It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
Sting? Wasn’t he in The Threepenny Opera?
Passion already was a movie long before it hit Broadway. It was an Italian film called Passione d’amore, directed by Ettore Scole, and it had it US premiere at the 1981 NY Film Festival. BTW: It’s a great movie.
Sorry: Ettore Scola.
Good point! Doy!
I just watched the Neil Labute version of The Wicker Man. Wow. Wow.
I’d pay a pretty penny to see a Broadway musical of this film. Labute’s already a playwright, so he can do the book. Frank Wildhorn can do the music.
Seriously. This needs to happen.
Thank you David for writing this. Although, you did forgot one musical. Probably the second best of the modern group (after Moulin Rouge!) and that would be the adaptation of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
I like what you say about Rent, in that it was sort of encapsulising the stage show. The same (even moreso) can be said for The Producers. They aren’t necessarily trying to be silver screen musicals, but are putting them to film so that they will always be there. Although, Rent is probably one that will live on stage forever. I think that show is playing somewhere in the world 24/7. Not surprisingly, I must say. It’s a brilliant show.
I would call you out for the Madonna/Evita mention (she was smashing), but that’s fruitless.
And lastly,
I’d really quite like to see Light at the Piazza adapted. It’s a true musical romance and it could easily be adapted to the screen (and look/sound fabo to boot). I saw it on Broadway and it was amazing. The songs were just georgous and pretty much everyone who has an opinion on it says that it was robbed for the Best Musical prize by a show aimed at tourists (Spamalot)
Wait, I think it was Light in the Piazza. Either way, it was smashing. *goes to download the soundtrack because its not available here or on iTunes* grrr.
It seems they keep making musicals exclusively for adults these days, which is kind of odd. Basically making a movie for an moviegoers ready for darker, more sordid storylines, but at the same time, an audience that will buy into priorities of style over substance, and the playful conventions that come with musicals. They hope to bring in audiences that seem to be up for two rather opposing sensibilities, which is a strange business model for an entire genre. I’m not familiar Dreamgirls, but it might be the least “sordid” of the recent crop of musicals, but even then, I can imagine the storyline being somewhat limited to kids. Why is no one out there making a damn family musical?
By the way, another Broadway smash who’s trek to film is likely inevitable is Wicked, which I find pretty ironic. If people are looking for fantasy series to make a franchise out of, Braum’s Oz chronciles would be perfect. But people seem too revenant towards the 1939 MGM movie. So the next likely take on the land of OZ is going to be another musical. Go figure.
Universal, as you probably know, produced Wicked. They also own Billy Elliot, which is a massive hit in London and will eventually land on Broadway.
The Weinsteins and Scott Rudin are also big investors on Broadway now.
And Kami – It is one of the really odd tihngs about iTunes… Light in the Piazza is available here in the U.S. Recently I wabted a French soundtrack, whihc was on iTunes.fr, but not here.
You would think that in the day and age of electronic commerce, everything from every country would be available.
I think the modern movie musical’s problem is twofold, and both reasons feed on themselves.
First, modern audiences have problems with the basic engine of musicals – that unless there’s a damn good reason for it (CHICAGO takes place in a character’s mind, most if not all of DREAMGIRLS’ musical numbers take place on a stage) people just can’t buy into people breaking out into song. People nowadays think it ridiculous. SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN would never fly today. People would not be able to make that leap.
And second, because of the first, studios don’t want to risk looking ridiculous, and so there must be some context, some reason for the singing, more than just character motivation. And because of this, movie musicals become more stagey and less cinematic. They stop feeling like movies, but more like simple re-enactments of the stage show. I loved DREAMGIRLS, and it’s to Bill Condon’s credit that the film feels more like a movie than a play, but that’s due to the editing and the innovativeness of the camerawork. I dislike MOULIN ROUGE, but it always feels like a movie.
Animated musicals make sense to the viewer because they can already make that leap. It’s got talking animals, which can’t happen anyway, so what’s one more leap to singing? SO people can deal with it easier. I think a big part of why EVITA failed with audiences is that it was a genuine musical film, not some stage re-enactment.
And that’s sad to me. I want film musicals to play to their own strengths – you can’t have an elegant shot like Julie Andrews on the mountains singing in theater. You can’t re-enact Gene Kelly in the rain on stage, not literally. I’d love to see original film musicals instand of remakes of Broadway plays, and I wish studios would take that risk. But more often than not, they won’t.
David, the reason you can’t download music from the French iTunes store is the byzantine copyright contracts that govern music sales. Different entities own the rights to distribute the same piece of music in different countries (and Apple has to deal with each of them one-by-one). Whomever holds the rights to the music in France probably doesn’t have the right to make a sale to a customer in the United States.
Just another example of the short-sighted, self-defeating business practices of the music industry.
…and as I’m considering this further, the music system is probably a lot like the film distribution system, which you’re clearly familiar with, so you probably could have guessed all of this.
Yeah, I was aware of that each country has their own iTunes essentially. I’ve changed my iTunes’ nationality just so I could look around the US one, but I couldn’t download, which was disappointing. You’d think that as a means of curbing piracy, that music would get a pretty simultaneous release throughout the world. But, alas, in order to listen to the latest CD by certain artists, we have to download them or pay large amounts for imports. I can understand stuff like soundtracks (Piazza has never been put on stage in Australia, so why would they expect anybody to want to buy it)
Anyway. Back to musicals.
People seem to forget that Chicago didn’t come with this radical idea of having musical numbers within the heroine’s head. As far as modern musicals go, Dancer in the Dark did it first.
Alan, I think they’re getting better at it though. I mean, The Producers and Rent did it last year. Moulin Rouge! did it before that. And I’m not sure about Hairspray, but it may do it.
I also retain my belief that Evita is good. Much better than Phantom of the Opera. Madonna and Antonio are great, the songs are a pick-and-mix lot but it’s a likable score, and production values are ace. And, as you say, thankfully it was adapted into cinema, not just a Broadway show on film.
“You can’t re-enact Gene Kelly in the rain on stage, not literally.”
Alan: Unfortunately, that didn’t stop the people who did the stage version of “Singing in the Rain,” a scene-for-scene re-enactment of the movie. Perhaps the most useless stage show ever produced.
I think most of the death of the musical is just due to changing culture. Why modern audiences can’t accept characters breaking out into song, but they can accept characters outrunning explosions and avalanches, I have no idea. But I think we can identify a few different factors at play.
One is special effects. Back in the heyday, movie musicals were spectacle films. If you wanted to be dazzled by spectacular visuals and sounds, you went to Singin’ In the Rain or Oklahoma or Oliver. The Busby Berkeley films of the 30s were all about hearing popular tunes and these huge, expensive sets, with beautiful women dolled up in lavish costumes, dancing and swimming in sync. If you wanted to see amazing sights, you went to these movies.
But when Westworld and The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure and Jaws and Star Wars and Superman started showing up, this was a new kind of spectacle to replace the movie musical, which audiences had grown accustomed to. It filled the need, and audiences were wooed away.
Clearly, though, the musical was waning before this. Factor #2, I suspect, was the French New Wave, emerging in 1959 and blossoming in the early 1960s. It rebelled against the tight, stagy film conventions, and loosened things up. It popularized naturalistic acting by featuring that in more naturalistic stories. It approached familiar subject matter in fresh ways, like imbuing gangsters (previously cartoony villains) with realistic lifestyles. The effect of the French New Wave rippled throughout the world, reaching Hollywood in the late 60s and ultimately resulted in things like Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, and The Godfather, films that feel “modern” to us even today, in stark contrast the films made just a few years prior.
The musical genre, I don’t think, “fits” into this new, modern filmmaking style as well. If the new fashion is naturalistic storytelling, how much harder is it to turn around and make characters sing and dance their way through key dramatic moments?
“I also retain my belief that Evita is good. Much better than Phantom of the Opera. Madonna and Antonio are great, the songs are a pick-and-mix lot but it’s a likable score, and production values are ace. And, as you say, thankfully it was adapted into cinema, not just a Broadway show on film.”
I agree completely – I think EVITA works.
And I think film contains multitudes – we can have the big action superhero sci-spectacle and the gritty crime drama and the film musical. Whether or not audiences will go is another matter.
In this year of Clint versus the Dreams, I thought it would be good time to revisit this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF3bWPq4-gM
I agree with Sam, and bring up one more point. What had happened by the mid-60s was rock became the dominant musical style, one that made the bloated musicals seem like just that.
“As far as modern musicals go, Dancer in the Dark did it first.”
Maybe you don’t consider it modern or a musical, but All That Jazz did it.
Teens don’t seem averse to movie musicals though…if Disney were to make High School Musical 2 for theatrical release it would do very well at the box office. I saw Dreamgirls the other day and there were plenty of families, women and teenage girls who loved the movie with some saying they wanted to see it again.
Points of order…
1) The Really Useful Company is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s outfit, not Cameron Mackintosh’s.
2) This year’s Tony winner for Best Musical was Jersey Boys, which is not based on any movie. 2004’s Best Musical, Avenue Q, is also not based on any movie. Ditto 2000’s Contact. Of the last fourteen Tony winners for Best Musical (Kiss of the Spider Woman’s win being 13 years ago already), seven have been based on motion pictures, but of the last seven, only four are. (And let’s face it, Dave, if someone in Old Media had made the same incorrect ascertain, you’d be all over them for lazy fact checking.)
3) Notice how more and more movie-based Broadway adaptations are starting to tank, and tank hard? Shows like The Wedding Singer and High Fidelity are dropping quickly because they weren’t stories that were interesting enough to audiences to justify the ticket price… which, strangely enough, is the reason why movie musicals started to drop off the face of the Earth in the late 1960s. Take a look at the list of Best Musical Tony winners from the past forty years converted to movies…
Cabaret: A damn good film, with excellent direction from an artist working in his field of expertise.
The Wiz: A pretty mediocre film, with tepid direction from an excellent filmmaker totally working outside his realm of expertise.
A Chorus Line: A very mediocre film, with plain direction from a very good filmmaker totally working outside his realm of expertise.
Annie: A horrible film, with stupefying direction from a exception filmmaker totally working outside his realm of expertise.
Evita: A fairly decent film, with good direction from a filmmaker who has at least worked on movie musicals in the past, but a film that suffered mostly from a third-rate actress trying to prove her legitimacy.
Rent: A good film, with decent direction from a filmmaker who has no otherwise discernible personal vision.
The Producers: A fairly decent film, considering it was from a first time filmmaker who has little concept of what filmmaking is all about.
Add in second-rate movie adaptations of big Broadway hits like Hair and Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, also made by directors who had never worked in the musical genre before, either on stage or in film, and it starts to become a bit clearer why movie musicals fell out of favor. Moulin Rouge and Chicago scored with modern audiences because they were fairly well made films from filmmakers who had a background in the musical genre. And if Hairspray works, it’ll be because Shankman has some background in the musical genre.
Dreamgirls works as well as it does, which isn’t all that well for the record, because it’s a big colorful traipse through a cinematic world of all atmosphere and no gravitas. I’m glad I got to see it at the Dome, which is probably one of the reasons why I even consider the film to work at all (I also saw Chicago and Moulin Rogue at the Ziegfeld, which might also explain why I thought those worked as well). Big movie musicals need to be seen on big screens.
Hmmmm…
Maybe one of the reasons why movie musicals aren’t as successful is because movie theatres have gotten so small. Would a movie like The Sound of Music work with today’s audiences if they were first exposed to it in a tiny 250 seat auditorium, instead of those massive palaces that were still around in the mid 1960s? Maybe someone should check the seat count and screen size of the theatres playing Dreamgirls, and see if the better capacity ratios are coming from the ones playing it in their largest auditoriums. A 70% capacity in a 600 seat theatre is certainly more impressive than a sell out in a 250 seater.
Slight correction: it was DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS (another musical baed on a movie) that truly got screwed out of Best Musical by SPAMALOT. I saw both the same week (with the original casts) and there’s not even a comparison. PIAZZA was solid, but SCOUNDRELS has it all and was a true audience pleaser if ever there was one.
“In this year of Clint versus the Dreams”
There’s no way it’s Clint versus the Dreams. If anything, it’s Departed vs. Dreams. No way is Letters winning best pic.
Not sure if you’ll be reading this far into the thread, D-Po, or if this is the most relevant entry in which to raise this, but was wondering what you make of Slant Magazine’s Ed Gonzalez’s very negative 1.5-star review of DREAMGIRLS?
He says Beyonce’s performance is “unwatchable,” and apparently holds such contempt for Eddie Murphy’s performance, he refuses to acknowledge it as such (Ed similarly dissed it in an aside about predictable Oscar frontrunners the other week.) One of his main issues is that all of its serious undercurrents are alluded to but never shown, and that the music is mediocre.
Not saying if he’s right about the film, especially since Ed and Co. rarely line up with my sensibilities, though I do greatly enjoy reading their beyond-contrarian hatred of not just anything mainstream, but pretty much anything at all. Though I tend to wonder WHY Ed Gonzalez and Nick Schager are drawn to film criticism at all if they hate 97% of everything they see. Heh, maybe this would’ve been more appropriate for the “critics” thread.
“There’s no way it’s Clint versus the Dreams. If anything, it’s Departed vs. Dreams. No way is Letters winning best pic.”
Yeah, but I don’t have footage of Martin Scorsese singing a Broadway musical.
What ‘serious undercurrents’ are there in Dreamgirls? The ‘whoops, I didn’t realize there was a riot going on’ scene is the closest I can think of.
It’s all about good songs, singable songs, appealing songs.
In other words, what Chicago, Moulin Rouge and Dreamgirls have in common with Beauty and the Beast, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sound of Music, Singin in the Rain, Holiday Inn, Top Hat etc etc.
I don’t know how well Sweeney Todd will work but I have trouble classifying the one song I’ve heard from it as music. Lyrics that don’t work and atonal music–ooooh how arty.
Also helps if the songs aren’t just about being gay and/or closeted.
But for the most part songwriting in the musicals that have failed of late is just awful and unappealing.
A musical is a hit based on how many people coming out of the movie are singing one of the numbers, imo.
People are perfectly capable of ‘making the leap’ of actors bursting into song just as they were capable of it in the past.
But it does help to have songs people respond to, can sing along with and writing good songs is damned hard.
I don’t remember which thread it was in, but someone asked whether Disney animated movies can be considered musicals. I asserted that they can’t.
Animated features and live-action musicals emerged from two distinct artistic media: features stem from animated shorts, and, in turn, the early years of cinema. Musicals were born from the stage: Broadway, music hall, vaudeville.
Some animated features attempt to recreate the musical style. Poland mentioned Ashman and Mencken coming from Broadway, and that asthetic shows up in Little Mermaid and (most notably)Beauty and the Beast. But those movies merely emulate the style. They’re still a competely separate film art from their live-action cousins. Each has its own history, its own conventions, its own genre cliches, and its own distinct feel and audience.
Movielocke: You really should listen to the rest of the Sweeney Todd score before you make snap judgments. The show is considered sufficiently “musical” to be performed by some opera companies. (No kidding.) And yet it’s also mainstream enough that Perry Como recorded one of its tunes (“Not While I’m Around”) as one of his last hit singles.
I like musicals generally speaking, although I haven’t seen a lot of the modern stuff – after say 1970…and the only musicals that I have seen and still like are: Fiddler on the Roof, Moulin Rouge! and Chicago. I did enjoy what I saw of Little Shop of Horrors, but that was quite a few years ago, and my memory is a bit fuzzy on it.
Phantom had its moments, but was pretty underwhelming and the music was repetitive. repetitive.
Annie is so terrible that I can never make it through in one sitting…
I haven’t seen Dreamgirls yet, but I look forward to it. I liked what Condon did with Chicago, so at the very least, I expect that DG will be entertaining.
One of my alltime favourite films is Singin’ in the Rain, and it’s sad to think that it wouldn’t necessarily work these days with modern audiences. The problem isn’t just that people buy into the conceit that someone might just break into song – it’s that they’re so damn happy while doing it. Audiences are far too cynical it seems to take a Gene Kelly-type seriously.
You could probably educate audiences to appreciate musicals, but it’s an uphill battle. Still once someone sees Astaire/Rogers or Kelly/Cherise dance and sing up a storm, well, it’s enough to make even the most cynical person lighten up. At least for a couple of hours.
I hope Burton knocks Sweeney Todd out of the park. I’ve never seen the play, but based on what I’ve read, he probably is one of the few that can make it work.
A director can’t make a musical if one doesn’t know the history of musicals on film. I still think there is room for a few more musicals where characters spontaneously burst into song, but it may have to be sorta like Moulin Rouge!, where a good portion of the music is familiar/popular; afterall, Singin’ in the Rain cribbed most, if not all of its music from other films/sources. Maybe audiences will be able to accept musicals one day again – afterall, how many more exploding buildings and avalanches can they take?
Does “Everyone Says I Love You” count, or is it such a unique take on a musical that it’s its own thing? Either way, that’s a pretty hilarious musical. Love the hospital scene.
Sam: Sorry, but I’ve always thought of Everyone Says I Love You as Woody Allen’s version of At Long Last Love.
Sweeney Todd is one of the only theatrical musicals that I have in my CD collection, speaking as someone who doesn’t really like musicals.
David Poland et al,
What a pleasant surprise that in my daily visit to The Hot Blog I see a posting about the movie musical. I own MovieMusicals.net which is re-launching in January. Here are some facts for you:
Since the early
WHY DOES EVERYBODY FORGET DANCER IN THE DARK. For crying out loud. And, yes, why isn’t Everyone Says I Love You on there?
“Maybe you don’t consider it modern or a musical, but All That Jazz did it.”
Palm, when I was saying “modern” I meant in context of the latest “boom” (if you will) of Musicals since the start of the 2000s (or, 1999 with South Park). But, yes, All That Jazz does indeed do it – and supurbly, too. Althought it does have several scenes set in real life too.
“Teens don’t seem averse to movie musicals though…if Disney were to make High School Musical 2 for theatrical release it would do very well at the box office.”
That’s because teenagers today are very into the music scene. And by that I mean the mainstream music scene, what with music much easier to come by these days. Plus, you have directors such as Baz Luhrmann who have attracted audiences by abstract methods. Plus, teens have been watching dance-infused films for ages. Musicals are just an extension on from them.
Another point is that there are shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer doing their episode “Once More With Feeling” (one of the greatest musical moments ever, really) that make it seem hip.
My last point, and this is my big one:
Another reason for musicals’ fortunes in the last two decades or so, as others have eluded to, is that there are no musical STARS. Olivia Newton John would have gotten there if it weren’t for Xanadu. But, there are no Gene Kellys, Judy Garlands, Fred & Gingers, Liza Minnellis etc. There are potentials. We could see Jennifer Hudson take up the torch. Hugh Jackman has Happy Feet, Carousel, a very-likely Boy From Oz adaptation. That’s what the genre needs. It needs stars (and directors, i might add, like Rob Marshall who worked wonders with Chicago but flopped with the straight drama Geisha) that people become familiar with, just like people see Tom Cruise or Will Smith or Tom Hanks are personalities in certain genres.
You’re right, Kami, the lack of musical stars hurts just as much as the unappealing songs.
I’ve not dismissed Sweeney Todd out of hand, but I didn’t have a very good reaction to seeing a taped version of the play, the music didn’t appeal to me, but I didn’t spare it much attention either.
Animated films are just as legitimate musicals as live action, whether or not they have different heritage. Saying they’re not musicals because they are animated is like saying Rene Clair didn’t make musicals because Le Million and A Nous la Liberte are in French rather than English. Why should animation be cordoned off into a segregated zone?
And with Happy Feet they should be becoming even more legit to people who dismiss them. (Happy Feet‘s musical scenes were done, largely, using motion capture and real dancers)
I just remembered a few other musicals that there have been recently like De-Lovely, Prey For Rock & Roll, A Mighty Wind and ones from overseas such as 8 Women, U-Carmen, Lagaan, Bride and Prejudice, The Happiness of the Katikuris.
And in the “sort of musical” category, stuff like The Saddest Music in the World, O Brother Where Art Thou, Topsy Turvy and The Red Violin.
…and why have we forgotten From Justin to Kelly already?!?
Because none of us saw FJTK?
(…that was a joke)
I realize I’m in an extremely small minority on this one, but I rather enjoyed Kenneth Branagh’s musicalization of Love’s Labour’s Lost. Hey, how often do you get Shakespeare, Irving Berlin, Natascha McElhone and George Gershwin in the same package?
“De-Lovely” was a musical but not promoted as such. “A Mighty Wind” is a Christopher Guest mockumentary. “Everyone Says I Love You” is Woody Allen.
“Bride and Prejudice” has Bollywood written all over it. So does “Lagaan”.
I don’t consider De-Lovely, Ray, Walk The Line et al musicals. To me, a musical is a “book” musical. Not a “jukebox” musical.
There are plenty of musical stars–but they’re all on the New York stage. You can open a musical on the strength of Nathan Lane or Faith Prince or Donna Murphy or Brian Stokes Mitchell, but west of Morris Plains, NJ, they mean next to nothing.
But De-Lovely had musical sequences of the break-out-and-sing variety as well as on-stage numbers (sorta like Dreamgirls). While I consider Ray and Walk the Line musical in nature, they are “musicals” per se, true.
Chucky, I said Bride & Prejudice and Lagaan because, while they are Bollywood (and B&P is a Brit-version of Bollywood), they are more popular and widely-known than the many many traditional Bollywood films that come and go throughout the year.