How Do YOU justify the singing in a movie musical? — Page 2

I don't justify it...the director does.

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I usually think that they don't realize they are singing or rather that is their way of talking / thinking. For instance a lot of people comment that the song Roger sings in Rent "One Song Glory" about finding his song is a lot better than the song he actually writes. However I don't think that the roger character is REALLY singing, it's Jonathan Larson writing Roger's thoughts.

However, as my friend brought up, in Spring Awakening the play takes place in the late 1800s but when they sing and pull out microphones it is as if they are transported into the present.

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Right now, audiences are only able to buy musical films if they are total fantasy (either in someone's imagination or a fairy tale), or animated (where the entire environment is not real), or highly stylized (like Little Shop or Hairspray, where it's a surrealistic rendition of the early '60s) or where the musical numbers are all "realistic," like a backstage bio-pic.

That's it.

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But why? People keep saying that's what the audience wants, but is it? Why is it only singing on screen that has so many restrictions? People don't need their sci-fi to have science that makes perfect sense, etc. Why is a musical treated like something that has to adapted into other genres, rather than a genre itself?

Uncag, ReNt hurt my soul, too. It was one of the most unmusical movie musicals ever.

And I am generally a purist, too. I always wonder why people want to take a musical that worked on stage and make it so drastically different, unless the medium dictates it, such as Hedwig, where it would have been dull as a straight concert film. Honestly, though, Hedwig is one of the most faithful stage adaptations I think I've ever seen. Virtually everything Hedwig talked about on stage you actually got to see on film.

I agree that Dreamgirls was clumsy and sheepish about being a musical, and so much useless backstory was added that did nothing for the plot (WHY have Curtis say he had an ex wife and never bring it up again? Why give Effie and CC a father, when part of what's heartbreaking about the show is that they are all each other had? Etc, etc)?

Yes, Sweeney was stylized, but it really understood that it's a damn musical. I think musicals by nature are just inherently stylized, but so damn what? I think the problem is that American movies are so literal-minded. I guess that collective Hollywood CW is that us people in the hinterlands want that, but I don't know.

i justify it the same way i justify action movies like james bond being able to do all those impossible action scenes. Fantasy films having talking animals and creatures. Comic movies where the hero flys or transforms.

Another problem is that there are no musical stars anymore. Back in the MGM heyday, audiences went to movies EXPECTING Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Ann Miller (among hundreds of others) to sing and dance. It's what they did -- and if they didn't, it was rare and almost daring.

Now we live in an age where CHICAGO's where camera angles can convince us that Renee Zellweger can dance and digital editing can put together a track that makes it sound like Helen Bonham Carter can sing.

HAIRSPRAY worked because from the opening moment, it was a MUSICAL. I think SWEENEY does the same thing. PRODUCERS should have, but it just laid there like old fish.

PHANTOM, RENT, and DREAMGIRLS all suffered because the directors -- quite simply -- didn't trust their material or the form enough.

But integrated singing and dancing on film is merely a cinematic device. And movies are FILLED with illogical cinematic devices today. Unfortunately, THAT one's gone out of style.

That is very true...the fact is that it's not a movie genre that is appealing anymore. And it also doesn't work when the "stars" that would sell the movie are obviously not recognized for being movie musical sensations, like in the past.
We just need to accept that they will do the best job they can with their limitations.

I also agree with Tanner, if you are doing a movie musical based on something written for the stage, you need to use that as a source, but not much else. Don't ignore the fact that most musicals are adaptations...just imagine how book readers feel about a bunch of stage adaptations, or even movie fans that hear about the now very popular transfer from screen to stage, that IMHO and with notable exceptions, is just a pathetic attempt to make money.

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I've always wondered how others "justified" this. Everybody has really good reasons. Here's mine...

"It's catchy. Shut up and watch, okay?" haha

Actually, this isn't a new problem. Movies are a realistic medium, and so movie musicals only really work when they create a completely new stylized world in which singing and dancing make sense. The "classic" movie musicals of the 1940s and 1950s and their modern counterparts were mostly performance or backstage musicals--they were ABOUT singers and dancers (SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, CABARET, THE BAND WAGON, WHITE CHRISTMAS, KISS ME, KATE, FAME, etc.) Apart from THE SOUND OF MUSIC and MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, which made a kind of style out of home theatricals, the Rodgers and Hammerstein "naturalistic" approach has never really worked on film. (Try to watch the dreadful movie of CAROUSEL--yeah, yeah, I'm sure someone on this board just loves it). DREAMGIRLS did best with the "performance" scenes and fantasies and faltered slightly when it went "realistic" ("We are a Family"). The most charming parts of ACROSS THE UNIVERSE were songs as interior monologues--the longing lesbian cheerleader version of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", for example. (At moments like those, the movie seemed to be about the way pop music unites our experience--how we apply the latest Top Forty hit to whatever's happening in our own lives.) CHICAGO and PENNIES FROM HEAVEN did the fantasy-world thing best, while SWEENEY is an example of the totally-stylized world concept. I think this is probably how it's going to stay, and I don't know that that's a bad thing.

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Updated On: 5/8/09 at 04:48 PM