play vs movie

[magerificmags]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 8:24pm

there has been a couple of plays made into movies such as
hairspray
Mammia mia!
Phantom of the opera

what do you think was better the play or the movie?

[rjjn]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 8:25pm

Hairspray - movie
Mamma Mia! - play
Phantom of the Opera - play

[ifuweregay93]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 8:26pm

A COUPLE???

[magerificmags]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 8:34pm

did i miss some

[ifuweregay93]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 8:47pm

Just a few.

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 8:48pm

You missed about a hundred or so.

[gypsy4]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 8:53pm

I should probly add to the list.

ANNIE
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF
THE SOUND OF MUSIC
WEST SIDE STORY
GUYS AND DOLLS
THE MUSIC MAN
EVITA
THE FANTASTICKS
GYPSY
CAROUSEL
CABARET
CHICAGO
DREAMGIRLS
SWEENEY TODD

FEEL FREE TO ADD ANYMORE.





Updated On: 1/13/09 at 08:53 PM

[magerificmags]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 9:33pm

annie-ew
Fiddler on the roof-ew
The Sound Of Music-movie
West Side Story- play
Guy And Dolls-never saw either
The Music Man-never saw eithe
Evita-play
Sweeny todd-movie
THE FANTASTICKS-never saw either
GYPSY -play
CAROUSEL -never saw either
CABARET -Never saw eiter
CHICAGO -Movie

i didnt know all these were made into movies billy elliot was made into a movie if you already didnt know th
DREAMGIRLS
SWEENEY TODD

[magerificmags]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 9:36pm

which ones did i miss bobbybuddy

[shpants]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 9:40pm

Billy Elliot is a movie???

[CSonBroadway]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 9:43pm

RENT- musical

not play.

[magerificmags]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 9:54pm

yes shpants it orignally a movie and when billy joel went to see it they had to drag him out of the movie theater and he went up to the writters of the movie and said if you ever want to make it a musical let me know cause i want to get involved with it.


i ment a show in general csonbroadway

[shpants]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 9:57pm

Oh boy

I guess my sarcasm wasn't as blatant as I had hoped.

[TonyVincent]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 10:01pm

magerificmags has to be a troll baiting us, and (s)he's being pretty clever, at that. Billy Joel rofl

[Mamie]

Posted: 1/13/09 at 10:05pm

Everyone knows Billy Joel's a song-writing sock puppet. It gets confusing...

[NoDecencyLeft]

Posted: 1/14/09 at 12:46am

Generally speaking, the best movie musicals are those that were concieved as movie musicals and not as stage musicals then bastardized into movie format (just like the best stage musicals generally don't come from the movies). The best movie musical based on a stage musical - that's CABARET (Fosse, 1972) - has an almost entirely different script.

There is one major exception, imo anyway: THE SOUND OF MUSIC, which is much more profound and moving in a cinematic format than it could ever be onstage.

[Gypsy9]

Posted: 1/14/09 at 5:27am

I must be the only person on the planet who hasn't seen the movie of THE SOUND OF MUSIC. There is a reason: although I wasn't expecting much, I loved the original Broadway production of THE SOUND OF MUSIC so much that I never had any desire to see the movie. The Broadway musical worked so well as theatre, with a great cast: Mary Martin, Theodore Bikel, Kurt Kazner, Marianne Marlowe, and the big voiced Patricia Neway. The OBCR is excellent, with the exception of the too sugary songs, "Doe
a Deer" and "My Favorite Things". Also I should add that I am not a fan of Julie Andrews, except in the Broadway production of MY FAIR LADY.

In general, I do not especially like movies of Broadway musicals, except for CABARET whose Broadway production I did not see. The Hollywood movie of GYPSY starring Rosalind Russell is so bad that I won't let it be shown in my house. However, film musicals that are pretty good include ON THE TOWN, THE BANDWAGON, CAROUSEL, and THE MUSIC MAN. Like Arthur Laurents, I did not like the film of WEST SIDE STORY, especially the actor who played Tony.

The original film musical SINGING IN THE RAIN, with a score that includes some older songs, is brilliant. I have not seen most of the recent film adaptations of Broadway musicals so I can't comment on them, except for PHANTOM of the OPERA. Having seen the film, I have no desire to see the Broadway musical.

Updated On: 1/14/09 at 05:27 AM

[magerificmags]

Posted: 1/14/09 at 5:00pm

uhhh whats troll baiting?

[shpants]

Posted: 1/14/09 at 6:23pm

HAHAHAHA

that is all.

[dayao]

Posted: 1/15/09 at 2:58am

CALL ME MADAM: movie
CAROUSEL: mixed - the original play is much better written than the adapted movie script but the orchestrations and vocals in the 1956 film remain to this day the greatest performance ever of the score and will likely never be surpassed.
BELLS ARE RINGING: movie
A CHORUS LINE: play
OLIVER!: movie
THE LITTLE MERMAID: movie
BYE BYE BIRDIE – the play is better written but the movie is fun on its own terms.
KISS ME KATE: play & movie are a dead heat. The movie is faster paced and the superb orchestrations blow away any stage production but otherwise the stage version is about as perfect as it gets for a musical.
CAMELOT: play
HIGH SOCIETY: movie
DAMN YANKEES: play
PAJAMA GAME: movie
ANNIE: play
FINIAN’S RAINBOW: they are about equal but the movie has those gorgeous Ray Heindorf orchestrations
LI’L ABNER: movie
KISMET: the play is better but the movie is very faithful to the original and again those lush Andre Previn orchestrations in the film have to be heard to be believed.
CAN-CAN: despite the ridiculous miscasting and truncated score, the film has a much better script and the songs are performed beautifully.
THE KING AND I: the movie is eons better than the stage play.
FLOWER DRUM SONG: the 1957 original play has a rather clumsy book which was adapted into an excellent screenplay, but both the 1957 original play and the 1961 movie are by a country mile better than the hideous monstrosity that has recently been passed off on stage as “Flower Drum Song”.
SWEET CHARITY: play
MAN OF LA MANCHA: play
THE MUSIC MAN: movie
WHITE CHRISTMAS: movie, but the stage version, although missing much of the film’s magic, is wonderful in its own way
GODSPELL: the stage version works much better but the 1973 film features the best recording ever of the score.
ON THE TOWN: play
MAME: play, but the stage musical pales by comparison to the 1958 non musical film of the original 1956 play, AUNTIE MAME
MARY POPPINS: movie
HAIR: play
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: movie
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF: play
MY FAIR LADY: the play is preferred unless Cameron Mackintosh has anything to do with it but the 1964 film is a very faithful adaptation and features Rex Harrison & Stanley Holloway’s most polished performances as Higgins & Dolittle plus even though she is not a soprano and had to be mostly dubbed by Marni Nixon in the songs (who is arguably every bit as good a singer as Julie Andrews), Audrey Hepburn on her worst day was a better actress than Julie Andrews was on her best day in 1964 and is still the definitive acting Eliza.
THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLE: the movie by a mile
THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN: movie
WEST SIDE STORY: The original 1956 stage production with Carol Lawrence, the fabulous Chita Rivera and Larry Kert as the definitive Tony is preferred but despite the miscasting of Richard Beymer as Tony in the 1961 film, the recent casting of equally pretty boy Matt Cavanaugh proves we haven’t progressed much further in subsequent stage versions and Jimmy Bryant (who dubbed Beymer in the film) is a much better singer than Cavanaugh or anyone except perhaps Kert in the role. The much larger orchestra and Johnny Green’s impeccable conducting make the 1961 soundtrack still the best recording ever of WEST SIDE STORY. There is a good reason why Arthur Laurents hates the film: the brilliant concise screenplay by Ernest Lehman is leaps and bounds superior to Laurents’ stage play, which I think is the weakest thing about the stage production. Lehman’s juxtaposition of “America” & “Officer Krupke” and the jettison of the silly “Somewhere” ballet are in particular, strokes of genius that increase the tension and propulsion of the story enormously. The revisions Laurents made to the current revival mask rather than fix what is broken with his play, in my humble opinion.

Updated On: 1/15/09 at 02:58 AM

[Gypsy9]

Posted: 1/15/09 at 8:08am

Dayao: I am curious: Did you see all of the stage productions that you compare with the movie versions, beginning with 1945's CAROUSEL, or are you just referring to the OBCR's? If indeed you got to see the OBC of Carousel, congratulations.

I can't believe a few of your choices. For me, the stage production of LI'L ABNER surpasses the movie with the former's terrific orchestrations and plentiful dance numbers(Yes, I know that Michael Kidd choreographed both). Tammy Grimes as THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN surpasses Debby Reynolds, although the second act droops. The stage version of FLOWER DRUM SONG opened in 1958, not 1957 and was so much better than the limp movie. The stage version of OLIVER with its unique, for its time, unit set by England's Sean Kenny and its tighter book is superior to the overblown movie version. And how could you not like the "Somewhere" Ballet in WEST SIDE STORY's stage version? I agree with most of your other choices, including your choosing the movie AUNTIE MAME with Rosalind Russell over the stage musical, although the latter is great fun.

Updated On: 1/15/09 at 08:08 AM

[JenNYferTheatrical]

Posted: 1/15/09 at 10:50am

Broadway is totally the way to go for those three! I thought the movie version of Hairspray was pretty good but it still was not as good as broadway. Nothing can compare to live theater!!!

[dayao]

Posted: 1/15/09 at 5:37pm

Gypsy9:

I was only 10 when CAROUSEL premiered on Broadway but the stage production I saw was the 1965 Lincoln Center 20th Anniversary Revival with the original Billy Bigelow, John Raitt, Eileen Christy as Julie, Susan Watson as Carrie, Katherine Hilgenberg as Nettie & Jerry Orbach as Jigger. It was a superb production and RCA released a cast album LP from it and it convinced me that Oscar Hammerstein’s original book is far superior to the 1956 screenplay which introduced an unnecessary and undermining (to the story) flashback technique. But despite my disappointment with the film itself, I still believe that, separated from the film, the soundtrack recording is far and away the finest recording of CAROUSEL ever. I have listened to all subsequent recordings of revivals & such and the 1956 soundtrack still blows them all away in its brilliance.

I did attend the original 1949 Broadway production of SOUTH PACIFIC and it was an evening of pure musical magic that is impossible to describe in words. Let’s just say you had to be there. I saw the recent 2008 revival and although good it pales by comparison to the original.

I think performers like Tammy Grimes are an acquired taste and I found her truly awful as Molly on stage, although Harve Presnell as Johnny Brown was as wonderful on stage as he was in the film. Also I found the stage score to be bloated with too many songs that blocked the flow of the story (Chick-A-Pen, Bon Jour, The Denver Police, etc). Debbie Reynolds to me was a much better Molly and the film’s screenplay fixed a lot of the stage version’s clog. I would love to see THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN revived on Broadway with Tammy Blanchard, who I think would make a fabulous Molly. I heard James Anest sing the Soliloquy from “Molly Brown” fantastically in a concert a while back and it convinced me that the handsome 6’4” Anest (if he could be lured away from the operatic stage) would make a great Johnny Brown opposite Blanchard. That is a revival that I would definitely come to New York to see.

FLOWER DRUM SONG just shows how people react to things differently and neither is right or wrong: I found the stage production of FLOWER DRUM SONG (which you are right was a year later) to be choppy and boring and the orchestrations the worst I have ever heard in a Broadway musical. In the film Alfred Newman and Ken Darby brought the music to life and gave it a bigness it did not have on the stage and I felt that the screenplay fixed some of the things I did not like in the stage version.

I have never liked the “Somewhere Ballet” in the stage version of WEST SIDE STORY. I think it undermines the tension and flow of the story and such a beautiful song should be sung by Tony and Maria, in awareness of their impossible personal situation, as it is done brilliantly and poignantly in the film version, although I still think it is a crime that Larry Kert was not allowed to preserve his brilliant performance as Tony in the film.

In the case of L’il Abner, I agree that the stage version was fantastic and is probably overall better than the film. The same is true of OLIVER! My preference for the film versions of these musicals is more a personal one, especially in the case of OLIVER!. Johnny Green’s orchestration of the score is so magnificent it never fails to astound me every time I hear the film soundtrack.

Updated On: 1/15/09 at 05:37 PM

[magerificmags]

Posted: 1/15/09 at 10:45pm

your right jenNYferTheatrical but some times the movie has singers that are even better then the people on broadway
BYE BYE BIRDIE-Movie has more humor but the show has alot better singing

shows cant do some of the things that they can do on screen but its alot more fun to watch people on stage then on a screen

[Ajpuppypal]

Posted: 7/4/11 at 2:39pm

Phantom of the opera- play but i think the movie is good
Cabaret- Play, the movie is awful in my opinion(besides Liza of course)
Sweeney Todd-Movie
All Disney Productions- Movies