Let's face it, no one who saw "Legally Blonde" thought "you know, this would be even better if it had showtunes!" Of course, you can argue that no one who saw "Legally Blonde" thought, period. But that's another story.
The original formula was play > movie of play > Broadway musical > movie of musical. Now it's movie > musical of movie > movie of musical of movie > fat tourists running around with programs of musical of movie clogging the sidewalks in Times Square. But, unfortunately, all of Broadway is geared to fat tourists who clog sidewalks like they do their own arteries.
In my sketch comedy troupe, The Mistake, we did 10-20 minute musicals out of the following movies: The Blair Witch Project, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and The Invisible Man. And I thought we were pushing the boundaries of satire. And, like most satirists, we had to conclude that in fact we hadn't gone far enough.
Of course, Broadway could just give up on producing anything new and completely embrace this trend. Turn the whole strip into a multiplex.. Maybe even have theme seasons. "For 2013 - ALL COSTNER DISASTERS!!!! Waterworld, the Musical. The Postman, the Musical. Robin Hood, the Musical (wait, they did that, didn't they?). Field of Dreams, the Musical (sorry, this is one of the worst baseball movies ever made, don't get me started - or I'll get started in another post) Wyatt Earp, the Musical!"
Why do I feel I'm going to look back on that last paragraph a few years from now and sob?
I enjoyed this post, especially how you made "shitty" a tag. I have a feeling it's a tag which will have a lot of entries on this blog.
ReplyDelete-- Anonymous (but really Mark Loewenstern)