It's not even so much that I worry he doesn't have a good take or pitch on it... though I assume it's going to be pretty straight forward no matter who directs... it's a question of if this director can pull it off, within the presumably limited budget they'll have, and have the touch and ability with an editor, after having the touch on set directing the actors and cameras, to make the difficult tone and big vs smallness of this material work on screen. I have no idea if Ashford can do that - maybe he can maybe he can't - but the issue is he's never had to prove it, and it's not like he even has a stage career that would make me say "take a chance on him, he's brilliant" like I would have with, say, Sam Mendes doing American Beauty.
I'm all for stage people getting a chance to do film... but I just can't take another bad film of a stage musical to tell audience and producers "musicals are bad... don't spend money on them, this is what you get."
And I also just do not get, on paper or otherwise, the matching of this stage director/choreographer with this particular material. This musical rides such a line of being a mistake to make as a film, being a risk, and also of almost but never happening... i am just surprised they were willing to greenlight it without a proven film director at the helm. |
