Finally--an Andrew Lloyd Webber scandal

I'll report the facts on this before I start screaming like an angsty 15 year old:

BBC's online edition had a report today on a controversy surrounding the British reality show How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?. The show, where contestants audition to star in a West End production of The Sound of Music, was accused by Saturday's Independent of being fixed, namely due to the fact that the winner, Connie Fisher, began recording in a studio before the show was finished, as well as the fact that the show's runner up, Maria Emma Williams, had a nasty falling out with the show when she found out she wouldn't be splitting performances with Fisher. Webber vehemently denied the allegations, and is considering pursuing a libel trial.

First off, let me just say that there is pretty much no one I hate more in the arts world than Andrew Lloyd Webber. I hate him as a rock fan who despises campy musical numbers, and I hate him as a thespian for how he has cheapened and monopolized the musical, and to some extent American and English theater as well. For all the reasons film snobs hate George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, I hate Andrew Lloyd Webber and then some.

Among the other items on my arts-world you are reality television, yellow journalism, and diva culture. So really, this is a perfect storm for getting Ethan riled up. At this point I don't even care if the show was fixed, I'm just angered that the show existed in the first place. I suppose it's to be expected, as other flailing traditions have also hit the reality TV bug (seriously, has anyone seen The Contender?).

But for Americans who think theater hasn't been bastardized enough, fear not! Lloyd Webber hopes to create a similar show in the U.S. I'll be curled up in my room reading the Lenane trilogy when the show premieres.

Ho-Ho-Hannibal

So it looks as if Thomas Harris's "long-awaited" follow-up to Hannibal will be released on December 5, just in time for Christmas!

I put quotes around "long-awaited" because Hannibal was published in 1999, and I don't consider seven years a very long wait for a book. Hell, they can't all churn 'em out like J.K. Rowling. To rush matters along even faster, Harris is writing a screenplay based on this story as he puts the finishing touches on the book.

Many think Hannibal Rising, or Young Hannibal, or Behind the Mask - accounts vary on the title - is a sell-out of the Hannibal Lecter character, but I don't think so. Harris is a top-notch writer, and where he took Lecter's relationship with FBI agent Clarice Starling in Hannibal was a lot more interesting than the compromised vision offered by the movie. Those who thought it was unbelievable - including Jodie Foster, who famously portrayed Clarice in the Oscar-winning film adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs - needed to look closer. The foundations for such a development had been in Starling's character all along.

If I had created such an iconic character, I think I would cash out as much as possible. Hannibal in Space? Why not? I believe there are more stories to be told about Lecter; I just hope Harris won't stoop to writing a subpar novel because he's operating on Hollywood's timetable.

Zach Braff's insistence on speaking to his generation doesn't mean he actually does so

Josh Levin had a fantastic criticism of Zach Braff on Slate's website today. He argues that, although Braff is the self-declared voice of his generation (and unfortunately, people agree with him), Garden State was a hollow, self-indulgent and self-absorbed piece of film. Levin argues that such quirky insertions such as a man walking around in knights armor only distracted from the vacancies and inconsistenties his characters and dialogue.

Furthermore, I would argue that those quirks only detracted from the consistency of the movie as a whole; was this movie supposed to be a quirky, surreal spoof, or The Graduate for Generation Y? I know The Graduate featured it's main character in a deep sea diving outfit and ended with its young protagonists driving off to an old folks' home, but those quirks only added to the character's sense of confusion, as opposed to hiding their fundamental flaws.

Levin argues that instead of knowing how his generation thinks, Braff knows how his generation consumes. Levin's prime excamples were Braff's oh-so-precious indie soundtrack selection and successful myspace account. I would take it a step further. The reason consumption is Braff's main form of understanding is that no one knows how else to speak to his generation. If the 60s had Bob Dylan and the 90s had Kurt Cobain, who will be our voice?

I hate to say it, but the concept of "the voice of a generation" is largely obsolete. With communication so decentralized and since people have access to more information than ever available before, it's virtually impossible for one person alone to be the unanimous spokesman of his generation. The reason some pick out Zach Braff is not that he offers anything insightful to say, but that he seems like someone who would represent his generation. That's mainly because his films address youth, uses dialogue vaguely familiar from Dawson's Creek-via-O.C. television programs, and seems so gosh-darn insistent on being a spokesman.

This is a problem that plagues music and literature as much as film, as everyone's looking for the next Catcher in the Rye or Nevermind as much as they are the next Graduate. But as long as the resources that were once put into 3 or 4 works of art are now put into 300, we won't have another Bob Dylan. Declaring that any one to be so for lack of better options is just a colossal waste of time.

Fox's new Christian movie division not as scary as you may think

The news was certainly frightening Wednesday when 20th Century Fox announced the formation of FoxFaith, a film wing dedicated to Christian movies. Certainly, anyone who experienced The Passion of the Christ a couple of years ago knows how scary fundamentalist movies can be, and Fox, citing the Passion's success, launched FoxFaith to support an "undeserved market."

Before running to the hills, let's get a little perspective. While the Passion made over $400 million internationally, that film had major star power (even if it was the director), the attention of every major media outlet, and a national controversy that only made the film more intriguing to the casual moviegoing public.

In fact, other than the Passion, the market for Christian films has almost no history of success. Take for instance Left Behind, the adaptation the fundamentalist Christian book franchise about a post-apocalytpic world. The franchise has sold over 200 million books, but the movie went straight to video and was a financial failure. Chuck Klosterman had a fascinating chapter on the franchise in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; apparently the filmmakers intended to make money off the film by spreading "the word," but unfortunately this strategy was based on religious conversion, not proven film marketing strategies.

Obviously, 20th Century Fox is smarter and has more resources than the makers of Left Behind. However, the main problem with this initiative is that Hollywood and Bible Belt markets simply don't overlap all that much. Talladega Nights was a suprise success, despite the fact that it had Will Ferrell, mainly because experts were shocked that so many NASCAR-lovers would actually go to the movies. It'll be interesting to see what Fox does with FoxFaith, but my prediction is that it will be a failure.

Image of the day

I got this image off Defamer, but it made me laugh for a good long while. Perhaps I got the roles confused, because I had originally thought that John Travolta would be in drag. Either way, this is a great image.




















On a slightly unrelated note, Pitchfork did eventually publish a review of the New York Dolls' latest album, something I criticized them for not doing in my ver. Of course, they didn't like the album all that much (6.0 rating) and published the review on August 31, more than a full month after the album came out. I do agree with Pitchfork over the new Mastodon album, however, and Blood Mountain has quickly surpassed albums by TV on the Radio and Lambchop for my favorite album of the year. Fantastic metal in 2006? Yes, yes there is.

Sorry for the lack of posts

I've spent the last week and a hald packing, unpacking and being an Orientation Leader, hence the infrequent posting. I'll try to make a couple more post before the school year starts, but expect regular blogging to resume Monday.

Ethan

More hate between critics and playwrights

While doing research on the Weiss scandal, I came across an amusing article from Philadelphia Magazine about Philadelphia's problems with theater-critic relations. Apparently, after Toby Zinman, theater critic at the Philadelphia Inquirer, published a particularly nasty review of a musical at the Act II playhouse, a singer in the show started a blog called "We Love Toby! The Blog" devoted to slamming Zinman. Here's some of the tidbits:

“She’s the self-proclaimed ‘Bitch of Broad Street,’ the ‘Vacuous Vamp on Vine,’ a ‘biased biting bitch,’ ‘a boil on the beautiful ass of our community,’ a ‘big stupid head,’ the one and only Toby Zinman … who’s [sic] work this site is committed to disparaging for its constant lack of nuance, creativity, insight, intellect, and value to anyone or anything, save her own wilted self-image. … Here shall stand a monument to our collective, unrequited desire to see her choke on her own self-righteous bile.”

The Act II Playhouse has started a campaign to get her fired, trying to get local theaters to pull out their advertising if the arts editor does not fire her.

While I respect theater companies right to have their play represented fairly in a review, and Zinman seems like a rather crappy critic, this cause amounts to nothing more than a teenage Livejournal-based chain mail campaign. Ironically, theaters would be hurting themselves more by pulling their ads than by having Zinman review their plays, and the campaign would do nothing to get her removed. The other suggestion, having a website where people can review the plays on their own, is equally useless (IMDB, anyone?). If people are going to raise grievances against critics, I'd hope they'd be more mature than these bloggers.

Theater critic woes

There's been a lot of fall out lately for the Sun-Times review, and I personally have gone back and forth on it a few times. I'm pretty sure that I'm annoyed at everyone involved in this scandal, although I still think Weiss has proven to be the most malicious.

Since my last post on the matter, it has been revealed that Weiss has reviewed this festival in the past, and that the Theater Building had no objections to her reviewing the piece. Joan Mazzonelli, the director of theater building, published a letter expressing that she had no problems with the festival being reviewed.

It's true, then, that John Weidman, president of the Dramatists' Guild, only responded with a letter writing campaign because the review this year happened to be negative. While that puts him in a deservedly poor light, it doesn't give Weiss a free pass to do whatever she wants, as she clearly though Mazzonelli's letter gave her.

Accordingly, she launched on an all-out counter attack in Friday's Sun-Times, arguing the following:

And had these essential facts been investigated by the powers that be at the Dramatists Guild of America, and all those distinguished members of the Guild who so blindly and unthinkingly engaged in a letter-writing campaign based on a total lack of honest information, the attack launched against my ethics might well have been reconsidered.

Well, let's see Hedy. You did review a series of musicals that were unfinished products, and you did criticize them profusely while not seeing them to completion. The fact that you got away with it for so long does not negate what you did was wrong.

I don't think the fact that Theater Building didn't disapprove lets Weiss off the hook. Yet, I still think the Dramatists' Guild has handled the case poorly, and has its foot in its mouth even if it is right in this situation. Mostly, I'm extremely frustrated to see the animosity between critics and playwrights only grow larger.

Weiss criticism overblown

The criticism of Hedy Weiss does not center on her decision to review works she hadn't seen all the way through. Weiss spent a 12-hour day at Theatre Building Chicago's Stages festival, sampling plays much as an audience member might do. Is this lazy journalism? I would argue the exact opposite. If something didn't grab her in the first act, she moved on, so that she might review the festival more comprehensively.

The criticism of Weiss centers on her choice to review the workshop performances at all. But according to the Trib's Chris Jones (via an article in the Chicago Reader), the rules about reviewing workshops are "hard and fast in New York, where workshops tend to be closed, but in Chicago it's a gray area. I haven't reviewed Stages in the past, and I wasn't planning to, but I wasn't aware that I wasn't allowed." Neither was I.

And let's not forget that the playwrights sent Weiss promotional materials, including photographs, obviously inviting a review. Sure, these were works-in-progress, but after all, the festival was open to the (paying) public. And though Weiss' review ran after the festival had ended - ostensibly negating the purpose of a review - this is occasionally the case when a run is so brief.

According to Theatre Building Chicago marketing director Tom Ballentine, who's quoted in the same Reader article, "I feel badly if we didn’t put it in black and white and spell it out in a press release, but in every other way we made it distinctly clear" that Weiss was not to review the shows. (In every other way? What would that be - telepathy?) The Reader also says that Ballentine was hoping for a more generalized overview of the festival. But that wasn't his call. If it wasn't explicitly stated that Weiss was not to review the performances, she was within her every right to do so.

My suspicion? If Weiss' review of the plays had been positive, this debate about her "unethical conduct" would be nonexistent.