Your Gonna Love Me- Page 2

[Adam Chris]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 10:48am

If you have seen the movie CAMP you'll remember there are two scenes where YOU'RE GONNA LOVE ME is performed by a girl. Then if you watch Holiday's rendition it will blow you away. It really seems like two different songs. ( I know, I know, CAMP is about a bunch of kids at camp who are not professional actors and should NOT sound like an experienced performer. ) The contrast is amazing.

[WickedGeek28]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 10:50am

Needed to change the title, sorry.

[blueroses]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 11:20am

Joanna Chilcoat, the girl who sang AITY in Camp, has a great voice ( though of course it wasn't purposely suitable for that part).

Using Joanna was hilarious and very much intentional, though, because in the scene preceding, there are two black campers complaining about the lack of productions suitable for black actors (one of the little boys is dressed in shtetl-like garb and payes because he is in a production of Fiddler on the Roof! hee!) Cut to a scene of this little kid cast as CURTIS, of all people, being sung And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going by a white girl (with a voice more like Andrea McArdle than Jennifer Holliday). It was funny stuff.

[ggersten]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 11:35am

Lillias White's rendition of "And I Am Telling You" is also available on YouTube from the Concert version. I still love her rendition - she has the pain, the pride, the love, all of the emotions. BUT as good as it is, when you watch Holliday's version, you see just how amazing Holliday was in the role. Holliday sang somewhere from the gut, and even though she was 21 or 22 at the time, sang as if she had been through the situation before. It felt honest.

[sondwisenheimer]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 11:35am

What I was blown away by in seeing Jennifer Holiday perform this in its entirety for the first time in a long while was the staging that divided and built the song physically as it built musically and emotionally. Michael Bennett was truly a genius. I wish he were still around.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 11:44am

blueroses- That scene in CAMP gets me everytime. It makes me laugh at how the director reacts to their plea for more black shows. And how he says that they came be Eastern Jewish or something is hysterical.

[blueroses]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 11:54am

And in the beginning...when Jill doesn't remember Fritzi, and Fritzi tells her they were in a show together the previous summer.

The show? 'Night Mother! lol.

[WickedGeek28]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 12:05pm

Why are you laughing? 'Night Mother has a huge cast, it's easy to forget one person!

[allofmylife]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 12:09pm

I saw "Dreamgirls" in early 1982, just after it first opened and of course, there was so much buzz about Jennifer. When she sang "And I Am Telling You" and people realized she was going into THAT song, there was a palpable electric buzz in the theater. Breathing, which can become quite rythmic when 1200 people are in the same room, STOPPED. It was stunning. AtT the end, the hair was still standing up on my neck. My girlfriend turned to ma we filed out at intermission and said "What did you think?" And strangely enough, the one thought at that moment that flashed across my mind was "Ethel Mermen." It took me a good ten minutes to figure out that when I was a little kid I had been amazed by The Merm in Gypsy and this was the first time since then that someone hadsung as loud and as arrestingly as she had. Huh....

[blueroses]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 2:23pm

"Why are you laughing? 'Night Mother has a huge cast, it's easy to forget one person!"

No. 'Night Mother is a TWO-PERSON play. Hence the laughter.

[blueroses]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 2:41pm

Allofmylife--wow! You were so lucky to be there. I know how I felt just watching the eight minute Tony telecast. I can't even imagine it even came close to the magic you experienced in the theater.

[Theatreboy49]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 2:44pm

It is imo the best Tony Performance in theatre history and I swear if Hudson kills it in the movie Ill scream and leave the theatre.

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 2:50pm

I was there too, all (saw it several times...with a few different effies), and what I find most interesting is that NOONE does that scene like Jennifer. That said, she was not a great actress (I felt like she lacked some focus.) Lillias acted the part VERY well, and her "One Night Only" and "I Am Changing" were unparalleled, imo. The concert recording is not the best representation of her work in the show (80s revival) when I saw her play Effie 5 times. Her vocals, along with everyone elses, are very strained due to the rough time they had those weeks around 9/11.

..and yes, it was the most beautifully staged show I've ever seen, that scene in particular.

[Theatreboy49]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 3:06pm

tEY SHOUDL HAVE THE ORIGINAL CAST COME TOGETHER ONE NIGHT ONLY (NO PUN INTENDED) AND DO A CONCERT OF THE SHOW

[allofmylife]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 6:31pm

Blueroses, I wish you had seen it, too. We hada spare ticket (we had spare tickets for every show that week, SOMEONE - I'm not naming names - blew us off to go lay in the sun) and we gave it away at the door. Someone got the thrill of a lifetime. I don't remember if it was that show or one of the others but I got kisssed real well that week by some girl.

Anyway, what I was going to say is (and of course, as a member of the entertainment industry I preface this by saying it would be SOOOO WRONG) if you go to www.youtube.com and type in "Dreamgirls" there are four amazing sequences from the original show from early in the run. If memory serves, Clevant Derricks and Obba Babatunde singing "Stepping to the Bad Side", the Vogue photoshoot, J. Holliday doing "And I Am Telling You - actually from the Tonys, but WOW, the whole scene with dialogue is there and recently someone put up Loretta Devine singing "Ain't No Party." You may recognize her as short, chubby, crazy Marla from "Boston Public." Back then, she was thinner than Paris Hilton and what a delivery!

Enjoy. And whish you'd been there.....

[jaesdare]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 6:55pm

holy crap...one of my favorite shows ever, if Hudson screws it up I will pay her a visit personally and rip out her vocal chords.wow, i have some pent up anger- hahha, just kidding. i don't think Holliday will ever be onstage again, because unlike her understudy who did have vocal chords of steel (Margo gave a short lecture about Dreamgirls awhile back), Holliday didn't have vocal chords of steel- so she was ruined a little.
That woman is fabulous, pure raw energy- that isn't much evident in today's theatre performances(fake and "plasticy" performances). oooooo steppin to the bad side, whew those brothers can sing, damn. let's hope the movie does it justice, because that will probably be the only way most people are exposed to it.
okay I'm done, sorry for my rant.

[blueroses]

Posted: 6/23/06 at 11:37pm

Allofmylife, I saw all of those clips. They were great. I didn't watch Boston Public regularly, but Loretta Devine was my absolute favorite in Waiting to Exhale (*sighs* love that movie...Angela Bassett setting the car on fire, Gregory Hines, pre-crack ho Whitney). It was weird seeing her so skinny!

[allofmylife]

Posted: 6/24/06 at 3:29am

When she sang on Boston Public, I nearly plotzed. David E. Kelly, like him or hate him, has used so many great singers. Jennifer Holliday had a recurring role on Ally McBeal. She played a church soloist who sued her minister husband for having an affiar (or something like that) and she sang at the end of one episode.

The other thing that's interesting about that set of clips is that in 1982, whoever shot those must have used a pretty bulky videocamera. Even in the balcony, that had to be pretty gutsy to whip that puppy out and start filming.

BTW, did you find the Donna McKechnie "Music and the Mirror" clip on Youtube? It may be faded, but wow (and the sound is pristine). Now THAT brings back memories.

Updated On: 6/24/06 at 03:29 AM