Movie Musicals

[Rinaldo]

[Eliza's return] wasn't created for the musical, though; the 1930's non-musical film ends exactly the same way. Shaw was still alive then; does anyone know if he complained?

Oh boy, is that a story. To answer your question: Shaw never complained publicly (he stood to do very well out of international sales, after all, and he hoped for further films of his plays from the producer, Gabriel Pascal). In answer to questions, he said something like "There is a short final scene, but it is too indeterminate to make a fuss about." What he said in private, I have never seen reported.

 

But that Pygmalion film is really ingenious (not to say underhanded) about it! Shaw had it in his contract that any additional dialogue for the film had to be written by him, and he did write new scenes: Liza coming home to her room after the first scene; Liza being introduced to the concept of a bathtub by Mrs. Pearce; bits of her elocution lessons; the embassy reception; Liza leaving Higgins's house at night and having a makeout session with the waiting Freddy. But Shaw didn't write that final scene, it was filmed without his knowledge, and yet he was helpless to protest. Why? (I love posing this to my students after the watch the end of MFL, and seeing them reason it out.) Because every line in that scene is "lifted" from earlier in the play: what we hear on the recording, Liza's wry self-quotation that she washed her hands, and his demand for his slippers. So all the lines are indeed by Shaw, even if he never meant them to be used like that.

Edited July 3, 2014 by Rinaldo

[Julia]

i never saw how that was supposed to be romantic. The first thing he did after the return of his consort battleship was to have her fetch his slippers? I think she should have shied them at him again.

On the other hand, it did prove his mom had him nailed.

[Milburn Stone]

I'm a big Hepburn fan, but I have mixed feelings about the film. She got a lot of flack because the studio wanted her and not Andrews, and then they dubbed her voice. It's true Hepburn does not have a great voice, but it is still strange to see her dubbed after Funny Face. 

 

She did sing charmingly in Funny Face, and therefore it's natural to wonder why she had to be dubbed in MFL. Here's the thing. Warner Bros. did allow her to pre-record her numbers, and those recordings exist. I have heard her performance of "I Could Have Danced All Night." If you heard her performance of "I Could Have Danced All Night," you would no longer be wondering why she had to be dubbed by Marni Nixon. Her pleasant-enough voice is not up to the challenge of that song, or of "Show Me." Although she may have wanted to do her own singing, if Warners had decided to release the film with her voice in it, the result would have been humiliation for her. They protected her as well as themselves with the decision they made.

[Athena]

She did sing charmingly in Funny Face, and therefore it's natural to wonder why she had to be dubbed in MFL. Here's the thing. Warner Bros. did allow her to pre-record her numbers, and those recordings exist. I have heard her performance of "I Could Have Danced All Night." If you heard her performance of "I Could Have Danced All Night," you would no longer be wondering why she had to be dubbed by Marni Nixon. Her pleasant-enough voice is not up to the challenge of that song, or of "Show Me." Although she may have wanted to do her own singing, if Warners had decided to release the film with her voice in it, the result would have been humiliation for her. They protected her as well as themselves with the decision they made.

 

I agree that her voice doesn't have the range for those songs. I honestly think they should have gone with Andrews and not had it in the first place. Audrey did look good in the costumes. In any case, not much for the ending as I said. It's one of my least favourite Hepburn films.

[aradia22]

I'm very anti-dubbing particularly when it's obvious (I had no idea Deborah Kerr was dubbed in The King and I for years so it didn't bother me) so that hurt the film for me. I couldn't watch it for the longest time because of the dubbing. Then again, I'm against terrible singing. Really, I'd just like them to cast people who can sing. Is that so hard? Is it?

 

I feel like we're talking around it a little so let's be explicit. How do we feel about the Shaw ending? It was a very adamant, Higgins and Eliza should not be together ending but I think he left a lot room for "shippers" to say, but look, he fascinates her and she does seem to be attracted to him because of that island fantasy. And yeah, I have seen enough of the movie to recognize those passages lifted from the end of the play. It did throw me when I read it.

[GreekGeek]

There's also the fact that the play is subtitled "A Romance in Five Acts." Was the "romance" not between two people but a love of the English language? Or did Shaw mean the word differently from the way we use it today?

[aradia22]

 

There's also the fact that the play is subtitled "A Romance in Five Acts." Was the "romance" not between two people but a love of the English language? Or did Shaw mean the word differently from the way we use it today?

I'm an English major... or was, so when I hear romance I think 1. romantic love 2. romance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_(heroic_literature) and 3. Romantic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism. I wouldn't consider it to be a play about the love of the English language. That's not what interests or drives Eliza and Shaw seems to have mixed feelings with the way he lambasts Higgins throughout the play and those who practice his profession in what I think was the prologue. 

[Rinaldo]

I would take Romance in this case to mean "a fantasy" -- a piece of fiction. Our modern use of the word is very restricted compared to its former breadth of reference, where to say someone was "romancing" could mean that he was making up stories.

 

It's interesting how in some cases where a new "happier" ending was devised to replace a less appealing one, that new ending in time becomes unpalatable itself. Now the tendency is to think "she's coming back to fetch his slippers and be ordered around? yuck!" so productions will sometimes insert a kiss (or have her fling the slippers at him, and they both break up laughing, or something) to show that it's not going to be like that. Similarly with Show Boat: Edna Ferber's novel has Ravenal leave Magnolia and his daughter, and she learns to provide for the two of them by performing the songs she grew up with on the show boat. The musical had Ravenal return in the last scene for the mandatory happy ending. But now that ending seems (besides being perfunctory and contrived) hard to swallow: he deserts his wife and his very young daughter, comes back decades later, and is welcomed with a smile? If the musical were being written for the first time now, there'd be no problem having Act II depict Magnolia and then Kim learning to take care of themselves, and that could be a happy ending. But as it exists, the romanticism of the pair is built into it, he has to return, and it can leave kind of a sour taste (nobody even suggests that he's done something that needs forgiving). Such is the passage of time. 

[aradia22]

 

It's interesting how in some cases where a new "happier" ending was devised to replace a less appealing one, that new ending in time becomes unpalatable itself. Now the tendency is to think "she's coming back to fetch his slippers and be ordered around? yuck!" so productions will sometimes insert a kiss (or have her fling the slippers at him, and they both break up laughing, or something) to show that it's not going to be like that.

Yeah, that doesn't fix the 20+ year age difference. At least with Jane Eyre most people acknowledge that the story is way creepy.

[Lonesome Rhodes]

The ending of MFL is inspired, imo.  

 

She had won, forever, the battle of wits.  She knew it.  He knew it.  What then?  A victory lap?  The show was already filled with "words, words, I'm entirely sick of words."  

 

It is also a gloriously sophisticated book.  To me, it would have dumbed things down to have some kind of apology or grovelling.  I love that the reprise of "Face" serves as a bottom for Higgins.  The man was defeated.

[Athena]

There's also the fact that the play is subtitled "A Romance in Five Acts." Was the "romance" not between two people but a love of the English language? Or did Shaw mean the word differently from the way we use it today?

 

Shaw did not like romances. In the "Sequel" to the play entitled "What Happened Afterwards", he goes into detail about why he used the word specifically:

 

 

Now, the history of Eliza Doolittle, though called a romance because of the transfiguration it records seems exceedingly improbable, is common enough. Such transfigurations have been achieved by hundreds of resolutely ambitious young women since Nell Gwynne set them the example by playing queens and fascinating kings in the theatre in which she began by selling oranges.

 

Basically, as @aradia22 noted, it's the third kind of romance: Romanticism. I agree with @Rinaldo that our modern use of it is a bit narrower than the Victorian and Edwardian use.

[Crs97]

Lonesome, I agree with you. The look on his face when he realizes she is back and the smile on her face when he asks about the slippers speak volumes. He knows he has lost, and she knows he is just trying to save a little face, but they are so clearly equals at that point she can allow him that moment. I have no fears that life returns to what it was between them.

I have seen it on stage where it ends with his question, her showing him the slippers, him laughing and their dancing and kissing. It was sweet, but not as satisfying as the movie ending.

[Milburn Stone]

I have seen it on stage where it ends with his question, her showing him the slippers, him laughing and their dancing and kissing. It was sweet, but not as satisfying as the movie ending.

 

I haven't seen a production with that ending, but it sounds like an abomination. 

[aradia22]

I watched Cadillac Records today. I'm going to say... not a movie musical. I do think there are some biopics that can be musicals but not all musical biopics are musicals. This was hurt by featuring too many different perspectives and only featuring a few songs that expressed something about the characters or helped to tell the story. As a movie, it's not something you have to go out of your way to see. It's not terribly well constructed. It's paced a bit slowly and leaves some questions unanswered. I'm not familiar enough with the originals to judge but I think the covers featured in the movie might leave something to be desired.

[ebk57]

Just dropping in to plug the showing of "1776" on Friday at 1:30 (PM, not AM - thank goodness!) on TCM.  One of the best stage to screen adaptations ever.  Love that most of the original Broadway cast is in it.  Love the music.  Love, love, love William Daniels!! 

[Rick Kitchen]

Hate that Richard Nixon got them to remove "Cool, Cool Considerate Men" from the movie.

[Julia]

I hate it in political and artistic freedom terms, but honestly I thought the release cut was a tighter, better-paced movie, maybe because I'd known it for so long before I saw the director's cut.

[aradia22]

I tried to get through 1776. I quit when Adams went to look for Franklin who was having his portrait painted. I might try again next time it's on TCM but I couldn't do it. After the first song where I couldn't decipher most of the lyrics and the pins/saltpeter song I didn't think I could make it through 3 hours. Also, the DVR is almost full.

[Sharpie66]

I love 1776. There was a local production years ago that was a concert version with gender switching in some roles--they had a woman playing John and a man playing Abigail--that I would have loved to have seen. One of my favorite shout-outs to the play/film is in St. Elsewhere, when the character played by William Daniels and his wife go to Philly for a medical conference. The writers kept on tossing in lines from 1776, from "I am obnoxious and disliked" to "It's hot as hell in Philadelphia!"

I grew up on movie musicals, and love the ones from the first half of the 20th century the most. When I would babysit on New Years Eve (this was before widespread VCR availability), the local PBS station would show Astaire/Rogers movies all night long, and I just slurped them down.

For Gene Kelly fans, there is a non-musical version of The Three Musketeers in which he plays D'Artagnan using all of his dance grace in the swordfights.

I was lucky enough to see stage productions of The King and I with Yul Brynner and Harrison in My Fair Lady in the 1980s (co-starring the wonderful actress who played his mother in the film!), but missed seeing Dick Van Dyke as Harold Hill in Music Man (he was sick for my matinee show).

Edited August 8, 2014 by Sharpie66

[A Boston Gal]

I've seen it more times than I should ever be willing to admit.  And I still love it.

 

Two of my favorite movie musicals are Oliver! (minus Nancy's "As Long as He Needs Me", because girl, please!) and Annie.  

 

Yeah, I'll show myself the door now.

I once showed this film to a large group of middle school and junior high school aged kids for an after-school activity. I fast-forwarded past "As Long as He Needs Me", and briefly explained why, something like "it's never ok to make excuses for someone who's hurting you", and "this show was written years ago when not too many people were thinking about this kind of thing."  I got the thumbs up from the kids as we continued past that scene.

Edited August 8, 2014 by A Boston Gal

[Julia]

I once showed this film to a large group of middle school and junior high school aged kids for an after-school activity. I fast-forwarded past "As Long as He Needs Me", and briefly explained why, something like "it's never ok to make excuses for someone who's hurting you", and "this show was written years ago when not too many people were thinking about this kind of thing."  I got the thumbs up from the kids as we continued past that scene.

 

I think it might have made the point equally effectively if they'd gotten to watch her being brutally murdered because she got that so terribly wrong. My kid is sort of resigned to me making her sit through teachable moments about old movies (and even older books).

[A Boston Gal]

Good point, Julia!  I think they got the gist of it, though.

[bosawks]

I should find this embarrassing but I don't I love, love, love Pete's Dragon!  Humming a little "Candle on the Water" as we speak..........

 

I'm pretty sure I'm going to have the same opinion about Into the Woods as I did about Sweeney Todd; less Sondheim is never, ever the right choice!

[Milburn Stone]

There's a book I've just started--I'm maybe 25 pages into it--but already I can tell how good it is. The author knows his stuff, and he's a good, witty writer to boot. I highly recommend the book for its fresh insights and for its being sheer fun to read. The author is Richard Barrios, and the book is Dangerous Rhythm: Why Movie Musicals Matter.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Rhythm-Movie-Musicals-Matter/dp/0199973849/

[Shannon L.]

 

I should find this embarrassing but I don't I love, love, love Pete's Dragon!  Humming a little "Candle on the Water" as we speak..........

I loved Pete's Dragon!  So much so, that on my first first trip to Disney Land, I had to buy a stuffed Elliot and even teared up a little when he came through in the Electric Light Parade.  I was 18. *blush*  I like the songs Brazzle Dazzle Day and There's Room for Everyone.

Edited August 8, 2014 by Shannon L.

[aradia22]

 

I fast-forwarded past "As Long as He Needs Me", and briefly explained why, something like "it's never ok to make excuses for someone who's hurting you", and "this show was written years ago when not too many people were thinking about this kind of thing."

I've still never seen Oliver so for me, As Long As He Needs Me exists solely as an audition song without context. Therefore, I love it. It's awesome to belt out. 

 

I'm pretty sure I'm going to have the same opinion about Into the Woods as I did about Sweeney Todd; less Sondheim is never, ever the right choice!

I will also put something about this in the Theater Talk thread but on my vacation I finally got to watch Six by Sondheim (the HBO documentary) on the plane. God, I love hearing that man talk about his work. It's not a great documentary but I recommend it anyway for Sondheim fans. You can always fast forward through the familiar anecdotes.

[Milburn Stone]

I finally got to watch Six by Sondheim (the HBO documentary) on the plane. God, I love hearing that man talk about his work. It's not a great documentary...

 

We'll have to agree to disagree about that.

[Rick Kitchen]

On yesterday's "Days of Our Lives", one of the characters told another character that he was "losing your timing like this at this point in your career" and I immediately yelled, "Wow, she's quoting "Send in the Clowns!"  :)

[vibeology]

I've still never seen Oliver so for me, As Long As He Needs Me exists solely as an audition song without context. Therefore, I love it. It's awesome to belt out. 

 

I think the context is what gives the song power. Nancy is treated horribly by everyone in her life with Bill being the worst and she latches on to him because she has poor self-esteem and doesn't realize she deserves better. She's caught in a cycle of abuse that ultimately destroys her. Its very powerful and tragic. The song is important to the show because it sets up her sad end. 

 

I love Oliver! Its a favourite music movie. Who Will Buy is an amazing musical sequence. Its one of the few movie musicals heavily featuring children that I think got the casting spot on and is entertaining because of the kids not in spite of  them.

[aradia22]

 

We'll have to agree to disagree about that.

I'm picky about documentaries. There isn't one I can hold up as being perfect and I think the lack of a narrative gloss makes me more critical about the editing and the narrative they do manage to create. This is a bit of a digression but Somewhere Between is a strong documentary for me because they managed to craft a solid narrative and it's very emotionally affecting. Pink Ribbons Inc. has too many viewpoints presented in a disorganized manner and chops up the interviews too much. I watch a good number of documentaries on Netflix where I give things I normally wouldn't watch a chance (documentaries are my go-to watch for zoning out when Law and Order isn't on). There was one on shoes that was just horribly edited. The interviews were chopped to bits and the way they were cobbled back together was tortured. Six by Sondheim benefits from focusing on a single subject... and because Stephen Sondheim is great at talking about his work. It's been more than a week since I saw it and I was groggy on the plane but I think my issues were largely about the way things were organized and the pacing vs. the content. Though some of the musical numbers were better than others. For me, Opening Doors was clearly the best. Send in the Clowns was a little disappointing but that was largely because I kept expecting Will Swenson to make it a duet. I'm Still Here was just painful to me. I made it through a good chunk of it and then gave up and fast-forwarded. Was everything in chronological order? I kind of got the sense that it wasn't at times which threw me off. But again, on a plane... not the best circumstances. The part about him reflecting on his obligation to teach and the offhand comment about wishing that he had a child was more than a little sad to me. It's not that they should have explored it more but I haven't heard him talk about children in that context before and I feel like in that section the documentary was kind of unsure about where it was going. But again, I'm Still Here was like a dose of novocain.

[Sharpie66]

I just watched Six by Sondheim after seeing it mentioned here. Thanks for the rec, because I really enjoyed it! I am a big musical geek, so it was just perfect. I really liked Opening Doors with Darren Criss and America Ferrara.

After watching it, I went to YouTube and looked up the doc about the recording of Company, which I found interesting for the difficulties that Elaine Stritch (RIP) was having recording Ladies Who Lunch at 4 in the morning.

[Rick Kitchen]

I've been watching a lot of Company clips on YouTube lately, and Dean Jones's "Being Alive" is to me, the epitome of any musical song ever.  There have been a lot of good performances of the song later, but his is the perfect version of the perfect song.

 

This is the clip from the documentary on the recording of the cast album.

 

Edited August 10, 2014 by Rick Kitchen

[bosawks]

I love Barcelona! Dean Jones and Susan Browning can't help but act out the entire scene. It's wonderful.

[aradia22]

This thread has been dormant for a little while so I thought I'd try reviving it with this article. http://www.playbill.com/news/article/maybe-this-time-the-top-10-songs-added-to-movie-musicals/P2

 

In case you don't want to play into the blatant attempt to get more clicks/ad revenue I will summarize.

 

10. Listen- Dreamgirls

9. Hopelessly Devoted to You- Grease

8. I Will Always Love You- Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

7. Better Than a Dream- Bells Are Ringing

6. You Must Love Me- Evita

5. Beautiful City- Godspell

4. Bye Bye Birdie- Bye Bye Birdie

3. Just Leave Everything to Me- Hello, Dolly!

2. I Have Confidence- Sound of Music

1. Maybe This Time- Cabaret

 

6, 8, 9, 10 all fit into my favorite kind of musical ballad and 2 is just adorable so yeah, good list. What are your thoughts?

[methodwriter85]

On one hand, I like that they got the talented original cast for Rent, save for a couple of the roles. On the other hand, they were just too damn old for the parts by 2005. It's still a pretty good movie though, even with the sanitizing they had to do to get it a PG-13 movie.

 

However, I'm glad that any attempts to get Spring Awakening off the ground have failed, because there's no way in hell you can do that movie as PG-13 without making the movie unrecognizable from the musical, and it seems like execs are loathe to do R-ratings for musicals. (The Jersey Boys are the exception.)

[Rick Kitchen]

Not "Suddenly" from Les Mis?

[Shannon L.]

I was scrolling through the thread to see if anyone had mentioned a certain movie yet and saw that DollEyes had pointed out an error in my first post.  I said Jersey Girls instead of Jersey Boys ::facepalms::  Thanks for the correction--I don't know how I missed it and now it's too late to edit it.

 

Anyway, I was reading an article about the best movie theme songs and one popped up that I'd forgotten about:  The Muppet Movie!  I love the music in the original and The Muppets Take Manhattan.

[Rinaldo]

My top of that list would definitely be "Better than a Dream," the contrapuntal duet (he and she each sing a different song, then -- yay! -- they sing them together and they fit perfectly) that Styne/Comden/Green added for the movie of Bells Are Ringing. They rightly thought so highly of it (it musicalizes a moment in the story that needs it) that they added it to the still-running Broadway production. Judy Holliday & Dean Martin do justice to it in the movie, and Kelli O'Hara & Will Chase were terrific doing it in the Encores production a few years back.

 

Bottom of the list (really, more like "shouldn't even be on a list of Bests") is "Bye Bye Birdie." Charles Strouse has frankly admitted that he and lyricist Lee Adams were required to supply a title song for the movie, they thought it didn't need one, and so they tried to write the stupidest, emptiest song they could imagine in hopes that it would be rejected and they would have fulfilled their obligation. Unfortunately, nothing was too stupid or too empty for the producers, and it was featured at the top of the movie. I guess there's a lesson there.

[Sharpie66]

"Beautiful City" is one of my favorite songs from Godspell, so big thumbs up for that one! Victor Garber is so very young in that one, and I love seeing Lynne Thigpen (from my hometown of Joliet, Illinois) before she was in The Warriors and then Carmen Sandiego. I just realized I have four albums with Garber singing--Godspell, Sweeney Todd, Assassins, and the Carnegie Hall tribute to Sondheim. I also saw him in Chicago playing opposite Luci Arnaz in They're Singing Our Song back in the 1970s.

I didn't know that "Maybe This Time" was written for the movie. That is just one of my favorite songs, period, so it definitely deserves the #1 spot.

[Milburn Stone]

My top of that list would definitely be "Better than a Dream," the contrapuntal duet (he and she each sing a different song, then -- yay! -- they sing them together and they fit perfectly) that Styne/Comden/Green added for the movie of Bells Are Ringing. They rightly thought so highly of it (it musicalizes a moment in the story that needs it) that they added it to the still-running Broadway production. 

 

That's a good one, but for me, there are two that top it. Both involve Streisand, and one (like the above) involves Jule Styne.

 

The first is the title song of the movie "Funny Girl." (The stage musical doesn't have a title song.) Gets me every time.

 

The second is "Just Leave Everything to Me," the opener of the film "Hello, Dolly!" Jerry Herman wrote it for Streisand, and it's one of those deliciously "meta" songs that feels like the performer's autobiography (Streisand generously fessing up to being the control freak she is) as much as it does the character's. A brilliant piece of work.

 

As for "Maybe This Time" being written for the "Cabaret" movie, I'm not so sure it was. It wasn't in the stage musical, this much is true. But it seems to me I've heard somewhere along the line that Kander and Ebb wrote it in the sixties (either they wrote it for no particular project and it sank without a trace, or the particular project they wrote it for ended up not using it) , and they found a good home for it at last in the movie.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Milburn Stone

[Rinaldo]

I didn't know that "Maybe This Time" was written for the movie. 

As Milburn Stone suggests, it wasn't really. It was an addition by the Cabaret team to the movie of their show, so in that sense it qualifies for the list. It seems Kander and Ebb did write it for a project that was never produced, and it was made available to performers they knew -- Liza Minnelli did it in her club act. So to those in the know (of whom I wasn't one) it was not at all new when the movie came out. To me, it always sits oddly in the Cabaret score, as all the other songs make a gesture at 20s-30s musical style, and it's very 60s-70s ballad pop.

[aradia22]

I really need to rewatch Little Shop of Horrors. I'm just throwing that out there. I don't know why I don't own it on DVD. 

[aradia22]

http://www.tiff.net/festivals/thefestival/programmes/discovery/bang-bang-baby

[harrie]

I hope Bang Bang Baby plays somewhere near me - it looks like a lot of fun. 

[Sharpie66]

That sounds wonderful--I really like Peter Stormare, too.

Edited September 9, 2014 by Sharpie66

[aradia22]

I think a big flaw with movie musicals today is that we don't have enough of them. That is, there aren't enough of them to give actors an incentive to put in the time to learn to sing and dance and perform in a musical. And most movie musicals insist on casting straight (that is, dramatic and not musical theatre) actors instead of the talent who could knock it out of the park but doesn't bring starpower and probably wouldn't stick around to be packaged as the next big Hollywood it person. It's not that all of the movie musicals actors in the past were perfect but they could usually at least bring one skill to the table. I'm thinking about Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire who... let's be honest, were not the best singers. 

 

I just find it deflating to watch some musicals now where I'm expected to ooo and ahh because so and so is managing to sing in key. Sort of. It's like when you listen to professional performers and then try and go back and watch a reality singing competition. It's too difficult for me to buy into the delusion sometimes.

[Ankai]

Just stopping in to say that my favorite film is a sort-of musical called Memories of Matsuko. Check out that music-filled trailer, highlighting the movie's cheery take on miserable subject matter.

 

I think a big flaw with movie musicals today is that we don't have enough of them. That is, there aren't enough of them to give actors an incentive to put in the time to learn to sing and dance and perform in a musical. And most movie musicals insist on casting straight (that is, dramatic and not musical theatre) actors instead of the talent who could knock it out of the park but doesn't bring starpower and probably wouldn't stick around to be packaged as the next big Hollywood it person. It's not that all of the movie musicals actors in the past were perfect but they could usually at least bring one skill to the table. I'm thinking about Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire who... let's be honest, were not the best singers. 

 

I just find it deflating to watch some musicals now where I'm expected to ooo and ahh because so and so is managing to sing in key. Sort of. It's like when you listen to professional performers and then try and go back and watch a reality singing competition. It's too difficult for me to buy into the delusion sometimes.

They could go the Bollywood route and blatantly lipsync the whole thing.

[Julia]

Hugh Jackman. Just saying.

[Milburn Stone]

I think a big flaw with movie musicals today is that we don't have enough of them. That is, there aren't enough of them to give actors an incentive to put in the time to learn to sing and dance and perform in a musical.

 

You identify a real problem, and the only thing I'd add is that the problem isn't limited to actors. We also no longer have the writers and directors (with some ultra-rare exceptions) who understand movie musicals in their bones and know how to make them work.

[Rinaldo]

Very true, Milburn Stone. This is shown to be true any time a successful movie writer/director decides to make "his musical." Never mind that they cast actors without the needed skills -- it's true but that's a separate problem. The fundamental reason they never work is that this "geniuses" think they can just shove songs any old where in a screenplay and it'll work (if the stupid audience thinks otherwise, they just don't "get it"). People who write stage musicals for a living know that you need to have a song letting us know why we should care about the protagonist (the "I want" or "this is who I am" song) pretty soon after the beginning. And similar necessities elsewhere in the structure. Or if you decide such a trope would be wrong in this one case, you know what you're doing and have a darn good substitute. You have learned this through classes and workshops for writers, through informal apprenticeships, or through your own trial and error.

 

But a moviemaker feels above all that, the necessities of the form don't apply to him. And so we get Peter Bogdanovich making At Long Last Love (with after-the-fact protestations: "People don't understand! Cybill and Burt are deliberately bad -- it's cute!" yes, he really did). Woody Allen making Everyone Says I Love You. James L. Brooks making "I'll Do Anything" -- remember that one? It was so bad, they cut out all the songs before release and recut it as a straight drama. All of these jerks who think they want to make a musical without knowing anything about the form show only contempt for it and for their audience.