Follies in Concert DVD

[laura is broadway]

Posted: 12/27/08 at 11:48am

I got it for christmas. Was anyone else really disappointed? Really ridiculous cuts and not too spectacular performances.... No Road You Didn't Take??? However I did think Mandy did a good job in Buddy's Blues. But why all the cuts? I suppose the documentary was enjoyable, but it certainly didn't make up....

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 12/27/08 at 1:59pm

When it first appeared on cable TV in the mid-80's, it was more than sensational. Now... 2 decades later, we see how it could have been done better.

I personally still find it a fascinating document of that concert. If you want the entire concert, it can still be heard on the 2-disc CD recording.

[sondheimboy2]

Posted: 12/27/08 at 2:06pm

Yeah, I remember being TREMENDOUSLY disappointed by it.

I'd tried to get tickets for it. I don't live in New York, so when they went onsale, Sunday at noon, I sat and did nothing but redial the number for three hours! When I finally got through, I said "I can't believe it! I finally got through!"

And the person on the other end of the line said, I kid you not, "That's because we're out of tickets."

And you mean that in the past TWENTY YEARS since then, they couldn't have released the entire concert on video? I mean, they had to have filmed the entire thing! You can't tell me that the camera person just sat there, just filming snippets of each song!

Though, with all of the bootleg people I know, NO ONE says that they have it. So, maybe that's what the camera man did...

[BigFatBlonde]

Posted: 12/27/08 at 2:28pm

The fact that the documentary was even MADE is something of a miracle!

Why there hasn't been an expanded dvd with added footage is beyond me.

But I will say that that concert and the documentary made an entire generation of musical theatre lovers familiar with FOLLIES.

Mind you.. this was WAY WAY WAY before the internet and youtube. There was only one consistent outlet for this sort of thing: PBS.

The broadcast of that documentary launched an appreciation for the piece that no revival or recording has done since.

I daresay every subsequent production owes a debt to the Concert. After seeing the documentary people began to understand what FOLLIES is about.

We take that for granted now...but then it was a HUGH cultural perspective shift that brought a new audience to musical that had had an aging cult following.

Updated On: 12/27/08 at 02:28 PM

[binau]

Posted: 12/27/08 at 4:09pm

In future you can always read amazon reviews before purchasing :), it is usual helpful in preventing disappointment. But I'm sure anything Sondheim is better owned that not owned. (Especially if a video recording).

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/27/08 at 4:25pm

Having seen the original 6 times when I was 15 (as I have reconuted many times on this board), I went to see the concert version twice, reluctantly, at Avery Fisher, both times with friends who had never seen Follies before.

For them, it was a revelation; for me, it just made me sad.

I learned then that I had to allow everyone to have their own Follies, in their own way.

For me to constantly be saying, "Well, in the o-RIG-inal..." only made me seem bitter and jaded, but not bitter and jaded AND glamorous like Phyllis.

Now that there is so much more Follies to be experienced, I guess the concert version can't help but feel disappointing.

So here, if you haven't seen them, watch these clips from the original (which everyone here has now seen a million times), made from silent footage dubbed with the soundboard tape:


Who's That Woman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhQeVQ6677A


Lucy/Jessie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TxLGIdv85I


The Right Girl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFxygAHcNGM

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 12/27/08 at 7:32pm

The reason the full concert has not been released is that BBC didn't film all of it. They were only allowed/able to film highlights. For me the documentary part leading up to the concert is much more interesting. Sondheim said at the time that the BBC/PBS broadcast was unfairly maligned because it was promoted as if people would see the whole concert.

PalJoey, what you feel about the concert is in line with what every person who sees a major revival feels. I think partly because our memories tend to distort to good and the bad. With FOLLIES the original cast was so legendary that no subsequent production - no mater how good - cannot live up the "memory" of the original even among those who never saw the original. Like MY FAIR LADY with Andrews and Harrison or GYPSY with Merman or even CHICAGO with Verdon and Rivera - they were all of a moment and nothing can ever bring them back. That's why the best and most successful revivals (CABARET, and even this year's SOUTH PACIFIC) find ways to make the material shine without trying to mimic the originals. I'd a love a really creative directors have a chance to remake FOLLIES into something new for the 21st century.

[Paul W. Thompson]

Posted: 12/27/08 at 7:38pm

Yes, it is too bad that the entire Concert isn't available on video. But it is on audio, as was pointed out.

And what we DO have in video! A lot of great numbers, and a lot of behind the scenes footage which is fascinating. Let's all be grateful that there were cameras around at all.

Someday, maybe we'll have a full video "Follies" we can cherish. For now, we must cherish what we have, and work toward even more.

[laura is broadway]

Posted: 12/28/08 at 11:35am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGRa-s5qrOs


Is that also off the silent footage? I just found it for the first time