Merrily We Roll... and Roll... and Roll... Along
Thursday, August 29, 2019 at 8:02PM by Nathaniel R
Real life theater friends Ben & Beanie, doing a musical theater movie adaptation together. But they won't be done with it for another 20 years
While The Film Experience was in the pro-Boyhood camp in 2014 we were never among its biggest fans. It was hard to be in that club given the massive stanning for a movie that was winning Best Picture prizes left and right in its year. But today we love it more than we ever have now that it's given the king of longform cinema, Richard Linklater, the funding and confidence to attempt the coolest or most foolish movie musical ever. As you may have heard he's now embarking on an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's most beloved flop Merrily We Roll Along to be filmed over the next 20 (gulp!) years...
If you've never seen the Sondheim show the gimmick is that the show moves backwards in time so you start with three jaded and estranged middle-aged people in showbiz (a movie producer, a playwright, and a theater critic) and you move (mostly) backwards until they're young best friend twenty-something dreamers with no idea what's really ahead for them for the show's gorgeous finale. All that being said, Merrily We Roll Along is to Sondheim shows what, oh, One From the Heart is to Francis Ford Coppola... a highly ambitious but super-duper niche production that doesn't quite work, unless you make a lot of concessions for it, but which is also genuinely loved by more than a few super-fans who will do just that! Get it?
UPDATED WITH CORRECTION VIA BEN PLATT'S TWITTER SINCE MULTIPLE SITES HAD GOTTEN WHO HE WAS PLAYING WRONG: The film will star Ben Platt (of "Dear Evan Hansen" fame though you also know him from the Pitch Perfect movies or Ricki and the Flash, if you haven't seen him on Broadway) as Charlie the playwright, Blake Jenner (Everybody Wants Some!!) in the central role of Frank, the songwriter turned movie producer, and Beanie Feldstein as their theater critic friend Mary. That's righti! This makes Richard Linklater's Merrily We Roll Along also an elaborate in-joke with Greta Gerwig & Lady Bird fans since Beanie's character Julie played the role of Mary in the high school musical within that perfect movie.
Lady BIrd's musical theatre kids
The most common instantaneous response to this project online seems to be snarky cynicism, with people claiming its foolish to assume movies will still be around in 2040, let alone the world. It's true that the Planet Earth is being overrun by fascists and may well become unliveable soon due to climate change before this movie wraps production. But frankly, we believe that the apocalypse is the only thing that will truly kill the cinema (which has survived everything that's happened to it to date) so we choose to believe that we'll still be around to see Merrily We Roll Along in 2040 (if we survive both old age and climate change) when it premieres in whatever way movies do premiere in that far flung possibly dystopic future.
Stephen Sondheim definitely won't be around to see Merrily We Roll Along: THE MOVIE! since he's 89 years old at the moment. However, we think this news must still delight him. How cool would it be to know that your art will survive you, not just in theory but quite specifically since a twenty-year project based on your art is already in the works (along with the assumption that your shows will be revived as long as musical revivals exist). Not that Sondheim couldn't live to be 109 -- the oldest living person right now is 116 years old! -- but it's unlikely, no matter how much we'd like him to be immortal.
The original Broadway cast of Merrily We Roll Along, then and now...
For those of you who are interested in Merrily We Roll Along we highly recommend the documentary Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened (2016) which features the cast of the original stage production looking back at the doomed musical (which made it through just 16 performances on Broadway).
Reader Comments (29)
Boyhood lost all the industry Best Picture prizes (unless you consider the Globe an industry prize) - even the Indie Spirit Award - and most of the minor critics' Best Picture prizes, but the perception lingers to this day that it won everything, because it dominated the major critics' awards. So people labelled it "overrated."
As a huge Linklater fan, it is comforting for me to think of him having his Altman-losing-for-Gosford-Park moment at the Oscars in 2040.
This is one fucking stupid idea.
I'm a little surprised at the optimism of this project, but also just the patience of it. Even if they did this over 10 or so years it could still have a comparable effect, but 20? And I'm torn over this approach - sure, experimentation is interesting, but I don't know that the extreme realism approach of actual aging is necessarily nobler or going to generate a reaction that a more standard film couldn't. Cinema is full of illusions, built on them, really. And even "realism" is born from stylistic choices and affectations. So this is an interesting notion, but I don't know that I'll find it any more satisfying than getting to see a finished product sooner. Ask me again in 20 years, I guess.
That sounded more negative than I meant it to. The movie could be wonderful, I just think the same team is capable of making a wonderful movie right now, too.
I'll be dead by then! My heart won't take more Best Actress heartaches.
This seems like a really terrible project. As you say, the show just doesn't work. Even if you use the same actors and age them over the correct amount of time, it doesn't fix two major issues: 1) the story is problematic and 2) people don't love this musical like most of Sondheim's others. It seems doomed to people getting their hopes up and then discovering the same problems that everyone else has found with the show.
As someone who loved Boyhood and adores the score of Merrily, this news is fascinating. The issue, as always with this show, is how will they solve the storytelling problems in the show. But with editing, and 20 years to play around with it, maybe they can.
I’m highly skeptical of this, but I love it when you write about One From the Heart, and that seems a fair comparison (overall I like that but still think - oh Teri Garr, you deserved better).
Well, now I have a reason to live another 20 years. SO EXCITED FOR THIS! This is the perfect director, cast, and approach to this tragically underappreciated gem from the best musical composer of this or any universe.
It's actually looking like Blake Jenner will be Frank and Ben Platt is Charles from a Hollywood Reporter article.
ken s. for President 2020. They've got just the right amount of nuance, complexity and evidence-based decision making that the USA needs right now.
this is really incredible news, and ideal casting. i've seen about six productions of MERRILY, and none of them worked, but i think temporal expectations in film are different than the theater and that a movie version could work. and if anyone can do it, it's linklater...who i don't love as a director, but he made a gorgeous picture with Boyhood, in this same style. boo to the haters...this is an innovative approach to a difficult, interesting project!!!
Okay, but what if they film the movie in the same order as the play? So the young actors will be playing the middle-aged characters while the 20-years-older actors will be playing the young dreamers. Would that be TOO much? Or just crazy enough to work?
ANYWAYS... I'm excited for this. It's at least something to look forward to while the world burns all around us.
Ben Platt is the very definition of white privilege and nepotism.
Linklater himself will be 80 when the project is completed.
I don't want to be negative but Boyhood was a free-wheeling develop the narrative as you go project which would have survived had cast/crew been unable to continue, will a scripted piece be as flexible?
I thought the show din't work until I saw Maria Friedman's production recorded at the West End. It was brilliant. Hope I'm still alive to see this.
Blake Jenner. That is all.
I think it's a cool idea. People are so cynical!
Andy -- you say nepotism like it's a bad thing. It's only a bad thing if the person isn't super talented. Without nepotism we dont get Liza Minnelli or Mia Farrow or countless other sensational showbiz types. Ben Platt is very talented so it's fine.
Without nepotism (adjacent) you wouldn't even have Stephen Sondheim, so sometimes it works. I really don't want to think of a world without Jane Fonda or Angelica Huston or Drew Barrymore or Vanessa Redgrave or...
Merrily We Roll A Long Time...AMIRITE?
This isn't my favourite Sondheim (the holy trinity of Follies, Sweeney and Sunday in the Park With George), nor is it the one I think Linklater is best suited for (Company) but this is legitimately exciting news and I'm kinda floored at the level of snark.
Sure, why not?! It'll be even more deflating usual if it turns out to be a dud, but hey I want to embrace the (pun unintended) folly.
Arkaan -- me too. I think this is a genuinely exciting undertaking even if it doesn't work out. My only fear is that we'll keep hearing about it for the next 20 years. It would be so much better if people forgot it existed until it premiered. One of the reasons BOYHOOD was so exciting was that it came into the world fully formed and felt like magic (wait, you've been filming this for how many years... with actual stars and nobody knew about it?)
I just want the Streep/Follies movie
Just because 15% of nepotism products have talent it doesn't justify looking the other way of the mechanisms that prevent more talented people from even getting an audition and celebrate people who simply have not struggled and haven't faced the hardships of the industry.
A lot of straight white men are talented and yet we keep hearing the "privilege" accusations to no end, so why not concentrate on even more damaging cases of unfairness?
A site pretending to be progressive while celebrating nepotism seems very contradictory to me.
Pablo -- There's no winning once the purity contests start. Politically i am progressive but it's nothing I want the site to be burdened with if it means *not* celebrating talented people.
Some actors have to struggle to get successful. some don't. Same in any profession. Life will never be a level playing field though we should make laws and environments that strive for a more level playing field. That's the progressive part. But once talent is there, it shouldn't be shunned just because it had a headstart. Some brilliant actors came up from poverty (Viola Davis) while other brilliant actors had the world handed to them through enormous wealth (Rooney Mara) but both are worth celebrating among the best in their field... some of the worlds greatest actors come from the inside (family business) like Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Fonda and Jeff Bridges... while others Meryl Streep come from non-showbiz families. Same with talent behind the scenes.
I think people need a reality check when it comes to the arts and "privilege" Until our nation starts funding the arts sufficiently (a worthy progressive role but it seems unlikely given how conservative and anti-intellectual the US tends to be *sigh* ) it's ALWAYS going to be easier for people who come from privilege to make it in creative professions... creative professions don't tend to pay living wages until you're very successful... a point few artist ever reach.
Nathaniel, of course I didn't mean not to celebrate talented people just because they are lucky, but you said nepotism wasn't a bad thing and when it is systemic is as bad as any form of discrimination. It happens in every profession but not to the degree that it happens in showbusiness which is a very coveted field. And it is not just a headstart. Sometimes the connections influence an entire career (Tori Spelling, all of Goldie Hawn's offspring) and we can never get rid of these people.
Vanessa Redgrave, Jabe Fonda and Jeff Bridges are great, but you lost me at saying Rooney Mara is one of the best in the field. She seems inexpresive to me and her luck of struggle, passion and drive is a evident as Viola's abundacy in those fields. It shows in the performances.
Jamie: ME TOO!!!! Follies, starring Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Kevin Kline (I want to pretend Hugh Jackman can be the fourth, but it obviously doesn't work).and directed by Todd Haynes.