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re: One thing to remember

Posted by: Chromolume 08:55 am EDT 03/18/14
In reply to: One thing to remember - AlanScott 05:28 am EDT 03/18/14

Right - which is why I said that I was making generalizations.

But even so, I just somehow tend to think the whole sensibility of those projects was different than many we see nowadays. (I also don't think any of those projects were really driven by the absolute popular name recognition of the subject matter - perhaps Gypsy.)


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re: One thing to remember

Posted by: AlanScott 05:42 pm EDT 03/18/14
In reply to: re: One thing to remember - Chromolume 08:55 am EDT 03/18/14

I think that when it comes to musicals, it really may have been more often than not during the Golden Age that producers bought the rights and then hired writers.

But I agree that a major difference is that it was much less about name recognition than thinking something would make a good musical. The Pagnol trilogy was famous when Merrick set about trying to get the rights and putting together a team, but it shows the difference between then and now that Merrick went to a foreign-language trilogy for his first musical. It was believed that just doing a good show would lead to making money, which Merrick wanted to do (although he also really loved theatre).

Nowadays a musical must run so long to make a real profit that it's believed a show must be a blockbuster, and that may be one factor pushing the tendency to adapt blockbuster movies much more often nowadays. The irony being, of course, that many of those shows flop.


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re: One thing to remember

Posted by: ryhog 06:01 pm EDT 03/18/14
In reply to: re: One thing to remember - AlanScott 05:42 pm EDT 03/18/14

One way of looking at all of this is that theatre has almost always been a collaborative enterprise in which creatives and producers function together. A show is like a lobster pot-easy to get into, difficult to live it and virtually impossible to get out of. Film, by contrast, is usually a top down affair. Everyone can be fired by the producer (and in the end the product belongs to the producer). That makes the essence of projects very very different. New York is family; Hollywood is business. You won't always get along, but it is not the same. Some of these shows we are talking about are really a blending of these modi operandi.


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