulls beneath the mothballs, waiting to be found again by historians, fans, or the collaborators themselves. "Remember that show we did…?"

In late 1992, five young composers on the cusp of breaking through — Bob Golden, Paul Scott Goodman, Jonathan Larson, Rusty Magee and Jeremy Roberts — gathered under a banner and created an irreverent look at the Creation Myth (they billed it as "A New Beginning") as the pilot for a weekly cable TV series pitched as "Sacred Cows."

Looking back at the show's origins, its surviving creators spoke about coming together as a team, trying to sell a wacky religion-mocking musical to MTV in the days before "South Park," and their excitement about revisiting an early work.

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It began with Paul Scott Goodman (who would later write Bright Lights Big City and Rooms). A regular at the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, Goodman began an offshoot project, Multi Media Musicals, to develop musicals for TV and film. Assembling an up-and-coming "dream team," Goodman first turned to a fellow composer and neighbor who'd cast him in a workshop at the Public Theater: Jonathan Larson.

At the time, Larson was routinely doing self-produced runs of his rock monologue tick, tick...BOOM! and recently finished his first full draft of Rent. Hoping to get further work in TV, having provided incidental music for "Sesame Street," but unable to get his vocal songs onto the show, Larson jumped at the chance.