#1
Posted: 5/31/06 at 12:36pm
At the wishes for my thoughts (from Phantom2) on the matter of Lestat, I offer this perambulation...
Lestat Thoughts
Part I - The Venture
The Great Confusion
As to the venture by Warner Brothers into new territory of Broadway producing. A rough game by any counts, mounting a successful and money-making show on the Great White Way. One would think the natural step would be to launch a looney, tune-filled cartoon character musical, perhaps a joint venture with experienced Disney for a stage version of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Familar cartoon characters, a few tap dancing numbers, the occaisional acrobatic flippy-do, great singing voices, parody and sillyness, the Disney publicity machine and experience--this would seem the natural choice to fill many seats. A surface story for children, adult layer for the adults--whamo, a crowd-pleaser. Even had a new show been written for familar Warner Brothers cartoon figures, cutting out a joint Disney venture and "toons," still the promise of filling seats was there.
But it was not to be. Instead, another try for the ultimate vampire musical, this one serious, dark, a real horror musical. Hmm. Was there ever a big money successful, serious Broadway horror musical? And are dark musicals ever very commercially successful? As opera perhaps, with all those dying arias.
Now add to the mix we have trendy homoerotic vampire business, adding a little Oedipal thing with the mother and borderline pedophiliac attraction of parenting a psycho female vampire brat and we've got some Oprah daytime television issues here. Which can be submerged to avoid the homosexual issues, which may not sell mainstream, yeah we need mainstream so we'll go with the blood lust thing and the great metaphor that a vampire is just a wolf predator worth preserving as an endangered species. Well, the ecology thing may not work, and we're skipping the sex, so let's go Buddhist, hell yes, and have the primordial vampire show up and make like the Dalai Lama. Ignore the friggin' chick in lit who over the weekend went and read the Dalai's Autobiography about how Buddhists don't believe in killing--hey nobody reads or knows about that sh*t and they'll buy it. They bought millions of those Rice books. Just stick the robes on him and it's like Zen, yeah, vampire Zen.
We've got this sexy stud vampire, so it's okay if he's gay, everything's gay now--well, okay maybe it's not so he'll be like sexy androgenous so both men and women can go for the dude. Well, the women won't pay attention to the gay part, just get a former Phantom. Parents bringing children to see the show? Well, there's a little girl with dolls for the kids. An analogy to drug addiction with the bloodlust? No, it's like mythic, instinct, there's no drugs, except the laudanum, yeah it has opium, but that's to poison him, drugs are poison, even to vampires.
Message? We don't need a message. We do? Okay, this is a tough one. Vampires kill and they want to live forever. Everybody wants to live forever and be sexy androgenous hooked on blood, it'll sell. Then why do we get rid of the bodies? Well, he can't get caught. Isn't he doing something wrong? Oh, don't go moral on me, no one wants to go there, it's like BO-RING, look around you, nothing's moral, this is the real world, people die, sh*t like that--okay, so some of them don't die, that's what this story is about.
to be cont.
© 2006 nomdeplume by pseudonym, all rights reserved
Lestat Thoughts
Part I - The Venture
The Great Confusion
As to the venture by Warner Brothers into new territory of Broadway producing. A rough game by any counts, mounting a successful and money-making show on the Great White Way. One would think the natural step would be to launch a looney, tune-filled cartoon character musical, perhaps a joint venture with experienced Disney for a stage version of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Familar cartoon characters, a few tap dancing numbers, the occaisional acrobatic flippy-do, great singing voices, parody and sillyness, the Disney publicity machine and experience--this would seem the natural choice to fill many seats. A surface story for children, adult layer for the adults--whamo, a crowd-pleaser. Even had a new show been written for familar Warner Brothers cartoon figures, cutting out a joint Disney venture and "toons," still the promise of filling seats was there.
But it was not to be. Instead, another try for the ultimate vampire musical, this one serious, dark, a real horror musical. Hmm. Was there ever a big money successful, serious Broadway horror musical? And are dark musicals ever very commercially successful? As opera perhaps, with all those dying arias.
Now add to the mix we have trendy homoerotic vampire business, adding a little Oedipal thing with the mother and borderline pedophiliac attraction of parenting a psycho female vampire brat and we've got some Oprah daytime television issues here. Which can be submerged to avoid the homosexual issues, which may not sell mainstream, yeah we need mainstream so we'll go with the blood lust thing and the great metaphor that a vampire is just a wolf predator worth preserving as an endangered species. Well, the ecology thing may not work, and we're skipping the sex, so let's go Buddhist, hell yes, and have the primordial vampire show up and make like the Dalai Lama. Ignore the friggin' chick in lit who over the weekend went and read the Dalai's Autobiography about how Buddhists don't believe in killing--hey nobody reads or knows about that sh*t and they'll buy it. They bought millions of those Rice books. Just stick the robes on him and it's like Zen, yeah, vampire Zen.
We've got this sexy stud vampire, so it's okay if he's gay, everything's gay now--well, okay maybe it's not so he'll be like sexy androgenous so both men and women can go for the dude. Well, the women won't pay attention to the gay part, just get a former Phantom. Parents bringing children to see the show? Well, there's a little girl with dolls for the kids. An analogy to drug addiction with the bloodlust? No, it's like mythic, instinct, there's no drugs, except the laudanum, yeah it has opium, but that's to poison him, drugs are poison, even to vampires.
Message? We don't need a message. We do? Okay, this is a tough one. Vampires kill and they want to live forever. Everybody wants to live forever and be sexy androgenous hooked on blood, it'll sell. Then why do we get rid of the bodies? Well, he can't get caught. Isn't he doing something wrong? Oh, don't go moral on me, no one wants to go there, it's like BO-RING, look around you, nothing's moral, this is the real world, people die, sh*t like that--okay, so some of them don't die, that's what this story is about.
to be cont.
© 2006 nomdeplume by pseudonym, all rights reserved
Updated On: 5/31/06 at 12:36 PM
