Tags
Adam Shankman, Alec Baldwin, Broadway, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Julianne Hough, musical, Paul Giamatti, Rock of Ages, Russell Brand, Tom Cruise
It’s been a little while since my last post, but with the debut of the new trailer for the broadway musical, “Rock of Ages”, I wanted to chime in with a few words.
First off, I’m unabashedly in love Hollywood movie musicals. I grew up with them. I love the idea of them, the other worldly nature of them, and the energy and how they wear all their larger than life emotions on their sleeves. The old-time classic movie musicals were where the audience was as much a participant as the characters were. They were invited to stand up and cheer, sing along, applaud after a great number, it was as close to a stage experience as we got in a movie theatre.
When the movie musical disappeared for a number of years, it was because the world had become too cynical to accept that style of filmmaking. When it made its comeback (in the 90s), in my opinion, it was still holding back, coating the musical numbers in MTV glitz and refusing to let the audience in on the experience (see “Chicago”, “Nine” and “Evita”). Adam Shankman, an award-winning choreographer, brought back the exact style and optimistic exuberance that was missing from those previous “movie musicals” with “Hairspray” and I’ve been awaiting his follow up. He seemed to be the only working filmmaker you got the stylistic concept of the movie musical. It wasn’t about quick cuts, jumping locations, or singing on a stage, persay. It was about facing dead out at the audience, and directing the musical numbers for their enjoyment. Those musical numbers always broke away from the “reality” of the film, that’s what made them so unique as a stylistic ploy.
In looking at the new trailer, Shankman’s love affair with choreography and movie musicals is still apparent (thankfully), but the trailer is playing a little coy with the breakout energy of those musical numbers, which I know he’s employed. This is a teaser trailer as such, and taken that way, it works a charm.
On a side note, I’ve read some rumblings about present day movie musicals not using “original” songs. I’ll accept the idea of this criticism, as we’ve sort of grown up with the Disney musical where original songs were created for the stories. However, it must be acknowledged that a great deal of the classic Hollywood musicals were populated with songs that were pilfered from the studios back catalogue. Movie musicals were a relatively cheap form of film entertainment and, rather than commission new material, they simply looked through what they had at their disposal and wrote a story around those songs.
“Singin’ in the Rain’ is the classic, and most successful, example of this, as every one of the songs, including the title tune, was taken from a previous film or an unpublished song from another production. ”An American In Paris” was designed around classic Gershwin tunes, and “White Christmas” was an Irving Berlin showcase. The other type of Hollywood musical was the stage adaptation, such as “The Music Man” and “On The Town”, which is where “Hairspray” fits in. ”Rock of Ages” is an interesting amalgam of both styles of movie musical, being a stage adaptation, but also employing previously written and published song material.
Bottom line, if you’re a fan of film history, and of Hollywood movie musicals, this is an adaptation that should give one reason to hope for a great night out.
Hated the stage version of this because it unabashedly admitted that its script existed solely to string some pop songs together. This looks like they’ve added some plot, and it’s beautiful.
Never saw the stage version, myself, so it’s cool to hear that side of things. Agree, it looks beautiful.