By Karen Bliss, Toronto | March 27, 2013 12:28 PM EDT
It’s all about family entertainment now for Michael Cohl, the concert tour impresario who has overseen worldwide tours by the Rolling Stones, U2, Michael Jackson, and more. During a 50-minute one-on-one interview at Toronto’s Canadian Music Week with Celebrity Access’ Larry LeBlanc, the former chairman of Live Nation and current founder of S2BN Entertainment capped it off by chatting about the once ill-fated "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark" and plugging his new productions and his son’s band.
“We’re working on 'Transformers' and 'Ghostbusters,' just a whole lot of other things,” he says, later adding Broadway shows of "Bat Out Of Hell" and the "Blues Brothers" to the list. “We think there’s a whole opportunity to create new platforms of shows for the baby boomers, grandparents and their kids and their grand kids. But as far as Live Nation goes, I’m getting along great with [Mike] Rapino and Arthur [Fogel]. We had a two-year scrap and we’re best buddies." He mentioned he has re-signed as a consultant for five more years.
S2BN, a diversified international family show and event entertainment company, is also bringing "Spider-Man" to Las Vegas. Next, Cohl says, it will be an arena show. “We know what to do. We’ve got a redesign ready and I think it can be a much better show in an arena. It can be pretty crazy with all that space. It should’ve been an arena show from the beginning. The space in the theatre in this [stretched his arm modestly] and the space in an arena is this [widens his arms].”
“It’s the worst project I’ve ever got involved in and the greatest triumph of my entire career,” Cohl said of "Spider-Man" on Broadway, a show he took over when it had run out of money and opened $55 million in the hole, “without an ending,” no less, which he later came up with, he says. “We’re at three [years] for 'Spider-Man' and we will definitely get five years out of it. Who knows, we could be there for 15.”
Talking about loving the production side because you are “integral to the creation of the piece itself as opposed to taking a piece that someone else brings you,” he said, “The way I described it to my kids was if you want to get into show biz, you might consider -- and none of them has taken me up on it -- if you’re not going to be the guy onstage, which Liam [Cohl] is in a great new band called The Treasures -- look out April 2 Universal -- I have the next best job and if you want to be in entertainment, be in show business. That’s what attracts me to it.”
At the Dakota Tavern, during the music festival portion of CMW, The Treasures made an impression with its 40-minute set: a strong image (most of the guys in tasteful embroidered cowboy shirts) and cool alt-country sound in the vein of The Band, Allman Brothers Band and Flying Burrito Brothers. Their agent, Adam Countryman, from The Agency Group, said Michael Cohl approached TAG president Ralph James a couple of years ago about helping the band out.
“We met them through Eli [Cohl, The Treasures’ manager] and his family. Liam plays in the band,” Countryman told Billboard at the venue. “They came to us really young; they had maybe played 10 shows. It must have been two years ago. We started going out to see them and every time we saw them they got better and better. They’ve gone away to Nashville and they’ve recorded in LA.”
The Treasures -- vocalist-guitarist Duncan Davies, lead singer-acoustic guitarist Michael Poskanzer, pedal steel-dobro player Michael Eckert, drummer-singer Galen Pelley and Liam on bass -- release their debut album, Bring The Night Home, on April 2, distributed by Universal Music Canada.
“It’s been a long time for the record,” says Countryman. “They re-recorded a little bit, but they spent a lot of time, as this is their first release, to make sure it worked out well. Being a young band they’ve really developed over the last two years so I think they wanted more time to let that new sound work its way into the album.”
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/global/1554528/michael-cohl-former-live-nation-chairmain-on-spider-man-in-vegas
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Friday, March 29, 2013
Andrew Lloyd Webber: 'My greatest regret'
Andrew Lloyd Webber: 'My greatest regret'
Andrew Lloyd Webber looks back on 40 years in show business in conversation with Charles Spencer.
By Charles Spencer
4:05PM GMT 26 Mar 2013
Things have been unusually quiet on Planet Lloyd Webber in recent months. He has been laid up with back problems – now on the mend – but the Lord, as Graham Norton called him on those telly talent shows, is now back with a vengeance. On Easter Sunday ITV is broadcasting a 90 minute special celebrating his continuous run of hits in the West End over the past 40 years. There hasn’t been a single week since Jesus Christ Superstar opened without at least one Lloyd Webber show in London, and at one point he had five playing simultaneously.
Michael Ball hosts the extravaganza, and as well as Lloyd Webber, those taking part include Michael Caine, Il Divo, Nicole Scherzinger, Melanie C, Tim Minchin and the egregious Simon Cowell. Classical guitarist Milos Karadaglic will also perform a number from Lloyd Webber’s eagerly awaited new musical, Stephen Ward, about the Profumo affair, that heady mix of politics, spies and good-time girls that engulfed the Macmillan Government in the early Sixties. It reunites him with lyricist Don Black and writer Christopher Hampton for the first time since Sunset Boulevard and is planned to open early next year.
CS: How have you seen the West End change in the last 40 years?
ALW: In the last few years, everything seems to have gone slightly away from music and more towards the comedy musicals, the Hairsprays and the Book of Mormons. I just don’t know if there’s a public for something now which is much more serious and is old fashioned in the sense that it is melodic.
CS: Does that make you feel out of place?
ALW: Somewhat, yes, because I’m quite frankly proud of the fact that there have only been three of my musicals that have not had a top three hit. It’s very difficult to get a hit song from a show nowadays. The songs are what I think musicals are about in the end. Of course they can be about something else and they can be fun and they can be, you know period and whatever, but for me, songs are what I do. I find it much more difficult not to write tunes than to write them.
CS: Have you ever been stumped for a tune?
ALW: I’ve sometimes found that they’ve taken a while, but then you get the ones where its so obvious that you think 'that must have been done before’ so you go through agonies and get musicologists and people to look at them.
CS: You’re currently working on a musical about Stephen Ward, the society osteopath at the centre of the Profumo Affair. What will that be like?
ALW: Well because of the period and everything, the Stephen Ward show is going to feature much more of my other side. This is going to be the antithesis of 'Love Never Dies’ or 'Phantom’
CS: What drew you to the story, apart from the sex, vice and sleaze?
ALW: I didn’t really know much about the character of Stephen Ward, apart from the fact that he was the one who was convicted, but then I happened to read an interview with him from 1962 which said he was a bore about the Cold War.
And then I read the Ludovic Kennedy book about the trial. He called it 'The Martyrdom of Dr Stephen Ward’ and so I thought 'this is getting very very interesting’.
CS: The lyrics are by Christopher Hampton and the book by Don Black, whom you worked with on Sunset Boulevard.
ALW: Yes, we talked over dinner and we concluded how extraordinary this man Stephen Ward was, probably the most sought after dinner guest in London, the world’s top osteopath and a man who knew absolutely everybody from Kennedy to Gandhi to Churchill and was great friends with Prince Philip.
The thing that really made Christopher think 'yes it’s a stage show’ is that Ward ended up as a waxwork at the chamber of horrors in Madame Tussauds. Next to the acid bath murderer.
Funnily enough Sarah Brightman [Lloyd Webber’s ex-wife] told me her mother Paula was one of the girls in Murray’s Cabaret Club [where Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies worked]. I remember Sarah telling me this hysterical story about when she was about five or six years old, they were all asked at her school to bring pictures of what their parents did at work and she brought in a picture of her mum with the dancers of Murray’s Club which would have been with Mandy and Christine.
CS: What do you think when you look back over your career?
ALW: What strikes me is that there’s a very fine line between success and failure. Just one ingredient can make the difference.
A really good example of that is design and 'Love Never Dies.’ The London production didn’t have any consistency of style, so it would go from say art nouveau to art deco to straightforward, old-fashioned Broadway showbiz. The Australian production [which has been very successful] had its own language. It was more like Maria Bjornson’s original design for Phantom or the original design for Evita, it was at one with the piece.
Another example is Harold Prince [the great Broadway producer]. He wanted to direct Jesus Christ Superstar and I never got the telegram because I was in America and so it went to my father’s college of music and I never got it. I often think how different my career would have been if Harold Prince had directed it on Broadway.
I remember the telegram to this day. It was: 'I am the producer of Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof and West Side Story and I’d like to do Jesus Christ Superstar,’ signed Harold Prince. I thought 'I know who you are!’ Instead the production was the most vulgar horror.
CS: Do you have any lasting regrets?
ALW: The regrets in the theatre have always been the shows that you know ought to have worked but for one reason or another haven’t. One of the things I am doing at the moment, slowly, is I’m going over, say The Woman in White which has a large plotting problem in it, and getting my musicals into as good a shape as they possibly can be in my view. Then if somebody wants to do them, I can say 'look there’s a better version’ . It’s amazing thought how many people do want to have a go at some of these old shows, some of the ones that haven’t worked so well.
I suppose if I had one real regret its that I would have loved to have had a long term writing partner like [Richard] Rodgers had with either Hart or Hammerstein. I was really hoping that the Tim Rice relationship would have gone on but my dad was the one who first pointed out to me that he thought it was unlikely.
I suppose the difference is that I’m obsessed with theatre and for Tim it’s something that he does enjoy doing, is very good at but it isn’t his whole life like it is with me.
The natural rhythm of our partnership fell apart because I never could figure out quite how dramatically you did the story of Chess, which was his baby, so he went off and did it with Bjorn [Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, of Abba] . Bloody good songs it had in it, too. Of course then Cats happened [a musical to poems by TS Eliot] and that by definition didn’t need a lyricist.
That, I think, would be the biggest regret. I’m one of those people who likes the security of working with people they have worked with before, which is why I’m excited about working with Chris and Don again.
CS: What will be in the TV show on Sunday?
ALW: Nicole Scherzinger’s going to do 'Don’t cry for me Argentina’ which is going to be interesting because she’s really a musical theatre actress, and I’m going to be intrigued to see what she makes of it. I’ve been through it with her and she really thinks about what she’s saying, which is awkward in the case of 'Don’t cry for me Argentina’ because, when she asks me questions about it, it doesn’t really mean anything.
Because it was originally called 'It’s only your lover returning’, 'the truth is I never left you’ makes a great deal of sense. But the title got altered at the last minute and it’s one of those examples of, you know, you don’t ask, you don’t explain. So when she said immediately 'I’m trying to make sense of this’, I said 'actually don’t.’
'Andrew Lloyd Webber: 40 Musical Years’ will be shown on ITV on Easter Sunday
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/9955003/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-My-greatest-regret.html
Andrew Lloyd Webber looks back on 40 years in show business in conversation with Charles Spencer.
By Charles Spencer
4:05PM GMT 26 Mar 2013
Things have been unusually quiet on Planet Lloyd Webber in recent months. He has been laid up with back problems – now on the mend – but the Lord, as Graham Norton called him on those telly talent shows, is now back with a vengeance. On Easter Sunday ITV is broadcasting a 90 minute special celebrating his continuous run of hits in the West End over the past 40 years. There hasn’t been a single week since Jesus Christ Superstar opened without at least one Lloyd Webber show in London, and at one point he had five playing simultaneously.
Michael Ball hosts the extravaganza, and as well as Lloyd Webber, those taking part include Michael Caine, Il Divo, Nicole Scherzinger, Melanie C, Tim Minchin and the egregious Simon Cowell. Classical guitarist Milos Karadaglic will also perform a number from Lloyd Webber’s eagerly awaited new musical, Stephen Ward, about the Profumo affair, that heady mix of politics, spies and good-time girls that engulfed the Macmillan Government in the early Sixties. It reunites him with lyricist Don Black and writer Christopher Hampton for the first time since Sunset Boulevard and is planned to open early next year.
CS: How have you seen the West End change in the last 40 years?
ALW: In the last few years, everything seems to have gone slightly away from music and more towards the comedy musicals, the Hairsprays and the Book of Mormons. I just don’t know if there’s a public for something now which is much more serious and is old fashioned in the sense that it is melodic.
CS: Does that make you feel out of place?
ALW: Somewhat, yes, because I’m quite frankly proud of the fact that there have only been three of my musicals that have not had a top three hit. It’s very difficult to get a hit song from a show nowadays. The songs are what I think musicals are about in the end. Of course they can be about something else and they can be fun and they can be, you know period and whatever, but for me, songs are what I do. I find it much more difficult not to write tunes than to write them.
CS: Have you ever been stumped for a tune?
ALW: I’ve sometimes found that they’ve taken a while, but then you get the ones where its so obvious that you think 'that must have been done before’ so you go through agonies and get musicologists and people to look at them.
CS: You’re currently working on a musical about Stephen Ward, the society osteopath at the centre of the Profumo Affair. What will that be like?
ALW: Well because of the period and everything, the Stephen Ward show is going to feature much more of my other side. This is going to be the antithesis of 'Love Never Dies’ or 'Phantom’
CS: What drew you to the story, apart from the sex, vice and sleaze?
ALW: I didn’t really know much about the character of Stephen Ward, apart from the fact that he was the one who was convicted, but then I happened to read an interview with him from 1962 which said he was a bore about the Cold War.
And then I read the Ludovic Kennedy book about the trial. He called it 'The Martyrdom of Dr Stephen Ward’ and so I thought 'this is getting very very interesting’.
CS: The lyrics are by Christopher Hampton and the book by Don Black, whom you worked with on Sunset Boulevard.
ALW: Yes, we talked over dinner and we concluded how extraordinary this man Stephen Ward was, probably the most sought after dinner guest in London, the world’s top osteopath and a man who knew absolutely everybody from Kennedy to Gandhi to Churchill and was great friends with Prince Philip.
The thing that really made Christopher think 'yes it’s a stage show’ is that Ward ended up as a waxwork at the chamber of horrors in Madame Tussauds. Next to the acid bath murderer.
Funnily enough Sarah Brightman [Lloyd Webber’s ex-wife] told me her mother Paula was one of the girls in Murray’s Cabaret Club [where Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies worked]. I remember Sarah telling me this hysterical story about when she was about five or six years old, they were all asked at her school to bring pictures of what their parents did at work and she brought in a picture of her mum with the dancers of Murray’s Club which would have been with Mandy and Christine.
CS: What do you think when you look back over your career?
ALW: What strikes me is that there’s a very fine line between success and failure. Just one ingredient can make the difference.
A really good example of that is design and 'Love Never Dies.’ The London production didn’t have any consistency of style, so it would go from say art nouveau to art deco to straightforward, old-fashioned Broadway showbiz. The Australian production [which has been very successful] had its own language. It was more like Maria Bjornson’s original design for Phantom or the original design for Evita, it was at one with the piece.
Another example is Harold Prince [the great Broadway producer]. He wanted to direct Jesus Christ Superstar and I never got the telegram because I was in America and so it went to my father’s college of music and I never got it. I often think how different my career would have been if Harold Prince had directed it on Broadway.
I remember the telegram to this day. It was: 'I am the producer of Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof and West Side Story and I’d like to do Jesus Christ Superstar,’ signed Harold Prince. I thought 'I know who you are!’ Instead the production was the most vulgar horror.
CS: Do you have any lasting regrets?
ALW: The regrets in the theatre have always been the shows that you know ought to have worked but for one reason or another haven’t. One of the things I am doing at the moment, slowly, is I’m going over, say The Woman in White which has a large plotting problem in it, and getting my musicals into as good a shape as they possibly can be in my view. Then if somebody wants to do them, I can say 'look there’s a better version’ . It’s amazing thought how many people do want to have a go at some of these old shows, some of the ones that haven’t worked so well.
I suppose if I had one real regret its that I would have loved to have had a long term writing partner like [Richard] Rodgers had with either Hart or Hammerstein. I was really hoping that the Tim Rice relationship would have gone on but my dad was the one who first pointed out to me that he thought it was unlikely.
I suppose the difference is that I’m obsessed with theatre and for Tim it’s something that he does enjoy doing, is very good at but it isn’t his whole life like it is with me.
The natural rhythm of our partnership fell apart because I never could figure out quite how dramatically you did the story of Chess, which was his baby, so he went off and did it with Bjorn [Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, of Abba] . Bloody good songs it had in it, too. Of course then Cats happened [a musical to poems by TS Eliot] and that by definition didn’t need a lyricist.
That, I think, would be the biggest regret. I’m one of those people who likes the security of working with people they have worked with before, which is why I’m excited about working with Chris and Don again.
CS: What will be in the TV show on Sunday?
ALW: Nicole Scherzinger’s going to do 'Don’t cry for me Argentina’ which is going to be interesting because she’s really a musical theatre actress, and I’m going to be intrigued to see what she makes of it. I’ve been through it with her and she really thinks about what she’s saying, which is awkward in the case of 'Don’t cry for me Argentina’ because, when she asks me questions about it, it doesn’t really mean anything.
Because it was originally called 'It’s only your lover returning’, 'the truth is I never left you’ makes a great deal of sense. But the title got altered at the last minute and it’s one of those examples of, you know, you don’t ask, you don’t explain. So when she said immediately 'I’m trying to make sense of this’, I said 'actually don’t.’
'Andrew Lloyd Webber: 40 Musical Years’ will be shown on ITV on Easter Sunday
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/9955003/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-My-greatest-regret.html
Monday, October 8, 2012
“Little Shop” Director’s Cut Lets You Suddenly See More
“Little Shop” Director’s Cut Lets You Suddenly See More
Posted by Alec Kubas-Meyer on 10.5.2012
For more than 25 years, people have been watching (and loving) Frank Oz’s film adaptation of the musical Little Shop of Horrors. It’s an awesome film, with a great cast, great music, and just great everything. Still, there’s something odd about the way it ends. Both the stage musical it’s based on and the 1960 Roger Corman film which, in turn, inspired the musical end in death and despair, but that isn’t the case for the theatrically-released 1986 movie-musical. Despite the final hint of something sinister, everything seems to work out in the end for Seymour Krelborn and Audrey.
But that wasn’t how things were supposed to go. The ending of Little Shop of Horrors was supposed to be tragic, much closer to the musical with its mass destruction, and far beyond what took place during the 1960 film. Explosions, demolitions, and all manner of chaos were supposed to rein throughout the world. And for the majority of production, rein they did. Everyone involved in the project (save a couple of less-optimistic souls) believed that an unhappy ending would still pull people to the theater, and the film was conceived, written, and shot with that belief in mind.
Unfortunately, it all came crashing down when Little Shop of Horrors was put in front of test audiences in San Jose. The rules of test screenings go something like this (or at least they did in 1986): audience members watch movie, audience members fill out reaction sheet, studio execs read reaction sheet, studio execs exert control over filmmakers. The key question on that sheet is: “Would you recommend this film to someone?” If fewer than 55% of the answers are “Yes,” something needs to be changed. For Little Shop, that number was 13%, and the same thing happened at another test screening in LA. Something had to give, and reactions told everyone involved that it was the ending. Nobody wanted to watch Audrey and Seymour die. They wanted things to be pretty and happy.
So Oz changed it. For three weeks, he reshot the film to make the movie that is known and loved today. And the original ending, which hadn’t quite been finished at the time of the test screening, seemed to have disappeared. Aside from some ugly black-and-white work-print footage released on a soon-after-recalled Special Edition DVD, nobody was really sure where the footage had gone, and no one really knew what the original ending looked like. Thankfully, a team from Warner Home Video led by Kurt Galvao (who was a restoration consultant on Blade Runner: The Final Cut) set about restoring the film as it was meant to be seen, and it premiered on Saturday, September 29 as part of the New York Film Festival Masterworks section.
It’s interesting to rewatch the theatrical release having seen The Intended Cut (as it refers to itself in the credits), in part because the scale is so much diminished. An enormous amount of work went into creating the finale of devastation and essentially none of it was usable. Oz said in a Q&A session that the hardest phone call he ever had to make was to miniature creator Richard Conway, who had spent one year and one million dollars putting everything together, letting him know that his work would not be in the final release. What happens isn’t terrible by any means, but it’s obvious that things were done in three weeks, because there isn’t much to it. Most (but not all) of the big intense moments in the finale were repurposed from the original footage with inserts to change the way things were perceived (something that is fascinating to watch in and of itself).
Still, there are some hints of the director’s original vision in the film. Those who have seen Little Shop a number of times may have noticed that Audrey leaves Audrey II’s mouth at the end with blood on her dress where she was presumably bitten, only to have it immediately disappear. In the original (spoiler warning for everything here on out), Audrey dies of the injuries inflicted upon her by Audrey II and then is fed to the plant as a sacrifice to further Seymour’s future.
During the Q&A following the film, composer Alan Menken mentioned that there had originally been two versions of Little Shop of Horrors. At the time, the idea of adapting an old exploitation movie was pretty crazy, and Menken and his partner Howard Ashman came up with a version that was relatively close in tone to Roger Corman’s film. (He then sang a few bars from it, and it sounded fantastic.) But when put up against the “dark side of Grease” version that came to be, it didn’t have much of a chance. Corman’s film, which bears some similarities to his 1959 film Bucket of Blood (a much more serious film about a sculptor who kills people to use as subjects), is a very different entity than the musical it inspired. Obviously a lot of changes have to be made to take a film, especially a shoestring-budget exploitation film, and turn it into an off-Broadway hit. And then, obviously, a lot of changes were made to put that stage production back on the screen. Howard Ashman wrote an initial draft of the screenplay, but Frank Oz was asked to rewrite it when he took the director’s chair. Oz said that he didn’t change a single line of dialogue in the screenplay, but he took the story from a stage sensibility to a movie sensibility.
Some of the more notable changes from screen to stage to screen involve the role of the dentist, who was a sadist in Corman’s original, but had no real importance to the story. Instead, he was simply another victim in Seymour’s unintentional reign of terror. Bill Murray’s turn as the masochistic Arthur Denton was not based on any character from the stage play but on the character of Wilbur Force from Corman’s film, famously played by Jack Nicholson in one of his earliest roles. In the original film, Force ends up being the patient of a terrified Seymour, whose lack of training gives Force the painful experience he was looking for. It’s a great scene and I’m glad it was brought back, at least in spirit, to the movie-musical.
Perhaps the greatest omission from either of the adaptations was the character of Seymour’s mother. In the original film, Seymour constantly has to take care of his mother, a hypochondriac who may or may not actually be diseased. Regardless of her actual health, she drinks cough syrup with dinner and covers the food with all sorts of “healthy” items. Unaware that food is supposed to taste good, Seymour does the same. She’s an interesting character, and I think she would have had some pretty great songs, but the musical’s singular focus on the shop and those people immediately affected by it meant that some cuts had to be made. As much as I liked the character, it was for the best.
And then we return to the ending. What about the film’s original, epic finale turned audiences off so much? Oz pointed to two reasons: the close-ups and the curtain call (or lack thereof). In a play, everything is in a wide shot, but the close-up gets the audience right up there with the characters, creating a different kind of connection. That connection is made stronger, and the severing of that bond becomes that much more painful. This is compounded by the fact that the end of a film is simply that. In a stage musical, the entire cast comes out (and probably sings a song together); a movie-musical ends with the credits. Seymour Krelborn and Audrey are dead, and that’s that.
Twenty-six years later, I think it’s time for the world to finally see Little Shop of Horrors the way Frank Oz and the entire cast and crew intended for it to be seen. The new ending is intense, crazy, brilliant, and I am very sad this isn’t the classic that everybody and their mother knows about. It is in every way a better film. Ignoring the fact that the theatrical release had a new ending that was essentially rushed out the door, the general tone of the film fits far better into a world of total chaos and destruction. It’s a world where Seymour has seen and done terrible things, and for all intents and purposes he should be a pretty disturbed guy. The film sets itself up for the terror that reigns, and going anywhere else just seems inappropriate. Restorations of old films have been very popular in recent years, and it’s awesome to see higher quality versions of these classics, but the restoration (and in some cases recreation) of 20-plus minutes of presumed-to-be-lost footage is something much rarer. I imagine Warner Home Video will be releasing The Intended Cut or The Director’s Cut or whatever it ends up being called within a year, possibly with some special features about the restoration process, which would be very cool to see. I’m looking forward to that. Telling people about how awesome the new ending is one thing, but getting to experience it with them and discuss it together is something else entirely.
I hope that day happens, and I hope it happens soon. When it does, I will be first in line.
Alec Kubas-Meyer is a member of the NYFF Critics Academy program. You can follow him on Twitter at @AlecJKM.
par3182 • 2 days ago
I imagine Warner Home Video will be releasing The Intended Cut or The Director’s Cut or whatever it ends up being called within a year
Nobody at the screening mentioned the DVD was being released on October 9th?
http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2012/blog/little-shop-of-horrors-directors-cut-ellen-greene-frank-oz-alan-menken-nyff
Posted by Alec Kubas-Meyer on 10.5.2012
For more than 25 years, people have been watching (and loving) Frank Oz’s film adaptation of the musical Little Shop of Horrors. It’s an awesome film, with a great cast, great music, and just great everything. Still, there’s something odd about the way it ends. Both the stage musical it’s based on and the 1960 Roger Corman film which, in turn, inspired the musical end in death and despair, but that isn’t the case for the theatrically-released 1986 movie-musical. Despite the final hint of something sinister, everything seems to work out in the end for Seymour Krelborn and Audrey.
But that wasn’t how things were supposed to go. The ending of Little Shop of Horrors was supposed to be tragic, much closer to the musical with its mass destruction, and far beyond what took place during the 1960 film. Explosions, demolitions, and all manner of chaos were supposed to rein throughout the world. And for the majority of production, rein they did. Everyone involved in the project (save a couple of less-optimistic souls) believed that an unhappy ending would still pull people to the theater, and the film was conceived, written, and shot with that belief in mind.
Unfortunately, it all came crashing down when Little Shop of Horrors was put in front of test audiences in San Jose. The rules of test screenings go something like this (or at least they did in 1986): audience members watch movie, audience members fill out reaction sheet, studio execs read reaction sheet, studio execs exert control over filmmakers. The key question on that sheet is: “Would you recommend this film to someone?” If fewer than 55% of the answers are “Yes,” something needs to be changed. For Little Shop, that number was 13%, and the same thing happened at another test screening in LA. Something had to give, and reactions told everyone involved that it was the ending. Nobody wanted to watch Audrey and Seymour die. They wanted things to be pretty and happy.
So Oz changed it. For three weeks, he reshot the film to make the movie that is known and loved today. And the original ending, which hadn’t quite been finished at the time of the test screening, seemed to have disappeared. Aside from some ugly black-and-white work-print footage released on a soon-after-recalled Special Edition DVD, nobody was really sure where the footage had gone, and no one really knew what the original ending looked like. Thankfully, a team from Warner Home Video led by Kurt Galvao (who was a restoration consultant on Blade Runner: The Final Cut) set about restoring the film as it was meant to be seen, and it premiered on Saturday, September 29 as part of the New York Film Festival Masterworks section.
It’s interesting to rewatch the theatrical release having seen The Intended Cut (as it refers to itself in the credits), in part because the scale is so much diminished. An enormous amount of work went into creating the finale of devastation and essentially none of it was usable. Oz said in a Q&A session that the hardest phone call he ever had to make was to miniature creator Richard Conway, who had spent one year and one million dollars putting everything together, letting him know that his work would not be in the final release. What happens isn’t terrible by any means, but it’s obvious that things were done in three weeks, because there isn’t much to it. Most (but not all) of the big intense moments in the finale were repurposed from the original footage with inserts to change the way things were perceived (something that is fascinating to watch in and of itself).
Still, there are some hints of the director’s original vision in the film. Those who have seen Little Shop a number of times may have noticed that Audrey leaves Audrey II’s mouth at the end with blood on her dress where she was presumably bitten, only to have it immediately disappear. In the original (spoiler warning for everything here on out), Audrey dies of the injuries inflicted upon her by Audrey II and then is fed to the plant as a sacrifice to further Seymour’s future.
During the Q&A following the film, composer Alan Menken mentioned that there had originally been two versions of Little Shop of Horrors. At the time, the idea of adapting an old exploitation movie was pretty crazy, and Menken and his partner Howard Ashman came up with a version that was relatively close in tone to Roger Corman’s film. (He then sang a few bars from it, and it sounded fantastic.) But when put up against the “dark side of Grease” version that came to be, it didn’t have much of a chance. Corman’s film, which bears some similarities to his 1959 film Bucket of Blood (a much more serious film about a sculptor who kills people to use as subjects), is a very different entity than the musical it inspired. Obviously a lot of changes have to be made to take a film, especially a shoestring-budget exploitation film, and turn it into an off-Broadway hit. And then, obviously, a lot of changes were made to put that stage production back on the screen. Howard Ashman wrote an initial draft of the screenplay, but Frank Oz was asked to rewrite it when he took the director’s chair. Oz said that he didn’t change a single line of dialogue in the screenplay, but he took the story from a stage sensibility to a movie sensibility.
Some of the more notable changes from screen to stage to screen involve the role of the dentist, who was a sadist in Corman’s original, but had no real importance to the story. Instead, he was simply another victim in Seymour’s unintentional reign of terror. Bill Murray’s turn as the masochistic Arthur Denton was not based on any character from the stage play but on the character of Wilbur Force from Corman’s film, famously played by Jack Nicholson in one of his earliest roles. In the original film, Force ends up being the patient of a terrified Seymour, whose lack of training gives Force the painful experience he was looking for. It’s a great scene and I’m glad it was brought back, at least in spirit, to the movie-musical.
Perhaps the greatest omission from either of the adaptations was the character of Seymour’s mother. In the original film, Seymour constantly has to take care of his mother, a hypochondriac who may or may not actually be diseased. Regardless of her actual health, she drinks cough syrup with dinner and covers the food with all sorts of “healthy” items. Unaware that food is supposed to taste good, Seymour does the same. She’s an interesting character, and I think she would have had some pretty great songs, but the musical’s singular focus on the shop and those people immediately affected by it meant that some cuts had to be made. As much as I liked the character, it was for the best.
And then we return to the ending. What about the film’s original, epic finale turned audiences off so much? Oz pointed to two reasons: the close-ups and the curtain call (or lack thereof). In a play, everything is in a wide shot, but the close-up gets the audience right up there with the characters, creating a different kind of connection. That connection is made stronger, and the severing of that bond becomes that much more painful. This is compounded by the fact that the end of a film is simply that. In a stage musical, the entire cast comes out (and probably sings a song together); a movie-musical ends with the credits. Seymour Krelborn and Audrey are dead, and that’s that.
Twenty-six years later, I think it’s time for the world to finally see Little Shop of Horrors the way Frank Oz and the entire cast and crew intended for it to be seen. The new ending is intense, crazy, brilliant, and I am very sad this isn’t the classic that everybody and their mother knows about. It is in every way a better film. Ignoring the fact that the theatrical release had a new ending that was essentially rushed out the door, the general tone of the film fits far better into a world of total chaos and destruction. It’s a world where Seymour has seen and done terrible things, and for all intents and purposes he should be a pretty disturbed guy. The film sets itself up for the terror that reigns, and going anywhere else just seems inappropriate. Restorations of old films have been very popular in recent years, and it’s awesome to see higher quality versions of these classics, but the restoration (and in some cases recreation) of 20-plus minutes of presumed-to-be-lost footage is something much rarer. I imagine Warner Home Video will be releasing The Intended Cut or The Director’s Cut or whatever it ends up being called within a year, possibly with some special features about the restoration process, which would be very cool to see. I’m looking forward to that. Telling people about how awesome the new ending is one thing, but getting to experience it with them and discuss it together is something else entirely.
I hope that day happens, and I hope it happens soon. When it does, I will be first in line.
Alec Kubas-Meyer is a member of the NYFF Critics Academy program. You can follow him on Twitter at @AlecJKM.
par3182 • 2 days ago
I imagine Warner Home Video will be releasing The Intended Cut or The Director’s Cut or whatever it ends up being called within a year
Nobody at the screening mentioned the DVD was being released on October 9th?
http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2012/blog/little-shop-of-horrors-directors-cut-ellen-greene-frank-oz-alan-menken-nyff
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
First reviews and feedback on The Dark Knight Rises online!
Clint Morris July 7, 2012
The press and industry types have just witnessed what’s said to be the best in Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” series, “Dark Knight Rises”. With words like “epic”, “Awesome” and “crying”, seems we’re all in for a treat when mid-month rolls around and Batman makes his final stand wearing the Christian Bale mask.
Suggesting the film has a rather beautiful conclude, many were said to have teared up as well as jumped to their feet and ripped with thunderous applause.
Tom McAuliffe says : “Just finished the screening of Dark Knight Rises…so much awesome…can’t wait to see it again. And again.” He later adds, “To your original question – there are things I criticize in every film, but this one measures high on many measures. There will be some surprises but not big ones, the beauty of the film is how well it tells the story. Tom Hardy was incredible as Bane, the storyline was fantastic. I think the Joker is far more iconic than Bane, with more memorable quotes, but this story was great, including Bane’s origin. Godfather 3 never happened. Xmen 3 & Spider-Man 3 were awful, this film was the perfect final chapter in the trilogy.”
SHH’s The Shape and Scoop say : “I think Bale gives his best performance as Batman and as Bruce Wayne in this one. He was terrific. And I especially loved his bat voice this time around…I really enjoyed [Neeson's] part in the movie. It shows both his villain side and his fatherly figure to Bruce side… [Bane is] very intimidating, more so than Darth Vader ever was IMO.Because you can see his eyes..”
Manarchy Magazine says : “I would be remiss if I did not touch on what Nolan seems to have perfected – the villain. Bane is this installment’s chaos. He is played by Tom Hardy who is (yes, you guessed it) a supporting actor in Inception. The brilliance of the direction of these films is how lost you get in the villain’s soul. You lose track of the fact that an A-list actor is on screen. You are completely immersed in their portrayal as an ordered society’s tainted medicine. If you thought The Dark Knight introduced us to a dystopia, just wait until you watch this movie. We learn that it is not only Bruce Wayne and Batman that are rotting from the inside out, but an entire society. You will see urbanites at their most wretched, and in their prime. The chaos wrought unto Gotham City by the Joker was merely the beginning. And Nolan manages to convey this wild ride into 165 minutes of his best work.”
Zach Pincus says : “The Dark Knight Rises is not only easily the best Batman movie yet, but now one of my favorite movies I’ve ever seen. It was unbelievable!”
@cmfcknw says : “Critic after The Dark Knight Rises screening: “If this does not break the mold and win Best Picture, no comic book movie ever will.”
So there you have it, a masterpiece by the sounds!
http://moviehole.net/201255404first-reviews-and-feedback-on-the-dark-knight-rises-online
The press and industry types have just witnessed what’s said to be the best in Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” series, “Dark Knight Rises”. With words like “epic”, “Awesome” and “crying”, seems we’re all in for a treat when mid-month rolls around and Batman makes his final stand wearing the Christian Bale mask.
Suggesting the film has a rather beautiful conclude, many were said to have teared up as well as jumped to their feet and ripped with thunderous applause.
Tom McAuliffe says : “Just finished the screening of Dark Knight Rises…so much awesome…can’t wait to see it again. And again.” He later adds, “To your original question – there are things I criticize in every film, but this one measures high on many measures. There will be some surprises but not big ones, the beauty of the film is how well it tells the story. Tom Hardy was incredible as Bane, the storyline was fantastic. I think the Joker is far more iconic than Bane, with more memorable quotes, but this story was great, including Bane’s origin. Godfather 3 never happened. Xmen 3 & Spider-Man 3 were awful, this film was the perfect final chapter in the trilogy.”
SHH’s The Shape and Scoop say : “I think Bale gives his best performance as Batman and as Bruce Wayne in this one. He was terrific. And I especially loved his bat voice this time around…I really enjoyed [Neeson's] part in the movie. It shows both his villain side and his fatherly figure to Bruce side… [Bane is] very intimidating, more so than Darth Vader ever was IMO.Because you can see his eyes..”
Manarchy Magazine says : “I would be remiss if I did not touch on what Nolan seems to have perfected – the villain. Bane is this installment’s chaos. He is played by Tom Hardy who is (yes, you guessed it) a supporting actor in Inception. The brilliance of the direction of these films is how lost you get in the villain’s soul. You lose track of the fact that an A-list actor is on screen. You are completely immersed in their portrayal as an ordered society’s tainted medicine. If you thought The Dark Knight introduced us to a dystopia, just wait until you watch this movie. We learn that it is not only Bruce Wayne and Batman that are rotting from the inside out, but an entire society. You will see urbanites at their most wretched, and in their prime. The chaos wrought unto Gotham City by the Joker was merely the beginning. And Nolan manages to convey this wild ride into 165 minutes of his best work.”
Zach Pincus says : “The Dark Knight Rises is not only easily the best Batman movie yet, but now one of my favorite movies I’ve ever seen. It was unbelievable!”
@cmfcknw says : “Critic after The Dark Knight Rises screening: “If this does not break the mold and win Best Picture, no comic book movie ever will.”
So there you have it, a masterpiece by the sounds!
http://moviehole.net/201255404first-reviews-and-feedback-on-the-dark-knight-rises-online
Friday, March 2, 2012
Stephen Sondheim & David Ives
But not content merely to revisit the past, Sondheim speaks of pushing forward and says he has "20 or 30 minutes" written of a new musical that he is collaborating on with American playwright David Ives, a New York regular little known in London. "Having spent the better part of four years writing two books [both sizeable tomes in which he anatomises his own career as lyricist alongside that of others], I'm really rusty. I sit at the piano and think, 'Where's middle C?' Any muscles, as you know, atrophy when you don't use them, and I haven't been using my musical muscles."
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/article-24039487-in-new-york-were-starved-of-plays.do
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/article-24039487-in-new-york-were-starved-of-plays.do
Monday, February 27, 2012
Lloyd Webber eyes Profumo musical
(UKPA) – 1 day ago
Andrew Lloyd Webber is considering a musical about a key figure in the Profumo affair.
The stage maestro said he found the story of Stephen Ward - who had a pivotal role in the scandal - intriguing and could use it for his next production.
Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the episode which led to the downfall of the then secretary of state for war, John Profumo.
The story of his affair with showgirl Christine Keeler was chronicled in the 1989 film Scandal.
It starred Joanne Whalley as Keeler, Sir Ian McKellen as Profumo and John Hurt as Ward, a society figure who introduced the pair at a party at Cliveden and was central to the tale.
In the fallout from the affair, he faced charges of living off immoral earnings but died as a result of an overdose of sleeping tablets. Ward was found guilty although he was dead before sentencing.
Lord Lloyd-Webber - soon to lead an ITV1 search for the star to lead the cast in a revival of Jesus Christ Superstar - said Ward's story could form the basis for his next new musical.
He told Chris Evans on his BBC Radio 2 breakfast show: "I'm looking for a subject at the moment and I think I've found one. You always have to go and try these things.
"Stephen Ward really intrigues me and was a fantastically interesting character. The most popular man in London who ended up with absolutely nobody after the trial and everything.
"I kind of think he was the fall guy."
Copyright © 2012 The Press Association. All rights reserved.
Andrew Lloyd Webber is considering a musical about a key figure in the Profumo affair.
The stage maestro said he found the story of Stephen Ward - who had a pivotal role in the scandal - intriguing and could use it for his next production.
Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the episode which led to the downfall of the then secretary of state for war, John Profumo.
The story of his affair with showgirl Christine Keeler was chronicled in the 1989 film Scandal.
It starred Joanne Whalley as Keeler, Sir Ian McKellen as Profumo and John Hurt as Ward, a society figure who introduced the pair at a party at Cliveden and was central to the tale.
In the fallout from the affair, he faced charges of living off immoral earnings but died as a result of an overdose of sleeping tablets. Ward was found guilty although he was dead before sentencing.
Lord Lloyd-Webber - soon to lead an ITV1 search for the star to lead the cast in a revival of Jesus Christ Superstar - said Ward's story could form the basis for his next new musical.
He told Chris Evans on his BBC Radio 2 breakfast show: "I'm looking for a subject at the moment and I think I've found one. You always have to go and try these things.
"Stephen Ward really intrigues me and was a fantastically interesting character. The most popular man in London who ended up with absolutely nobody after the trial and everything.
"I kind of think he was the fall guy."
Copyright © 2012 The Press Association. All rights reserved.
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