Dangerous Liaisons

The latest in the "How did they adapt THAT?!" files: "Les Liaisons Dangereuses". I of course LOVE the 1988 "Dangerous Liaisons" movie, which I saw in theaters. I'm only now (finally!) reading the book- it's entirely epistolary, the Marquise and Valmont hardly ever even meet in person, it seems. Hampton did an AMAZING job adapting it to the stage (and that script is what the movie "Dangerous Liaisons" is based on), I have no idea how I would have gone about it. Very odd that it's been adapted so many times (Opera, Films, Musicals, stage (I've even seen an onstage all-male adaptation)) "Cruel Intentions" is so obviously based on the movie and not the novel. Also explains why Jean-Claude Carrière's script for "Valmont", which came out in 1989, is so different from Hampton's. (that movie, btw, is worth a look - Annette Bening is incredible as Merteuil. Colin Firth is a bit too adorable as Valmont. Fairuza Balk(!) as Cecile, and the kid from E.T. as Danceny- they're BABIES.)

The Real Theatregoers of New York

A comment on the brilliant Time Out New York review of Wonderland...

The real theatergoers of New York will prove you Communist homosexual perverts who hate wholesome family entertainment wrong--AGAIN!

Now, I assume this person ("Anonymous - Unverified" - if that is their real name), means Broadway theatregoers, in which case, probably correct- most of them are tourists who've come for "culture" and expect to be as bored by theatre as they would be by a museum. The guy texting next to me at Wonderland clearly didn't speak English, there were people crackling bags of whatever food they brought in... The families who are desperate for something they can bring their children to, something they won't have to explain or talk to them about. People who can afford Broadway prices, but don't really care about the shows they see beyond the spectacle all that money can provide. These are the real theatregoers.

Charles Ludlam said in the 1980s:

What's wrong is that Broadway is not the pinnacle of achievement that it should be. It should be something that you long for, that you should want to be on. We all should want this, because it represents achievement and accomplishment and is a fair measure of our talents. Unfortunately, it is not that.

But there should be a wonderful place where you're crowned with laurels if you achieve something in art. That's not good enough in the commercial theatre. It has to be an idea you're sure you can sell, and sell a lot.

I've personally abandoned any hope or dream that a play of mine will actually be on Broadway one day. The "real theatregoers" can keep it.

Adaptation

Made myself a personal course of study: to watch movies where I'd read the book and said to myself: "How the HELL could they adapt THAT BOOK into a movie?!"

SO watched The Fountainhead last night. Movie's not bad. The adaptation (also by Ayn Rand) is rather impressive, contracting that long-ass book into 2 hours. A lot of stuff gets relegated to backstory, and Katie disappears entirely. Story focuses on the love drama between Dominique and Roark (and Dominique doesn't marry Peter in the book, she goes right to Gail). Since Dominique is the only character who really changes in the book, very smart to keep the emphasis on her (much like Dolly in Hello, Dolly; the original original text was called The Merchant of Yonkers, referring to the Vandergelder character*); though it's interesting that although the four sections of the book of The Fountainhead are named after the 4 main male characters, Dominique is in all of them.
Storytelling brisk and interesting till it drops dead for Roark's big speech.
Gary Cooper a bit boring as Roark, Patricia Neal is fantastic as Dominique.

Then decided to get out of the way my other personal assignment: The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Though the book is quite cerebral and philosophical, the actual plot events are interesting enough to warrant dropping the fascinating philosophy. Makes the movie a bit more sentimental than the book, in some ways. Acting is great; Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin are fantastic. Baby Daniel-Day Lewis is weirdly un-sexy (to me), though his Informed Sexiness is of course a given in the world of the movie.
Didn't really miss the philosophical stuff (which includes the meaning of the title), because enough of it was dramatized to still be interesting; and some of the philosophy is actually enclosed within the plot, though in the movie it's more "these things happened, draw your own conclusions".
Prague is gorgeous. Cinematography perfect. Mirrors everywhere in the film, commented on and interacted with, or sometimes just there, though of course nothing can be "just there" in a film, working with a mirror you have to be very careful not to get the camera reflected in the shot.
One whole section is dramatically shot with extra grain and switching from color to black and white to integrate new scenes with actual footage of the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia; fascinating.
Didn't realize till I was about an hour in (because I was riveted) that the movie is nearly 3 hours long. After about an hour stopped being riveted, but was still entertained.
As good as the book, but in a different way.

* I was just reading that in previews Vandergelder ended Act I of Hello Dolly! with a song called "Penny in My Pocket", but audiences were loving Dolly so much that the focus shifted, so "Before the Parade Passes By" was written for Dolly (apparently in a couple of hours).

Writing for the Screen

I was recently commissioned to write my first screenplay. I was given a synopsis and certain characters and asked to write around it. Just finished the first draft and sent it in. Quite pleased with it. I was worried for a bit, but once I got past the halfway mark, the story began to take over and really flow. It's funny how the words just come when you know where you're going.

I've written for the theatre all my life, and it's quite freeing in some ways to be able to essentially follow someone when they leave the stage. I've always said the versatility of theatre is great, because you can have someone stand in a blackbox and say "I'm on the moon", and so they are. But actually writing that someone goes to the moon is another thing entirely when it comes to film, because then someone will have to build a moon set and probably a space suit; probably I'm quite lucky that my first assignment was for an animated feature, it takes some of the onus off me to make things affordable.

It's plain to see some kind of harmony is on the rise.

Downloaded and have been listening to the soundtrack to Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. I recently, in conversation, cited Chicago as a great movie musical because they used the movie effect of placing all the songs as Roxy's fantasy version of events.

DHSaLB, on the other hand, and which is a pretty perfect movie musical, doesn't do that- aside from the Bad Horse epistles, all the songs are rooted in the "reality" of the story; BUT, I never noticed till listening to the songs divorced from the story, almost none of the songs actually END. All except "My Eyes" (or, as I thought it was titled, "On the Rise") are interrupted by a plot event, and ALL the songs move the story forward in some way. Which makes sense, since DHSaLB was actually written FOR film, there is no live audience to applaud, there's no need for a button at the end of songs, and so we can just proceed with the plot.

Ties in to something I noticed about In The Heights (a pretty fantastic stage musical)- despite the "radio edits", there is very little from the show that's actually excerptable, because so much of it is plot-based. Even Vanessa's I Want Song gets interrupted by Usnavi and Sonny and I need some packing tape coño!

Things to bear in mind while writing the musical I'm working on now.

Tradition

Such [insistence on traditional interpretation of Gilbert and Sullivan] would have mattered little had not the D'Oyly Carte enjoyed exclusivity within Britain. After all, "historical" productions of Shakespeare contribute to our appreciation of his plays, as "original instruments" performances of Bach do for his works - but in large part because other performance traditions exist side by side.

This is something people have often questioned me on, as a playwright. I consider it ideal for original plays to be performed as the writer intended, without a radically different interpretation by a director. I always think of that episode of Dream On, where Martin's play, a romantic two-hander about his ex-wife, gets made into an experimental musical without his knowledge (with a greek chorus wearing boxing gloves: ♫ This Marriage is Doomed! It's Dead in the Water! This Marriage is Doooomed! Stick around for the Slaughter! ♫).

But I DO enjoy and entertain new interpretations of Shakespeare or Chekhov because everyone knows (or should know) the original text/story that's being riffed on. Some other writers have achieved such notoriety that I think their work could safely be re-interpreted without damaging the reputation of the artists, though their estates won't allow it- notably Samuel Beckett and Tennessee Williams. The Beckett estate is notorious for only allowing strict interpretations, and the Williams estate recently challenged a production called Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer named Desire, claiming that the one-man show which used Blanche DuBois as a character devalued their property.
Stephen Sondheim in the 80s vetoed a production of Company in which one of the couples was made into a male/male couple without permission, but then in the late 90s granted permission to a college that wanted to cast Marta as a male (so Bobby would have two girlfriends and one boyfriend).

It's a controversial topic; I have frequently directed the original productions of my own plays, just so that I'd be sure of getting my own undiluted vision across to audiences. I can only hope one day I'll be famous enough that people will want to give new interpretations of my plays.

If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.

- Václav Havel - Address to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London quoted in The Independent, London (24 March 1990)

Perspective

Every twenty years or so, America remembers it has a theater. There's a surge of interest and youthful talent to the form, like a rush of blood to the head. Then there's a battle royal: The new talents struggle to overthrow the old conventions, and old figureheads, that have made the theater boring; the old ways fight back. (...) What this cyclical pattern means, essentially, is that the American theater, as an institution, never grows up, never evolves a native tradition, never accrues the sense of perspective that comes with maturity.

- Michael Feingold, from the introduction to Grove New American Theater

An interesting idea. It seems to be true that a lot of my contemporaries don't have much perspective on theatrical history. I've been working lately on synthesizing modern writing with more old-fashioned techniques (writing 5-act plays in verse, or 4-act plays), and I'm met with amazed bewilderment. There's a reason old plays work, they have the mechanism to do so, it's just a matter of blowing the dust off, and discarding what is no longer relevant.