The Spider-Man musical on Broadway has postponed its official opening from January 11 to February 7. Some of you are probably wondering what difference that makes, given that the show will continue to play to audiences every night as planned.
What it means is that they're declaring, "We're still changing major stuff. Don't review us yet!" They can do this because they're selling well in previews. Last week, for instance, they were at 99.4% capacity. Can't do much better than that. Ordinarily, a show that went through extended previews in New York would be suspect. Theatergoers would say, "They're postponing the reviews because they know they're gonna get murdered and they're trying to sell tickets before that happens." Or maybe some of them would say, "They're delaying because they're still trying desperately to fix the thing."
In the case of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, they apparently are planning to make some significant changes to the show — new dialogue, at least one new song, a new ending, etc. If this was a "regular" Broadway show without the hype about the budget and publicity about tech problems, this new delay might be fatal. It would trigger the above quotes and more. As it is, I don't think it'll matter. People have heard so much about this show, they want to see it. I don't think it'll matter a lot what the critics say about it, either. (The Addams Family, which did not get good reviews, is still running at 70-80% capacity, which ain't bad after ten months. Its producers are apparently so confident about it that they're not expecting to close when Nathan Lane leaves in a few months. They've already announced his replacement.)
Articles speculate that Spider-Man is going to have to take in a million bucks a week in order to run. The change of opening date might make some think they're worried they're not going to be able to achieve that with what they currently have. Maybe. But maybe they just figure that with audiences flocking to previews, they have the luxury of enough time to make things better.
The new Yogi Bear movie is not getting great reviews, a fact that appears to delight many on animation-related forums. I haven't seen it and probably won't, at least in a theater. There are two reasons for this, one being that it's in 3-D and some part of my brain looks at a 3-D movie and declares, "It's nap time!" I oughta get a full set-up here in my home, not for pleasure but for any night when I have insomnia. The only trouble is that it puts me into the kind of snooze that usually comes accompanied by a headache — the kind that feels like instead of attending their own temples, Jews are inside yours and are pounding to get out.
So right there is reason enough not to buy a ticket. Another is that I love Yogi Bear...and while some would think that's a reason to race to the theater, it's really not because I don't love that Yogi Bear. I love the one that was animated for pocket change, debuted just when I was the perfect age and spoke with the masterful tones of Daws Butler. That this one isn't that one doesn't mean that this one is necessarily bad; just that the affection doesn't automatically transfer. I mean, a lot of us love Batman but that doesn't mean we like every interpretation, every incarnation, every time someone draws their version or dons a facsimile of the costume. In some ways, it's the opposite: We come to every Batman comic or adaptation with certain expectations, expecting those in charge to clear a high bar. We also, of course, have opinions of what's right and wrong for the character. That's the price the creators of the new comic or movie or whatever-it-is pay for not baking from scratch. We can't blank out the past ones and just judge some new one wholly on its own merits.
I've received a few e-mails from Yogi-loving constituents who are waiting for me to eviscerate this movie I'm not going to see. Unlike some of them, I don't think it's a crime that Time-Warner wanted to resurrect the character. Yogi was a commodity when Hanna-Barbera made the original cartoons and he's a commodity now. Certainly, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were never reticent to alter him, exploit him, retool him, misuse him or do whatever it took to wring more bucks out of the franchise. They might have grumbled over choices in this or any other reboot but does anyone think they would have stopped it? The Bill and Joe I worked for never said no to anything like that...and if they wouldn't, I don't see why I should leap to protect my childhood fave.
Is it a bad movie? Unworthy of the name of Yogi Bear? I dunno. If it is, I suppose my attitude is that of the fellow who was told that a terrible film had been made of his favorite book. "They destroyed it," a friend told him. "No," he replied pointing to a bookcase. "My favorite book is right over there on the shelf, exactly the same as it ever was." I have a DVD set of the original Yogi Bear cartoons — the ones that gave me so many hours of pleasure and inspiration — and they ain't changed.
Adrienne Roy, who created color designs for most of DC Comics' top comic books for more than two decades, lost a year-long battle with cancer on December 14. She was 57 years old.
A native of Verona, New Jersey and a Magna Cum Laude fine art graduate of William Patterson University, Adrienne was active in science-fiction and Star Trek fandom before she became one of the first female comic fans to break into the ranks of New York comics professionals. She initially assisted her then-husband, DC Comics staffer Anthony Tollin, with his freelance color work before she moved (rapidly) to working on her own. Before long, her work was seen on Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Warlord, The New Teen Titans, House of Mystery and many other titles but she was most often associated with the DC books featuring Batman. Amazingly prolific — and often specifically requested by artists — she was at one point the only DC freelancer with her own desk in the company's Manhattan offices. She was also the first colorist signed by the firm to an exclusive, multi-year contract.
Her long tenure on Batman (more than 600 issues of various comics featuring the character) meant that her credit appeared on more tales of the Caped Crusader than anyone else except for Bob Kane. "Adrienne made it easy to take her for granted because she was quiet, pleasant, reliable — never any fuss with her — and her work was always exemplary," former Batman editor Dennis O'Neil recalls. "It's only in retrospect that I realize what a blessing she was to my editing."
She lived her final years in Austin, TX, and is survived by her daughter Katrina Tollin, her brother Normand Roy and her former husband and art partner, Anthony Tollin. She is also survived by more than 50,000 pages of colorful comic book storytelling featuring the World's Greatest Super-Heroes. I always liked Adrienne and am saddened (but given her recent health, not surprised) by this news.
Ezra Klein on what's wrong with the tax cut deal...the one that no one really likes. His analysis sounds frighteningly accurate to me. No one is getting the solution they think will actually improve the economy. They're just getting a bill that can be passed.
41 songs you either never heard or heard and don't remember are eligible for the "Best Song" category in the 2010 Academy Awards. This press release lists them but you might be more interested in the rules that govern this particular award. They include...
To be eligible, a song must consist of words and music, both of which are original and written specifically for the film. A clearly audible, intelligible, substantive rendition of both lyric and melody must be used in the body of the film or as the first music cue in the end credits.
So does this mean a song under opening titles and credits is not eligible? If so, might that have something to do with the fact that almost no one does that kind of song anymore? Anyway, I was not aware that a song is not a song unless it has lyrics.
The "written specifically for the film" clause is why, incidentally, a stage musical transferred to the screen will often have a couple of new songs added. Either the composer wants a shot at winning an Oscar or the studio thinks it will help the box office if the film wins that award...or most likely, both. It's why they added "I Move On" to Chicago and why they added "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and a few others to Grease and why they added "You Must Love Me" to Evita and why they added "Surprise, Surprise" to A Chorus Line and why they added "Pet Me, Poppa" and "Adelaide" to Guys and Dolls and why they added "Mean Green Mother" to Little Shop of Horrors and why they added "Being in Love" to The Music Man and you get the idea. I think I read somewhere that before Dolly Parton agreed to appear in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas or Nine to Five, she insisted she be able to write at least one song for each so she'd have a crack at that Oscar.
What's interesting, of course, is that so few songs written for movies in the last few decades are familiar to us even if we've seen the films...and some songs we do know weren't even nominated. I'll bet more people know "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" from Life of Brian (a film which received zero Oscar nominations) than that year's winner, "It Goes Like It Goes," which was from the movie, Norma Rae. Most of you also probably know — and some artists still record — two songs which were nominated that year but lost: "The Rainbow Connection" from The Muppet Movie and "Through the Eyes of Love" from Ice Castles.
At the Oscars the following year, Steve Lawrence and Sammy Davis sang a darn good medley of songs that were written for movies and which became part of American culture...but were not nominated. In fairness, a lot of these tunes were penned at a time when there were a lot of good songs in the cinema so they didn't necessarily go unnominated because no one recognized their appeal. Some years then, there were ten great songs but only five could be nominated. That has not been a problem in quite some time.
I liked a lot of the movies for which the late Mr. Edwards was responsible...and hey, I not only liked the movie of Victor/Victoria, I even liked the Broadway musical they made of it. I also really, really liked the first few films in which Peter Sellers played Inspector Clouseau...and it really is an achievement to create a character like that, one that becomes a "franchise" leading to movie after movie. When I got into the entertainment business, a wise producer told me the following and I think he was right...
The dream of every Head of Development is to have a franchise like that. It's like owning a major star. So at any given moment, they always have at least one project in development that was pitched to them as "The American Clouseau." They almost never get past the script stage because that's a lot harder to do than it looks.
You could probably look back at a lot of movies and TV shows that did get made and realize that was what was on someone's mind. When I saw The Nude Bomb, that none-too-successful attempt to revive Get Smart as a feature film vehicle some years back, I could practically hear someone saying, "Hey, you know who's really the American Clouseau? Maxwell Smart."
Edwards' movies are, I find, worth revisiting. I really disliked The Great Race when it first came out...but I was a kid at the time and years later, watching it again, I can't find anything to dislike. On the other hand, I recently watched S.O.B., a film I liked upon its initial release, and didn't enjoy much beyond Richard Mulligan's incredible performance. Maybe the next time around...
And then there's the Pink Panther. I mean the cartoon character, not the movie. The movie is fine but the animated figure designed for the main title has truly endured. It was all created in the DePatie-Freleng cartoon studio and years ago, I heard someone who acted like he was there at the time tell the following story...
It was a big deal for the studio. They were offered the opportunity to do this main title and they thought that if they could ace it, it would really put them on the map. What they had to do was design a pink panther that Blake Edwards would like. They got a bunch of artists and had them design pink panthers...hundreds of them. Fat pink panthers. Skinny pink panthers. Short pink panthers. Musclebound pink panthers. Dashing pink panthers. Stupid looking pink panthers...
Night and day, they churned out these drawings until they finally had...it must have been a thousand of them. They had this conference room with cork walls and they pinned drawings up on every inch of space. Friz Freleng said, "There's got to be one in here that Edwards will approve."
Then Mr. Edwards comes in. Everyone is very nervous because a lot is riding on this. They have hundreds of other drawings in folders in case he doesn't like any of the zillions they have on the walls.
Edwards walks in, glances around, points to one drawing on the far wall and says, "That one." And that was it.
Great story, right? Sadly, I don't think it's true. I later found out that the person who told me the story wasn't there at the time, wasn't as he led us to believe, a witness. He didn't go to work for the studio until years later when they were producing a steady diet of Pink Panther shorts. And I later heard Freleng tell how the design had been selected and it was a somewhat different tale.
What made the anecdote credible for me was, in part, the decisiveness of Blake Edwards' movies. Even if you didn't love a given film, it was obviously made by someone who knew exactly what he wanted to do and how to achieve it. Someone once said of another accomplished director, "Nothing gets into his pictures by accident." I felt that was true of the Clouseau films, of 10, of Victor/Victoria, of all the rest. I'm sorry there won't be any more of them because the guy really did know how to make movies.
December 16, 2010
