Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Stage and screen share symbiotic bond
Post Gazette: For decades Broadway producers regarded Hollywood as the agent of death. They fought to delay film adaptations of "West Side Story," "Hello, Dolly!" "The Wiz" and other shows for fear that those movies would decimate ticket sales for the Broadway originals and their national tours.
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There is a great danger in converting a piece of one medium into another. In general, audiences don't consider how vastly different a movie is from a musical, a musical from a play, a play from a book, etc.
This isn't to say that all medium translations are bad. It's just harder to make a good movie-musical than it is to make a good movie because a movie-musical must adhere to the roles and audience expectations of both movies and musicals. Consider West Side Story. I think its fair to assume that most theatre-people would agree that the movie is fantastic. Why? Because the adaptation not only preserves the musical qualities of the piece (like creating a world in which people expressing their internal monologue through song and dance is acceptable) but also utilizes many of the creative aspects of cinema. A "good" movie based on a musical can't just create a film entirely separate from the original script, nor can it ignore that fact that it is limited to the silver screen. (If you're looking for a bad example of musical-turned-movie, might I suggest picking up a copy of Sweet Charity. Bonus points if you count keep a running tally of every time there's a freeze-frame used to transition between scenes.)
I would go on my usual rant about the pros and cons of turning movies into musicals (including the pros and cons of the recent Disney-Broadway takeover), but I distinctly remember writing about that in a comment many moons ago.
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