Ragtime Movie

[LuvUrBatBoy]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 3:44pm

Recently saw another Amazing production of Ragtime and it got me thinking how well this could translate back into a movie. (It was based off of a book which spawned a mini-series/movie in the 80's)

Thoughts? Opinions?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 3:51pm

The original movie by Milos Forman was terrfic, starring Howard Rollins, Jimmy Cagney, Elizabeth McGovern, Debbie Allen, Mandy Patinkin et al.... Personally, I don't think it's crying out to be remade (even as a movie musical). By the way, the Doctorow novel is a heck of a great read.

[JohnPopa]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 3:53pm

I like the show but I think it would be a dull movie.

[POLisPOL]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 3:59pm

When I saw the musical (in london with maria friedman) I thought that was more like a concert than a musical.

[ForTheLoveOfLea]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 4:10pm

I thought it was a good idea too, but someone here told me it was far too theatrically staged to do it as a movie.

[Plum]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 4:16pm

Unless you change it up completely. Look at something like Catch-22. The movie is quit different from the book, but each is good in its own way.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 4:26pm

The London production WAS more like a concert. The Broadway production was fully staged. Both the existing film version (which I love) and the musical are very different from the novel. Personally, I would love to see a more accurate non-musical film version. I just don't think the singing narrative will translate so well onto the screen.

[Jon]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 5:23pm

Rather than a new movie (musical or not), the book really needs to be a mini-series - at least three parts = 8 hours. There is too much good stuff that had to be cut for previous versions.

[marincrazy11]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 6:49pm

I had heard somewhere that Doctorow was not very happy with the way his book was cut for the movie made in the 80's. So he has been very carfeul about his story gets told and how it is written. And Margo, I agree the novel is brilliant!!!!

[WhatevDude]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 6:53pm

I say, forget the movie and revive the show. Shouldn't have ended so soon to begin with... Does anyone know if there are talks of a revival?

[Unknown User]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 7:28pm

I would love to see a revival. I have to admit that I think if they did the show in a smaller stage theater it might give more intensity to the fact that Ragtime was bursting at the seams to begin with. The whole idea of the show was that life was about to explode and a staging of extravagant proportions on a space that is too small, might give it more urgency.

[MatthewAddison]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 7:40pm

Not a NY revival...but damn close...

Come see it at the North Carolina Theatre

September 11-19

Starring Julia Murney, Norm Lewis, and Michael Rupert.

Be there or be square.

:)

I'm in it, as well! (Already posted about this--but GOTTA do publicity for a good show. Don't stone me...you'd be telling it, too.)
The North Carolina Theatre Online

[Unknown User]

Posted: 8/24/04 at 7:41pm

I would love to come to North Carolina and see this show.


uh oh.. ROADTRIP

[EvelynNesbit1906]

Posted: 8/29/04 at 3:09pm

I would tend to agree with the person who suggested that it be made into a miniseries. Around 1976, EL Doctorow and Robert Altman were planning to adapt it into a six-hour film (!?) or a ten-hour miniseries. A screenplay for the miniseries -- published in Doctorow's recent book, "Three Screenplays" -- was to be filmed by Altman. However, the project went into production hell and was saved (or so it seemed) by Milos Forman. To this day, Doctorow hasn't fully forgiven Forman for his filmic adaptation of Ragtime. I'm not 100% sure of why Doctorow disliked it, but I would guess that he thought many of the important themes were lost by making the story of Coalhouse Walker, Jr. the "central" story of the film. In the novel, there are four parallel stories, none of which takes precedence over all others: the WASP family in New Rochelle; the African-Americans in Harlem; the Latvian immigrants on the Lower East Side; and the exploits of showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, her husband Harry Thaw and her former lover Stanford White. Then there are several much smaller stories -- such as the experiences of Tom Thumb's wife Lavinia at an aristocrat's party and Freud's reaction to America -- that are told almost independently of the interwoven Immigrant-Nesbit-WASP-Harlem plot. Obviously it proved too formidable a task to adapt all of these stories into a 2.5 hour film. However, in Doctorow's estimation, Forman could have at least found a way to incorporate one of the most important historic figures from the novel -- the radical anarchist Emma Goldman -- into the final cut. Scenes with Goldman (including her sexual experience with Evelyn Nesbit) were filmed but deleted in post for pacing, with Doctorow's begrudging consent. Maybe they'll appear on the DVD that's to be released within the next few months?

I love the soundtrack for the film and especially find the scenes involving Elizabeth McGovern as Evelyn Nesbit to merit multiple viewings (surprise). Nevertheless, the general mood of Forman's Ragtime reeks of Reagan era blandness. I'm all for a miniseries or remake. As for a movie musical based on Ahren's and Flaherty's wonderful work... well, they'd have to rewrite it in the first person. Characters directly addressing the audience throughout a film just isn't very cinematic. I would also like to see the screenwriter flesh out the character of Evelyn Nesbit a bit more so that she has the depth she exhibited in the novel. Ahren's and Flaherty's intention, I believe, was to have her sing a song that would tell the audience about the physical abuse she endured by Thaw and how much she really loved Stanford White despite slandering him on the witness stand to save her husband (whom she did not love) from the electric chair (which, for rhyme's sake, is a noose in the musical -- "Harry must not be hung... Let's have that verdict sung!"). However, that aspect of the plot had to be deleted for pacing too. This is exactly why the novel should be adapted into a televised miniseries...

Anyway, I've read the screenplay for Doctorow's version of the miniseries (which was never filmed) and liked quite a few of the approaches toward telling the story -- such as having Freud witness the shooting of Stanford White by Harry Thaw* and zeroing in more closely on Harry Houdini's career in vaudeville. The dialogue is a little shaky; it's clearly a screenplay from the 1970s. But I think that Bill Condon (Chicago, Gods and Monsters) or Martin Scorsese (Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York) would be a great choice to direct a miniseries if it were made anytime soon. Maybe it would finally get Scorsese the awards that he so craves?

* Thaw, btw, was the inspiration for Cal Hockley in James Cameron's Titanic. Cameron noted this in the illustrated screenplay for Titanic. The implication is that Jack Dawson was Stanford White (both Paris-loving artists accused of deflowering another man's "wife") and Rose was Evelyn Nesbit. Indeed, one of the photographs displayed in her house (at age 100) is Evelyn Nesbit as a ragtime dancer around 1913... Updated On: 8/29/04 at 03:09 PM