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The new movie version of the 1986 Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical about fairy tales has lots of good things in it, ranging from old troupers like Meryl Streep, Tracey Ullman, and Johnny Depp, to current stars like Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick, and Chris Pine, to fine young performers playing Jack (of Beanstalk fame) and Little Red Riding Hood (who would make an ideal Lucy Van Pelt in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown).
The one missing item is of course catchy tunes. As with most Sondheim musicals, you won’t walk out humming the closing song. Or I did, but by the time I got to the lobby the Sondheim finale was mutating into the more memorable “Candy Man” from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and that’s what’s been stuck in my head ever since.
In a more tuneful alternate reality version of Broadway history, Leonard Bernstein would have followed up West Side Story by composing three or four more musicals, with Sondheim repeating as lyricist. But Bernstein got himself stuck thinking he had to top West Side Story, and that proved dauntingly hard to do. So the Bernstein-Sondheim composer-lyricist pairing never happened again.
Sondheim always wanted to compose his own music, and as Mark Twain sort of said about Wagner’s oeuvre, it’s better than it sounds. Sondheim is a hard-working artist who is an ornament of the upper reaches of American popular culture. It’s good to have a culture sophisticated enough to produce a Sondheim. It’s just unlucky that he lacks the gift of composing melodic hooks.
The story Sondheim has often told about how when he was 15 his friend’s dad taught him how to write a musical is delightful. Of course it help if your friend’s dad is Oscar Hammerstein II. To reach a Sondheim level of sophistication it usually takes more than one generation. From the Paris Review:
INTERVIEWER
When you were ten and your parents divorced, your mother moved to Pennsylvania and it was there at the age of eleven that you encountered Jimmy Hammerstein and were welcomed into the family of Oscar and Dorothy Hammerstein. I understand you’ve said that if Hammerstein had been a geologist, you would have become a geologist.
STEPHEN SONDHEIM
Yes. He was a surrogate father and a mentor to me up until his death. When I was fifteen, I wrote a show for George School, the Friends school I went to. It was called “By George” and was about the students and the faculty. I was convinced that Rodgers and Hammerstein couldn’t wait to produce it, so I gave it to Oscar and asked him to read it as if he didn’t know me. I went to bed dreaming of my name in lights on Broadway, and when I was summoned to his house the next day he asked, Do you really want me to treat this as if I didn’t know you?
Oh yes, I said, to which he replied, In that case, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever read. He saw me blanch and continued, I didn’t say it was untalented, but let’s look at it. He proceeded to discuss it as if it were a serious piece. He started right from the first stage direction; and I’ve often said, at the risk of hyperbole, that I probably learned more about writing songs that afternoon than I learned the rest of my life. He taught me how to structure a song, what a character was, what a scene was; he taught me how to tell a story, how not to tell a story, how to make stage directions practical.
Of course when you’re fifteen you’re a sponge. I soaked it all up and I still practice the principles he taught me that afternoon. From then on, until the day he died, I showed him everything I wrote, and eventually had the Oedipal thrill of being able to criticize his lyrics, which was a generous thing for him to let me do.
INTERVIEWER
I’ve read that one of the things you learned from him was the power of a single word.
SONDHEIM
Oscar dealt in very plain language. He often used simple rhymes like day and May, and a lot of identities like “Younger than springtime am I / Gayer than laughter am I.” If you look at “Oh, what a beautiful mornin’! / Oh, what a beautiful day!” it doesn’t seem like much on paper, but he understood what happens when music is applied to words—the words explode. They have their own rainbows, their own magic. But not on the printed page. Some lyrics read well because they’re conversational lyrics. Oscar’s do not read very well because they’re colloquial but not conversational. Without music, they sound simplistic and written. Yet it’s precisely the hypersimplicity of the language that gives them such force. If you listen to “What’s the Use of Wond’rin’ ” from Carousel, you’ll see what I mean.
INTERVIEWER
He also stressed the importance of creating character in songs.
SONDHEIM
Remember, he’d begun as a playwright before he became a songwriter. He believed that songs should be like one-act plays, that they should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They should set up a situation, have a development, and then a conclusion . . . exactly like a classically constructed play. Arthur Pinero said about playwriting: “Tell them what you’re going to do, then do it, then tell them you’ve done it.” If that’s what a play is, Oscar’s songs are little plays. He utilized that approach as early as Show Boat. That’s how he revolutionized musical theater—utilizing operetta principles and pasting them onto American musical comedy.
INTERVIEWER
That afternoon, as I recall, Hammerstein also outlined for you a curriculum and told you he wanted you to write four things. It sounds like a wonderful fairy tale. What were they?
SONDHEIM
First, he said, take a play that you like, that you think is good, and musicalize it. In musicalizing it, you’ll be forced to analyze it. Next, take a play that you think is good but flawed, that you think could be improved, and musicalize that, seeing if you can improve it. Then take a nonplay, a narrative someone else has written—it could be a novel, a short story—but not a play, not something that has been structured dramatically for the stage, and musicalize that. Then try an original. The first one I did was a play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly, Beggar on Horseback, which lends itself easily to musicalization because it’s essentially a long fantasy. We performed that at college when I was an undergraduate at Williams. I got permission from Kaufman to do it and we had three performances. It was a valuable experience, indeed. The second one, which I couldn’t get permission for, was a play by Maxwell Anderson called High Tor, which I liked but thought was sort of clumsy. Then I tried to adapt Mary Poppins. I didn’t finish that one because I couldn’t figure out how to take a series of disparate short stories, even though the same characters existed throughout, and make an evening, make an arc. After that I wrote an original musical about a guy who wanted to become an actor and became a producer. He had a sort of Sammy Glick streak in him—he was something of an opportunist. So I wrote my idea of a sophisticated, cynical musical. It was called “Climb High.” There was a motto on a flight of stone steps at Williams, “Climb high, climb far, your aim the sky, your goal the star.” I thought, Gee, that’s very Hammersteinish. I sent him the whole thing. The first act was ninety-nine pages long. Now, the entire script of South Pacific, which lasted almost three hours on the stage, was only ninety-two pages. Oscar sent my script back, circled the ninety-nine, and just wrote, Wow!
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American musical theater has become terminally pretentious, edgy, and gay. And the music, little that I have heard of it, sounds crappy. Musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein were worth listening to because the music was written by Richard Rodgers, one of America’s greatest composers, whose music stands by itself as very good music.
“American musical theater has become terminally pretentious, edgy, and gay.”
Were you expecting musicals to be filled with testosterone alpha male manliness similar to an Arnold Schwarzenegger film like Predator ?
I agree. Sondheim wrote wordsicals, not musicals.
Johnny Depp mostly plays weird eccentric characters and that is what he is known for the most. That is why his non weird eccentric work in films like “Blow”, “Public Enemies”, and “Donnie Brasco” are underrated.
I think some of Johnny Depp’s best work is when he plays real life people like Joe Pistone, John Dillinger, and George Jung.
I know it’s trite, Rodgers was better when he was writing with Hart.
One has to wonder just how much of the West Side Story Sondheim actually wrote. Everything after that was crap.
“American musical theater has become terminally pretentious, edgy, and gay.”
I agree. It’s completely lost the manliness it had in the days of Cole Porter.
And yet, even after High School Musical, after the success of Glee, after Chicago winning the Best Picture Oscar (first for a musical in 35 years), after acknowledging the fact that Bollywood scores big money on musicals, 21st century Hollywood still can’t really admit the public has a pent-up demand for big screen musicals. To do would mean the industry would have to re-tool, that real singing and real dancing would have to be part of a would-be actor’s basic tool belt, that more money would have to go into sound engineering than CGI.
Musical theater was always gay. It was an acceptable place for gays to indulge their love of pageantry; but they were forced to do so with a wink. Now they’re just unashamedly, blatantly gaying it up with impunity.
Please, no bricks thrown my way. It's not my colored ass fault.
It’s probably true that most of Sondheim’s tunes are not catchy, but It’s the Little Things You Do Together has both a catchy tune and brilliant lyrics.
And so forth.
That song is hilarious.
Were you expecting musicals to be filled with testosterone alpha male manliness similar to an Arnold Schwarzenegger film like Predator ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXMKjNu9ZqMReplies: @syonredux
For alpha male manliness in a musical, try Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Or just about anything featuring Gene Kelly.
I saw a snippet of that. I would call it country-rapey.
Thumbs up for Gene Kelly, but Astaire was true alpha dog. At least as it was once understood.Replies: @syonredux, @syonredux
I used to think I didn’t get Sondheim because of my own tin ear. But really, how many great songs has the guy written? Besides “Send in the Clowns”, nothing has made it into the Songbook. Broadway nerds love him, but he has no crossover appeal. Granted, the public’s taste for sophisticated pop songs has surely waned since WWII, but he is no match for Porter, Arlen, et al. He’s an “eat your vegetables” type of composer.
My ex loved Sondheim. She had a cd of one of his musicals that didn’t do well, at least at first: Assassins. She played it a lot when I was driving on long car trips and it cracked me up. I think it was to a degree supposed to be funny in part but I think it was also somewhat unintentionally funny.
There were songs for Booth, Czolgosz, Zangara, Charley Guiteau, Squeaky Frome, Hinckley.
Apparently there’s a reveival in London. Now I can’t get some of the tunes out of my head:
God’s my employer
And now he’s my lawyer
I’m Charley Guiteau
or
Czolgosz
Working man
Born in the middle
of Michigan
I have to admit that I am not a big fan but these songs just sort of dig into your head after a while.
There was also a joke David johansen/Buster Poindexter would tell about a part his agent was telling him about.
“You’ll love it, the lyrics are by Sondheim?”
“Steven Sondheim?”
“No, his brother Maury, but he’s better, more melodic.”
The bit would go on in this vein: “The book is by Mamet.”
“David Mamet?”
“No, I think it’s with 2 Ms; Fosse is the choreographer”
“Bob Fosse?”
“No, that’s not it.”
Finally the agent goes: “And you won’t believe your co-star. Goulet!”
“Robert Goulet?”
“Yeah.”
That is a great sentence. Like Hemingway's six-word story about the baby shoes, what happened to the rest of that relationship pretty much writes itself.Replies: @Hhsiii
I love this one.
Melody was dying generally around that time anyway. Nothing comes close to the output of the 1940s.
It’s as if modern composers think melodiousness are Lame or something.
Like love songs, melodiousness is so old school.
Steve, these are perceptive insights into cultural matters. Your alternate history of the B’way musical leaves me a bit jealous of the theatregoers on that parallel world.
Of Sondheim, I’ve long had an impatient urge to dismiss him as overrated, but I can’t help giving him his due as an artist of great ability–which he surely is. He has shown that he can indeed write tuneful songs, but there’s just something unsatisfying about even his best songs, almost as if he’s purposely keeping something from the listener. “Pretty Women” from Sweeny Todd is a lovely song that could have become a standard for solo artists, with a tweak here or there; but I feel as though Sondheim subordinates his songs so much to the greater work that they can seldom stand alone (except as part of a specialized revue of his work).
Sondheim’s super gifted and smart but he’s often struck me as more interesting as an intellectual-about-musical-theater than as a creator of musical theater.
Wow, so that’s how you spent New Year’s earlier part of week, watching that one. Doesn’t exactly sound Oscar worthy so maybe they dumped it into January wasteland for a reason. I thought Anthony Newley wrote “Candy Man” for Willy Wonka?
On a lighter note: US Women’s Soccer star out of Diamond Bar CA Alex Morgan got hitched in Santa Barbara on New Year’s Eve to an MLS player.
All the best.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/how-mario-cuomo-won-the-long-game-and-how-he-lost/384169/
It's as if modern composers think melodiousness are Lame or something.Replies: @Kylie
“It’s as if modern composers think melodiousness are Lame or something.”
Like love songs, melodiousness is so old school.
“Seamus
““American musical theater has become terminally pretentious, edgy, and gay.””
I agree. It’s completely lost the manliness it had in the days of Cole Porter.”
Good comeback. Sure, Broadway has always been gay, or at least gayish. But they used to make musicals that a normal man could at least enjoy. Now they seem to go out of their way to “break boundaries” as pretentious art-douches like to say – to flaunt the marginal, the queer, the other, the degenerate.
Toxic as family entertainment. But, that’s par these days. It’s all anti-family.
Please, no bricks thrown my way. It’s not my colored ass fault.
Don’t know if alpha is the exact right word for Seven Brides…
I saw a snippet of that. I would call it country-rapey.
Thumbs up for Gene Kelly, but Astaire was true alpha dog. At least as it was once understood.
Just saw this and I agree. I remember thinking the lyrics were witty, but I can’t recall any one stand out song.
As someone who did Into the Woods in high school, I can tell you:
Sondheim sucks. Oh lordy, does he suck. Long, boring, bad endings, bad songs, over-complicated plots, bad characters, etc. Being in his shows are torture.
His musicals are designed to appeal to the gay-left intellectual set which keeps musicals alive on Broadway; but if you’re not in the mood for such propaganda, it’s sickening. So he’s appealing, basically, to the 1%.
Musicals used to be made for everyone, including straight men; On the Town, Chicago, My Fair Lady, South Pacific, High Society. A straight non-lefty man could sit down with his wife and watch a musical and see things that were entertaining and interesting and funny and didn’t insult him and could walk out humming the tune.
Heck, most Hollywood movies made for the masses once had spots where someone, front and center, would sing at least one song. Bob Hope, whose voice is severely underrated today (much as his comedy was until Woody Allen saved his legacy), made it a point to sing in most of his films. One of the songs he sang , “Buttons and Bows,” (in The Paleface) won the Academy Award for Best Song. He also made the Christmas song “Silver Bells” into a hit when he sang it in The Lemon Drop Kid. Even Casablanca had songs in it—full songs, and not just La Marsielle; go back and watch if you don’t believe me.
Since, however, television became a universal American right, musicals and plays were abandoned by the public at large, leaving them to gays and lefties seeking propaganda tools. Then Hollywood randomly attempts to put one of these gay-left musicals on the screen, and are surprised when they under-perform. Well, when straight men and their wives aren’t used to seeing musicals but do know that they are gay-left propaganda tools, what do you expect? That the audience will just magically enjoy having their way of life insulted for 3 hours in song by a bunch of poofers?
Yes Musicals are pretentious and gay, but that plays very well to middle aged women who save up for a lifetime to visit NYC and catch a show. Broadway makes a lot of money, and the money supports the new Sondheims and stuff like “Wicked” and so on … derivative but big gay spectacles that said middle aged women love.
However I wrote a while back that this whole ecosystem depends on said middle aged women spending money there in NYC — the extras support the whole actor / director / producer people, the craft unions, the off Broadway experimental plays (taking advantage of downtime of said actors, directors, craft unions etc) and so on.
What happens when NYC goes the full de Blasio? When every day is a Dog Day Afternoon?
My guess is that everyone moves to Vegas, baby!
And Las Vegas not NYC slowly becomes the cultural capital of the US. Already you’re seeing Elton John and Britney Spears stay in residence at a casino for a year, doing shows, because its cheaper and more lucrative than touring. Easier too. I don’t think the move to Vegas will happen overnight, but yeah I do think it will happen, and likely make musicals a bit less pretentious and edgy, less gay, more appealing to the boyfriends/husbands of said women. It will be interesting to see if publishing, and TV/movies also move to Vegas.
Vegas is a very different sort of town, ruled by cars, not bounded by water, mega casinos run by mega corporations not tolerant of glorious diversity that ruins tourism, to put it mildly. Yet built on cheap immigrant labor.
Cole Porter was never pretentious nor edgy and wrote the Yale Fight song.
He was gay.
“As with most Sondheim musicals, you won’t walk out humming the closing song.”
Yea, but the exception to that rule is ‘Send in the Clowns’, and it’s arguably one of the most memorable musical numbers of all time.
Interesting how this site is now mentioning Jewish culture creators outside of the context of some hypothesized porn impressario responsible for degrading Christian culture. Rogers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Sondheim, Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg, a vast number of tin pan alley guys, Leiber and Stoller in the early days of rock and roll — there is a major major Jewish role throughout the golden age of the great American songbook. It’s almost like Jews are another American ethnic group made up of individuals who reflect the health or lack of it in the wider culture around them, rather than all-powerful representatives of an evil parasitic conspiracy to pollute the precious bodily fluids of their Christian hosts!
I’d pay cash money for the guys who did Conan the Barbarian: The Musical
and Predator: The Musical to do a full-length show based on Arnold’s best movies.
There were songs for Booth, Czolgosz, Zangara, Charley Guiteau, Squeaky Frome, Hinckley.
Apparently there's a reveival in London. Now I can't get some of the tunes out of my head:
God's my employer
And now he's my lawyer
I'm Charley Guiteau
or
Czolgosz
Working man
Born in the middle
of Michigan
I have to admit that I am not a big fan but these songs just sort of dig into your head after a while.
There was also a joke David johansen/Buster Poindexter would tell about a part his agent was telling him about.
"You'll love it, the lyrics are by Sondheim?"
"Steven Sondheim?"
"No, his brother Maury, but he's better, more melodic."
The bit would go on in this vein: "The book is by Mamet."
"David Mamet?"
"No, I think it's with 2 Ms; Fosse is the choreographer"
"Bob Fosse?"
"No, that's not it."
Finally the agent goes: "And you won't believe your co-star. Goulet!"
"Robert Goulet?"
"Yeah."Replies: @HA
“My ex loved Sondheim.”
That is a great sentence. Like Hemingway’s six-word story about the baby shoes, what happened to the rest of that relationship pretty much writes itself.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2894556/The-horrific-moment-group-six-women-kicks-punches-shaves-head-teen-girl-terrifying-Christmas-Eve-attack-BRAG-online.html
When will someone use the Occam’s Fist and say that the real racial problem is about blacks being stronger and more aggressive than other races?
But never mind. And forget about what happened in Ferguson.
The entire nation will go through another cuckold orgy of watching the superbowl where black thugs dominate the field and are worshiped by white boy wussies and white girl pussies.
“Now they’re just unashamedly, blatantly gaying it up with impunity”
Sentences like this are why Steve has the best commenters in the blogosphere
I heard a clip from a modern musical recently and was reminded that musicals are one more bankrupt art form, aren’t they all? Maybe they all sound the same because wordsicalist Sondheim wrote them all.
Rock and Jazz have some creativity left in their death rattles. Rap was the new art form a generation ago but quickly died. Painting, sculpture, literature, fuggedaboutit.
Sports may be the last form of self expression with any breath left. Ah the turn in fresh snow!
“Yes Musicals are pretentious and gay, but that plays very well to middle aged women who save up for a lifetime to visit NYC and catch a show.”
Yes the man hating middle aged women who think gays are cute. HRC is counting on them.
H/T
http://www.isteve.com/np-abort.htm
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/pre-emptive-executions/
Unrequited love?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395585/abortion-distortion-mona-charen
“Yes Musicals are pretentious and gay, but that plays very well to middle aged women who save up for a lifetime to visit NYC and catch a show. Broadway makes a lot of money, and the money supports the new Sondheims and stuff like “Wicked” and so on … derivative but big gay spectacles that said middle aged women love.
However I wrote a while back that this whole ecosystem depends on said middle aged women spending money there in NYC — the extras support the whole actor / director / producer people, the craft unions, the off Broadway experimental plays (taking advantage of downtime of said actors, directors, craft unions etc) and so on.
What happens when NYC goes the full de Blasio? When every day is a Dog Day Afternoon?
My guess is that everyone moves to Vegas, baby!
And Las Vegas not NYC slowly becomes the cultural capital of the US. Already you’re seeing Elton John and Britney Spears stay in residence at a casino for a year, doing shows, because its cheaper and more lucrative than touring. Easier too. I don’t think the move to Vegas will happen overnight, but yeah I do think it will happen, and likely make musicals a bit less pretentious and edgy, less gay, more appealing to the boyfriends/husbands of said women. It will be interesting to see if publishing, and TV/movies also move to Vegas.
Vegas is a very different sort of town, ruled by cars, not bounded by water, mega casinos run by mega corporations not tolerant of glorious diversity that ruins tourism, to put it mildly. Yet built on cheap immigrant labor.”
Las Vegas is the Orlando of the Western United States. It is a service industry town.
I agree with what has been said here about Sondheim’s music not being appealing to normal people. He only wrote the lyrics for West Side Story. Leonard Bernstein wrote all the music, which is why it is so much better than any of Sondheim’s later shows, for which Sondheim wrote the music as well as the lyrics.
However, it is not true that “Clowns” is the only catchy Sondheim tune. For A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, he also wrote “Comedy Tonight,” which is now considered a standard too. When the show was trying out in Washington before its Broadway premiere, Jerome Robbins told Sondheim that the show needed a better opening number. Sondheim went back to his hotel room and wrote “Comedy” in an evening, just to prove that he could write a conventionally catchy Broadway tune if he really wanted to. The song immediately went into the show and is the only song of enduring worth from it.
For the rest of his career, Sondheim reverted to writing the kind of songs he and his effete followers favor. If he had ever written an entire show containing songs like “Comedy,” which he certainly could have done, he could have produced something worthwhile. But he preferred to express his contempt for the average middle class, middlebrow theatergoer by writing songs that he knew they wouldn’t like.
If you want to see a real Broadway show, go to the current Broadway revival of On The Town. All the music is by Bernstein, who despite being (like Sondheim) a highbrow by nature was willing to write entire musicals full of crowd-pleasing tunes. New York New York, it’s a helluva town!
Hollywood is making lots of successful musicals. They’re just all animated.
Maybe the Mouse has siphoned off all the great musical talent?Replies: @smurfette
My favorite musical of all time is “Jersey Boys”.
I saw a snippet of that. I would call it country-rapey.
Thumbs up for Gene Kelly, but Astaire was true alpha dog. At least as it was once understood.Replies: @syonredux, @syonredux
And how exactly does that diminish its Alpha status?
And here Sondheim sums up the nature of his appeal. Hammerstein wrote lyrics that function superbly within the reality of the performance but that wilt under literary analysis.Hence, the lack of intellectual appeal. No one in a Lit department wants to sit down and analyze “Oh, what a beautiful mornin’! / Oh, what a beautiful day!” It’s meant to be experienced, not read.
Sondheim, though, is different.You can sit down and find tertiary layers of meaning in the words themselves. Indeed, Sondheim’s lyrics (unlike Hammerstein’s) almost seem to function better when they are seen on the page as opposed to being heard in performance.
For a highbrow comparison, one might note the example of Wagner, whose librettos are usually seen as great literary works in their own right….which is not something that can be said for a lot of great operatic librettos
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jan/08/in-ferguson/?insrc=hpss
“The St. Louis city limits encompass a small area and Ferguson is one of ninety incorporated municipalities that immediately surround the “Gateway to the West,” each with its own mayor or manager. These local authorities raise money in significant part from fines levied against motorists. A police officer citing someone for a petty infraction is in reality a municipal worker trying to get paid.”
Stop and Fine sounds like Stop and Frisk. But at least the people were stopped for infractions.
In NY, they were stopped and frisked for no reason.
“For the first time in US history, more poor people live in the suburbs than in the cities. In St. Louis County, the “Delmar Divide” (at Delmar Boulevard) separates the mostly white South County from North County where the black towns are. The Ferguson police do not live in Ferguson, and some even live outside the county, in rural areas.”
Well, whoopie! I wonder how that came to be.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2014/12/how_a_foundry_owner_in_queens_got_rich_selling_imitations_of_world-famous_s.php
LOL.
http://www.villagevoice.com/2014-12-24/film/selma/
“Describing Ava DuVernay’s quietly remarkable Selma to a friend, I caught myself referring to the Civil Rights Era as a historical event, a thing of the past, and then backtracked. The killing of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice at the hands of police officers — not to mention the Supreme Court’s dismantling, in June 2013, of the Voting Rights Act, a quieter yet perhaps more insidious event — all indicate that the Civil Rights Era is ongoing, because it has to be.”
Riiiiight, because the killing of Michael Brown the thug is like what happened 60 yrs ago.
It’s like the Chinese explaining all the recent troubles with the West thru the lens of the Opium Wars.
Times change! Why a white may have killed a black 60 yrs ago is not the reason why such things happen today.
Look at crime stats. It’s now mostly about white self-defense.
But movies like Selma would like to Selma-ize all racial violence within the framework of the past.
It ignores all black on white violence or black on dotter violence and falsely pretends that white violence against blacks(mostly self-defensive in nature) is like what Bull Connors did.
I saw a snippet of that. I would call it country-rapey.
Thumbs up for Gene Kelly, but Astaire was true alpha dog. At least as it was once understood.Replies: @syonredux, @syonredux
I don’t see how that works against it being alpha…..
singing something and riding off their carriages. Bride kidnapping, not unusual motif. Central Asians, Hmong still do things like that. Not to get too technical, but if everyone is doing it, then it can't be alpha. Then we have to ask what is savagery and what is alpha. This question has been turned around often this blog.
and put them in a wagon and ride off. Now, there are different versions and different casts.
If Woody Allen/The Rock bride kidnapped, you wouldn’t call Allen alpha. If the Rock sipped tea, you'd still call him alpha. There’s no act Allen could ever do and be call alpha.
Plus, maybe it wasn’t the protagonists that carried of the women. Maybe these were the bad guys that the leads later defeated.
Versions matter, the observer matters. Maybe most important, who the performer is matters.
I’ve heard Beethoven’s 5th feel and sound like Beethoven’s 6th, depending on which symphony and conductor is performing it.Replies: @Kylie
Sondheim, though, is different.You can sit down and find tertiary layers of meaning in the words themselves. Indeed, Sondheim's lyrics (unlike Hammerstein's) almost seem to function better when they are seen on the page as opposed to being heard in performance.
For a highbrow comparison, one might note the example of Wagner, whose librettos are usually seen as great literary works in their own right....which is not something that can be said for a lot of great operatic librettosReplies: @Steve Sailer
I’m reminded of Mozart’s librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, an amazing rogue but not one who let his ego get in the way of doing the smart thing and granting Mozart complete artistic dominance in their relationship.
a "moral superpower".Replies: @Pat Boyle, @AnonymousForGoodReason
Imagine. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Francis Scott Key, pulling a Kevin Bacon on us.
I should tell you about Geoffrey Chaucer and Henry the Navigator sometime…
And he ended up in the USA, oddly enough:
Great point. Frozen did about a billion in revenue, gross, for Disney. Every little girl in America was singing the songs. Kids are adorable that age and any doting parent likes to indulge them.
Maybe the Mouse has siphoned off all the great musical talent?
Sondheim sucks. Oh lordy, does he suck. Long, boring, bad endings, bad songs, over-complicated plots, bad characters, etc. Being in his shows are torture.
His musicals are designed to appeal to the gay-left intellectual set which keeps musicals alive on Broadway; but if you're not in the mood for such propaganda, it's sickening. So he's appealing, basically, to the 1%.
Musicals used to be made for everyone, including straight men; On the Town, Chicago, My Fair Lady, South Pacific, High Society. A straight non-lefty man could sit down with his wife and watch a musical and see things that were entertaining and interesting and funny and didn't insult him and could walk out humming the tune.
Heck, most Hollywood movies made for the masses once had spots where someone, front and center, would sing at least one song. Bob Hope, whose voice is severely underrated today (much as his comedy was until Woody Allen saved his legacy), made it a point to sing in most of his films. One of the songs he sang , "Buttons and Bows," (in The Paleface) won the Academy Award for Best Song. He also made the Christmas song "Silver Bells" into a hit when he sang it in The Lemon Drop Kid. Even Casablanca had songs in it---full songs, and not just La Marsielle; go back and watch if you don't believe me.
Since, however, television became a universal American right, musicals and plays were abandoned by the public at large, leaving them to gays and lefties seeking propaganda tools. Then Hollywood randomly attempts to put one of these gay-left musicals on the screen, and are surprised when they under-perform. Well, when straight men and their wives aren't used to seeing musicals but do know that they are gay-left propaganda tools, what do you expect? That the audience will just magically enjoy having their way of life insulted for 3 hours in song by a bunch of poofers?Replies: @californian
having your way of life insulted for 3 hours? Try the Book of Mormon for instance. S’pose the “edgy” theater/musical producers would do that with the Koran and Islam?
“But movies like Selma would like to Selma-ize all racial violence within the framework of the past.”
I find it funny that the film “Selma” has a Hip Hop soundtrack, when rap music did not even exist in 1965 which is the year that the movie takes place.
Rap was born in the late 1970s with The Sugar Hill Gang who made a song called “Rapper’s Delight” which sampled the beat off a disco song called “Good Times”.
However, it is not true that "Clowns" is the only catchy Sondheim tune. For A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, he also wrote "Comedy Tonight," which is now considered a standard too. When the show was trying out in Washington before its Broadway premiere, Jerome Robbins told Sondheim that the show needed a better opening number. Sondheim went back to his hotel room and wrote "Comedy" in an evening, just to prove that he could write a conventionally catchy Broadway tune if he really wanted to. The song immediately went into the show and is the only song of enduring worth from it.
For the rest of his career, Sondheim reverted to writing the kind of songs he and his effete followers favor. If he had ever written an entire show containing songs like "Comedy," which he certainly could have done, he could have produced something worthwhile. But he preferred to express his contempt for the average middle class, middlebrow theatergoer by writing songs that he knew they wouldn't like.
If you want to see a real Broadway show, go to the current Broadway revival of On The Town. All the music is by Bernstein, who despite being (like Sondheim) a highbrow by nature was willing to write entire musicals full of crowd-pleasing tunes. New York New York, it's a helluva town!Replies: @Eric Rasmusen
Right– A Funny Thing Happened is full of good tunes. I think Pacific Overtures is very good too. It has strong melodies, e.g. Four Black Dragons when the thief see the American ships, Have Some Tea My Lord, etc. They’re storytelling songs, though, rather than lyrical. Those two musicals aren’t at all gay in style, even though Pacific Overtures has men playing women.
When I saw the Threepenny Opera in the Village in the 1950s the audience did leave the theatre singing the theme song. That performance was so good that I saw it twice again – once with my mother and another time with college friends. Ah, the good old days!
I watched an interview of Sondheim years ago in which he said the only composer worth listening to (or maybe it was the “only composer HE listened to”) was JS Bach. I thought that was particularly telling. Bach was a great composer but his contrapuntal style, played by the limited Baroque orchestra, is not nearly as popular as the style of composers who mastered the art of “pleasing” compositions, which also benefitted from a fuller orchestral ensemble. This might be the explanation for Sondheim’s lack of “melodic” compositions. It may well be that he was capable of producing those but was artistically driven to strive for what he perceived to be a higher form of musical composition.
He appeared to have disdain for Rodgers. I believe he worked with him on one show and called it “a colossal mistake” (or words to that effect).
From the tiny bit I saw it was with the men flipping crying women on their shoulders and
singing something and riding off their carriages.
Bride kidnapping, not unusual motif. Central Asians, Hmong still do things like that.
Not to get too technical, but if everyone is doing it, then it can’t be alpha. Then we have to ask what is savagery and what is alpha.
This question has been turned around often this blog.
However I wrote a while back that this whole ecosystem depends on said middle aged women spending money there in NYC -- the extras support the whole actor / director / producer people, the craft unions, the off Broadway experimental plays (taking advantage of downtime of said actors, directors, craft unions etc) and so on.
What happens when NYC goes the full de Blasio? When every day is a Dog Day Afternoon?
My guess is that everyone moves to Vegas, baby!
And Las Vegas not NYC slowly becomes the cultural capital of the US. Already you're seeing Elton John and Britney Spears stay in residence at a casino for a year, doing shows, because its cheaper and more lucrative than touring. Easier too. I don't think the move to Vegas will happen overnight, but yeah I do think it will happen, and likely make musicals a bit less pretentious and edgy, less gay, more appealing to the boyfriends/husbands of said women. It will be interesting to see if publishing, and TV/movies also move to Vegas.
Vegas is a very different sort of town, ruled by cars, not bounded by water, mega casinos run by mega corporations not tolerant of glorious diversity that ruins tourism, to put it mildly. Yet built on cheap immigrant labor.Replies: @whorefinder
Yes Musicals are pretentious and gay, but that plays very well to middle aged women who save up for a lifetime to visit NYC and catch a show. Broadway makes a lot of money, and the money supports the new Sondheims and stuff like “Wicked” and so on … derivative but big gay spectacles that said middle aged women love.
Not really. Musicals in NY make most of their money on local gays and other nearby mental cases who buy many repeat tickets to the shows—so much so that the hardcore ones get feted by the casts. Usually these are failed actors and lonely shut ins, which New York has in droves.
The occasional Wicked or Spiderman or Les Mis aside, Broadway doesn’t bother to cater to outsiders; it prefers its insular theater-jockeys donating money and coming regularly. Disney and Andrew Lloyd Webber do the big-tourist musicals, but the other shows like NY lefties coming alone to snark at the outside world. The vast majority of shows in NYC—probably 90%—are targeted to the Daily Kos crowd, and they only want their friends present.
For example, I took in Spamalot during its early run on Broadway, and, honestly, even outside the shoehorned gay marriage propaganda in the plot, you would be surprised at the unscripted comments the actors and staff said in front of the audience. Let me just say that if they were truly trying to draw in the tourist crowds, the kind of Daily Kos level of mumbles should have been verboten, especially by theater professionals: (actors disparaging Bush, Cheney; staff serving drinks while complaining about “Republicans” ruining everything; a joke about white guys not being able to jump, etc.)
My guess is that everyone moves to Vegas, baby!
Maybe, but they already tried this and failed. When Vegas tried to rebrand itself a few years and back away from the whole “Sin City” angle, it brought in many family-friendly shows, and the idea flopped. Spamalot—a huge hit on Broadway, not only with tourists, but with straight male tourists especially (who were reliving their movie experiences, and ignoring the gay marriage plot) —closed quite shortly. Other family acts folded as well. While some do exist, Vegas thrives on its illicitness; when the family-friendly fare failed, Vegas went right back to it’s old calling for sin: “What Happens in Vegas” as a catch phrase was designed to wash away the Disney-type previous actions.
Until Vegas’s main draw is something other than adult entertainment, the Broadway-shows will fail, unless sex-laden. NYC has the draw of tourism and non-adult entertainment economics (Wall Street, shipping in Jersey, law, media) to bring people in for a week who will take in a show with the kids. No one brings the kids to Vegas willingly.
And Las Vegas not NYC slowly becomes the cultural capital of the US. Already you’re seeing Elton John and Britney Spears stay in residence at a casino for a year, doing shows, because its cheaper and more lucrative than touring. Easier too.
Entertainers have long settled down in Vegas for floor shows for gamblers, even those not in retirement. Sinatra and Elvis and Celine Dion sang for gamblers nightly, but both had upswings in their careers ahead of them. That didn’t make Vegas more family friendly.
mega casinos run by mega corporations not tolerant of glorious diversity that ruins tourism, to put it mildly.
I wish; the opposite is true. Mega-corporations knuckle under to diversity at every turn. The old school Italian Mafia would not have done so, but these companies donate to Al Sharpton shakedown operations daily, have diversity mission statements and agendas, and quite willing to push whitey into a corner to kiss Jesse Jackson’s behind.
Sadly, I think the only way the U.S. corporate world could go anti-diversity is if Russia, China, and Arab Oil Nations (but not Israel) gained control over the major corporations. Not beholden to blacks in their own countries, having armies and miles between them, and often openly despising blacks, they could offer hope and crush Al Sharpton’s ridiculousness from abroad in pursuit of the middle-class dollar.
Yes Musicals are pretentious and gay, but that plays very well to middle aged women who save up for a lifetime to visit NYC and catch a show. Broadway makes a lot of money, and the money supports the new Sondheims and stuff like “Wicked” and so on … derivative but big gay spectacles that said middle aged women love.
Not really. Musicals in NY make most of their money on local gays and other nearby mental cases who buy many repeat tickets to the shows—so much so that the hardcore ones get feted by the casts. Usually these are failed actors and lonely shut ins, which New York has in droves.
The occasional Wicked or Spiderman or Les Mis aside, Broadway doesn’t bother to cater to outsiders; it prefers its insular theater-jockeys donating money and coming regularly. Disney and Andrew Lloyd Webber do the big-tourist musicals, but the other shows like NY lefties coming alone to snark at the outside world. The vast majority of shows in NYC—probably 90%—are targeted to the Daily Kos crowd, and they only want their friends present.
For example, I took in Spamalot during its early run on Broadway, and, honestly, even outside the shoehorned gay marriage propaganda in the plot, you would be surprised at the unscripted comments the actors and staff said in front of the audience. Let me just say that if they were truly trying to draw in the tourist crowds, the kind of Daily Kos level of mumbles should have been verboten, especially by theater professionals: (actors disparaging Bush, Cheney; staff serving drinks while complaining about “Republicans” ruining everything; a joke about white guys not being able to jump, etc.)
My guess is that everyone moves to Vegas, baby!
Maybe, but they already tried this and failed. When Vegas tried to rebrand itself a few years and back away from the whole “Sin City” angle, it brought in many family-friendly shows, and the idea flopped. Spamalot—a huge hit on Broadway, not only with tourists, but with straight male tourists especially (who were reliving their movie experiences, and ignoring the gay marriage plot) —closed quite shortly. Other family acts folded as well. While some do exist, Vegas thrives on its illicitness; when the family-friendly fare failed, Vegas went right back to it’s old calling for sin: “What Happens in Vegas” as a catch phrase was designed to wash away the Disney-type previous actions.
Until Vegas’s main draw is something other than adult entertainment, the Broadway-shows will fail, unless sex-laden. NYC has the draw of tourism and non-adult entertainment economics (Wall Street, shipping in Jersey, law, media) to bring people in for a week who will take in a show with the kids. No one brings the kids to Vegas willingly.
And Las Vegas not NYC slowly becomes the cultural capital of the US. Already you’re seeing Elton John and Britney Spears stay in residence at a casino for a year, doing shows, because its cheaper and more lucrative than touring. Easier too.
Entertainers have long settled down in Vegas for floor shows for gamblers, even those not in retirement. Sinatra and Elvis and Celine Dion sang for gamblers nightly, but both had upswings in their careers ahead of them. That didn’t make Vegas more family friendly.
mega casinos run by mega corporations not tolerant of glorious diversity that ruins tourism, to put it mildly.
I wish; the opposite is true. Mega-corporations knuckle under to diversity at every turn. The old school Italian Mafia would not have done so, but these companies donate to Al Sharpton shakedown operations daily, have diversity mission statements and agendas, and quite willing to push whitey into a corner to kiss Jesse Jackson’s behind.
Sadly, I think the only way the U.S. corporate world could go anti-diversity is if Russia, China, and Arab Oil Nations (but not Israel) gained control over the major corporations. Not beholden to blacks in their own countries, having armies and miles between them, and often openly despising blacks, they could offer hope and crush Al Sharpton’s ridiculousness from abroad in pursuit of the middle-class dollar.
As I said I only saw a snippet. In it some guys sling reluctant crying women onto their shoulders
and put them in a wagon and ride off. Now, there are different versions and different casts.
If Woody Allen/The Rock bride kidnapped, you wouldn’t call Allen alpha. If the Rock sipped tea, you’d still call him alpha. There’s no act Allen could ever do and be call alpha.
Plus, maybe it wasn’t the protagonists that carried of the women. Maybe these were the bad guys that the leads later defeated.
Versions matter, the observer matters. Maybe most important, who the performer is matters.
I’ve heard Beethoven’s 5th feel and sound like Beethoven’s 6th, depending on which symphony and conductor is performing it.
You really should get your hearing checked.
Kierkegaard on Mozart’s Don Giovanni is aesthetic writing at its finest. A Dane who was truly
a “moral superpower”.
“Jefferson says:
I find it funny that the film “Selma” has a Hip Hop soundtrack, when rap music did not even exist in 1965 which is the year that the movie takes place.”
It is funny because rap is one of the reasons that white people got tired of black people and their causes.
Someone’s evidently never heard of a place called Branson.
Hint: it’s across the state from Ferguson.
Weren’t we just talking about his daughter Teresa, the apex of a triangle between Dan Sickles and Philip Barton Key?
Imagine. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Francis Scott Key, pulling a Kevin Bacon on us.
I should tell you about Geoffrey Chaucer and Henry the Navigator sometime…
Of Sondheim, I've long had an impatient urge to dismiss him as overrated, but I can't help giving him his due as an artist of great ability--which he surely is. He has shown that he can indeed write tuneful songs, but there's just something unsatisfying about even his best songs, almost as if he's purposely keeping something from the listener. "Pretty Women" from Sweeny Todd is a lovely song that could have become a standard for solo artists, with a tweak here or there; but I feel as though Sondheim subordinates his songs so much to the greater work that they can seldom stand alone (except as part of a specialized revue of his work).Replies: @Steve Sailer
Perhaps with Sondheim, having been a sort of ward of Oscar Hammerstein II, he wanted to make as big a leap forward as Hammerstein made with Jerome Kern in Showboat in the 1920s and then with Richard Rodgers in Oklahoma in the 1940s. And do it all by himself.
That kind of artistic ambition is not to be derided even if I don’t personally want to go along for the ride.
Similarly, a lot of people find Tom Stoppard too much work for too little payoff. I don’t, but then I do things like read Stoppard’s plays before I see them, which is a little much to ask of audiences. I’m on Stoppard’s wavelength, however, while I’m not on Sondheim’s.
having your way of life insulted for 3 hours? Try the Book of Mormon for instance. S’pose the “edgy” theater/musical producers would do that with the Koran and Islam?
Good point, bad example. The creators of Book of Mormon are the South Park dudes Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who are pretty even handed about attacking everyone, and the musical is actually only 1/2 mean to Mormons, 1/2 sickly-sweet complimentary (Parker would probably have been a Broadway composer in the 1940s and 50s, but today his libertarian politics and straight-male POV made the gay-left Broadway scene unattractive to him) .
Parker and Stone make many a Mormon joke on South Park, but that’s largely because they’re Colorado dudes who run into Mormons a lot more than Coastal Folk, and even then South Park had an episode where the moral is that, on the whole, Mormonism is a net positive on humanity.
Stone and Parker were the only mainstream creative types who dared to make a Muhammad cartoon following 9/11 and the Dutch beheadings and all that. Comedy Central banned the episode , showing the networks true colors; Parker and Stone angrily pointed out in interviews that they consistently depicted Jesus and other religious figure son their show in mocking ways and Comedy Central didn’t ban those depictions.
Jon Stewart even tried to pretend he had a backbone and put Parker and Stone on the night the episode was banned—but of course, did nothing meaningful to protest Comedy Central’s cowardice, despite having huge weight at the network—never depicted Muhammad himself or on his show, the hypocritical coward.
And Parker and Stone often depict hilarious Jewish jokes, criticisms, and stereotypes, although Stone gives them a free pass because he is Jewish himself.
Anyway, I agree the assault on Christians, and not Jews or Muslims in the general western culture is driven by cowardice and a decision to attack the group that won’t ruin your career or kill you in America.
I saw Into the Woods on TV in the 90’s, and live on stage a couple of years ago. I, and everyone else I saw it with, agreed: the only problem was the second act. Cut it off with “happily ever after” and it wasn’t half bad. Pair it off with Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial By Jury and you’d have a fun night out.
I laughed at A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (saw it live) but didn’t care a thing for any of the tunes…but Sweeney Todd and Assassins both had excellent songs, though they needed the right actors to carry them off (George Hearn/Angela Lansbury for Todd…I couldn’t watch more than 5 minutes of that Johnny Depp travesty).
I laughed at A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (saw it live) but didn't care a thing for any of the tunes...but Sweeney Todd and Assassins both had excellent songs, though they needed the right actors to carry them off (George Hearn/Angela Lansbury for Todd...I couldn't watch more than 5 minutes of that Johnny Depp travesty).Replies: @Steve Sailer
Sondheim has created a version of “Into the Woods” for schoolchildren to perform that’s just the first act.
I heard that the second act was a downer so I went to the concession stand, then got lost coming back and wound up watching five or ten minutes of The Hobbit before realizing I was in the wrong auditorium. So I kind of missed the second act of the movie. But the first act was pretty good!
For those of you who think Sondheim is bad, he is head-and-shoulders above this generation's Sondheim, Jason Robert Brown.
Jeeze, 65 comments in and no one mentioned Hairspray? I figured that would be the ultimate iSteve musical (at least IRT noticing things). You’ve got your zaftig heroine taking on the WASP establishment and leading friendly negroes to a bright future where Baltimore integrates and becomes known as Bodymore, Murderland in short order. Not before the WASPs attempt to bomb the entire zaftig/negro alliance (no really).
It was, at the least, a precursor of what was to come with the black worship in ‘entertainment’.
It is particularly hilarious when delivered by the late Elaine Stritch. Ditto for The Ladies Who Lunch, a song that should not be sung by anyone else. Ever. Especially in a cabaret.
That is a great sentence. Like Hemingway's six-word story about the baby shoes, what happened to the rest of that relationship pretty much writes itself.Replies: @Hhsiii
Yeah. We’re still cordial. My current wife is more a Mama Mia musical type.
Wagner was so appalled by the commercial vulgarity of Giacomo Meyerbeer (!) that he wrote a notorious essay on the supposed baleful influence of Jews on music. One hardly dares imagine how he might have reacted to “Send in the clowns” – let alone “Comedy tonight.”
Maybe the Mouse has siphoned off all the great musical talent?Replies: @smurfette
The composer for Frozen is Bobby Lopez, who also composed Avenue Q and Book of Mormon.
and put them in a wagon and ride off. Now, there are different versions and different casts.
If Woody Allen/The Rock bride kidnapped, you wouldn’t call Allen alpha. If the Rock sipped tea, you'd still call him alpha. There’s no act Allen could ever do and be call alpha.
Plus, maybe it wasn’t the protagonists that carried of the women. Maybe these were the bad guys that the leads later defeated.
Versions matter, the observer matters. Maybe most important, who the performer is matters.
I’ve heard Beethoven’s 5th feel and sound like Beethoven’s 6th, depending on which symphony and conductor is performing it.Replies: @Kylie
“I’ve heard Beethoven’s 5th feel and sound like Beethoven’s 6th, depending on which symphony and conductor is performing it.”
You really should get your hearing checked.
“whorefinder
“”…..having your way of life insulted for 3 hours? Try the Book of Mormon for instance. S’pose the “edgy” theater/musical producers would do that with the Koran and Islam?””
Good point, bad example. The creators of Book of Mormon are the South Park dudes Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who are pretty even handed about attacking everyone,…..”
No, good example. The fact that everyone is attacked does not alter the fact that YOU are attacked.
Trey and Stone think they can get a pass by being jerks to everyone. Being a jerk to everyone doesn’t make you a good guy – it makes you a jerk.
“For alpha male manliness in a musical, try Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Or just about anything featuring Gene Kelly.”
Does “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers” have cool alpha male one liners like “Predator” ? Does it have one liners as cool as “Dillon You Son Of A Bitch” “I Ain’t Got Time To Bleed” “If It Bleeds We Can Kill It” “Bunch of slack-jawed faggots around here. This stuff will make you a god damned sexual Tyrannosaurus, just like me” and “GET TO THE CHOPPA”.
Well does it ?
* Tried posting this earlier, but nothing happened, so I'm giving it another try
Does "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers" have cool alpha male one liners like "Predator" ? Does it have one liners as cool as "Dillon You Son Of A Bitch" "I Ain't Got Time To Bleed" "If It Bleeds We Can Kill It" "Bunch of slack-jawed faggots around here. This stuff will make you a god damned sexual Tyrannosaurus, just like me" and "GET TO THE CHOPPA".
Well does it ?Replies: @syonredux
No, but it does feature a frontier recreation of the Rape of the Sabine Women:
Few things quite as Alpha Male as bride abduction
* Tried posting this earlier, but nothing happened, so I’m giving it another try
The thing about Sondheim’s musicals: just listen to the soundtrack. The book’s unnecessary. This is true with his two best works: Company (mentioned above) and Follies.
By the way, with all this talk about great Sondheim songs, no one has mentioned Follies, which has some stupendous, much covered songs–most famously, I’m Still Here. But Leave You is tremendous, as is Broadway Baby. From Company, in addition to Little Things and Ladies Who Lunch, there’s Barcelona and Being Alive.
Sweeney Todd also has some great tunes, even if the subject matter’s a bit gruesome. Nothing’s Going to Harm You, stripped of the context, is lovely. Try A Little Priest is both catchy and witty, if not coverable.
Which is not to say I disagree with the general point: I don’t really enjoy Sondheim plays, although I do like the soundtracks.
In 1982, Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George went up against La Cage Aux Folles and Jerry Herman (of Mame and Hello Dolly) won practically everything, while Park just won two. In his acceptance speech, Herman did a major smackdown that was widely perceived to be directed at Sondheim (source, and I watched it live a million years ago):
there’s a rumor going around Broadway that there aren’t anymore hummable tunes and that’s not true. We are doing it 8 times at week at The Palace Theatre.
Herman has always been a tad defensive that he isn’t viewed as a visionary genius like Sondheim, despite having written far more songs you can remember.
Of course, the real irony is that Sondheim’s story about a straight French artist is beat out by a story about a French drag nightclub and the married homosexuals who own it.
“Does “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers” have cool alpha male one liners like “Predator” ? ”
Well, it depends.
Them a woman was sobbin’, sobbin’, sobbin’
Fit to be tied.
Ev’ry muscle was throbbin’, throbbin’
From that riotous ride.
Oh they cried and kissed and kissed and cried
All over that Roman countryside
So don’t forget that when you’re takin’ a bride.
Sobbin’ fit to be tied
From that riotous ride!
….
They never did return their plunder
The victor gets all the loot.
They carried them home, by thunder,
To rotundas small but cute.
And you’ve never seens so,
They tell me, such downright domesticity.
With a Roman baby on each knee
Named “Claudius” and “Brute”
While the Romans was goin’ out hobbin’, nobbin’
Startin’ up fights.
They kept occupied by sewin’ lots of little old togas
For them tots and sayin’ “someday women folk’ll have rights.”
Them a women was sobbin’, sobbin’,
Sobbin’ buckets of tears
On account o’ old dobbin’,
Dobbin’ really rattled their ears.
Oh they acted angry and annoyed
But secretly they was overjoyed
Them a women was sobbin’, sobbin’, sobbin’
Weepin’ a ton
Just remember what Robin, Robin, Robin
Hood woulda done.
We’ll be just like them three merry men
And make ’em all merry once again.
You make the call.
I copied the lyrics from a website, but the terrible thing is, I knew them mostly by heart. I’ve attained more knowledge of musicals than most self-respecting gay men of the 70s ever dreamed of acquiring. Not today, though. Seems to be a lost bit of their culture.
Hey, steve, my previous post is awaiting moderation. Something I said? Should I post again?
As a devote of Sondheim, I’ve always been puzzled by the “he doesn’t write melodic songs” jibe. To me, he’s brilliantly, almost impossibly melodic.
The reason he doesn’t have more “popular songs” is because he doesn’t generally write “songs” as such. He writes musical interludes in the context of the larger show. As a result, outside of the larger show context the songs are often puzzling or meaningless. If you don’t know what’s come before the song’s moment, the song doesn’t make sense, or at least loses much of its meaning, which is contextual and referential.
I think “Into the Woods” is a brilliant musical. I haven’t seen the film yet, though I will eventually, mostly because I shudder at the clips of Meryl Streep, who can’t sing a note, trying to put over songs that are resoundingly musical. Compare her tepid, tuneless croaking to Bernadette Peters’ original Broadway versions. Why the hell they didn’t get Peters for the film, I don’t know. But Hollywood loves ruining musicals by casting stars who can’t sing. Which is precisely how they ruined “Sweeney Todd,” a musical that has more gorgeous melodies than you can shake a stick at.
Then we have to ask what is savagery and what is alpha.
The two categories overlap. They re not mutually exclusive.
The only musicals I have any real interest in are Gilbert and Sullivan.
Once in school we had to present a poem (songs counted) and compare the tone of the song to that of something else. I presented “The Nightmare Song” from Iolanthe and compared it to a scene from “Keeping up Appearances.” (The tone was mock horror at the annoyances of daily life).
a "moral superpower".Replies: @Pat Boyle, @AnonymousForGoodReason
Kierkegaard on Mozart’s Don Giovanni is aesthetic writing at its finest. A Dane who was truly a “moral superpower”.
When I was a teenager in Arlington Virginia I rode my bike across the Potomac to the Library of Congress to read Kierkegaard on Don Giovanni. I really loved Mozart. That’s probably why when years later when I saw ‘Into the Woods’ when it toured San Francisco I was so disgusted.
Sondheim is to my mind a bad Jew. Jews have a gift for tunes. The good Jews who had had only a marginal influence on classical music in the nineteenth century came to dominate the American musical theater in the twentieth. It is demonstrable quantitatively. Count the famous tunes in Berlin’s ‘Annie get Your Gun’ – it’s about twenty. You know all of them. Or Rogers’ ‘South Pacific’ – another score with all hits.
Now compare the scores of the other famous modern Broadway show composer – Andrew Lloyd Webber. ALW is considered a genius for writing one ersatz Puccini song per show. Go ahead whistle a second tune from Cats or Evita. Can’t do it, can you?
But the Jews were busy writing tons of memorable music for Hollywood. There is a whole literature of ‘Cowboy Music’ written by Jews for Westerns. Try to imagine ‘The Magnificent Seven’ without the music. Everybody knows that Tin Pan Alley was Jewish but some forget that almost all the good movie music of the late twentieth century was written by Jews. Those were the ‘good’ Jews. And the big themes and tunes just poured out of them. Meanwhile back in NYC we had bad Jews like Sondheim – Mr. Effete writing unlikeable anti-melodies about unlikeable characters. Ugh.
About the only musical theater score as dreadful as Sondheim’s is probably ‘A Quiet Place’ by Leonard Bernstein. There’s also a lot of bad music in ‘Trouble in Tahiti. These two pieces are so anti-human and negative you might think they were written by Sondheim.
“Pat Boyle
Sondheim is to my mind a bad Jew. Jews have a gift for tunes.”
It is interesting that Jews have not been as prominent in european music as one would assume (the only european jewish composers who are considered great are Mendelsohn and Mahler). But many of the greatest american composers have been jewish – Copland, Bernstein, Gershwin, Rodgers, Herrmann, Goldsmith, Glass.
When I took philosophy as an undergraduate it was said that the before science came to dominate Western thought you had to wait for a singular genius like Descartes for an advance. But science allowed men of more modest gifts to contribute. That reminds me of Mozart - we're still waiting for the next one.The Jews seem to go into writing melodies - all except Sondheim. Bad Jew.
You are of course right about European Classical Music – not many Jews – although I might also include Halevy. But in the twentieth century in Tin Pan Alley and especially the movies the situation reverses. Or I should say it reverses for the melodic part of music and vocal music.
You might want to look up movie music composers. The Jewish domination of that genre is overwhelming. I suppose some of that comes from the fact that Hollywood was founded by Jews but all those ‘Cowboy Tunes’ written by Jews must mean something. The Tin Pan Alley Jews of pop music fame couldn’t orchestrate. The most famous show composers, Berlin and Rogers – both needed help. Basically they created the tunes and hired some Gentile with formal training to do the rest.
Being able to write a good vocal tune is rare. Beethoven wasn’t very good at it. Look at how many times he had to revise his one opera. Opera in the eighteenth and nineteenth century required a composer who could do it all – good songs, good ensembles, good orchestration, good dramatic sense. Only a few men could master all those disparate skills at once. Schubert couldn’t although he spent one third of all his composition work on opera. Mozart’s skill were hard to replicate.
But in the twentieth century with opera largely dead, musical theater became subject to ‘division of labor’. The tunesmiths adopted orchestrating collaborators. Productivity soared. In the nineteenth century there were over 2,000 operas written by Americans – mostly on cowboy and Indian stories. Not a single note survives.
When I took philosophy as an undergraduate it was said that the before science came to dominate Western thought you had to wait for a singular genius like Descartes for an advance. But science allowed men of more modest gifts to contribute. That reminds me of Mozart – we’re still waiting for the next one.
The Jews seem to go into writing melodies – all except Sondheim. Bad Jew.
Then you didn’t realize your luck. The movie dispenses with much of the second act. It’s so gruesome they had to, to make it a Disney movie. But it guts the essential message of the stage version.
For those of you who think Sondheim is bad, he is head-and-shoulders above this generation’s Sondheim, Jason Robert Brown.
a "moral superpower".Replies: @Pat Boyle, @AnonymousForGoodReason
Well said. Kierkegaard’s commentary is generally extremely rich.