Threaded Order Chronological Order
| A guilty pleasure... | |
| Posted by: GrumpyMorningBoy 11:32 am EST 01/04/19 | |
| In reply to: Annoying things about A Chorus Line: The Movie - bobby2 06:24 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
|
|
|
| I saw it on VHS back in the 80's. I didn't know any better. It wasn't until late high school that I picked up the OCR and realized what A CHORUS LINE was supposed to be... So, now, looking back, I can admit the tiniest amount of guilty pleasure at just HOW EIGHTIES IT ALL IS. That style of dance, what I suppose some would have simply called "jazz dance," coming right out of the "Solid Gold" era, is just so deliciously tacky to me. I kind of love it. Of course, now, I feel awful for Terrance Mann, who clearly knew better, and I yet, my god, there are an awful lot of pretty people in that cast. I consider it a trifle now, and can't for the life of me imagine how anyone thought it was a good idea to NOT use the Bennett, but as a kid, I rather liked it. :) - GMB |
|
| reply to this message |
| A Chorus Line - the Movie | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 04:58 pm EST 01/04/19 | |
| In reply to: A guilty pleasure... - GrumpyMorningBoy 11:32 am EST 01/04/19 | |
|
|
|
| There used to be quite a few columns over the years at the NY TImes about how could they ever make a film of "A Chorus Line" -- until after the movie came out and most thought Attenborough really didn't know that much about making musicals or musical auditions apparently. They really should have given Michael Bennett the opportunity to direct the film -- after all, one of the most-received plaudits for his "Dreamgirls" was how cinematic it was. He might have seen the possibilities in a real cinematic way for his chorus liners. | |
| reply to this message |
| re: A Chorus Line - the Movie | |
| Posted by: BroadwayTonyJ 11:17 pm EST 01/04/19 | |
| In reply to: A Chorus Line - the Movie - PlayWiz 04:58 pm EST 01/04/19 | |
|
|
|
| I read that originally Universal hired Bennett to direct the film of A Chorus Line. However, the studio wouldn't go along with his vision for the film, and Bennett subsequently walked away from the project. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: A Chorus Line - the Movie/the dances in GHANDI | |
| Posted by: bmc 09:17 pm EST 01/07/19 | |
| In reply to: re: A Chorus Line - the Movie - BroadwayTonyJ 11:17 pm EST 01/04/19 | |
|
|
|
| It was because of the thrilling dance numbers is the movie GHANDI that Attenborough got the movie of ACL(?American civil liberties??? if they were to (and I hope they do) re-film ACL(The abbreviation stands for A CHORUS LINE) the should use Bennet's TV staging at the TONYS, where he re-worked the opening for the camera. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: A Chorus Line - the Movie | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 11:09 am EST 01/07/19 | |
| In reply to: re: A Chorus Line - the Movie - BroadwayTonyJ 11:17 pm EST 01/04/19 | |
|
|
|
| If I remember correctly, Bennett wanted to make a movie about dancers auditioning for a movie version of A CHORUS LINE. I sort of get why the studio wasn't thrilled with that idea, which is really a completely different project than a film adaptation of A CHORUS LINE, which is, obviously, what they wanted. It all sounds a bit meta and I feel like Bennett's concept would have been better served by creating an entirely new movie musical about dancers auditioning for a movie musical adaptation of a Broadway hit that would have been informed by Bennett's experiences working on the actual ACL film. Thinking about it...I'm not sure how Bennett ever saw this working. The songs in ACL come out of those characters' very specific experiences and I can't figure out how he was thinking of presenting them in his concept. Would you have a dancer auditioning for Mike singing "I Can Do That" as though it was his own experience? Would we have seen multiple versions of each song as different dancers audition? It just doesn't seem workable to me. |
|
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: A Chorus Line - the Movie | |
| Posted by: BroadwayTonyJ 06:40 pm EST 01/07/19 | |
| In reply to: re: A Chorus Line - the Movie - JereNYC 11:09 am EST 01/07/19 | |
|
|
|
| I wonder if Universal ever approached Robert Wise about directing the Chorus Line film. Although past his prime, he was still active back then. Also, Stanley Donen and Blake Edwards would have been better choices than Richard Attenborough. I assume they offered him the job because of his success with Gandhi. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: A Chorus Line - the Movie | |
| Last Edit: PlayWiz 12:12 am EST 01/08/19 | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 12:10 am EST 01/08/19 | |
| In reply to: re: A Chorus Line - the Movie - BroadwayTonyJ 06:40 pm EST 01/07/19 | |
|
|
|
| While Robert Wise had a tremendous hit with "Sound of Music", he followed that up with huge flop with the film "Star!". Maybe if "A Chorus Line" had some adorable children and Alpine scenery, the studio might have come calling. I think he was off the radar by that time anyway. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: A Chorus Line - the Movie | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 09:35 am EST 01/08/19 | |
| In reply to: re: A Chorus Line - the Movie - PlayWiz 12:10 am EST 01/08/19 | |
|
|
|
| Not in the mid-1980's, of course, but I can't imagine a better person to make a film of A CHORUS LINE now than Rob Marshall. He comes from Broadway and likely knows the material backward and forward, he clearly has experienced Broadway auditions on both sides of the table and he has experience taking a stage-bound show biz story and making movie magic with it. The problem would be that, I think, the material in A CHORUS LINE is resistant to being pulled apart and rewritten and changed...every word, note, and lyric is so interconnected that, once you start pulling it all apart to make changes, you risk all the dominos falling. And that IS a problem with the film. Marshall wouldn't be able to make the kind of changes to the material that he made to make CHICAGO work on film without risking another debacle like the 1985 version. He'd have to commit to working with the material as it is, and that might feel too constraining to a director who wants to interpret material in his own way. |
|
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: A Chorus Line - the Movie | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 12:10 pm EST 01/08/19 | |
| In reply to: re: A Chorus Line - the Movie - JereNYC 09:35 am EST 01/08/19 | |
|
|
|
| I remember seeing these terrific commercials in the movie theater for the show "Dreamgirls" when it was playing on Broadway, and on a big screen, filmed as it was playing on Broadway, in a 1-2 minute ad, it looked tremendous. It's possible Bennett or someone else could have just filmed the play pretty much as it was presented on Broadway, with some shots around the theater, perhaps to show Zach before he comes on stage, and it would have worked. There have been successful films that for the most part take place in one room or locale. ACL didn't need to be opened up really -- when you're an actor waiting for hours to be seen at an audition, it's part of the experience to be in that vicinity and world for a while. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: A Chorus Line - the Movie | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 12:55 pm EST 01/08/19 | |
| In reply to: re: A Chorus Line - the Movie - PlayWiz 12:10 pm EST 01/08/19 | |
|
|
|
| Absolutely agreed that the best possible person to have made that movie in the mid-80's was Bennett himself. He clearly was experimenting with ideas for just such a film with his staging of the show's opening that opened the Tonys that season. I just wish that he hadn't been so stuck on his own concept, written about above, that was anything but a movie adaptation of ACL. As I wrote elsewhere in this thread, he could have made a fairly straightforward adaptation of ACL and THEN made an original movie musical about dancers auditioning for a film adaptation of a Broadway hit that would have only benefited from whatever his experience would have been making ACL. It would have been win/win...we all would've gotten a better ACL film that probably would have done better at the box office and we would have gotten an interesting film experiment from Bennett. |
|
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
Time to render: 0.027709 seconds.