NBC's SMASH - Series & Broadway Adaptation Thread- Page 51

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 3:21pm

Honey...once you got a title, you don't need a book.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 3:29pm

lol, Really.
And which one of these creatives really thinks it is a good idea to have the word BOMB in a title for a Broadway show?

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 3:32pm

Speaking of titles, nobody thought the use of "bomb" in the title of a new Broadway musical was a bad idea? They know Riedel but have never read Mandelbaum?

Posted: 4/5/12 at 3:37pm

"but really every single number they are 'writing' for this new Marilyn musical sounds almost identical."

Not really.

No, not at all. Not even a little bit. You can bitch about how you don't like the songs but they've tossed out a very diverse and acceptable tunestack.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 3:46pm

Yeah, look what happened to BOMB-BAY DREAMS.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 3:54pm

JoKev at the very least they are unrealistically similar in tone and tempo. No musical would have a show with this lack of diversity. It would be more believable if they were trying all these numbers as substitutes for each other, but they are all (with perhaps one or two exceptions) completely derivative of a single idea - Marilyn Monroe in a moment that it is instantly recognizable to a television audience that hasn't seen last week's episode (Look its Marilyn singing an uptempo number in a baseball field! Look its Marilyn singing an uptempo number backstage at MGM! Look its Marilyn singing an uptempo while filming THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH!)

My point being that in what has already been identified as one of the problems with the show - that it can't decide who its target audience is - this kind of representation of a Broadway musical is completely unrealistic because they aren't even creating a realistic book musical.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 4:00pm

"at least on Smash the characters basically act consistant from episode to episode, something you really don't get at all on Glee..."

Glee started out like that but quickly became camp. The problem with these type of shows is that It's always conflict then resolution, conflict then resolution with people stabbing each other in the back one week and then making up a few weeks later, just so that they can turn around and stab each other in e back again. After a while, the cycle gets boring.

I'm sorry, but if you screw me once, I'm not going to be friends with you so that you can screw me again.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 4:09pm

Am I crazy, or was muscle23ftl in the crowd around Ivy and Karen?

Posted: 4/5/12 at 4:15pm

Nope, Michael you're not even close to having a point here. Even those three songs you named are quite different in tone and tempo, never mind the ballads and love songs you've ignored to attempt to prove your point.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 4:25pm

If they are somehow able to pull all of what they've shown us Kev into something that approximates a realistic, cohesive Broadway musical, I'll be happy to bow to your wisdom, but as of right now I maintain they are just spinning their musical wheels trying to catch an audience with glitz, all the while giving characters lines complaining about the 'lack of a show.' At least the actor playing the director looks suitably unimpressed by all of it.

[TheLadyoftheWood]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 4:41pm

Those reviews of this show on the New York Magazine should be read aloud and sold in an album entitled Smash: The Ugly, The Bad and the Who are we kidding? I think that would go solid gold or platinum.

[darquegk]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 4:46pm

The way the show plays now reminds me a lot of the style of Shaiman's last show, "Catch Me If You Can." The book will be in some way 'conceptual,' and rather than organic songs, "musical moments" erupt in a stylized and somewhat detached manner. They will be showpieces, rather than events in the musical's world.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 4:57pm

I agree that the songs have the feel of CATCH ME, though I think the whole thing is kind of silly in that the big point of drama is that they don't have a script. As Sondheim himself said when asked, what comes first, the lyrics or the music, the answer is the BOOK.

Updated On: 4/5/12 at 04:57 PM

[ckeaton]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 6:11pm

But then there's Kat McPhee.

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 6:39pm

BOMB-ITTY OF ERRORS

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 8:20pm

"Glee started out like that but quickly became camp. The problem with these type of shows is that It's always conflict then resolution, conflict then resolution with people stabbing each other in the back one week and then making up a few weeks later, just so that they can turn around and stab each other in e back again. After a while, the cycle gets boring. "

Theatre Diva, you are right, Glee's first half season did seem to have a sense of character, etc--it was later that the characters would say or act one way one episode and the VERY next would completely say or the opposite, just to serve whatever plot machinations were needed. So I suppose Smash could easily get worse in that aspect too (though really Glee's Ryan Murphy is infamous for having good concepts nd a good half season or so in him before things crumble).

I agree with you re Smash as well. One thing is even if we accept this should just be a "backstage soap opera" (and I gladly would), it' not even that they make up and repeat the conflict within a few episodes--often it seems to happen in the VERY same episode, which is not a good formula for serialized drama... You get a quick little scene setting one thing up, another quick scene,m and then a quick scene more or less resolving it.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 8:28pm

I actually felt the songs for Marilyn we've heard sound a bit too schizophrenic--while they're all Shaiman style pastiche, if played back to back you have a fairly modern style power ballad, then a duet that sounds out of mid 40s Broadway, a 50s style movie musical tune, etc... Not completely alien from each other, but I didn't think they sounded too similar,.

That said, I agree otherwise completely with Michael Bennett, that they largely seem to form similar functions (if any function) in the book (we've already mentioned how the two DiMagio duets with Marilyn serve the complete same function albeit one's sentimental number, and one a sort of do-wop), and I guess they've shown bits of plot driven numbers sorta (that song I can't remember where Marilyn is too drunk to film a movie and Arthur Miller comes in, as well as the one about herbecoming famous when DiMagio has his own power ballad moment), but it doesn't seem like there was any thought of how these could function in a coherent show. Maybe that's too much to ask for from the program, but I would have expected when Shaiman and his partner (who I never remember) were asked to do music for the show that they'd have some correspondence with the writer about how the songs could work with the episode and believably progress the show within the show.

I'm not sure why they didn't scrap one of the other characters and throw in a book writer character. There's no sense that Debbi's character is doing ANY work on that part at all, and as has been said, few successful dramatic musicals start with a good 7 or so songs on a theme and then someone coming in to tie them together. It also may have made more sense (if the story needed to be told) to have Debbie not wanna work with the librettist they hire because she had the affair with HIM, not the actor, or whatever.

[beensince1987]

Posted: 4/5/12 at 10:40pm

So this show is "Sopadish Broadway" instead of soap background. Hmm... I wonder which lady would be the one used to be a boy... wink, wink.

Oh sorry, "Spoilers"

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 4/6/12 at 10:46am

Well regardless of whether the show is good or bad, Uma Thurman will make it better. She's one of the best working actresses alive (If you have any doubts at all about that, I BEG you to watch her film HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS, where she gives one of the best performances I have ever seen on film).

[ucjrdude902]

Posted: 4/6/12 at 2:10pm

A friend got ahold of next Monday's episode and said, "You'll love it. This is about to become Uma's show".

[kyl3fong2]

Posted: 4/6/12 at 6:14pm

According to a LA Times article season two is going to be about "Bombshell" going to Broadway alongside a SECOND musical being developed as well.

I wonder if having two musicals being developed at the same time on the show will further derail it from having a clear central focus and be even more sloppy than its first season...

[Brave Sir Robin2]

Posted: 4/6/12 at 7:50pm

For some reason, I would love a cross-over episode with 30 ROCK. Imagine Jenna wanting to play Marilyn...

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:40am

Does anyone else think that Uma Thurman is too old to play Marilyn Monroe?

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:42am

Yeah it totally messes with the whole "realism" thing this show is going for.

[PiraguaGuy2]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 1:01pm

I think the points made about SMASH's original songs are valid - they would not work in the context of a real Broadway show. However, this is just a TV show, and the songs only really have to work in that context. In that respect, they succeed - almost all the original numbers showcased (with a few rare exceptions, including "Touch Me," "The National Pastime," and "I Never Met a Wolf") parallel the journeys and storylines of the main characters during the episodes in which they were featured. The more obvious examples are "Let Me Be Your Star," which is as much about Karen and Ivy's yearning as it is about Marilyn's, and "On Lexington and 52nd," which Michael sang directly to Julia. But almost every other number similarly intersects the main storyline in interesting yet subtle ways - Karen sings "The 20th Century Fox Mambo" as she, like Marilyn in the song, attempts to transform herself into a star. Even "The Higher You Get," which isn't even from BOMBSHELL, seems to reference Ivy's travails over the course of the episode; the title could just as easily be applied to Ivy's demotion from star-in-the-making back to lowly chorus girl.