Stage Musical To Movie Translations — Page 2

Re: going back to 8 1/2

Yes, Marshall is no Fellini, as much as he tried with that particular movie. The changes from the original movie were what made NINE a worthwhile property to begin with. Nobody wants a Fellini wannabe with songs (which is what the movie became) so the stage show took the premise and directed it in a completely different direction.

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Pretty much every movie musical adaptation is complete garbage except for My Fair Lady. It's the only one where they trusted the material, made very few changes, and didn't try and make it into something that it wasn't.

Chicago was absolutely incredible. It was a perfect movie adaptation and the gold standard for musical to movie adaptations.

Updated On: 10/23/14 at 11:40 PM

"I encountered Yeston in the audience of a show around the time Nine was coming out. I asked him about the rumor the score was being butchered and he got slightly defensive."

That seems an appropriate response to an aggressive inquiry from a stranger.

"People seem to not like the Phantom of the opera Movie, but I'm not sure why."

For one, they oversexualized the title character. By taking your deformed villain and turning his crippling deformity into a mere rashy sunburn...thing just for the sake of making him more physically attractive to the tween girls who are seeing the movie, you completely miss the point of the ENTIRE story. Also, while his acting was decent, Gerard Butler's rock-styled singing was just not cut out for the role. If they really wanted him in the part, they should have just dubbed in someone else's voice.

Also, Emmy Rossum as Christine. I understand that they wanted a young, teenage girl for the role, but Rossum was just too young at the time; her voice was not strong enough, and her acting back then was sub-par at best. Had they made the movie with her a good five or ten years later, she could have done the part justice, but at the time she just wasn't right for the role. (Christine is supposed to be an opera singer, of which Rossum did not have the pipes to convince me with yet.)

The rest of the cast was decent, so I'll continue on to the other topic: Oversexualizing. Yes, the stage show has sensual themes throughout the story, but they are very subtle, and they are intertwined with a slightly gothic feel and an air of mystery surrounding the Phantom. However, the movie throws these other components completely out the window and bulks up on the sexiness, which is a HUGE thing that makes many fans of the musical groan and roll their eyes. The lair itself was very disappointing, as I felt like I was looking at some sort of sex chamber designed for a porno Dracula movie. (The place was too lit up. They should have designed it closer to the way it looks onstage.) On a random note, showing and explaining how the Phantom does his tricks (i.e. Carlotta's croaking) was a bad idea, because part of the fun of Phantom of the Opera is watching the Phantom screw around with everyone and wondering how he manages to pull off such bizarre acts of magic. Also, the sword fight was just STUPID and not needed at all.

The cinematography was gorgeous, and there were a few things that worked, but overall the movie was just not up to par with what many fans were expecting. I could argue that the 2004 Phantom film is one of the absolute worst musical-to-movie adaptations out there; the musical would do well to have a movie remake in the next ten to twenty years.

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Lil Abner was one of the better ones

The Producers went downhill with the deletion of King Of Broadway. A more boneheaded decision was never made.

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Gypsy has never fared that well, either. The 60's version made Herbie and Uncle Jocko the same person, added unnecessary narration, and films the big numbers with zero imagination. Act 2 gets a little better, but still feels incredibly stiff.

The Milder version at least kept act 1 tighter, but it suffers from a similar lack of imagination. And that's saying nothing of Midler's manic performance that would have been too over the top even in the last row of Radio City Music Hall.

I hope whoever ends up directing this Streisand version at least has a little imagination with the musical numbers or else they'll feel just as stagey as the previous versions.

Another vanity project for Babs?

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Burton's SWEENEY TODD is not as bad as some of the others mentioned in this thread, but it felt like Burton had no respect for musical theatre as an art form and did everything he could to underplay the fact that this was a movie musical: he had the leads under-sing (and even under-play) their roles, the musical numbers were dispatched with very little affection for the score, etc. It was just a very unsatisfying film for me.

I had looked forward to LES MIZ for all of 2012 and enjoyed the film when I first saw it (went to an early screening even), but in the almost two years since I first saw it, I've had no desire to watch it ever again. Not even clips of it on YouTube. I'm not sure why that is, but mostly I think the film just reveals the flaws of the material: the musical condenses the story to such an extent that it's difficult to connect with any of the characters on anything but a very superficial level. Cutting it down even further by about 30 minutes makes the action even more whiplash-inducing. The stage version has the benefit of the frisson and electricity of a live performance. The film's version of the key moments just feels oddly airless. I re-read parts of the novel ("The Descent", and "The Noxious Poor" are some of my favorite pieces of writing anywhere) again and again, and am moved every time. But the film is just kind of there.

Updated On: 10/25/14 at 04:32 PM

I think the major problem with the film version of The Producers was the fact that it was mounted by the entire original Broadway creative team, and most of its original cast. They might have as well pro filmed the Broadway production with the original cast for a special on PBS by Great Performances.

"I think the major problem with the film version of The Producers was the fact that it was mounted by the entire original Broadway creative team, and most of its original cast."

I think the biggest problem was that it was a "Mel Brooks movie" without any sense that he had put his hand in at all once the script was delivered. It was clear that Stroman was a first time movie director and really needed some guidance to truly open it up and avoid the feel of an archival taping of the stage show.

For example look at the "Springtime for Hitler" sequence. In the original film Mel gave us that great overhead shot to show us the chorus marching in the spinning swastika formation. Obviously when moving the movie to the stage that wasn't possible so Stroman and her team used the overhead mirror to replicate that shot. In the film of the musical she did both the overhead camera shot and the mirror shot, which just ended up being overkill. It only needed one or the other. It was small things like that that could have been advised against and avoided to give the movie more of a cinematic feel.