When you hit middle age you really only have two choices: you can get fat and lazy until you roll over and die, or you can can get off your ass and do something, like maybe ride a bike.
Bluntness
I've also been told I have little tact, so if this offends you simply ride on.
My Black Friday at the store was... boring, no customers came to the flooring department and I was never needed in appliances.
And then, just after dinner, as I was sitting at my desk working on the next book, the headline flashed that Stephen Sondheim had died. Ah, yes, this was Black Friday.
I was lucky enough to see three of his shows on Broadway and each, in its own way, was riveting. The first I saw when I was in college. I, and two of my friends, jaunted up to New York to see a little show titled Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett, no less. Amazing. The show turned Broadway on its ears. How audacious! To write a show with great music, great lyrics, and then mix in a little blood and revenge. I was hooked on Sondheim.
Then, when I was working for Marriott, I went to see Sunday in the Park with George. The friend I went with was expecting some bold and splashy. That was not the case. Instead, we got to see Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters doing what they do best, sing great lyrics to great music. Sitting in the 14th row of the orchestra, this show was simply amazing.
A few years later I saw my third and last Sondheim show on Broadway, a little thing called Into the Woods. This is, I believe, the most accessible of Sondheim's musicals. Into the Woods is that bold and splashy musical (at least as far as Sondheim could go) people had been waiting for.
The movie versions are... well, some of them are passable. However, if you get a chance to see a Sondheim show on the stage, do so. They can be almost life changing.
I saw Into The Woods the other night. It was okay. I saw it a long time ago on Broadway, and have seen it twice since then in regional theater, so I'm somewhat familiar. Disney is fairly true to Act I, just a couple snips here and there, but nothing is really changed. Like just about everybody else, I feel Depp and his zoot suit should be been replaced, but that's another story, isn't it? Anyway, if you've ever seen the show you will know that Act II has a bit of a bite. Disney, in their attempt to maintain a PG rating pulled most of its teeth. That was a mistake. What the audience is left with is something which meanders without much purpose. Warning, here come what some might consider spoilers.
In the show Rapunzel is crushed to death by the giant, not so in the movie where she rides off with her prince. In the show the Town Crier kills Jack's mother by hitting her over the head with his staff. In the movie he pushes her and she has a heart attack... yeah, that's right. In the show the witch shoves the Town Crier to the giant telling her it's Jack. When the giant finds out it isn't, she hurls him away... through the air... but not in the movie. That's 3 deaths which didn't make it to the silver screen. Don't forget the Baker's wife, who seems to step out of frame in the movie. You find out late she has actually fallen off a cliff. Believe me, that's not how it happened in the show. And then there's the Agony reprise, in which the two princes lament on how they've both found two more beautiful maidens, unfortunately they have to go back to their wives. That's not in the movie, either.
What's funny is that for years I've been reading how Disney desperately wants to win a Best Picture Oscar... hell they're desperate to have a live action film nominated. They might get a nomination this year, but they won't get a win. The Best Picture Oscar tends to go to movies which have a little bit of a bite. Into the Woods, unfortunately, was defanged by Disney in order to get a PG rating. Those extractions will cost them.
The trailer for Into The Woods has dropped and already there are people shrieking like a bunch of little girls who've had their panties pulled down. "There's no singing!" So what? It's not the first movie musical to have a song-less trailer. "There are going to be changes!" Of course there are going to be changes. I would like one person to name me one Broadway musical that didn't undergo changes while transitioning into a movie musical. Look at Burton's horrendous "Sweeney Todd." I saw that show, on Broadway, with the great Angela Lansbury, and I can tell you there is no comparison to Burton's adaptation. Ms. Lansbury was funny, what's her name... Burton's wife?... was not.
There are going to be changes. Take the wolf's costume. You see, I also saw Into the Woods on Broadway (I've actually seen the show several times in various productions) and the first time the Wolf came on stage I said to myself "that'll never make it into the movies." You can't have a wolf running around on screen for 6 minutes or so with an erect penis if you want to keep your PG-13 rating. Take that 8 or so inches away and his song is much less about pedophilia and much more about eating little Red Riding Hood. " But that's going to change the meaning of the show,' some whine. To some extent... yes, but most likely not enough to change the focus of the show.
Okay, so it wasn't erect all the time. Sometimes it just hung there.
Or take that other little Sondheim musical which happened to become a major Oscar winner, "West Side Story." I was lucky enough to direct the show while in college and was surprised to discover, on reading the script, that the song "Somewhere" is actually song by an anonymous character in the middle of the "Somewhere Ballet" sequence. You say what? That's right, they cut a ballet which, gruesomely enough, has Riff and Tony (already dead) re-entering and killing each other a second time. Try to find that in the movie.
Changes happen. This is normal. Here's the I wish Give it a chance.
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