Richard Linklater - Merrily We Roll Along — Page 3

This is going to be some serious fun. I will be 92, and I definitely plan to be around to see it!!

Updated On: 8/31/19 at 08:52 PM

When I first saw this announcement I was beyond excited until I started thinking more about how ambitious the project would be. Like an earlier post mentioned, Boyhood had the advantage of being able to adapt the script to its needs, so I wonder how they'll handle tackling the Merrily book, especially considering all the trouble it's had in its past incarnations. Also, who even knows how well Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein will be able to sing in 20 years, and whether they'll still be as close of friends as they are now (it would be quite ironic for real life to imitate art).

That said though, given that this show has never really had a satisfactory book, I would be happy to see this on screen as long as they do the songs justice. Also wondering who else might get cast and if they'd be in that same circle of friends (Noah Galvin as Charlie maybe?)

chrishuyen said: "That said though, given that this show has never really had a satisfactory book, I would be happy to see this on screen as long as they do the songs justice. Also wondering who else might get cast and if they'd be in that same circle of friends (Noah Galvin as Charlie maybe?)"

According to the playbill article http://www.playbill.com/article/ben-platt-and-beanie-feldstein-will-star-in-merrily-we-roll-along-film Ben Platt will be Charlie Kringas and Blake Jenner will be Frank Shepard.

I preferred the 2013 west end (2017 Boston) production of Merrily over the one that was recently off-bway. I hope I'll still be alive in 20 years to see this film adaptation.

The original article said that Ben was playing Franklin, hence my disbelief/concern. Blake Jenner is a MUCH better fit.

Updated On: 8/30/19 at 12:16 AM

bk said: "Roscoe said: "I'm waiting for the "just kidding" alarm to go off from Linklater...."

Exactly. The Hollywood Reporter says that the first segment has already wrapped principal photography. So, no one in all of show business knew this was happening, not a single person anywhere, in this day and age? How do you keep that a secret exactly? Furthermore, the director will be seventy-nine in twenty years. Mr. Sondheim will be long gone in twenty years. Is this actually placed with a studio because who knows what this business is going to be like in twenty years? This smells like a big kettle of rotted turd to me."

Well, presumably the “first segment” would just be “Our Time” on the roof. So I think it’s possible it could have been filmed already and rather discretely . You are talking about an 8 minute scene with three actors.

I can't believe people's reactions to this are so negative. I think it's a creative way to do Merrily that solves many of the age problems with casting... and it's a full length movie of Merrily! More so, it shows that a director really knows the work he's basing it on. If someone gets sick during filming or something... as an audience member, how do you lose anything? You just don't see the movie.

What's not to love here?

Mr. Wormwood said: "I'm really shocked by the reaction to this. For those who think they should just use makeup, etc to age the actors - isn't that precisely a major problem the original show had? I don't think it had to do with how they looked, it was that they couldn't convincingly play 40 year olds. And for those who say "but what if someone dies?" or "what if they aren't big names?"... so what? Could any of those things happen in 20 years? Of course and they cross that bridge if it does. But why not take the chance because they could end up with something really fascinating."

The major problems the show has are:

1. Frank is never demonstrated to be worthy of his friends' long, long commitment to him in spite of major personal flaws.

2. The whole issue that a person who sells out in art must be a selfish, awful person in their personal life, while a person who sticks to their principals as an artist must be a good, loving person in their personal life is an embarrassingly childish view of life and the arts.

3. Frank's friends seemed like pathetic, desperately needy types due to their willingness to stick by such a selfish, unkind person so long.

4. Frank is never given a strong motivation to suddenly switch from committed idealist to sell out (and unfortunately, as Sondheim was one who never sold out and was with this very show writing his most unpopular score in the Prince/Sondheim cycle yet, the story came across as self-righteous and self-congratulatory: "I'm good and wonderful and earnest, not a horrible person like those popular, sell-outs." I'm sure this was not intentional. But it come across nonetheless.)

5. Because the show runs backwards, the script has to constantly fill us in on what "already happened" (i.e. the the scene after the present one) so we understand what the tensions are, and between that and the song spots, there is no room for real character development, and thus everybody comes off as stick figures.

6. On a production level, unless the show is done without costumes, there is nearly zero time for the lead actors to get offstage, changed, and back on, and this plus a giant production number near the end of the first act followed by a rousing song for the three needs at the end of the first act means that the show absolutely kills the performers doing it.

***

Old age makeup had zero do to with the show's problems.

For all the problems with the book, the score is melodic, moving, funny and inspiring. It's frustratingly married to an unworkable book.

Updated On: 8/30/19 at 12:29 PM

ljay889 said: "All I can say is WTF?
This before an adaption of Company, Follies, and Sunday is downright shocking. And who wants to wait 20 years to see this?"

It sounds like something a theater nerd would write for The Onion. I was sure it was a joke when I was reading the article.

I legitimately thought this was an Onion article.
Well, I'll be 41 when this movie comes out. Guess I'll take my kids or something, I don't know.

I didn't say it had anything to do with old age makeup. That was the point I was making, that makeup wouldn't help fix it.

I don't disagree with your points, but I have also read somewhere (sorry, can't remember where) that the creative team felt like the young actors in the original production had a lot of difficulty playing characters approaching middle age for the part of the show that required them to. I think the movie can at least fix that aspect."

I apologize for misreading.

The original production was supposed to be set in Frank's mind at he's giving a graduation speech at his old high school, and Lonny Price (original Charley, after all) created a neat documentary on the show called The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened), with archival footage in which Sondheim and Prince say that they were unsure before the first staged reading if it could work with kids taking the roles, but that the actual effect was having kids play the roles kept the story from being too downbeat.

I suspect revising the show with the casting also cemented the one-dimensional nature of the characters, as they started thinking of the kids as a teenager's concept of adult behavior, not the real thing.

I can't really muster strong feelings about this one way or the other yet. Might feel differently in 20 years.

Has it been mentioned anywhere whether the film will be 'set in real time' as well, ie, is Frank and the gang's graduation meant to occur in 2019 within the plot of the film? I've read a few articles but haven't seen that specified one way or the other. If so, then I suppose this would be a very loose adaptation, intending to incorporate or at least implicitly reference real-life changes to the world as time goes on. While that approach would be a head-scratcher in some ways (the retro score, having to cut/rewrite a lot), that would at least be a reason for the 20-year filming schedule, other than the real-time aging.

(Edit: To clarify, I would imagine that any such hypothetical rewriting wouldn't be undertaken by Sondheim himself in such a scenario, all things considered )

Updated On: 8/31/19 at 02:48 AM

1 question to everyone here...has there been any word if Sondheim will write a new song for this movie?...composers always seem to add a new song for Oscar consideration...just curious...

MichelleCraig said: "So if this musical is produced like 99.9% of movie musicals, what are the chances we'll be able to hear the soundtrack recording nearly two decades before the movie is released? After all, the songs will be prerecorded...maybe a good number of them have been recorded already! It could be up for a Grammy Award 20 years before the movie is eligible for an Academy Award!

As to whether or not the rooftopscene will take place in 2019... I guess OUR TIME could be sung as the three characters see the passing of Trump's first Space Force ship shoot across the night sky!

Finally, this thread has the possibility of becoming the longest thread in the history of Broadway World!



"

Nowadays, we can't be sure that the songs will be pre-recorded, and I guess if they are, the prerecordings will only be done for immediately upcoming filming dates. Interesting that they are filming in the opposite order the scenes will appear. But of course, if they want the performers to really age, that's the only way to do it.