An Underdog Has His Day

He studied musical theater at the University of Michigan, decided he couldn't make it as a performer and went to Cardozo Law School in New York, thinking he'd try entertainment law. He passed the bar exam but realized he couldn't live a lawyer's life.

He started his book, and while he spent his days in the world of teen election angst, he also wrote songs. They earned him acceptance into a music-writing program, where he met Robert Lopez. They worked up a musical movie about the Muppets, which won them a share of a first-place $150,000 prize.

Meanwhile, "How To Win a High School Election" sold steadily.

The movie script went nowhere, but Marx and Lopez created a puppet musical, "Avenue Q," which opened at a nonprofit theater where the collaborators paid their actors by buying them dinner. The critics raved. The show went to Broadway in 2003. The Tony nominations followed.

But once again, Marx was the underdog in the Tonys, up against that popular cheerleader of the 2004 season, "Wicked," a splashy musical based on "The Wizard of Oz." He reached back for his high school election gambit.

"We had a big pizza party for some of the Tony voters," he said, "and we went in and presented a new song we had written for them, 'Vote Your Heart.' "

Once again, it worked. On a June evening in 2004, Marx and his partner stood onstage at Radio City Music Hall and accepted the Tony for best musical.

Like his devoted reader Marin Cogan, Marx knows that winning his 11th-grade student council vice presidency wasn't the biggest thing ever to happen to him. But he remembers when it felt like it was. And that was a start.