Hamilton Mania, Pixar Short, Gay Rage, New Musical
Thursday, June 16, 2016 at 6:00PM • Variety Zac Efron possibly joining headliner Hugh Jackman in the new PT Barnum movie musical The Greatest Showman on Earth
• Universal Studios Wicked, the movie has a release date. More on this tomorrow
• Playbill Tony Kushner writing an adaptation of West Side Story for a remake by Steven Spielberg! Since that's my favorite movie of all time I feel very weird about this. Strangely the article stays that Kushner is "currently adapting the screenplay of August Wilson's Pulitzer-winning drama Fences" which would be really bad news for the movie since it's already done filming ;)
• My New Plaid Pants ...reacts to the news with a shout out to PT Barnum look-alike Jim Broadbent
• THR The British Independent Film Awards, which helped Ex Machina along last awards season, and are adding award categories this year will try a new system to coincide with what voters have seen and where there are conflicts of interest. Interesting.
• EW Tyler Hoechlin will play Superman for the CW
• The Stake Batman v Superman gets a new trailer for its expanded DVD edition. It's LONGER now?!? Jesus Christ.
• THR That Noah Galvin interview we discussed is still prompting news stories. Apparently ABC is coming down hard on him. Guess they're sensitive about Modern Family!
• NYT She Loves Me will be the first Broadway show streamed live. One night only June 30th. It will cost you $10 instead of the normal $100+
• Vanity Fair on the making of the new Pixar short "Piper". The buzz is true. The short is super adorable / impressive after a patchy run for the most recent Pixar shorts
• Awards Daily Oscar nomination frontrunners thus far?
• Facebook if you missed Jeffery Self's live feed "It's Awesome to be Gay" with lots of LGBT actors and performers all five parts are available to watch! I haven't finished watching it but there's much talking, funniness, and even some musical numbers. Loved Jordan Firstman singing "Smile," Brian Jordan Alvarez's story about Kevin Spacey, and Drew Droege and Sam Pancake talking about playing gay characters on TV, Darryl Stephens unconventional queer awakening via Prince's Under the Cherry Moon and more...
Hamilton Mania
I was finally able to see the insanely popular Hamilton on Broadway last night. For this I must thank the very talented Rory O'Malley (who broke through with Book of Mormon five years back) that's us on stage after the show to your left) who plays King George III. We met because of Into the Woods and this blog and long story.
King George III is such a fun role with perfect little comic interludes to comment on all the chaos in America. (That's the role Jonathan Groff originated but he had to leave the show early due to Looking and other commitments). Otherwise the original cast is still with the show -- for another couple of weeks at least. Good news: they'll be filming it soon for posterity! There will also be a Hamilton mixtape of cut songs and covers and a documentary later this year since people are insatiable.
We had excellent seats -- I nearly smacked the actor Josh Charles in the face (who happened to be sitting next to us) before the show while trying to send a selfie with too little wi-fi. The show lived up to the hype. Great energy, fun, and memorable music and an incredibly finessed marriage of content, form, and theme.
Politics
Tis the season. With the recent tragedy in Orlando it's hard to not focus on politics, and how broken the GOP is, basically serving only as meat puppets for the NRA who are holding us all hostage (and executing thousands of people each year) via lax gun laws. So here are a few political pieces worth reading/watching:
• BET an amazing open letter to straight people from Dominick Pupa which was banned from Facebook -- I guess because it upset sensitive straight people who don't like being reminded of the existence of gays? Not sure how Facebook can justify removing it
• The Daily Beast "Admit it..." a thought provoking piece on religion and mass killings and theocratic community's culpability
• Gawker the essential Rich Juzwiack on Anti-Gay hatred and gay resistance
Reader Comments (20)
I fell in love with Josh Charles in Bird People. You all should see it!
Just ordered my Hamilton Tshirt online.
Seriously why would anyone want to remake "West Side Story" ? How are they going to "improve" it ?! "Batman vs Superman" should be shorter not longer. Hugh Jackman and Zac Efrom would make a cute couple ...
It's been a particularly tough week of news this week, with the homophobic killings in Orlando followed by the murder of a policeman and woman in France and then, today, the killing of a much-loved and much-admired Member of Parliament here in the UK.
Nathaniel, thanks for the above links to political stories. It made me feel a bit better that there are some good writers, and compassionate voices - yours included - standing up for LGBT+ rights. I think my own LGBT+ voice is a bit timid most of the time, and so reading these people who have the boldness to say what I can't formulate gives me some encouragement at least.
Here's hoping for some good movies on the horizon to take some of the sting out of life as it currently is.
I'm not thrilled about a remake of West Side Story, and was even more nauseated to read that Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper will be remaking "A Star is Born", with Cooper starring and directing.
His first gig directing and he does this? I cannot avoid this enough.
That Daily Beast article is well-intentioned but unfortunately places the blame in the wrong place. Hatred (including homophobia) and violence are not exclusively "Muslim" or "Islamicist" problems. The author of course knows this, but by focusing his attention on it he perpetuates the notion that these tragedies are something that Muslims in particular need to answer for. While he (perhaps rightly, at times) is critical of liberal arguments defending Islam at all costs, he does not acknowledge that the vast majority of people in this country will simply glance at headlines and see the words "Muslim" and "terrorist" and "shooting" and stop reading because they think they understand what that means.
There are so many bigger issues at stake here-- why does homophobia thrive in certain places and not others? Why does it seem most prominent in countries torn by war, communities that are marginalized, and groups of people economically or educationally disadvantaged? Or in small communities with less diversity? Why are heteronormative nuclear families held up as pillars of social stability? Are there aspects of being labeled a "terrorist" because of how someone looks/dresses/prays that makes them more inclined to buy into an unending cycle of hatred-self-hatred-defensiveness (if I'm going to be called a ___ I may as well...)? In other words, does the tendency to label and profile actually increase an individual person's likelihood of feeling alienated and thus inclined to embrace "radical" and seemingly "empowering" (but often violent and damaging) ideologies and actions?
Orlando was a horrific tragedy that struck at the intersection of many of the US's most vulnerabilities: violence and hatred toward LGBTQIA communities, the tendency to "otherize" and demonize Latinos, and the inclination to assume that a Muslim man with a gun has a single-minded, pre-determined and straight-forward ideological agenda that can best be understood as "religious". In the wake of the tragedy many people shared their stories about how it feels to be in public as an LGBT person--feeling guarded about kisses, intimate moments, fears of looking or sounding "too gay". I couldn't help but be reminded of the fact that Muslims in this country also worry about looking "too religious" by wearing hijab, or wearing a beard (which of course would not hurt a white hipster!) or wearing clothes that looked "foreign"--and often face violent assaults for doing so.
A few suggestions for further reading:
1) If we're looking for a "big picture" analysis, I think this article on toxic masculinity is more fitting:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/06/toxic-masculinity-and-mass-murder/486983/?utm_source=atlfb
2) To the specifics of the case, the Guardian's examination of the shooter and the problem of self-hate:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/14/omar-mateen-gay-men-terrorism-pulse-jackd-sexuality
3) and finally, the things that Muslims in this country have to contend with every time something like this happens:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sana-mayat/being-muslim-in-america_b_10450256.html
I'll just add that as a historian who has done work on early twentieth century British India, a frequent extreme-Hindu nationalist accusation against Muslim men in the 1920s-30s was that they were too "cosmopolitan"--for some this meant too friendly with the British and "westernized", for others it implied being too "homosexual." So there have been moments and places--not so long ago-- where "homosexuality" and "Muslim" were considered part of the same "problem."
If we treat identities as stable entities inherently inclined to be interpreted in one way we do nothing but damage.
The Greatest Showman on Earth - 2017
Mary Poppins Returns - 2018
Wicked - 2019
West Side Story - 2020 (?) *because Spielberg is too busy
Are we going to have GOOD MUSICALS on Christmas from next year to 2020??? Is God listen to our prays???
(Will West Side Story be a new musical, right Mr. Spielberg???)
Why no on is talking about that???
cat baskets -- i appreciate all this but i think the article is more in reaction to the tendency of religious groups to never want to accept any culpability but a lot of religions still preach that homosexuals are immoral and that God does not approve. its not a big leap to say that this creates inhospitable culture for gay people in middle eastern countries and in the US with our loud right wing and evalengical factions.
Religions in general do so much damage in the world in terms of separating people and creating hierarchies where some people are lesser than. as soon as you dehumanize people it's easier to commit crimes against them or deny them rights.
I don't know what the solution is but organized religion (and the power of "spiritual leaders" who can manipulate religious people, who are by their nature manipulatable because they value unprovables and faith and trust above facts and demonstrable consequences) is clearly a huge part of the problem. Religious people aren't necessarily the problem except that they place those religions and those spiritual leaders above their fellow humans and thus reinforce the prejudices even if they don't wholly support the hatred as individuals.
i don't know what the solution is but there are so many sick religious people in this world who have no love for their fellow humans through some twisted version of spirituality.
In another thread it was mentioned that if Bent were to be adapted for the screen again, it would be easy to improve on its cinematic qualities, but not its cast. To a great extent, West Side Story would be the opposite: the translation of the original Jerome Robbins choreography to the streets of Manhattan is pretty much unbeatable, although some of the other scenes might be interesting to revisit. As far as the cast goes, if you take away the two Academy Award winners and a couple of the stellar performances by the rest of the supporting players, you have to admit that the two leads could have been better (sorry, Natalie). iI would be easy today to find a Tony and a Maria (from Puerto Rico) with more chemistry and who could actually sing the hell out of the parts—which would probably be the hook for a remake.
@nathaniel - I thought I saw you in the Times Square area last night!
HAMILTON! Happy you saw it and you thought it lived up to the hype.
Hi Nathaniel--
I would have LOVED it if the Daily Beast article had addressed the problem that you described. An apt title for that article would be: "Admit it: contemporary religions have an atrocious record with demonizing LGBT people." Such an article could have focused, as you suggest, on the bigger picture stuff: why is it that twentieth century definitions of religion seem to assemble around the idea of LGBT-intolerance. Many tenets of written doctrine are ignored by most religious people as being "unmodern"/ "of their time" and not applicable for the present (things like strict diets or rules on women's menstruation or property laws). So the question remain: why is homophobia linger as a rallying cry of faith? Why is it deemed relevant and modern? How did it become that way?
Unfortunately, the article is instead entitled "Admit it: These terrorists are Muslims." Ooof. Not at all thought-provoking or nuanced. So instead of the interesting questions about "why religion? Why homophobia? Why now?" the article simply perpetuates the notion that Islam is the problem. It says basically that liberals need to admit this fact or lose the discussion to Trump. Oof again. The lesson from this election cycle should not be that the pendulum of public opinion should swing further toward anti-Islamic intolerance. In fact, this article also misses that while many liberals do defend all meanings of Islam at all costs, many also scream "ban all religions!!!" from the rooftops. This is also a problem. One need not know much about religion to know that a persecuted martyr complex will NOT make religions go away. On the contrary.
I agree with you that there needs to be a long, nuanced, interesting discussion about how and why religious communities (especially in the US but also globally) are defining themselves in terms of heteronormativity (masquerading as "family values"). Part of this, I think, is that religious communities feel persecuted by secular modernity--the ever-present fear that they are irrelevant. A good way to stay around, the sentiment seems to go, is to reproduce--make lots of babies who are born into the faith. "Nuclear families" are useful as baby-making machines and political entities with the delusion of being self-contained. Calls to "ban" religion only strengthen these impulses to be insular and defensive which is very appealing in certain places and contexts.
The content of preaching and the agendas of spiritual leaders change a lot over time. In fact, the homosocial nature of a lot of religious education not so long ago leant itself to a much more fluid understanding of sex and desire. But with an increase in global militarism and the devastating effects of war there has also been a rapid increase in defensive (misguidedly self-preservational ?) homophobia. Many leaders definitely DEFINITELY need to get away from the tendency right now (which has strengthened overall if also ebbing and flowing since the 1930s globally) to see LGBTQIA people as enemies. Some leaders are moving in this direction (pope Francis has made some inroads, that republican leader in Utah recently said Orlando "changed his heart"). So these discussions are happening. And they are happening globally. Unfortunately, the daily beast article focuses on assigning blame to Muslims rather than working to understand why this problem is a problem of "now" and how religion is defined and understood in this moment rather than "religion" itself (and Islam) for all time.
Apologies for the manifesto. Love and respect always.
"Seriously why would anyone want to remake "West Side Story" ? How are they going to "improve" it ?!" Well, not many ways, but first they could cast actors to play latinos that are actually latino... lol
Philip H -- well at least they got it right with Rita Moreno who won the Oscar :)
Cat baskets -- i hear you. I'm not saying "ban religions" -- religion is clearly going nowhere ever as it's been around forever in multi-forms -- but I am saying until we address that religions (all types -yes, including muslims) demonize homosexuals, and talk about why that is and why even their more sophisticated educated members go along with its (or just stay silent) we are not going to get anywhere.
The only religion we need is actressexualiy.
Nathaniel, I'd be interested in your thoughts (if you have any) on the Ellen Barkin-headlined Aninal Kingdom TV series adaptation which premiered on TNT this week. I know it was one of your favorite films of 2010.
Oh now I really want Oscar Isaac to play Bernardo, but he's probably too old...
West Side Story getting a remake? So much for being unlike other classics and growing younger
My mixed feels about the West Side Story remake is clouded by how truly happy I am that this isn't being made by Rob Marshall. So there's that to look forward to! It's not Rob Marshall! It has a chance.
The real gamble is if they'll break with the original film's white-washed casting, because honestly who knows nowadays. Maybe ScarJo will be Maria. But you know who fits the bill of a bankable, lauded, theatre-and-film actor who has plenty of musical and dancing experience?
Christopher Walken. As Anita. Or Maria. Think about.
Yes the new improved "West Side Story " would have a Latino cast which would be nice- I can see it being done as a more realistic style but they could never top those production numbers.