Remember?

Right now, I am actually missing a comedy show I was quite looking forward to: Being as fixated with the Broad-way as I am with the NYC underground comedy scene, it's no wonder that I was so excited about this (and given the fact that I'm a girls' school grad who is big into musical theatre and hangs around the UCB in Chelsea, it's no wonder I need to meet more straight men).

So, it's at Mo Pitkin's, a place I've never been to and have some weird fascination with the fact that I need to see something there quick. It's the same deal as Under St. Mark's, and, if you're completely foreign to the small venues that are available to indie improv groups and the like, basically, they are all pretty much the same place. The drinks are crappy and the walls are painted-on black-box-theatre cinderblocks. It's no different than the Producers' Club 2. Only, y'know, underground.

It's Obsessed with Julie and Jackie.



Perhaps this existed in the massive mental backlog of entries I'd planned to write for this website, and am still, hopefully, going to get around to; these include:

*A guided tour of the annual BC/EFA Flea Market
*More pointless lists
*A blog of the opening night of Dreamgirls at Chelsea Clearview (and, given my choice of venue, it will probably be a madhouse)
*A "Bloomsday on Broadway" write-up where my best friend and I re-enact the November day depicted in The Producers on Bloomsday - that is, as soon as I learn how to upload personal photos to this thing. I always keep prolonging this one, as I will probably never get around to so much as owning a digital camera, let alone wanting one, so it may well not happen.

Utterly pathetic.

Anyway, since I can't go to Obsessed tonight (darn curfew!), I've decided to write about my stupid obsession of the moment...because, really, I tend to obsess over things in spurts. One minute it's "Arrested Development," and the next it's the original Broadway cast recording of The Full Monty. Then I just get defensive and can't bring myself to gush about them anymore with the gusto I used to summon at around those times.

So, without further ado, I am going to write about the absolute worst movie Elizabeth Taylor ever made. Seriously. Worse than Cleopatra. It's never going to make any AFI top whatever lists anytime soon, and it's not exactly a movie I'd recommend to my friends, but God help me if I end up defending it to my grave for no apparent reason other than it's proof that even great geniuses make horrible, horrible mistakes and even so much as destroying the evidence will never, ever change the past.

This elusive movie...is called...A Little Night Music.

There it is, just staring at me. A crusty, antiquated video box with a flowery mod pink font that no longer exists, and the photograph of Len Cariou in regal, turn-of-the-century Scandinavian aristocracy period costume smooching La Liz on the lips while simultaneously trying not to gag. Someone apparently thought that something so great and exquisite, a wonderful Broadway show like A Little Night Music would make a great movie. They were wrong. Dead. Wrong.

Because, maybe there was some strange occurrence in the film industry. Perhaps the gay mafia was overthrown by the Jewish mafia in terms of supremacy. Which is b.s., because the Jewish mafia doesn't just taint Broadway like this, too. I never count In My Life. No. What makes A Little Night Music spectacularly awful is that it's trying so hard in vain to avoid these precarious (read: obviously dunderheaded) mistakes that practically every major-studio movie musical of the last half-century and beyond has made. It's as simple as saying, "I know the actors are twenty years too old to recreate their original Broadway roles...but how to mathematically and logically balance it out...I know! Let's set Rent in the mid-eighties and film it in Canada!" Or "We have to work a major-label star who's way past her prime in here somewhere...the record company demands it...Why don't we just work Mya into the 'Cell Block Tango' number?" Or, just simply, "Nicole Kidman!" None of this makes sense. The biggest anachronism in Rent wasn't that scene where they were surrounded by posters that very visibly said "Freelancers' Union: Established 1998." It was that the actors really were twenty years too old to recreate their original Broadway roles.

But I digress. A Little Night Music is a terrible, terrible movie that practically seems to demand its own snarky DVD commentary. I can't explain why I'm so obsessed with it. I can pinpoint every twist and turn coming up. I was actually telling someone the other day that it's also a prime drinking game movie, because it took over two years to film - and, in that time frame, Liz's maximum-heifer to minimum-skinny weight was fluctuating so badly she was like the Luther Vandross of the mid-seventies. And every scene in this movie contains some elusive reshoot cut where Liz goes from hot to huge. I can't explain it. She's like two different women.

Here are just a few reasons to be morbidly obsessed with this movie: Some of the songs are cut. Some of them are changed. Even "Send in the Clowns" manages to sound good, even though they're working with late-seventies technology. Also, one woman dubs all of the female singing voices, except for Diana Rigg, who plays the Countess. And the actor who plays Henrik also does all of his own cello-playing, and he does it live. Not only that, he actually went on to do the voice of Frodo Baggins in the Bakshi Hobbit. And the only thing they really didn't change was the poster. It's still the same iconic "Well, you think you're looking at an ugly tree, but look closer, and it's actually a bunch of naked people fucking!" Broadway poster logo. Which, in my opinion, is way up there with La Cage for its sheer audacity: Balancing both vaguely artful graphic design and cool, ready-for-a-t-shirt crudeness.

They did not fuck up the score. Watching it again, it's kind of enhanced. The original Broadway score is all woodwinds and strings - no brass or percussion. The movie affords them to use both a full orchestra and outdoor settings. Which is a liability, because I saw some old book at the Strand the other day that had the old production photos of the original show, and those Broadway sets were pretty kick-ass. Like an Aliki book on heavy acid usage. Sets aside, though, there's enough to keep the purists happy, because Sondheim wrote two new songs for the movie, and he enlisted Paul Gemignani to musical direct, and Jonathan Tunick to arrange (Tunick actually has a nifty cameo, fake moustache and all, appropriately enough, as Igor Stravinski!).

Those two new songs, though...They got rid of "The Miller's Son." No matter. The nice and chubby lady who played Petra in it wasn't going to work much after that...in a severe case of art imitating life, she got knocked up by the guy who played Henrik. Look at me, all Man In Chair on this thing. And I wasn't even old enough to live through this movie's release!

Still, Len Cariou gives a peerless master class on lip-synching during "Now." That's got to be worth something, right? And wouldn't you rather take a chance on this late-seventies schlock than The Boynton Beach Club? Seriously!

I confess, I've never seen A Little Night Music live. I only have the soundtrack, and someone should probably motivate me to seek out the live taped version from the Kennedy Center at the library archives with Douglas Sills as Count Carl-Magnus and that wonderfully wonky brunette chick from The Light in the Piazza as Anne. I can't justify this movie's existence. Hal Prince probably can't save it either - it was the last movie he ever directed. Someone needs to bring this antique back into the public eye. I don't know how, or however ironically, people should appreciate and treasure this movie. It's an oddity. That's what it is. Nothing more, nothing less. And it's got Elizabeth Taylor on two extremes. So, it's really not that bad. But you'd think someone would have noticed at some point...

Here's a nifty, if somewhat over-long, review of the VHS!

And here's a place you can seek it out, too!