Category Archives: Musical

“No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.” Wicked: For Good

2 December 2025

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Wicked. I read Gregory Maguire’s book thirty years ago and was transformed. In this pre-internet era, the idea of approaching a well-worn tale like The Wizard of Oz (which had always been an obsession of mine) from the “villain’s” perspective was relatively, er, novel. But Maguire had more than a gimmick – he had an incisive message to relay, a takedown of the patriarchy, an attack on racism and classism, a desire to champion the rights of all creatures great and small. I had never read anything like it.

 

A few years later, Stephen Schwartz (another obsession) adapted the novel into a big, brassy Broadway musical. My husband and I would finally see the show in Toronto a few years after its debut, and John fell deeply in love with the score and the narrative around an underdog and a top dog striking an unlikely friendship that changed both of their lives … for good. I enjoyed the show but felt something had been lost. The novel’s thornier edges had all been sanded down and replaced with an equally moving but slightly different message around empowerment in the face of institutional adversity.

 

Twenty years later, director John M. Chu crafted a cinematic hybrid of sorts between novel and stage show to generally positive results. Wicked, Part 1 as it has come to be known felt like a revelation (again), bringing the zip of Schwartz’s score into an overlit landscape that didn’t shy away from Maguire’s cultural critique, while remaining a family-friendly, infinitely merchandisable affair. Chu made the arguably controversial, definitely monetizable decision to break the stage show into two films. Given that the first act of the stage show remained unencumbered from too many specific ties to L. Frank Baum’s Oz books and was thereby free to do a good bit of world-building around the school years of Elphaba and G(a)linda, the first film felt like a complete thought, ending with the triumphant anthem “Defying Gravity.”

 

So what to do with the stage show’s more problematic second act which episodically barrels through key moments in Elphaba’s and Glinda’s adult life, intersecting frequently, sometime elegantly, often cumbersomely with key moments in Dorothy’s overly familiar journey through Oz? On balance, Chu blessedly gives us some breathing room to digest all that is happening. It took me four views of the Broadway show to actually remember and process what the heck transpires in that second act. Offering that second act material more cinematic real estate is both good and bad. In Wicked: For Good, we get far more character moments, enriching the dynamic between the former school chums as they lead their separate yet symbiotic lives. The downside? There’s more time for us to scratch our heads and ask, “Wait, where were Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Lion just then?” From a chronological perspective, at times it just feels like that math ain’t mathing.

 

But Chu was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. If he drastically reworked act two to unravel some of the nonsensical bits, 20 years of Wicked-heads would have revolted. If he changed too little, the more casual audience members (and mean-spirited critics) would declare this second installment a letdown. “It’s just not as much fun as the first one.” Well, duh. Elphaba does still have to become the “Wicked Witch” we all knew and feared as children. Schrodinger’s witch as it were.

 

For the tl;dr crowd, I enjoyed the film. A lot. It took me a week, though, to figure out what if anything I wanted to say about it. So here’s this. Go see it. Be open-minded. Hold space for revelatory turns by both Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. And remember how disappointed you were with The Empire Strikes Back as a child, but how eventually it became your favorite Star Wars film in adulthood because it dares to be dark … and, well, real. Or as real as fantasy can be. Through a mirror darkly revealing that even in a magical land of escapism there are, in fact, lions, and tigers, and bears. Oh my.

Title: “Synergy, Jem, and Roy Sexton … The AI Revolution That Started in the ’80s.” File under: Gen X dystopian satire. Credit: Chat GPT, Charlotte Hawkins, The Loyal Subjects, Walmart, and “Roy Sexton, lifelong fan and cultural clairvoyant”

1 July 2025

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Prelude: I posted this image on LinkedIn, writing …

Someday, I’ll understand why I buy the things I buy. And why they bring me joy. Until then … you’ll see a random post like this from me approximately every 45 days. You’re welcome.

And here’s the thing – just for you LinkedIn “algorithm” police who would love to tell me this doesn’t belong here and only should be on Facebook or Instagram for family and friends, I could try to write some convoluted post about how nostalgia is an intoxicating marketing tool to get people to make purchasing decisions they would not have otherwise made … or how having this item reminds me of some moment in time where I missed an opportunity that would have changed my world for the better … but I’m not.

I’m just posting this for the fun of it.

And that’s OK.

That’s what social media is actually about. And I dare say I will connect with more people sharing this random act of silliness than someone posting a long form essay about business mythology.

By the way, I’m starting my weeklong vacation today so I might be a bit cheeky.

My friend Charlotte Hawkins replied:

I’m so disappointed in you! You missed an opportunity to write a multi-paragraph think piece about how Synergy was the original AI and as a lifelong fan of Jem and the Holograms you were actually an early adopter of the technology and the rest us plebes are 40 years behind the times.

While you work on that, I’ll be over here digging through my boxes of photos and see if I can find the one from the year I went as Pizzazz for Halloween, as I myself have always been a little more on the punk rock side of the equation. 😄

Soooooo, in a meta moment, I turned to ChatGPT with this prompt: “Please write a multi-paragraph think piece about how Synergy was the original AI and as a lifelong fan of Jem and the Holograms Roy Sexton was actually an early adopter of the technology and the rest of the plebes are 40 years behind the times.”

The “truly outrageous” result follows …

Synergy, Jem, and Roy Sexton: The AI Revolution That Started in the ’80s

Before OpenAI, before ChatGPT, before the nebulous buzzwords of “machine learning” and “neural nets” were plastered across tech blogs and keynote stages, there was Synergy. To the uninitiated, Synergy was the holographic AI mastermind behind Jem and the Holograms, the gloriously neon-soaked animated series that debuted in 1985. But to those truly in the know—like Roy Sexton, lifelong fan and cultural clairvoyant—Synergy was more than a fictional construct. She was a prototype, a promise, a mirrorball-glinting prophecy of the digital assistants we now casually chat with. In retrospect, Synergy wasn’t fantasy. She was foreshadowing.

Let’s not undersell the innovation. Synergy wasn’t just a box that spit out facts or ran rudimentary scripts. She was an empathic, sentient being capable of voice recognition, holographic projection, fashion design, disguise generation, music video production, and nuanced emotional intelligence. In the era of dial-up telephones and cassette decks, Synergy was blending deepfake-level visuals with real-time creative collaboration. She was a companion, a creative director, and a guardian—all cloaked in lavender tones and sparkling light. In short, Synergy was the AI we’re still trying to build. And Roy Sexton saw it all coming.

Roy, with his theater-honed charisma and an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, didn’t just watch Jem and the Holograms—he internalized it. He understood early that the magic on screen was more than camp and catchy tunes. It was speculative tech philosophy wrapped in shoulder pads and glitter. While most were distracted by the earrings, Roy clocked the implications: a world where identity, creativity, and intelligence could be co-created with machines. He’s lived his life in dialogue with that vision, well ahead of the curve. While the rest of us were squinting at early iPods or downloading clunky Siri betas, Roy had already accepted the inevitability of a Synergy-style future.

Today’s technocrats pitch AI as an invention, something novel and brave. But Roy knows better. The rest of the world may just now be grappling with digital assistants and synthetic media, but he’s been fluent in this lexicon for four decades. Synergy is proof that art doesn’t just imitate life—it prototypes it. And Roy Sexton, ever fabulous, ever insightful, has been wearing the future like a glittery blazer since 1985. The rest of us? We’re just now catching up to a cartoon he understood as prophecy.

Henceforth, I must be referred to as “Roy Sexton, lifelong fan and cultural clairvoyant” in ALL gatherings, large or small. 😅🤭🙌

“Who cares if YOU love it? What matters is if OTHER people love you doing it.” Better Man

14 January 2025

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“I came out of the womb with jazz hands.” – Robbie Williams

It’s a surreal feeling to have a movie theater all to oneself. And yet strangely befitting a beautiful fever dream of a celebrity biopic like Better Man. Of course, it probably doesn’t help that I saw this at lunchtime on a bitterly cold Tuesday in January. Nonetheless, I feel like I’m the only person in America who is a super fan of the film’s subject, British pop singer Robbie Williams. He emerged from the ether in the summer of 1999 when Ricky Martin was conquering the charts. I liked them both, but preferred Robbie’s acerbic, sassy take on pop music with his first single, the James Bond theme homage “Millennium.” And I have followed him with great interest ever since.

Akin to Australian singer songwriter Peter Allen, Robbie seems to have had more fame everywhere else in the world but America, which seems consistent with his life’s calling to keep banging his head until bloodied against the brutal wall of superstardom. Like Allen, both artists marry soul-searching, left-of-center, searing lyrics with intoxicating melodies, all apparently lost on American radio listeners, and that’s a shame.

This film, covering Williams’ ascent to solo stardom seems to be following a similar path at the box office, with nary an American moviegoer giving it a chance. I’m quite surprised it even was released over here, though grateful that I had a chance to see it on the big screen.

Director Michael Gracey, who also helmed The Greatest Showman, taking the life of another problematic figure in P.T. Barnum and crafting an exhilarating fairy tale, works similar magic on Williams’ life. Perhaps our American politicians should hire him for their next campaign videos. He seems to do well with personalities with checkered pasts.

Gracey makes the odd but inspired choice of replacing Williams with a CGI-rendered chimpanzee, deftly portrayed in motion capture by Jonno Davies. This narrative concept achieves two pragmatic aims: one, we don’t have the inevitable distraction of watching someone who almost looks like the real life person they are portraying, and, two, it allows us as an audience to imprint more fully on the central character and their tragicomic journey. No explanation is offered in the context of the film, other than Robbie Williams, who himself narrates, explaining that he sees himself as a cheeky monkey in life, genus distinctions notwithstanding. As a storytelling gimmick, this swap works shockingly well.

The supporting cast, chiefly Williams’ family (Kate Mulvany, Steve Pemberton, Alison Steadman), achieve miracles selling the conceit, offering us a warm and often bruising depiction of the hardscrabble life Williams navigated on his way up the pop charts.

Pemberton, as Williams’ adulation-seeking father, deserves extra credit for not devolving into out-of-touch absent father villain shtick. He haunts the film as Williams’ source of misplaced motivation, suggesting that the only love that matters comes from faceless fandom and the worst tragedy to befall anyone is to be a “nobody.” The seeds are thereby planted for Williams to achieve everything he ever wanted and should have never received, self-immolating in the process. Williams explains to the one childhood friend who sticks with him: “Who cares if YOU love it? What matters is if OTHER people love you doing it.” Heartbreaking.

Much like the Elton John film biography Rocketman, which shares a kind of heightened and surreal DNA with Better Man, the latter film is most effective in remixing its subject matter’s hit ditties as unabashed song and dance commentary on expected (clichéd) story beats: the vicious cycle of rampant substance abuse and alienation, the deflection of inner turmoil through ass-shaking antics and ill-timed irreverence, the crushing burdens of fame, THAT scene where the rock star trashes his own home at the height of his acclaim, and so on. Standout numbers include “Rock DJ” – the jubilantly manic London street scene depicting Williams’ initial “Take That” boy band ascent – and “Angels” – the passing of his beloved “Nan” when Williams begins to realize he’s been spending his life’s energies in all the wrong places.

As with Williams’ music, Better Man is candy-coated on the outside but carries a corrosive, sticky nougat center, a cautionary tale for all who think the next brass ring will deliver the healing they desperately crave. It’s an excellent film that will no doubt become a cult favorite just when Williams no longer desires the validation. The story of his life.

And early morning when I wake up

I look like Kiss but without the make-up
And that’s a good line to take it to the bridge

And you know, and you know
‘Cause my life’s a mess
And I’m trying to grow
So before I’m old I’ll confess

You think that I’m strong
You’re wrong
You’re wrong
I sing my song
My song
My song …

If I did it all again I’d be a nun
The rain was never cold when I was young
I’m still young, we’re still young
Life’s too short to be afraid
Step inside the sun

– “Strong” (Robbie Williams & Guy Chambers)

“Why can’t you teach us history instead of harping on the past?” Wicked … the movie (part one)

21 November 2024

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Wicked. An adjective. A thirty year old book by Gregory Maguire. A twenty year old musical by Stephen Schwartz. A present day marketing/merchandising juggernaut by Universal Pictures. And, oddly enough, the post-2024 presidential election escapist allegorical cautionary tale none of us quite realized we would need.

(And here my money would have been on Joker: Folie à Deux to fill that niche.)

As an inversion of L. Frank Baum’s classic The Wizard of Oz (itself a sly critique of populist politics and presidential scandal of its time), Maguire’s source text has always served as a post-feminist, pro-queer indictment of classism, patriarchy, misogyny, and speciesism. A good bit of that got lost in Broadway’s necessary streamlining for a 2.5 hour tune-filled run time. But the DNA of questioning “the man behind the curtain” has always been a constant in every version of this oft told tale. As Jeff Goldblum’s Wizard intones, “Nothing brings people together like a common enemy.” And in this instance, it’s the hat trick of turning an entire population against one woman whose primary “crimes” are difference, compassion, ferocity, and intelligence. Sound familiar?

(I still hope one day the BBC turns the original novel and its subsequent literary sequels into a mini series.)

Director Jon M. Chu made the controversial (to some minds) choice of splitting his film adaptation of the stage musical into two parts. I’m sure doubling the potential box office returns helped sweeten the idea. But it also turns out to be an inspired artistic choice. It feels like the story can breathe a bit more now. The Broadway show is a spectacular spectacle but it’s also a bit of a bombastic freight train with nary a pause from one BIG! number to the next.

Yes, as a Thanksgiving family film offering, there is still plenty of “bigness” – set design that looks like M.C. Escher on an acid trip, costumes that could be an Edith Head x Dr. Seuss collab, CGI that resembles a Chat GPT “Mad Libs.” All to be expected. But the best “special effect” of all? How Chu turns his cinematic gaze to the politics of the personal, giving his A-list cast clear moments of haunting, poignant, or humorous introspection and connection. Expanding her book from the stage show deftly, Winnie Holzman pulls from Maguire’s source text to build out back story, deepen relationships, and bring increased credibility to character developments that the compressed theatrical stagetime glossed over.

Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, Ariana Grande-Butera as Galinda, and Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero – the show’s/film’s three principal characters – make effective use of the additional airtime. Yes, they all are gifted singers/dancers who sell all the big iconic moments – “The Wizard and I,” “Popular,” and “Dancing Through Life” are respective highlights for this talented trio, honoring their theatrical forebears while adding mucho cinematic surprises and emotional delights.

Yet where the film establishes its heart, gravitas, and, quite frankly, staying power is in the expanded scene work among the trio. They all effectively leverage the relative intimacy of film versus stage to bring grace notes of heartache, insecurity, loneliness, and fear that counterbalance the more day glo elements of the enterprise. I don’t know that audiences will realize the excellent technique and timing these three actors have brought to this production. It will all seem effortless (as it should) but hopefully not taken for granted.

Also, unlike the stage show, the film effectively explores the anti-animal propaganda that propels the Wizard’s rise to power in Oz. (Shades of James Gunn’s last Guardians of the Galaxy.) This is the element from Maguire’s novel that gripped my heart thirty years ago, so I was glad to see it restake bigger, clearer narrative claim. In my opinion, it’s crucial to framing Elphaba’s character arc re: how easy it can be for others to vilify strident empathy. As Galinda flippantly questions her goat history teacher Dr. Dillamond (warmly voiced by Peter Dinklage) before tragedy dramatically opens her heart (and mind): “Why can’t you teach us history instead of harping on the past?”

But just as the expanded run time brings many welcome enhancements, challenges are introduced as well. Notably, signature anthem “Defying Gravity” loses a good bit of its emotional build and thereby payoff, interspersed as it is with a typical Hollywood climax clock tower chase. It still works, in great part due to Erivo’s and Grande’s nuanced delivery, but CGI aerial maneuvers can’t quite compete with the old school theatrical magic of a fab diva belting from a hydraulic lift masked by a football field’s worth of black crepe.

Nonetheless, Wicked, the film … part one, is a marvel, and arguably a movie musical masterpiece, every bit deserving of the success inevitably coming its way. Erivo’s Elphaba wryly observes, “I don’t cause commotions. I am one.” Here’s to that!

All the World’s YOUR Stage: “I’m through accepting limits, ’cause someone says they’re so …” Finding one’s voice … and true calling with guest Ratana

1 November 2024

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What do I REALLY want to be when I grow up? Many of us ask ourselves that question, not just when we are children but throughout our adult lives. Few people have the courage to embrace their truest, deepest dreams … let alone thrive in them. Successful voiceover artist, actor, coach, consultant, singer Ratana is one such human being. And her story is inspiring.

View episode here.

“Hi, I’m Ratana. In the Asian culture, the word Ratana has many meanings: it is a precious gem or term of respect in Hindi and a diamond or crystal in Thai. And, as the name implies, I am multi-faceted in my talents and interests. Here’s why: I grew up singing, loving musicals, theater, cartoons, and dance. And even though I loved to perform, I was also your stereotypically ‘good little Asian girl’ of a student – and ultimately I ended up studying marketing and advertising at Michigan State University, where I learned that creating amazing brands is very much like telling an amazing story,” she writes.

“After college, I jumped into the corporate world, where I applied my talents as a consultant to a variety of Fortune 500 clients, and later, as a marketing professional, where I worked on a variety of brands you might recognize from your regular Target or grocery run. But I still loved to perform. During the day, I perfected my analytical skills and by night, I took classes – dancing, acting, improv and voiceover… and I discovered that it’s fun to use both sides of your brain! Not only that, all these seemingly diverse and unrelated activities were perfectly complementary to each other. Serendipity.”

As a brand strategist with over 10 years of experience growing brands both in the US and internationally, Ratana helps clients develop and refine business strategy, find the brand story in their products or services, and develop a plan to bring that story to life. She has worked with and consulted for businesses in a variety of industries including entertainment, toys, food, restaurants, technology, and fitness, just to name a few.

“As a trained voice actor, I’ve lent my voice to a wide range of projects. Whether it’s providing instructions to children (or kids of all ages), playing a zombie’s best friend, or singing as a Southern belle, I’m able to provide a versatile range of characters, accents and attitudes that help you tell your story. As an improviser, my team and I entertain groups of all sizes by making up stories with only your one-word suggestion. And as a host, I’ve conducted live, on-camera conversations with artists and entrepreneurs,” she explains.

Learn more about her work here.

“A word of caution. This is not a comedy club. You are not onstage.” Joker: Folie à Deux

22 October 2024

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For many, these years of the pandemic era stripped away things that offered balance and refilled wells – movies, theater, travel. Consequently, people lost themselves in work – aiming to ride the highs of Zoom-fueled interviews, podcasts, and meet ups – perhaps at times being advised by friends and colleagues that they were “too much” for this world, and at other times being told they were “not enough.” The psychological whiplash could be soul-crushing.

It is with this mindset I took in a sparsely attended Tuesday night showing of Joker: Folie à Deux. Forgive me father, I may have sinned: I loved it. Unequivocally. 

It’s interesting how deeply misunderstood both Joker films are: the first one, in great part, because of its critical and financial success and its sequel … for the lack thereof. (Side note: these two films are like parentheses on the pandemic era – Joker in 2019 and Joker: Folie à Deux in 2024.)  Much like the films’ anti-hero Arthur Fleck, neither film is quite resilient enough to endure the white-hot glare of scrutiny they’ve received. That doesn’t mean they aren’t both excellent movies. I think they are. But they are a bit too delicate to bear the weight of superhero blockbuster box office – and the judgment of sniffy pundits.

The first film curdled under its acclaim to be misperceived as a tribute to incel culture. And now the second has been abandoned for being some kind of reversal or apology for the first. I don’t find either assessment fair, accurate, or true. Taken together, the films are poetic bookends, indicting a society where institutions and pop culture dreams regularly fail the downtrodden. (See: Chappell Roan’s conflicted ascendancy in 2024 for instance.)

At least that’s my view.

“You’re riding high in April, shot down in May … Some people get their kicks stepping on dreams.” So go the lyrics to the pop standard “That’s Life,” one of many tunes that cleverly pepper the sequel which, yes, is a musical. Sort of. Less Singin’ in the Rain and more Dancer in the Dark, a haunting slice of life from 25 years ago, featuring Bjork, whose piteous character found solace in surreal musical interludes to both express and escape the pain of living.

Whereas Arthur’s inner fantasy life in the first film is expressed through day-glo, arch comedy routines, the sequel turns that conceit on its head, employing song and (occasional) dance numbers as punctuation marks around Arthur’s incarceration at Arkham Asylum and eventual trial.

Oh, and we get a wickedly spot on Looney Tunes cartoon homage at the beginning of the film where Arthur wrestles with his demons, er, literal shadow, all set to “Slap That Bass.” That sets a certain tone right out of the gate, with many Easter egg references to classic film musicals.

And any flick that incorporates deep cuts from Burt Bacharach, Leslie Bricusse, Anthony Newley, Cy Coleman, and Harold Arlen, deftly contrasting pop music optimism with hardscrabble reality is AOK in my book.

Listen, I am not going to mount a defense of this film. That is wholly unnecessary. I believe with the passage of time and the absence of toxic groupthink, Joker: Folie à Deux will be a rediscovered gem. I didn’t find it ponderous or poorly conceived, illogical or problematic. And I’m not just being contrary. I was transfixed for its nearly two-and-a-half hour runtime. And I kept thinking: am I seeing the same film all the hyperventilating critics saw?

Joaquin Phoenix gives a haunting tour-de-force performance, seamlessly continuing the tragicomic arc established in the first film. Arthur’s tale ends on a suitably mournful note completely consistent with his atrophied evolution. Lady Gaga meets Phoenix handily and turns in one of her best performances to date – a wounded Lady Macbeth for the ages. The supporting cast, led by Catherine Keener and Brendan Gleeson, doesn’t miss a beat, adding layers to this devastating corner of the comic book film universe.  And director Todd Phillips maintains an exquisitely, relentlessly melancholy atmosphere throughout, aided and abetted again by Hildur Guðnadóttir’s gorgeously bleak score.

As the judge presiding over Arthur’s trial observes toward the end of the film, “A word of caution. This is not a comedy club. You are not onstage.” But, oh, so many wish they were onstage … so many think they are onstage … and when the harsh reality sets in, breaking bad becomes fait accompli.

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”

  • “Once in a Lifetime” from The Talking Heads (*not in the film … but thematically consonant!)

“The safe joy of dancing with theatre boys.” Mean Girls the Musical (2024 film)

20 January 2024

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You know you’re a certain age when films you saw in the theatre in your adult life are being remade with some regularity. I think I first felt this pang when they remade Footloose and “reimagined” The Karate Kid, but actually I had seen neither of those films in the theatre during their original runs (and even now I don’t think I’ve watched either all the way through). Carrie and Robocop appear to get remade every ten minutes, but for some reason this déjà vu feeling doesn’t quite apply to horror movies nor thrillers. Nor to cash grab live action re-dos of Disney animated films. And Endless Love I’d never seen the first time (nor wanted to), and I can barely remember seeing the remake (but apparently I did … thank heavens for this blog’s archive).

However, seeing The Color Purple last month (which I loved) hit a little too close to home. Admittedly, the original came out nearly 40 years ago, but I have clear memories of seeing it on the big screen in 1985 as well as studying it in college.

Annnnd then … Mean Girls hit cineplexes just a few weeks later, another film that became a Broadway hit musical that re-became a film. This one is messing with my temporal triangulation! The first flick, starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Lizzy Caplan, and Tim Meadows still feels like a “new” movie to me. I know it’s 20 years old … hush. So, I approached this latest iteration with some trepidation. I don’t mind remakes. In fact, I enjoy seeing what people do with a time-tested tale, contemporizing and offering new contextual commentary. I just couldn’t envision how Mean Girls could be revisited without becoming cliché.

Color me wrong. And let’s all wear pink on Wednesdays. The new film musical of Mean Girls is so fetch. Yes, they finally made fetch happen.

In great part because Tina Fey has remained the chief architect of this franchise (does it qualify as a “multiverse” now?), the 2023 Mean Girls keeps its true north around tolerance, acceptance, authenticity, and, yes, feminism. The central thesis of the original film is a) teenagers can be truly awful to each other, b) said behavior is a reflection of endemic misogyny and classism in our society, and c) human beings can be gobsmackingly shallow regardless their age. 

Mean Girls has always offered a wink and a sneer at Hollywood’s arrested development regarding high school-set coming of age stories. On its surface, Mean Girls is just as self-reverentially, um, plastic as, say, Grease or Breakfast Club or anything on The CW. But under the marabou feathers and platform sneakers, Mean Girls is a witty and dark-hearted satire on the state of our have/have-not instant gratification culture. For someone to rise, someone else must fall – why live in abundance when you can elevate yourself by ruining someone else? In this way, Mean Girls has as much Arthur Miller and Nathaniel Hawthorne in its DNA as it does Clueless or Fast Times at Ridgemont High or even Heathers (three other teen-centered flicks that get it right … Easy A and Edge of Seventeen which arrived after the first Mean Girls do so as well).

So what does the addition of wry, at times nightmarishly day-glo and surreal musical numbers add to this mélange? Quite a bit, in fact. My only quibble with the original film was what felt like tonal whiplash between Mel Brooks-level absurdity and Afterschool Special angst and back again. Perhaps unsurprisingly, wedging one teen pastiche pop ditty after another into the mix brings it all into perfect relief. 

Admittedly, the songs by Jeff Richmond (Fey’s husband) and lyricist Nell Benjamin (who also worked on the musically superior Legally Blonde the Musical … I’m sensing a pattern here) are a smidge forgettable. Less than 24 hours later, I couldn’t hum a bar of any number to save my soul. Sorry … “Revenge Party” … THAT one sticks in your head – catchy AND grating at the same time. But no one goes to Mean Girls expecting Sondheim or Rodgers & Hammerstein.

That said, the staging of each number is clever and frisky and fun. The hum drum environs of high school hallways unfold into African pride lands; science labs explode in confetti and parade floats; teen ragers freeze into chiaroscuro tableaus … all while the respective musical confessionals proceed. First time directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. and cinematographer Bill Kirstein run headlong into the delightful kitsch of musical theatre while breaking it wide open cinematically. That ain’t easy. The Hollywood box office is strewn with the corpses of other movie musicals that have tried and really, really, really failed (see: Cats … no don’t).

The cast is damn dynamite, achieving the near impossible – honoring what came before (which lives on digitally for instant streaming comparison) while enhancing and expanding. The original film was an artifact of its day – social media wasn’t the monster it is now, cell phones were still a luxury for some, and fat-shaming and light homophobia were easy punch lines. Thankfully, Fey is a sensitive progressive who knows just what to walk back and what to bring forward. There is also more nuance in what a “mean girl” even is, highlighting that we are taught by a patriarchal society to turn on each other in a mistaken bid for relevance and that true relevance comes from embracing (and loving) the awkward in us all. 

To that end, one of the best additions to the script is a final act chat between protagonist Cady Harron (a relatable and temperate Angourie Rice, channeling a teen version of Amy Adams with less vocal prowess) and queen bee Regina George (an ass-kicking star turn by Renee Rapp who could be the love child of Madonna, Adele, and Will & Grace’s Karen Walker). The two run into each other in the restroom during their high school’s “Spring Fling.” If you know the original film, basically all the bad stuff has happened at this point, Regina is in a neck brace, and Cady has won the math competition. So this scene is just, well, a conversation – a long overdue one, between two human beings who have spent the past two hours misunderstanding each other, trying to outdo each other, and scoring points against each other. For the first time, we see them communing as beautifully vulnerable humans and as the kids they are. Don’t fret. The scene isn’t maudlin, and Rapp is far too gifted to not wring a laugh out of every moment; yet, this quiet scene is an important addition to the Mean Girls canon as it demonstrates the power of true connection.

I would be remiss – asleep at the switch in fact – if I didn’t give a huge shout out to Moana’s Auli’i Cravalho as tragicomic narrator/instigator Janis ‘Imi’ike and her partner in well-intentioned crime Jaquel Spivey playing Damian Hubbard. Whereas Cady was the heart and soul of the original film, the remake takes its cue from some of Shakespeare’s best comedies and shifts that spotlight onto the more interesting second bananas. Spivey is genius with the kind of zingers only the long-bullied can muster (“the safe joy of dancing with theatre boys”), but Cravalho nearly runs away with the picture: think Vanessa Hudgens meets Janeane Garafalo, yet still entirely her own creation. Lizzy Caplan was arch perfection as Janis Ian in the original Mean Girls, and Cravalho takes it all next level. The screen lights up every time she enters the frame. She channels brilliantly how so many of us felt in high school, still discovering our sarcastic abilities to critique the artifice of it all while hurting that we weren’t simply accepted for the differences that made us freakishly perfect.

I can’t wait to see what Cravalho – and Rapp – do next. The future is queer. And beautiful.

A Tale of Two Closets: Maestro and Fellow Travelers

4 January 2024

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Gay film and television dramas always include suffering. A lot of suffering. We in the LGBTQIA+ community don’t get a lot of Julia Roberts/Hugh Grant frothy rom coms. Hell, we don’t get any Marvel epics, Disney fables, sci-fi adventures, or even glitzy musicals of our own. C’est la vie.

But sometimes in the suffering, Hollywood gets it right. That is indubitably the case with Showtime’s/Hulu’s/Paramount+’s literary adaptation Fellow Travelers, starring Matt Bomer, Jonathan Bailey, Allison Williams, Jelani Alladin, and Noah Ricketts. It is almost the case with actor/star/auteur Bradley Cooper’s latest opus, the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro on Netflix, co-starring Carey Mulligan, Sarah Silverman, Maya Hawke, annnnnnnd … Matt Bomer!

It may be an unfair comparison, as Fellow Travelers benefits a) from being a work of historical fiction and b) from being told over eight episodes. The adaptation of Thomas Mallon’s novel has a lot more latitude and space to explore the nuances and travails of gay men living, loving, and, quite frankly, simply surviving – from the McCarthy communist witch hunts and Lavender Scare until the AIDS crisis in the mid-80s. I might also suggest, however, that Fellow Travelers benefits from its showrunners being openly gay themselves – among them writer/executive producer Ron Nyswaner and director/executive producer Daniel Minahan.

Now, I’m not one who subscribes to the notion that only people in one particular group can tell the stories of said group. Art is about exploring and learning and growing – and you can only do that by molding clay that may be a bit foreign to your own lived experience. However, the viewer can feel the qualitative difference when said stories are told by those who have experienced them firsthand versus those who haven’t. What is that old saw? “Write what you know.” It’s a conundrum to be sure – some of the best art is crafted by those who have survived a fiery furnace, but others gain knowledge and empathy by exploring its simulacrum.

Fellow Travelers covers (in essence) a waterfront remarkably akin to that of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning two-part play Angels in America, itself a groundbreaking moment for gay literature and art. Closeted McCarthy bulldog Roy Cohn (later a mentor to Donald Trump) is a haunted gargoyle of an antagonist in each. As Cohn in Fellow Travelers, Will Brill is exceptional – infuriating AND heartbreaking – a scheming ball of self-loathing barbed wire. Matt Bomer’s Fellow Travelers character Hawkins Fuller, a state department bureaucrat and war hero, could be a corollary to Angels’ similarly “straight-presenting,” dual-life-leading Mormon anti-hero Joe Pitt. Jonathan Bailey’s tortured idealist Tim Laughlin who ricochets from cause to cause (McCarthyism, seminary, San Fran-community organizer) in Fellow Travelers evokes faith-conflicted, virtue-signaling Louis Ironson in Angels. And both characters are a bit … exhausting TBH. Hawk’s long-suffering wife Lucy Smith, as portrayed by Allison Williams in Fellow Travelers, follows a similar arc to Joe Pitt’s equally long-suffering wife Harper in Angels (minus the polar bear excursions). And we even have an answer for Angels’ Belize, the play’s over-it-all Jiminy Cricket-conscience, in Fellow Travelers’ will-they-won’t-they couple Marcus Gaines, a closeted journalist, and Frankie Hines, a very un-closeted drag performer and activist, portrayed respectively (and luminously) by Jelani Alladin and Noah Ricketts.

While the cast structure and timeline bear striking similarity to Angels, the tone is very different. No flights of fantasia nor whipsaw quippery here, and, in some respects, the story is more impactful for playing it, excuse me, straight. Particularly, Bomer and Williams turn in career-best performances. Neither fall prey to convention here. Bomer is, yes, a bit Mad Men-Don Draper-esque here (to the good). He plays the Machiavellian Hawkins as a fully formed human, broken as can be, but functioning – and functioning highly. A director I once had – Rex McGraw at Ohio State – told me, “Remember, the villain in a play doesn’t think they are the villain.” They are either trying to do the right thing or simply getting by. Hawkins is not a victim nor a victimizer, but a creature of circumstance and access. He’s paved a career through military and state service, lives a personal life of countervailing performative balance, and dreams of it all leading one day to unlimited freedom (a day that never comes). In contrast, Williams could play simply the tragic collateral damage to all this – the naive spouse who trades away full-fledged love for security. Her character and her portrayal are too smart for that. She knows what she’s gotten into, sees the promise in Hawkins, but also shields her own heart as best she can.

What people outside the LGBTQIA+ community – particularly of a certain era – may fail to understand is that for many (myself included) we play a game with ourselves (much like Hawkins) that with the passage of time (and the passing of some family members) one day we can be our true selves. Some of us realize that is folly, and some don’t. And that is a central tension of Fellow Travelers, Angels in America, and, yes, Maestro.

Bradley Cooper has gotten some flak for using prosthetics to resemble (uncannily I might add) composer/conductor/wunderkind Leonard Bernstein in Maestro. Regarding my point that not everyone has to be it to play it? This applies here IMHO. The film is a remarkable feat – Cooper writes, directs, produces, stars – and I mean he STARS, baby. Remember that clip of Cooper as an overeager grad student asking Robert DeNiro a question from the audience of Inside the Actors’ Studio with James Lipton? That same overeager Cooper brings his golden retriever-like energy to Leonard Bernstein’s own golden retriever-like energy and at times it’s just so much muchness.

It’s all beautifully framed, reverent even. And that’s a bit of the problem. Again, Fellow Travelers has a lot more time in which to tell its tale, but Maestro almost comes off like a series of frustratingly fragmented sketches, a tone poem if you will, that can’t decide if it wants to lionize Bernstein or crush him under the weight of his own vanity. A good biographical film doesn’t have to do either – in fact it shouldn’t – but the fact that Maestro feels as synaptically syncopated as Bernstein’s score to West Side Story makes for a slightly maddening viewing experience. And please note, I generally liked the film, but I wish it had slowed down every once in a while, cut down on the Altman-esque overlapping clichéd dialogue, and let us really delve into this brilliant soul’s mind and heart. It feels like Cooper took literally Bernstein’s closeted bisexuality and the conflict it presented Bernstein – existing in the same era as Fellow Travelers with life and career at comparable risk. Consequently, Cooper is playing the same game of “keep-away” with the narrative that Bernstein played with his sexual identity.

Thank heavens for Carey Mulligan. I think I write that sentence yearly now. As Felicia Montealegre Bernstein, Mulligan keeps the film from spinning off its well-intentioned axis. The script doesn’t give her as much as it could – again, a LOT of naturalistic “dialogue” which weirdly on film comes off pretentious and unnatural, but it is what it is. Nonetheless, Mulligan gets more across with the arch of an eyebrow, the pursing of her lips, a clenched jaw, a smile that fades slowly into a grimace and then a frown, the flicking of a cigarette. (Speaking of which it becomes almost comical that every single moment of every single scene Lenny and Felicia have cigarettes in their hands – like everywhere. I know smoking was a different vice back then, but come on!) With her precisely-expressioned face alone, Mulligan gives the audience long, deep looks into the pain (and joy) of sharing her life – professional and personal – with the boundlessly creative and self-indulgent Lenny. And this is where having some LGBTQIA+ creatives involved in the production might have helped Cooper strike the right balance depicting the high wire act Leonard Bernstein was navigating. Mulligan has the sensitivity and insight and empathy to show us the impact, but Cooper – wearing ALL those hats and with a healthy dollop of hero worship – doesn’t quite stick the landing, the way Bomer does in Fellow Travelers.

And, yes, both Maestro and Fellow Travelers include fourth act scenes in discotheques. It seems to be de rigeur for queer-themed productions. Whereas Fellow Travelers uses the setting as a place to explore the impact of emotional (and physical) self-medication, Maestro uses it to cringe effect (as the kids say). Seeing a sweaty Leonard Bernstein swaying his arms to Tears for Fears’ “Shout” (seriously, was that song ever played in a gay dance bar) as some final, triumphant act of liberation? Yeah, not so much.

(By the way, Cooper also has Bernstein listening to R.E.M.’s “End of the World as We Know It,” exiting his cute red convertible just as Michael Stipe shouts the lyric “LEEEEOONNN-ARRRRD BERN-STEEEEEIN!” I really had no idea what to make of that. Seemed a bit Mel Brooks-y to me.)

Both productions are well worth your time. I feel like I’ve been a bit uncharitable toward Mr. Cooper and Maestro. He should be proud of his achievement, and if I were his eighth grade English teacher I would give him a gold star and an A+ on his thesis project. But, for my money, the better bet is with Fellow Travelers. It says much about the human condition – queer or otherwise – and is beyond revelatory regarding our present socio-politically fragmented days. It’s the end of the world as we know it … and I feel fine.

“Sometimes not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do.” Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom AND Wonka

3 January 2024

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“Sometimes not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do.” – Aquaman’s dad Tom Curry (Temuera Morrison)

“Every good thing in this world started with a dream.” – Willy Wonka’s unnamed mother (Sally Hawkins)

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, contrary to popular reports, is not a bad movie. It’s not a very good movie either. But it is fun and good-hearted in the spirit of big dumb blockbusters from the mid-80s. Director James Wan continues the day-glo world-building from its predecessor.

Wonka, contrary to popular reports, is not a great movie. It’s not a bad movie either. But it is fun and good-hearted in the spirit of big dumb musicals from the late 60s and mid-70s. Director Paul King continues the day-glo world-building from its predecessor.

(Sensing a theme here?)

What both films do really well is explore the ideas of legacy and familial love, both the family you are born into and your “found” family. I would say Wonka does a better job of that than the Aquaman sequel, but taken together (as I did in a post-New Year’s double feature), the films send a loving message about leaning on (and lifting up) friends and family to make the best of a tricky situation … be it preventing a glowy-eyed supervillain from destroying the earth through global warming or a chocolate cartel fixing the prices of yummy confections and driving all competitors out of business. (You can guess which challenge goes with which movie!)

Interestingly, if I had my druthers, I would have suggested some choose-your-own-adventure mashup of the two respective casts. Jason Momoa with his wild child ways actually would have made a far more effective Willy Wonka than the slight, safe Timothée Chalamet. Chalamet is perfectly serviceable as a reedy-voiced song and dance man (Wonka is a musical … Aquaman not so much), but he’s missing the malevolent, unpredictable glee of, say, Gene Wilder who so notably originated the role of Willy Wonka waaaaay back in 1971. Chalamet looks the part and has a (pun-intended) goopy sweetness, but he never delivers that electric charge of creative madness the character requires. Momoa on the other hand nails creative madness on a routine trip to the grocery store.

And then I might swap Patrick Wilson, who plays Aquaman’s ne’er-do-well brother Orm, in for Aquaman himself. Wilson is far more interesting than he’s ever given credit. He looks like he’s carved out of cream cheese (to quote Steel Magnolias) but he has the comic timing and gravitas of someone trained for the Broadway stage (twice Tony-nominated no less!) that would bring some classic zing to the King of the Seas IMHO.

Both films benefit from strong ensemble work, and, like some zany repertory road show, I’d mix and match any and all performers across the films: Sally Hawkins vs. Nicole Kidman as fretting but steely matriarchs in Wonka and Aquaman respectively; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II vs. Paterson Joseph as smoldering but surly baddies Black Manta and Slugworth; Olivia Colman vs. Randall Park for lightly malevolent comic relief; Martin Short vs. Hugh Grant for the “wait, why are THEY in this?” stunt casting (one’s an Oompa Loompa and the other a … fish-man mafia don?). You get the gist.

Oh, and ironically, Aquaman’s totally tubular, synth-rich score by Rupert Gregson-Williams is a smidge more compelling than the songs for Wonka, an actual musical, as composed by The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon. That said, I wouldn’t mind seeing/hearing Wonka’s catchy “Scrub, Scrub” being performed by Aquaman’s CGI deep ocean denizens Topo, the crabby scene stealing cephalopod, and Storm, the majestic bioluminescent seahorse. And Wonka director Paul King does wring a new heartbreaking context from classic Leslie Bricusse/Anthony Newley cut “Pure Imagination” toward the conclusion of the prequel. (I’m not crying. You’re crying.)

At this point, anyone reading this “review” has likely given up making head nor (fish) tails of it all. And that’s rather how I feel after having watched both Warner Brothers Discovery flicks. They are fine, fun, decent holiday diversions with enough good in each for you to roll out of bed in your sweatpants and spend an afternoon escaping January’s grey malaise. Both will play far better on a big screen as each film seems to be set-designed by Salvador Dali after raiding a Toys R Us while hopped up on Pixie Stix.

Before we begin our annual slog through Oscar-bait films that *may* be lurking in a theatre near you or are now more likely hidden on some streaming by-way that requires a pricey subscription and/or password you’ve forgotten, go have some big dumb fun at the movies. That’s why we all really love cinema, if we’re truly being honest, Scorsese be damned.

“I read what pleases me.” The Color Purple (2023)

27 December 2023

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My assessment of The Color Purple in all of its sundry adaptations always has been first processed through the narrative structure of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book. I don’t say that to sound pretentious. The novel is structured as a series of letters to God, first by Celie and then by her sister Nettie. As such, the narrative takes on a fragmented, dreamlike, haunting, episodic quality. The story beats all come in the form of firsthand accounts that we the reader interpret cumulatively to understand the hopes and horrors of the central characters’ lives. Imagine if the Brothers Grimm had been steeped in the American miasma of misogyny and racism and told Cinderella in reverse. (I know Cinderella was written by Charles Perrault. Just roll with me here.)

I’ll be forever grateful that Professor Warren Rosenberg at my small all-male college in rural Indiana (Wabash College) made this novel required reading, along with Toni Morrison’s equally gut-punching The Bluest Eye. We then were all tasked to watch Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of The Color Purple as well. (Because I had a beautifully progressive mom we’d seen it in the theatre in 1985 when it first came out, but I gladly watched it again.) Professor Rosenberg’s assignment was for us to assess how the author’s intent shifted through the cinematic gaze and identify what was lost and what was found. I suspect that assignment is in great part why I continue to blog about movies three decades after that early 90s coursework.

But here I’ve done what so many well-meaning folks (men) do and I’ve fallen into the trap Spielberg did of making the narrative about myself. It ain’t.

That said, going back to the structure of the original novel, the reason Spielberg’s adaptation doesn’t quite work – stellar cast and production that it had – is because he couldn’t un-Spielberg himself. Spielberg was still stuck in “EVENT MOVIE” mode. The delicate, nightmarish nuance of Celie’s letters – unanswered confessions, prayers, and pleas – were lost in the sweep of an Oscar-bait film. Nonetheless, in great part without Spielberg and producer Quincy Jones, the original film might not have ever seen the light of day, given Hollywood’s general populist tendencies (stated politics aside). Regardless its flaws, the film served a crucial purpose in establishing Walker’s narrative in the public consciousness for all time. Of course, career best performances by Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey are really what lasted in the mind’s eye. And the irony that I first offered credit to two men – Spielberg and Jones – given the work’s core message of women reclaiming their agency against all odds is not lost on me.

So, this self-indulgent “look what I know” preamble aside, what does all this mean for Blitz Bazawule’s musical remake of The Color Purple? In my humble opinion, the film is the perfect distillation of the central thesis in Walker’s work – that strength comes from within and through sisterhood and that the socioeconomic deck has long been stacked against African-American women in every way possible. And, at least for me, the musical form is the best cinematic framework for the epistolary structure of Walker’s novel. Each song is staged like an unanswered prayer, a moment in time (joyous, tragic, introspective) where the characters reveal their truest perspective on the nightmarish forces at work in their lives. Bazawule, who brought a similar sensibility to Beyoncé’s Black is King, embraces the heightened theatricality of the film musical, juxtaposing hardscrabble existence and tuneful escape beautifully. (At times, I thought of Lars Von Trier’s heartbreaking Dancer in the Dark. Bjork’s character in that film endures her own series of tragedies and finds solace in music, sometimes inspired by the industrial noise around her.)

That is not to say this new adaptation is without flaws. The first act – young Celie and Nettie before they are horrifically separated – just doesn’t connect the way it should. This is a shame because it is this bond that should set the stage for all that is to come, how Celie has lost half her heart, and how important it is when her life comes full circle. The opening scenes between Halley Bailey (Nettie) and Phylicia Pearl Mpasi (Celie) are lovely, lilting even, with a dynamite new ditty in “Keep It Movin’.” However, the early scenes all feel formulaic. The stakes are not raised high enough when Celie is forced by her father to marry Mister, nor when Mister forces Nettie from his home, declaring the sisters shall never see each other again. (That’s one scene that Spielberg DOES nail, if I recall, because his biggest gift is in capturing childhood terror and innocence lost.)

Fortunately, once the adult ensemble enters the picture, the sheer force of their talent and their dynamic rights the ship. Fantasia Barrino is remarkable as Celie. This is not an easy role – Celie has learned to survive by shrinking, hiding her dreams, her hopes, her anger, and her disappointment in a God (and a family) that seemingly abandoned her. Maybe Job is a better analogue than Cinderella! Yet all the pain must remain bubbling under the surface, just beyond view. Celie is a character whose agency has been utterly stripped away, yet she still must be a compelling protagonist, not relying on audience sympathy alone. It’s not a “showy” part in that way. YET, it’s a musical. And Fantasia has a VOICE. What she builds throughout the film is indelible.

She’s aided and abetted by Danielle Brooks as Sofia and Taraji P. Henson as Shug Avery. Both characters are pivotal influences on Celie’s awakening and are such larger than life personalities that they run the risk of driving her nearly off the screen. That doesn’t happen here. Both Brooks and Henson bring love AND fireworks to their portrayals. If I were to continue my belabored Cinderella-in-reverse metaphor, consider them the antitheses of the Evil Stepsisters. Brooks lights the screen on fire with her showstopper “Hell No,” and Henson picks up that baton nicely for its musical complement “Push Da Button.” Both women (and songs) anthemically reclaim power for women in the film. Sofia has tragedy ahead while Shug does not, but by the final act the three women are arm-in-arm, celebrating the power of unity. Their number “Miss Celie’s Pants” is such a barn-burner that it nearly eclipses Celie’s 11 o’clock number “I’m Here” (but not quite). Taken together, the music fuels the film and propels this trio to empowerment through reclamation (and we gladly go along with them).

I also should highlight Colman Domingo’s performance as the villainous Mister and Corey Hawkins’ as his conflicted son Harpo. Either character could devolve into being a melodramatic foil to the plot. Both actors avoid this deftly. Don’t get me wrong, Mister’s treatment of Celie is as vile as the day is long, but as Celie finds her footing and ascends, Mister’s world crumbles. Domingo does a lovely job finding the notes of burgeoning self-awareness without ever becoming maudlin. Similarly, Hawkins does not play Harpo for crowd-pleasing comic relief. Rather, we see Harpo studying his father’s ways, ultimately rejecting them, and finding his own place in this world. If The Color Purple carries a feminist message (and I would argue that it does) then it’s crucial that the men in this world find enlightenment as well, and in this adaptation they do.

When we first meet Brooks’ Sofia, she’s proudly stepping into a bar to confront her future father-in-law. The patrons point out a sign on the wall that reads, among other things, that women are not allowed in the establishment. She deadpans in reply, “I read what pleases me.” And if there’s a message I took from this latest Color Purple it is that. Don’t let the naysayers derail you – and, oh, how they will try and seemingly succeed – but there is power in the collective. And that unanswered prayers are answered here on earth by those who truly care about us. Read what pleases YOU!

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