Randomness... 1986

by Nathaniel R

Continuing our 80s retros for a couple more weeks. Strangely when I examined it on Letterboxd (are you following me there?) I realized I’d seen fewer films from 1986 than I had the years surrounding it. I'm not sure why this is. Anyway, I thought it might be fun to also share Letterboxd lists to go along with this 80s party, so 1986 is here. Okay, Let’s jump right into the favourites, alphabetically… 

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Stage Door: The unkillable 'Little Shop of Horrors'

'Stage Door' is our new theater column. We'll review plays and musicals and, because this is a film site, we'll end each column with related movie recommendations. - Editor 

Crystal, Ronette, and Chiffon, the doo-wop chorus of Little Shop, are still a major highlight

The October 2019 Off Broadway revival of the singular scifi-horror-comedy-whatsit musical Little Shop of Horrors is still going strong at the West Side Theater in NYC. Well, minus 18 months off for the pandemic of course. The production has been through five Seymours now in its run (Jonathan Groff, Jeremy Jordan, Gideon Glick, Conrad Ricamora, and Skylar Astin) with a fifth on the way; Rob McClure takes over on July 12th so this is your last chance to see Skylar Astin (Pitch Perfect) in the role. Curiously its original Audrey (Emmy winner and Tony nominee Tammy Blanchard) and Orin (Tony winner Christian Borle) are still recycling their sadomasochistic relationship every night in this iteration of Skid Row.  Why can't the show keep a Seymour!?

Well, it is surely an exhausting role even if the anemia and sore fingers from feeding the bloodthirsty plant is fictional...

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Tweetweek

Amusing, thought-provoking, or cute showbiz tweets, curated for you so you don't have to spend time on Twitter... we all need social media breaks at times!

When there's an Eartha Kitt biopic this wonderful and nuanced moment will be the Oscar clip https://t.co/gpl4WZPkZV

— Ronaldo Trancoso Jr (@ronaldotrancoso) June 15, 2022

More after the jump including Little Shop alum smooching, lesbian vampires, impatient conductors, and Gay Pride moments...

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Showbiz History: The Children's Hour, Little Shop, and a Gyllenhalic holiday

6 random things that happened on this day, December 19th, in showbiz history...

1915 Edith Giovanna Gassion born in Paris and immediately abandoned by her mother. She would be raised by prostitutes and would become the famous songbird Edith Piaf, her last name slang for "sparrow", and eventually an international icon. Her life was dramatized (in excruciatingly non-linear fashion as was the fad in the mid Aughts) in 2007's La Vie En Rose which won Marion Cotillard the Best Actress Oscar. Like her contemporary Judy Garland she would struggle with addiction and die at age 47 years in the 1960s. 

1961 The now infamous drama The Children's Hour opens in theaters on its way to 5 Oscar nominations...

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Movies-to-Stage. On Musical Adaptations

Today we've turned the blog over to Tom Mizer, one half of the songwriting team Mizer & Moore...

Musicals have alwasy been adapted from non-musical material

by Tom Mizer

Can I admit something and you promise not to judge me? My writing partner and I are working on adapting some movies into stage musicals. If eye-rolling made a sound, I bet I would hear a thousand violent swooshes. “Not another movie made into a musical! Why can’t there be original musicals?”...

Here’s the deal: musicals have always been built largely on the foundations of other forms, whether adapted from novels (South Pacific, Show Boat) or straight plays (Oklahoma, My Fair Lady) or, yes, movies. Musicals are incredibly difficult to make work; there are so many moving parts that having the framework of a good story already in place can be an enormous advantage...

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