"Follies" on Film- Page 2

[B3TA07]

Posted: 12/17/06 at 12:19am

Oh, sorry. I saw the revival with Idina Menzel as Fosca and Kiefer Sutherland as John Wilkes Booth. It was pretty interesting I thought it was weird that the screenplay writer directed it though. Very Joe Brooks-esque. But if there were a dancing skeleton here during the priest song it would have been so cool. Oh well I guess Joe Brooks copyrighted it before they could borrow it.

Updated On: 12/17/06 at 12:19 AM

[Desperado]

Posted: 12/17/06 at 12:22am

i heard about that! i heard idina was so good and keifer has a good singing voice! i wish i was there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[B3TA07]

Posted: 12/17/06 at 12:26am

Yaaaa! This is the one she won the Tony for too I think! It was such tough competition that year too, I hear even Julia Roberts was nominated for Wicked.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 12/17/06 at 2:33am

Sean Martin - that isn't exactly true. The numbers were to be filmed in the style of classic movie musicals, but they weren't planning on jettisoning any of the Sondheim score with material from actual period films. In the draft at Lincoln Center, the LOVELAND sequence is almost identical, material wise, to what was on Broadway; I thought it was kind of neat becausde you saw all the decayed movie sets on the backlot as they were originally used in the supposed movie musicals.

Cinematic solution to putting any Sondheim musical on film would result in a significant amount of musical trims (see the upcoming film of SWEENEY for example). But to say the premise of the "MGM reunion" being the reason for cutting half of Sondheim's score would really be incorrect.

Lincoln Center has two drafts on file for a proposed film version of FOLLIES from the 70s - the MGM reunion draft and a draft that takes place in a theatre (as on Broadway). Both drafts cut numbers - thought not necessarily the same ones.

But whatever the concept, it's unlikely that any film of FOLLIES is going to contain (in their entirety) songs like "One Last Kiss," "The Right Girl" "Bolero D'Amour", etc.
Updated On: 12/17/06 at 02:33 AM

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/17/06 at 8:00am

>> The numbers were to be filmed in the style of classic movie musicals, but they weren't planning on jettisoning any of the Sondheim score with material from actual period films. In the draft at Lincoln Center, the LOVELAND sequence is almost identical, material wise, to what was on Broadway

The story goes like this: the drafts at Lincoln Center were the ones proposed to the studio. The honchos at MGM looked at the backlot version and said, in essence, why waste the time and money when we have an entire library of songs we can use free of charge? So *their* brilliant idea was to cut everything of the "pastiche" numbers and replace it. The project died after that, in no small part because of the horror that was HELLO DOLLY.

But when you look at the show, which barely runs two hours as it stands, there's little need to cut. "One Last Kiss", "Bolero d'Amour" -- certainly: these are numbers whose worth comes more in their implementation, although "Bolero" could be as thrilling as "Roxanne" in Moulin Rouge.

But whatever: the time isnt right for Follies as a movie. Societally as well as politically, we're not in the mood right now to be reflective and look back on past mistakes (which is part of the irony of this, in its own way), and anything that suggests that kind of thought will die a miserable death at the box office. It's probably going to take another generation's time before we see it done, if then.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 12/17/06 at 8:59am

"Streep and Close are too old."

Any of these people strike your fancy?

Kim Basinger, Michelle Pfeiffer, Annette Bening, Catherine O'Hara, Rebecca De Mornay, Kelly Preston, Mary Steenburgen, Ann Magnuson, Kathleen Quinlan, Amy Irving, Annette O'Toole, Marg Helgenberger.

[best12bars]

Posted: 12/17/06 at 9:39am

There's a big problem with Follies now, in that virtually NOBODY under the age of 90 was alive for any of the Follies era shows... and nobody under 75 (unless they were a CHILD) was around for the golden age at MGM.

So, what do you do... make it a period piece (1930s and 40s) within a period piece (1970s)?

You can't set it in our times today, unless it takes place in a retirement home.

Or unless they're flashing back to that golden "Follies era" of 1976. (???)

That's why the idea of having the film spring from the making-of book scenario instead of the actual show's premise itself, is pretty much the best way to approach the material now.

Time has marched on. What used to be considered nostalgia and remembered by many, is now considered ancient history and remembered by precious few... because most are now dead.

Updated On: 12/17/06 at 09:39 AM

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/17/06 at 10:59am

>> There's a big problem with Follies now, in that virtually NOBODY under the age of 90 was alive for any of the Follies era shows

And no one's alive who experienced the Oklahoma land rush, so there goes one of the cornerstones of the R&H canon. And we better get those productions of South Pacific out of the way, because not many people remain who were alive during WW2.

Sorry, that's not a good reason for dismissing it as a possible film. If anything, setting in the specific time of the late 60s/early 70s (with a subsequent flashback to the 20s, 30s, and 40s) might enhance a few of FOLLIES' central themes. The country changed dramatically during the period 1967 to 1975: we shook off the final vestiges of the Eisenhower years and wandered off into a whole new time, one that saw societal upheaval and our patriotic innocence about war lost because of Vietnam. And here you have a group of older people, literally in the cusps of their lives, looking back with regret and looking forward with fear and uncertainty.

One reviewer noted that the show wasnt about theatre so much as it was about America, and I think he's right. And thats all the more reason why this will probably never see the big screen, in whatever form. If you look at it a little too closely, it starts to hit home, and some folks just dont want to be reminded of that.

[Kringas]

Posted: 12/17/06 at 1:10pm

Any of these people strike your fancy?

I think Michelle Pfeiffer would make a smashing Phyllis.

[ahmelie]

Posted: 12/17/06 at 2:14pm

Uh, Blythe Danner anyone?

I wouldn't want to see this on film, personally. I would practically kill myself to see it don on film badly. That would be so devastating. I just think that there are elements of the stage production that if you do away with, it's not Follies, and they also wouldn't translate on screeen at all.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 12/17/06 at 11:30pm

Who, exactly, do you envision as the audience for this film - and remember you need 10,000,000 of them to pay for this film. That's the equivalent of 7,642 full Broadway theatres (or one show running 18.2 years). Follies ran 522 performances in a time when people knew what the Follies was and that was 35 years ago.

[Plum]

Posted: 12/18/06 at 12:07am

I don't agree with your point. The effort and cost of seeing a Broadway show like Follies- the advance planning it takes, the fact that it's only available in one venue- make it a totally different prospect than seeing a movie. Putting up the original show's attendance numbers is ridiculous.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 12/18/06 at 7:08pm

I simply meant - and I know this because I pitch to the studios on a weekly basis and have for 18 years now - that if I walked in to try to pitch "Follies", the response would be glacial. No studio is going to commit these days to a film of "Follies" even if you had Meryl Streep glueD to the cover of the pitch document. Musicals are SO hard to get made that we've had exactly FOUR in the past few years . And one was a GIGANTIC FLOP which pees in the pool for everyone coming after it.

And besides, "Follies" would just have no audience, beyond Sondheim fanatics and the intelligencia. Basically, you need to put vast numbers of butts in seats to make a profit on a musical. If a studio were going to gamble, they would and have put money into edgy things like "Chicago" or prestige works like "Dreamgirls" - especially with the cast they got. But $100,000,000 plus for a film about old people (that's their view, not mine) coming back to a theatre before it's torn down?

It will just never, ever happen. The studio head who greenlights a vehicle like this will end up at the Cheesecake Factory, sitting beside Judith Reagan, muttering "what just happened to my career?" (Don't cry for Judith, like the cockroach, she will survive anything).

Now MAYBE someone could get GM or SONY to finance making a television movie, but probably just a filmed version of a stage performance.

It's just silly - but noble - dreaming to imagine Hollywood embracing "Follies".

Oh, and of course, unlike Chicago, The Producers, Hairspray and Dreamgirls, the original stage version was ONE OF THE BIGGEST FINANCIAL DISASTERS OF ALL TIMES.

I'd pay to see you pitch that fact to a senior vice president of development, two d-girls and a guy from business affairs.

[best12bars]

Posted: 12/18/06 at 8:49pm

The studio head who greenlights a vehicle like this will end up at the Cheesecake Factory, sitting beside Judith Reagan, muttering "what just happened to my career?"



allofmylife --- Thanks for making me LOL at work.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/18/06 at 9:58pm

And I'm sure that the guy who went in and pitched a love story between two cowboys in 1950s Montana got the same glacial reaction.

Not saying that FOLLIES is an automatic greenlight, but I dont think it's completely outside the realm of possibility. After all, HISTORY BOYS got made into a film, with no apparent target audience. Hollywood has some weird ideas about success sometimes, and there are successful movies that came straight out of nowhere (BLAIR WITCH, anyone? I mean, *who* would have predicted that monster hit?). So dont completely dismiss the idea of a musical about "old people" (The four leads are, what, in their 50s? Yeah, that's ancient.).

[Plum]

Posted: 12/18/06 at 10:05pm

Heaven knows Hollywood can be really conservative at the strangest times, but things slip through the cracks. And sometimes they just force their way through- if Dreamgirls makes a ton of money, Condon + Musicals will be considered a pretty good combination, no?

[sondhead]

Posted: 12/18/06 at 10:14pm

"Three fine actors.
Talented.
Couldn't open a 7/11 between them.
Nobody in Hollywood would even take the pitch. "

Are you kidding me? Meryl Streep is one of the most respected and successful actresses of our time. She sells more movie seats than you'd think.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 12/20/06 at 12:24am

In Hollywood's view, she sells no movies seats. None. Nada. Sure, she's a fantastic actress, but now she's doing the older roles with younger actresses (Anne Hathaway) in the foreground. She's transitioning to character work, at which she will excel for the next twenty years, but nobody is going to greenlight a 80 to $100,000,000 (the cost of Dreamgirls and Hairspray) film with her in the lead.

And seriously, folks, comparing a huge musical filled with senior citizens to a tiny movie like Brokeback (budget 13,900,000) is ridiculous. It is just not in the cards. There are SO MANY musicals ESPECIALLY WICKED that the studios would makeahead of "Follies".

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 12/20/06 at 12:53am

Sean Martin, I think you missed best 12's point. He is not saying you have to have been alive in the 20's to see the film, but the CHARACTERS would have to have been alive then. So unless it is done as a 'period piece within a period piece' the characters NOW would have to be in their eighties or nineties.

My problem with casting a film version now is that a lot of the people you would love to see in those roles are dropping like flies and the survivors are not getting any younger. I have NO desire to see Lauren Bacall sing I'm Still Here, and Debbie Reynolds singing it would just be a tad too twisted, seeing as the character BASED on Debbie sang it in Postcards From The Edge. I don't suppose they could talk Betty Hutton into doing a bit? Rain on the Roof with Mickey Rooney or some such?

[allofmylife]

Posted: 12/21/06 at 12:36am

I mentioned this discussion to a friend of mine who's a Hollywood development exec (okay, I was soft pitching something else and this came up.) He had one utterly cogent thought that never occurred to me. He said "a big-budget musical with a mainly senior citizen cast? It's be a bitch to get insured."

And he was so right. No theatrical insurer would provide a completion bond for an all-seniors cast on something that big.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/21/06 at 6:46am

>> He said "a big-budget musical with a mainly senior citizen cast?

Uh guys? The four main characters are in their 50s, NOT SENIOR CITIZENS.

Sheeessh. I know the median age on this board is about 15, but let's not push character descriptions into absurdity because you have this strange idea about age.

And sorry, but comparing a tiny budget film like BROKEBACK is completely appropriate. It's not ALWAYS about money, in ase you learned nothing from your pitch meetings.

Hollyweird may be a strange animal sometimes, but all the reasons I've seen thus far for NOT producing FOLLIES are all coming from people so far outside the industry it's not even funny. Marketed correctly, this could be a big hit, but there's two snags, AFAICS.

(1) it would be a big-ticket production for the physica design. If you're doing FOLLIES, you have to do it right. But given what's spent on special effects for your run of the mill scifi movie, it'd probably even out. And I imagine that, as with the case with projects like this, most of the leads would see it as a prestige project and drop their usual 20-mil demand in favour of a percentage. Additionally, the DVD sales and international distribution would probably send it into the black, albeit marginally.

(2) your four main characters arent idols du jour of the teeny bopper crowd. But you guys are forgetting that there are EIGHT, not four, main characters, and if you need box office names lke Lindsey Lohan (yeah, there's a talent who's a long term threat to Streep), the yonger counterparts are the ideal place to put them.

And what will probably happen, more likely than not, is something akin to the HD broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera into select movie theatres across the country, whose first performance on December 30, in case anyone's interested in something that might appeal to someone over the age of 12, has already sold out in the strangest places. A series of Broadway plays, in your local movie house, in a live HD performance? Hell, if the Met can do it, why cant Broadway get with the damn times and see the income there?

http://docandraider.com

[allofmylife]

Posted: 12/21/06 at 11:45am

Seanmartin, it's ALL about the money. Don't believe for a minute that it isn't. And the money isn't going to go into a musical these days with 50+ leads when they can and will make another film with American Idol winners (or, actually losers).

And I do know the age of the cast of "Follies". I was actually, if you read carefully, reacting to other posters who had suggested using former MGM stars. First, most of the real MGM stars are dead. The heyday of the Arthur Freed unit was almost sixty years ago. Anyone still alive who ever MET or worked for Arthur Freed would now be 80 plus.

But getting back to what I do or don't know from pitch meetings, I will say this: all nine times I have sold a project to a Hollywood studio in my career (and nine times is a pretty good track record) cost-of-production has been the elephant in the room. Now maybe I'm not Michael Bay, who can get multi-hundred million dollar deals, but I can guarantee that even guys like him are reigned in over costs. There is no way, oh oh oh no way, that a modern studio is going to pump out that type of money for what they would consider (anyone over 40) a geriatric musical.

HOWEVER as a previous post of mine noted, you and I are in COMPLETE agreement over how the show COULD be recorded and broadcast, either in the theatre or over the air.

Follies is great theatre. It isn't, sadly, what Hollywood is going to blow 100,000,000 on. Now I could be proven wrong tomorrow morning if the people trying to mount the show find some crazy studio exec willing to greenlight such a venture and I'll have to wear the brown hat for a while, but my rocksolid belief is that there is not a large enough audience for such a film (it would require at least ten million asses-in-seats) to ever make such a "Folly" profitable.

So I would still emerge vindicated.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 12/21/06 at 11:58am

I agree mostly with allofmylife; though I still maintain the "right" cast can get just about anything greenlight in Hollywood. We are assuming they are going to cast the "geriatrics" of Hollywood in this movie (Meryl Streep, Glenn Close) but its just as possible they could cast younger people who could somehow (throught makeup and costuming) play both older and younger versions of these characters.

If the movie had a hypothetical cast of say Nicole Kidman, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Reese Witherspoon with cameos from people like Streep, Jim Carey, Angelina Jolie, etc. - i.e. every major movie star in Hollywood - I think the film would have some marketable angle.

I also don't really think FOLLIES would be a 100,000,000 movie in terms of production. I think it could be done for 2/3 of that - maybe less if they kept the theatre location.

And Hollywood always dictates by what the current trend is. If DREAMGIRLS is somehow an unbelivable smash at the box office and at the Oscars: Bill Condon will largely be able to write his own ticket. If he really wanted to do FOLLIES, and he came to the table with that kind of recent succes - there is probably a studio that would be willing to table it - folly or not.

A very unlikely scenario, of course - but possible .

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/21/06 at 12:28pm

It will never get made and it would never work anyway, even if Dreamgirls is the biggest hit ever. The audience that may make Dreamgirls a crossover hit will never even HEAR about the Follies movie--or care.

Best12bars's point is inescapable: the original production (which I saw 6 times as a teenager) had, in addition to the script and the score and the breathtaking production, an awe-inspiring rising-from-the-dead quality of seeing the last remaining forgotten performers from the actual period come back and be dazzling. Performers like Ethel Shutta and Mary McCarty and Fifi D'Orsay and Ethel Barrymore Colt weren't simply "still around and able to show up"--they were surprisingly great!

Without that kind of casting--and without Michael Bennett's magic--the flaws in the script will always loom too large for the show ever to be satisfying. Ever.

Even if you bring back a few near-death's-door older performers at this point, the quality would be more of a circus sideshow/freakshow than the rediscovery of gals-who've-still-got-it.

To parade frail has-beens who never even performed in the Follies is antithetical to the sprint of survival that made the original thrilling. And to put a Meryl Streep in it merely underscores the essential flaws in the script.

The magic of Follies can never be recaptured, and I don't even think the genius touch of Bill Condon can turn it into something-different-but-just-as-good.

As Simone Signoret used to say, "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be."

Updated On: 12/21/06 at 12:28 PM

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/21/06 at 3:57pm

>> Seanmartin, it's ALL about the money. Don't believe for a minute that it isn't.

That's true, but the money aspect works two ways. Sure, the studios want the blockbuster that will generate billions in revenue. But the studios also want the pictures that will *lose* money for those always needed tax write-offs. Amd those are usually your "prestige" films, made by smaller studios then distributed by the big ones simply for the fact that they wont turn a profit but they'll look real good come April 15. Would FOLLIES fall into that category? Damn straight.

But... is this a 100-mil film? No way. No way, guys, no way whatsoever. TITANIC was a 100-mil film, with almost a third of that money going into the special effects. FOLLIES would be low-rent by comparison, even with the big lavish numbers. My serious bet is that this could be pulled off for 30-40 mil and still be a stunning piece of work.

Is the script that much a mess? In some respects, yes, but it's not unsolvable. And the storyline is nowhere near as banal as some of the other things coming out of LA these days (LAKEHOUSE, anyone? And *that* puppy pulled a profit out of the hat.). I mean, hell, look at the story line for MOULIN ROUGE, and tell me that's any more riveting. MOULIN has dazzling camera work, a thrilling design, and a score that was all appropriated songs that most of the audience were clueless about. FOLLIES has something that's not known all that much outside NY, but it would also have the media push that could send it walking quite nicely. A producer with sufficient vision and a director with a firm hand on the material could make this thing just as exciting as CHICAGO.

True, it wont have Ethel Shutta or Fifi DOrsay or Yvonne DeCarlo. But as wondrous as those performances were (and I saw them in LA during the show's trimmed run there), the play doesnt depend exclusively on them. Yes, there was a certain indescribable magic to seeing these old-time performers out there for one last strut -- but that's seeing the material through a theatregoer's eyes, the people who understand and appreciate the Ethel Shuttas and the FifidOrsays. For a movie, you have to set that aside and think in more general terms for the casting, which opens the field a lot more. Personally, I think it would be a howl to see someone like Rosie ODonnell singing "I'm Still Here" or Madonna in the Alexis Smith role. But that's just my fantasy casting at play, nothing more. Nevertheless, it demonstrates that the pool of talent for something like FOLLIES could come from literally anywhere and work.

I doubt it'll get made, but my doubts are based more on the public's reception to the *themes* of FOLLIES, not the fact that it's a "musical about old people" (Yeah, fifty, that's old.).