The movie version of Paint Your Wagon

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 12/31/06 at 2:21pm

People don't really talk about it too much on here. Anyone have any thoughts on it (what works, what doesn't, whether you like the differences between the stage version and the film, etc)?

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 12/31/06 at 2:26pm

Just watched The Simpsons episode where they spoof it yesterday...one of their finer musical spoofs.

It's pretty awful all around.

[best12bars]

Posted: 12/31/06 at 2:54pm

I haven't seen it in years, but I remember it being pretty stagnant. I was surprised mostly be Clint Eastwood full-on singing! (Not a bad voice, but not a great one. Better than I expected, though.)

And I was shocked by how different it was than the stage show. They changed a LOT. It's a curious, dull floppero of a flick... despite having the star power of Eastwood and Lee Marvin.

Posted: 12/31/06 at 3:09pm

I loved it as a kid and found the plot pretty amusing and the score pretty wonderful. It is entirely different than the stage version- They threw out the entire book and started from scratch.

It's certainly...unusual...to hear Lee Marvin & Clint Eastwood sing. It took naturalism to a whole new level.

[bob8rich]

Posted: 12/31/06 at 3:18pm

Overall I much prefer booth the book and the score of the stage show - though I really do love the Lerner/Previn song A Million Miles Away Beyond The Door from the movie. Another thing that makes the movie a little special is the presence of Jean Seberg. Her real life story has to be one of THE great tragedies (a story, of course, that itself became the subject of the flop Marvin Hamlisch musical JEAN SEBERG).

[jimnysf]

Posted: 12/31/06 at 3:26pm

I really do love the Lerner/Previn song A Million Miles Away Beyond The Door from the movie. Another thing that makes the movie a little special is the presence of Jean Seberg.

I agree. I love that song as well as the Finale exit music used in the Roadshow version. I've never seen the stage version but I did enjoy the film, even with Lee Marvin's "singing".

[Mamie]

Posted: 12/31/06 at 3:29pm

I admit it - this is one of my major guilty pleasures. I remember seeing the film downtown on a BIG screen when it first came out. I thought the setting was gorgeous. Lee Marvin's attempts to 'sing' were more of a low, growly talking but I always thought it worked for his character and songs he did. I wasn't impressed with Clint Eastwood - except for the fact that he looked pretty. Jean Seberg was gorgeous and feisty and you had no problem at all believing that both of those guys really loved her.

"A Million Miles Away" was definitely a hightlight, but the top for me was Harv Presnell's "They Call the Wind Maria". You had that gorgeous voice in the background of some breathtaking camera work. (At least in my humble opinion)

[allofmylife]

Posted: 12/31/06 at 4:20pm

I remember being soooooo underwhelmed by the film when it came out. They took a simple, fun, sad, meancholy, wonderful story and made it Klondike poo bars. And the singing? Please. If you go in for surgery, wouldn't you get upset if, just as they put you under, someone mentioned the man wheilding the scalpel is a plumber?

Lee Marvin as Ben is one of the truly aweful casting decisions of all times. And a man who has made a CAREER our of having a stone face as Partner? I spent the entire movie expecting Clint to whip out the magnum 357 ("well partner, do you feel lucky?").

Only Ray Walston, as he always, ALWAYS was, is wonderful.

Oh, and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

The only sane person seems to have been Fritz Loewe, who decided to stay at the chemin de fer tables in Monte Carlo and gamble while this ship sank.

Updated On: 12/31/06 at 04:20 PM

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 12/31/06 at 4:57pm

After the success of THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965) Hollywood set out to deliberately destroy the Broadway-to-Hollywood genre.

In no other way can you explain the awful film versions that came out between 1967 and 1974 that all helped nail the coffin shut on the genre. CAMELOT, PAINT YOUR WAGON, MAN OF LA MANCHA, HELLO DOLLY, MAME, SONG OF NORWAY all suffered from horrible mis-casting, overproduction, and bloated budgets. They all failed miserably at the box office and were critically lambasted.

The few decent adaptations (1776 for one) were tampered with (edited) and released with little promotion and tanked at the box office.

PAINT YOUR WAGON took a show that never fully worked on stage, discarded all the parts that DID work, completely rewrote the book and kept only half of the original score. The move is a bore, and it deserved to fail.

[jimnysf]

Posted: 12/31/06 at 10:39pm

They all failed miserably at the box office and were critically lambasted.

THAT IS SO NOT TRUE! "Hello, Dolly!" was the #6 grossing film of 1970, so it did not "fail" at the box office! It did not make it's money back at the time of it's initial release because it had a huge budget. It has since turned a profit.

Top grossing films
North America

Airport
M*A*S*H, starring Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould, Palme d'Or winner

Patton, starring George C. Scott
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Woodstock
Hello, Dolly!
Cactus Flower
Catch-22
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
The Reivers
1970

"I've lost everything! Luis, Marty, my baby with Chris, Chris himself, James. All I ever wanted was love." --Sheridan Crane "Passions" ------- "Housework is like bad sex. Every time I do it, I swear I'll never do it again til the next time company comes."--"Lulu" from "Can't Stop The Music" ----- "When the right doors didn't open for him, he went through the wrong ones" - "Sweet Bird of Youth" ------------ --------- "Passions" is uncancelled! See NBC.com for more info.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 12/31/06 at 11:08pm

jimny, look at the list you just quoted. The audiences for eight of the ten films would NEVER have gone to see "Hello Dolly". In an era when MASH and Bob and Carol and Woodstock were drawing huge crowds, Dolly was the only film for those without tie-dyed clothes or attitudes. I remember when the film came out and nobody I knew would be caught dead watching it. Simply put, all those musicals of that era came out at the nadir of Hollywood studio productions. And they tried to roadshow many of them in prestidge theatres, only to see small, independent films sell out while crickets chirped in the big houses.

And Hello Dolly was a steaming pile of poo as a film, anyway. Overblown, overproducer, over orchestrated and starring a woman twenty years too young for the role. NOW, Babs should play this role.

[dutch46mill2]

Posted: 1/1/07 at 1:14pm

Interesting that they are thinking of a movie the last I heard was in 2005 in Utah they were trying to redo Paint your Wagon before returning to Broadway.Check BWW article
https://www.broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=6047

[CastAlbumFan]

Posted: 1/1/07 at 3:12pm

I think what helped killed the movie-musical genre in the mid-70s were really, REALLY horrible movie versions of 70s rock musicals, namely JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, GODSPELL, and HAIR.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 1/1/07 at 3:16pm

Interestingly enough, I remember the raves, RAVES Hair got from critics like Siskel and Ebert. I still was the only one in the theatre when I saw the movie.