I’m sure that’s been said before, probably starting with the silents way back last century. And I can see how a few generations of low-information morons such as we’ve somehow managed to breed over the last five or six decades could believe in their heart of hearts a movie version of a script is the only possible “correct” version of a story that originated years before on the stage. After all, the movie version never changes; there are never revisions, cuts, scenery changes, onstage flubs, or understudies performing “tonight” because the lead has a hangnail.
Well, not till someone remakes the movie, anyway.
The screaming and yelling and general jackassery that surrounded the recent NBC live production of The Sound of Music proves, if nothing else, my thesis.
I am not a huge fan of the Rodgers and Hammerstein vehicle. I’ve never seen it on stage and have never actually sat down and watched the movie all the way through (didn’t with the TV version, either). Personally I think R&H did better musicals before TSOM, but this is the one everybody (including my wife) freaks out about, because I guess Julie Andrews.
And since nobody actually goes to see live theater anymore, you get crap like this and crap like that.
God love Carrie Underwood. I don’t know who chose her for the part, but what I saw of the show suggested to me that she did a pretty darn good job on the singing part, and the acting part, well, I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen a LOT worse, in fact. Was this show superior to the 1965 movie? No. Was it entertaining? Yes, if you could let go of the arrogance of your opinion that the movie — made before most of the people bitching about the TV adaptation were even born — had locked the work into its final and unalterable form for all time, world without end, amen.
The evil people (and they are evil, make no mistake) who castigated her for daring to take on a part that had been supposedly cast in stone by Julie Andrews in 1965 have succeeded only in showing their own single dimensionality. Their willingness to jump with both feet into the fray without a simple understanding of the difference between the original Broadway edition and the later cinematic adaptation of the Von Trapp story only proves the twin depths of their barbarity and their poor cultural education.
I have seen (for instance) Fiddler On The Roof any number of times — on stage, and via the 1971 movie. Same dichotomy goes for works as varied as Shenadoah, Carousel, Evita (!), West Side Story, and so forth. I do not believe that I have ever seen a “perfected” version of any stage play or musical, even in cinematic form, and I don’t ever expect to. Hell, I’ve seen Wicked on stage three times, and to be honest, I’m not sure you could do it any better than the third time we saw it — but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.
The fact is that any stage play that survives its own time cannot possibly live forever frozen in its own time. The Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals that so many people love were not written for our time, and frankly R&H probably didn’t consider that they would become somehow “timeless”.*
My response to the barbarians who felt that they had to profanely bitch and moan about how awful Carrie Underwood was ought to spend some time attending live theater before they are ever allowed to post theatrical criticism again — including for their kid’s elementary school Christmas play. And by that I don’t mean so-called “alternative” theater; go see a real Broadway play, or even an off-Broadway play. Don’t waste your time with off-off-off Broadway crap or socio-political propaganda twaddle that pretentiously calls itself “theater”. Get yourself an education in what the theater is all about before whining about how fucking gawdawful it is.
For what it’s worth, I thought the NBC version — or at least what I saw of it, which was a considerable portion — was pretty good. I had one major problem with it, and that was Audra McDonald — only because it was jarring to see a black woman playing the part of an Austrian abbess at the time of the Anschluss. Got nothing against her singing, but that casting decision was off. Yet my wife says that my single casting criticism is just as bad as her criticism of the many “changes” that were made for the TV version — which as I told her at the time (and later found I was correct) were probably not changes, but actually how the script was written for the stage play. She remains unconvinced and I cannot convince her otherwise.
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* Take, for instance, any Shakespeare play. The Bard most likely did not consider himself to be writing for the ages; he was just interested in making a little money and providing a little diversion to his theater-goers. His plots tend to be timeless because they speak to unchanging human nature, but nobody goes around blasting (for instance) Kenneth Branagh for making a bloody realistic outdoor spectacle out of Henry V because it overshadows Lawrence Olivier’s wartime version that was more like watching the play from the cheap seats at the Globe. Nor do they whine about how Cole Porter reinterpreted The Taming of the Shrew with his musical Kiss Me, Kate! For that matter, the other night we watched the rather charming Joss Whedon remake of Much Ado About Nothing — which takes nothing away from Branagh’s version of same from twenty years ago, even if Branagh made a questionable casting choice of Keanu Reeves to play Prince John…
The point is that every generation must reinterpret drama for itself. To make some moronic claim that a 1965 cinematic spectacular can be the only definitive rendition of a play that has been performed thousands of times since it was written in the late 1950’s is disingenuous at best, and insulting to the intelligence and talent of real theater people at worst.
R&H removed some songs and added some for the movie as opposed to the stage version.
There was a general outrage when Julie Andrews was chosen for the movie version over the star who created the Maria role on stage — Mary Martin. We see the same idiots complaining now.
There was a similar critique when the star of the stage Version of My Fair Lady — Julie Andrews — was not given the film role of Eliza Doolittle.
Why is it so hard to accept the stage is a different medium than Film? Usually a movie needs far more visual content (The mountain scenery during TSOM overture in the film version for instance). People hate change.
Particularly people whose lives don’t include live theater.
As I think I said or at least implied, I get the fact that a film version of anything tends to solidify that thing. Those whose only contact with the thing is through film have a sort of hardening of the brain arteries when it comes to that thing, because the film never changes.
In a stage play, there are constant changes. It’s never the same twice. Hell, look at opera and the way just the sets change from production to production, which is to say nothing about the cuts and restorations that are made for various artistic purposes understood only by the director. Move a play or an opera from one venue to another and all kinds of changes, compromises, and accommodations have to be made to put on the production.
But movies aren’t supposed to change. Look at all the hubbub when George Lucas dared to rework Star Wars…