Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

Let’s go watch a Chazz Palminteri movie … with Chazz Palminteri!

While the venerable movie and stage actor is in town with his one-man show, A Bronx Tale (Sept. 23-Oct. 19 at the Golden Gate Theatre), he’s going to head up Market Street to the Castro Theatre for a screening the 1994 Woody Allen movie Bullets Over Broadway in which he stars as a brainy thug named Cheech, who’s a much better writer than the playwright David Shayne played by John Cusack. The role nabbed Palminteri an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.

Here’s one of my favorite exchanges between Cheech and David:

David Shayne: You’re gonna write it?
Cheech: What am I? A fuckin’ idiot? They taught me how to read and write in school before I burned it down.
David Shayne: You burned down your school?
Cheech: Yeah, it was Lincoln’s birthday. There was nobody there.

Palminteri will submit himself to a Q&A session after the movie, and I will serve as moderator.

Please join us. The movie is at 7 p.m., Monday, Sept. 22. The Castro Theatre is at 429 Castro St., San Francisco. Admission is $9.50 general, $7 for seniors (62 and up) and children (12 and younger).

You can also enter to win tickets to A Bronx Tale (visit www.shnsf.com for information about the show).

Visit www.castrotheatre.com for information about the movie screening.

Now here’s a sneak preview of Bullets Over Broadway (alas, Palminteri isn’t in this clip, but Harvey Fierstein and Dianne Wiest, in her Academy Award-winning role, are):

Not only is Pixar’s WALL-E an extraordinary movie – it’s also, in its strange way, a paean to musical theater.

You just don’t head into a computer-animated film set in the 2100s to feature tunes by the great Jerry Herman, but that’s exactly what you get. WALL-E is about a soulful little robot, one of the last moving creatures on Earth (save for his faithful and resilient cockroach friend), whose duty is to compact the mounds of garbage humans left on the planet into stackable little cubes.

How WALL-E the robot got his soul is left for us to ponder, but this adorable little guy – a cross between E.T., the robot from Short Circuit and a little bit of V.I.N.C.E.N.T from Disney’s The Black Hole – is fascinated by the detritus of humanity. When he comes across items that intrigue him, he throws them into a little cooler and takes them home to the Dumpster he lives in (and has festooned with Christmas lights). One of his favorite items is an old VHS tape copy of the 1969 movie Hello, Dolly! starring Barbra Streisand and Walter Matthau. Using an old VCR, an iPod and some sort of magnifying lens, WALL-E watches two scenes over and over again: “Before the Parade Passes By” with Michael Crawford as Cornelius Hackl strutting down the street and the ballad “It Only Takes a Moment” with Crawford crooning sweetly with Marianne McAndrew as Irene Molloy.

There’s no Streisand or Matthau in sight (which is probably for the best – Hello, Dolly!, though directed by Gene Kelly, is not a great movie musical). Rather, WALL-E is attracted to the high stepping of “Sunday Clothes” and the song’s naively romantic message about joining the human race to discover wonderful things and the heart-fluttering, hand-holding romance of “It Only Takes a Moment.” The fact that the movie and the original 1964 Broadway musical are based on a Thornton Wilder play (The Matchmaker) all play into the movie’s core message about the vital importance of connection and consciousness.

WALL-E director Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo) understands the potent romance of musical theater – the same thing that people who hate musicals deride as silly and unrealistic. In a post-apocalyptic setting, Herman’s sweet music represents an idealistic side of humanity not visible for all the junk and rubble. That’s what little WALL-E responds to – he wants to dance and be in love like Cornelius Hackl.

There’s a scene of WALL-E trying to dance with a hubcap for a hat that is priceless. But that’s just a prelude to the robot’s actual chance to fall in love with EVE, a slick droid sent down from the mother ship (where all the too-fat humans are carried on floating chairs, eyes glued to the screens in front of their faces). Neither of the ‘bots really speaks, so the true expression of their feelings (again, why these robots have developed feelings is mysterious, but intriguing) is by touching, or holding hands, just like Irene and Cornelius do in Hello, Dolly!

Is it corny? Yes. Is it effective? Undeniably.

Stanton comes by his affection for musical theater naturally. Apparently he was in a high school production of Hello, Dolly! See what we risk losing when we cut arts programs from our schools?

And Herman, whose music is so integral to one of the best movies of the year (animated or otherwise), is getting the kind of exposure he deserves. He told the Associated Press: “I’m still blown away by the fact that two songs of mine that are close to 50 years old have been used as the underpinning of the movie.”

Herman sold Pixar the rights to use the songs, but he was unaware of just how they’d be used in the final product. He said the movie brought tears to his eyes. He told the Hartford Courant: “It really blew me away. You’re talking to someone still in a haze. I couldn’t believe how beautifully the songs expressed the entire intent of the film.”

Now it’s time for those geniuses at Pixar, who haven’t made a bad movie yet, to create a full-bore musical of their very own. Maybe they’ll get Jerry Herman to help them out.

Here are clips of “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” and “It Only Takes a Moment” from the 1969 movie Hello, Dolly!:

So much information to digest.

First comes news that Annie Proulx’s extraordinary short story, “Brokeback Mountain,” which was turned into a less extraordinary but admirable film, is now becoming an opera. New York City Opera has commissioned American composer Charles Wuorinen to create an opera based on “Brokeback” for the 2013 spring season. I, for one, can’t wait to hear Ennis’ beleaguered wife sing that sure-to-be-hit song “Jack Nasty.”

Why, oh, why? Columbia Pictures and CBS Films are going to remake My Fair Lady with producers Duncan Kenworthy and Cameron Mackintosh.

Yes, the movie is going to be a musical and will feature the famed Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe score, but the gimmick this time out will be on-location shooting rather than in studio sound stages. They also say the film will will incorporate more of George Bernard Shaw’s original play, Pygmalion.

There have been rumors that Keira Knightley has been approached about playing Eliza Doolittle. That’s all well and good (if she can’t sing, Marni Nixon, who dubbed Audrey Hepburn in the movie, is still available, bless her heart), but can we please cast Julie Andrews as Mrs. Higgins?

Rob Marshall’s movie musical follow-up to Chicago (Memoirs of a Geisha doesn’t count because it wasn’t a musical) is going to be Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit’s Nine, and Daniel Day-Lewis has been confirmed to star as Italian film director Guido Contini. Day-Lewis replaces Javier Bardem, who had to drop out because he refused to get rid of that terrifying bowl cut from No Country for Old Men (kidding — he dropped out because he’s exhausted). Also in the cast, playing the women in Guido’s life are Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Sophia Loren, Nicole Kidman and Judi Dench.

Got a little excited when I saw the Mamma Mia! trailer in a movie theater recently. With the success of Hairspray last year, it looks like summer is becoming the season for frothy stage musicals turned silver screen tuners.

Here’s one of the trailers. I like this one because it actually shows Meryl Streep singing.

Here’s the trailer I saw in the theater:

Aaargh! The tyranny of ABBA! Why is that music so fun? Mamma Mia! the movie opens July 18.

This holiday weekend I saw some movies on the big screen (Indiana Jones and the blah blah Crystal Skull – exactly what you think it would be, enjoyable but nothing more; Iron Man, which made me love Robert Downey Jr. all over again – oddly more human than Indiana Jones) and at home.

One of the movies I watched at home was P.S. I Love You, a movie I had avoided in theaters because the review chatter was so negative. Why do I listen to reviews? I know better. My mother loved the movie, which should have been my first indication that I should see it. And it was co-written and directed by Richard LaGravenese, the man responsible for one of my favorite movies of all time: Living Out Loud, which is inspired by two Anton Chekhov short stories (“The Kiss” and “Misery”). LaGravenese also co-wrote another favorite, the 1995 adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess directed by Alfonso Cuaron.

One of the things I love about Living Out Loud, A Little Princess and now P.S. I Love You is their use of music. LaGravenese clearly cares about music. He doesn’t just throw pop songs haphazardly onto the screen. He practically writes musicals, but they’re cleverly disguised as straightforward movies. In Living Out Loud, Queen Latifah is a nightclub singer, and actually demonstrates her chops by singing some standards (”Lush Life,” “Goin’ Out of My Head”), and there are a couple scenes in which leading lady Holly Hunter is lifted by music: once (on Ecstasy) at a lesbian dance club and once to the strains of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime.”

Here’s the Ecstasy scene from Living Out Loud:

A Little Princess is a musical in many ways, even if the young stars aren’t singing and dancing around. Patrick Doyle’s enchanting score includes some beautiful songs, though they’re on the soundtrack rather than in the characters’ mouths.

In P.S. I Love You, even star Hilary Swank sings (albeit in a karaoke bar – the one way modern audiences will accept characters breaking into song), as does her leading man, Gerard Butler (whose varied film career includes the title role of Phantom of the Opera and the gladiator epic 300). The movie’s soundtrack includes some great songs by the likes of Flogging Molly, the Pogues (with the divine Kirsty MacColl),Toby Lightman and a band I have discovered great affection for, Camera Obscura. Even co-star Nellie McKay (a formidable singer-songwriter-actress whom you should check out if she’s unknown to you) gets to sing the title song. I could have done without the James Blunt song, but that’s just me.

So my point here is that Richard LaGravenese should just go ahead and make a musical already. It appears that among his next projects is the film adaptation of Douglas Carter Beane’s hilarious play As Bees in Honey Drown (rumored to star Cate Blanchett). That’s wonderful. But how about an honest-to-God LaGravenese musical? Now that’s the movie I want to see.

Here’s a montage from A Little Princess set to the song “Kindle My Heart.”

Anika Noni Rose and Terrence Howard in the Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Photo by the New York Times

Interesting article in Variety about the recent Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof starring James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Terrence Howard and Anika Noni Rose.

Not surprisingly, this camera-ready cast may be taking the play to the big screen. Of course, Cat has already prowled the cinema once before: with Paul Newman, Burl Ives and Elizabeth Taylor in 1958.

The Broadway production, which concludes on June 22, recouped its $2.1 million investment and is happily headed into profit.

Producer Stephen Byrd, who is making noise about the Cat movie, is also considering a simulcast of a live performance of of the play to be shown in Regal Cinemas across the country.

Read the Variety article here.

The movies have not been all that kind to Stephen Sondheim.

His early Broadway hits, for which he supplied lyrics only, West Side Story and Gypsy, became classic studio musicals (with West Side Story being a movie for the ages and Gypsy being an interesting movie with some good work by Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood).

But once Sondheim emerged as SONDHEIM, cinema got a little tricky. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) cut about half of the songs, and let’s not even talk about the movie of A Little Night Music (1978). His incidental music for Stavisky and Reds is lovely, but Sondheim is best when he’s pairing music and words.

Sondheim did win an Academy Award for “Sooner or Later,” one of five songs he contributed to the 1990 Warren Beatty version of Dick Tracy, so he has some film pedigree (compared to his seven some Tony Awards, but Sondheim’s theatrical pedigree has never been in question).

Given the Sondheim-cinema track record, lowered expectations might be considered acceptable for the new Sweeney Todd movie from the Tim Burton-Johnny Depp team (this is their fifth collaboration after Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

Well, I’m here to tell you that heightened expectations are OK. I saw Sweeney Todd last week and was delighted and horrified – a good reaction for Sweeney.

The thing that amazed me most is how faithful Burton is to Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Broadway musical (which is in turn based on a Christopher Bond play). You wouldn’t know it from the trailers, but this Sweeney is a full-blown movie musical with as much (if not more) singing than talking.

Earlier this fall, the Bay Area got a taste of the Sweeney Broadway revival, which pared down the orchestrations so that the actors could play their own instruments. That stage version had its merits (attention to Sondheim’s brilliant lyrics, for one), but oh, the lush, glorious orchestrations in the movie (courtesy of Jonathan Tunick), conducted by Paul Gemignani.

Those massive, bone-rattling movie theater sound systems are put to wondrous effect as Sondheim’s dark, chilling score pours out of them. This is one thing movies can do better than Broadway – a massive orchestra playing so loudly you feel every instrument and note.

Most discussions I’ve had about this movie Sweeney have begun with one question: How are the voices? And my answer is: fine. Not great. Not Broadway. But fine in the context of the movie. Depp’s Sweeney, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, who wields straight razors and slices necks like a jungle explorer clearing a path, has an appealing pop-rock voice with touches of early David Bowie.

Depp’s co-star, Helena Bonham Carter, isn’t quite as successful. Her wispy vocals don’t really register. In fact, Bonham Carter is miscast. Her Mrs. Lovett, the pie shop owner who turns Sweeney’s victims into deliciously greasy meat pies, is simply too sexy. No matter how much dark makeup they slather on her eyes, no matter how gaunt and pale they make her, she’s still sexy.

An older, more desperate Mrs. Lovett makes more sense in the context of the story. She’s smart enough to know how to woo Sweeney and desperate enough to do horrible things simply because she has run out of options. Bonham Carter’s Mrs. Lovett is just too young and hot to be at the end of her rope.

Still, she looks great, and because Burton’s approach has so much to do with creating a sinister gothic look, looking good is half the battle.

The supporting cast is stellar. Hard to go wrong with Alan Rickman (as the creepily sexy Judge Turpin) and Sacha Baron Cohen (as Signor Adolfo Pirelli), both of whom appear to be having a great time being bad. Jamie Campbell Bower is an impressive Anthony (and he’s only 19), and Jayne Wisener (another youngster at 20) is an angelic Johanna (though in her early scenes she looks a little like one of the big-eyed aliens at the end of Close Encounters). Special mention must be made of seemingly older-than-his-years Ed Sanders as Toby. He’s all of about 14 years old, and he more than holds up his end of the movie (which is fairly significant). He and Bonham Carter are wonderful together on “Not While I’m Around.”

When making holiday plans to slice and dice with Sweeney, keep in mind that this musical is rated R for very good reason. The blood flows like pub ale, and Sweeney’s specially rigged barber’s chair is incredibly violent. Even though the gore is self-consciously theatrical, it still packs a wallop. This is the bloodiest movie musical since Can’t Stop the Music.

At long last, Stephen Sondheim’s genius has been captured on film in a way that doesn’t cheapen or apologize or dumb down.

Here’s a Sweeney Todd behind-the-scenes teaser to whet your whistle.

When does a movie become theater? The easy answer is when it’s adapted a la Hairspray, The Lion King, The Producers and the like.

But there have been rare instances when movies become theater, usually when music is involved. I’m thinking of the rock band Spinal Tap, which, after their mockumentary became a hit, toured like a real band. Same is true of the “folk singers” in the genius Christopher Guest movie A Mighty Wind. I remember going to the Warfield to see the entire cast reassemble, in character, for a concert. The fictional becomes real – or if not real, exactly, then three-dimensional.

During the Mighty Wind show, the New Main Street Singers took the stage, and someone, spotting Parker Posey, shouted out, “Parker, I love you!” Posey didn’t acknowledge the shout in any way, so the shouter re-phrased using her character’s name: “Sissy, I love you,” and Posey, whipped her head around, a big smile on her face, and waved madly at her fan.

Another movie character recently stepped off the big screen for a concert in San Francisco. On Monday, fans and media attended a screening of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the latest from super-hot Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, Superbad), who co-wrote and produced.

The movie bundles every music biography cliché you can imagine and skewers them all gleefully. The humor is broad, dirty and silly – it’s sophomoric in the smartest way.

John C. Reilly is Dewey Cox, a kid from hardscrabble Alabama who is born to sing. He rises through the ranks – taught by African-American blues and soul men, schooled by peers such as Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. Drugs and alcohol, of course, play a big part in Dewey’s dark period, and then the ‘60s flower, and next thing you know he’s in India with the Beatles (played hilariously by Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman).

Jenna Fischer of “The Office” is Dewey’s lifelong love, Darlene, and their duet, “Let’s Duet,” is a musical highlight. Music plays a huge part, obviously, but the skill with which the songs are executed (great pastiche songs in all the right styles, with assists from Apatow, director/co-writer Jake Kasdan), Dan Bern and Marshall Crenshaw, among others) is a huge part of the movie’s success.

Reilly is a real singer – you only need to see him perform “Mr. Cellophane” in Chicago or hear him duet with Woody Harrelson in A Prairie Home Comapnion to know that – and a sincere and sincerely funny performer. He carries the movie with effortless skill.

I can say with some authority that Reilly is a real singer because, as good as he is in the movie, he was equally as good in person. After the screening on Monday, fans walked down the block to the Great American Music Hall, where the marquee proudly proclaimed, “Dewey Cox and the Hard Walkers: The Cox Across America Tour.” (If you think the last name Cox was accidental and won’t be joked about in every conceivable way, think again.)

Reilly performed for about an hour with a four-piece band (he played guitar and harmonica), and he never broke character. He was Dewey Cox, outfitted in a black-and-red bolero outfit seen in the movie when he’s performing “Guilty as Charged.”

Because the song stylings move from ‘50s blues and rock ‘n’ roll to ‘60s folk and psychedelia, Reilly really gets to show off his skills as a singer. He’s a little bit Roy Orbison, which is a great thing to be. His live high notes weren’t quite as pristine as his movie high notes, but he makes up for it in enthusiasm and humor.

The best song in the movie is the title song, “Walk Hard,” though I’m awfully fond of the nearly dirty “Let’s Duet.” Dewey’s posthumous tribute to himself, “(Have You Heard the News) Dewey Cox Died,” is probably something every famous singer/songwriter wishes he/she wrote, and his anthemic plea for the rights of little people, “Let Me Hold You (Little Man)” is a hoot.

Reilly is a theater veteran (A Streetcar Named Desire on
Broadway in 2005, Tony nomination for True West opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman, lead in the musical version of Marty), and his comfort onstage shows. He’s great onscreen, but in his Dewe Cox guise, he knows how to give good theater.

In the spirit of the film, let me just add that he rocks out with his Cox out.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is in theaters Dec. 21. Here are two trailers. The first is for all audiences. The second is rated R. Choose appropriately.

OK, I know this isn’t local, but I’m still excited about it. And it’s in our state and time zone, so technically it’s local.

Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles recently announced that it will host the world premiere of 9 to 5, the Broadway-bound musical based on the 1980 movie starring Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton.

Here’s the really good news: Dolly has written the music and lyrics for the show — her first-ever musical.

The show opens next fall, Sept. 3 through Oct. 19 at the Ahmanson Theatre.

The book is by Patricia Resnick, co-author of the movie, and Joe Mantello (Wicked) is slated to direct.

The cast includes Allison Janey (The West Wing) as in-charge Violet Newstead (the Tomlin role). Stephanie J. Block (Wicked, The Boy from Oz) will be fumbling office worker Judy Bernly (the Fonda role). And Megan Hilty (Wicked yet again) will be country gal Doralee Rhodes (the Parton role).

“It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to write a musical, and now I have the chance to not only make Doralee sing, but to bring all of Patricia’s wonderful characters to life on stage through music,” Parton said in a statement. “I think I’m gonna like it around here.”

For information visit www.centertheatregroup.org or call 213-628-2772.

Last night I attended a screening of Disney’s big holiday movie, Enchanted, and I have to say, I was pretty charmed by the notion of a classic Disney animated feature turned on its head and morphed into a modern-day, live-action musical.

The trailer gives you a pretty good idea what the movie’s all about:

The songs are by the Academy Award-winning dynamic Disney duo of Stephen (Wicked) Schwartz and Alan (Beauty and the Beast) Menken. The pair previously collaborated on Disney’s Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And though there aren’t enough songs for my taste, there are two — a huge, joyful production number in Central Park that ends in a veritable festial surrounding Bethesda Fountain, and a romantic waltz at a ball sung by Jon McLaughlin – that make me anxious for the CD (slated for release Nov. 20, and the movie comes out Nov. 21).

Amy Adams plays Giselle, a gentle (and somewhat simpleminded) lass who has Snow White’s woodland cottage and affinity for all creatures great and small. In her hand-drawn animation bliss, she has Ariel’s red hair and Belle’s taste in clothes. Her Prince Charming (Edward, actually, played by James Marsden in his second musical of the year after Hairspray) is more taken with himself than with Giselle, but every prince needs his princess.

Of course Edward’s stepmother, the Queen (Susan Sarandon chewing the scenery), has a problem with a potential new queen, so she and her bumbling sidekick (Timothy Spall) figure out a way to kick Giselle out of animated fairy tale land and into the harsh reality of Times Square.

Soon Prince Edward, the sidekick and, eventually, the queen herself, end up in the real world, where people, doggone it, just don’t spontaneously burst into song.

Giselle is saved from a downpour by handsome lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey, naturally), single dad to an adorable princess-deprvied daughter (Dad wants her to have strong women role models like Marie Curie and Harriet Tubman). Of course they think this beautiful redhead is absolutely bonkers, but they both fall for her charms.

Robert’s somewhat harsh girlfriend is played by Idina Menzel (the Tony Award-winning star of Schwartz’s Wicked), who doesn’t even get to sing a song, which is a shame.

There’s a lot of charm in this movie — not the least of which is a computer-animated chipmunk named Pip that nearly steals the picture — and the “let’s make fun of musicals while loving them at the same time” tone works well .

That said, I have reservations — and they’re cynical and very non-fairy tale in spirit. I can just hear the Disney corporate meetings that concocted what amounts to a giant commerical for its new line of princess toys and princess costumes and princess birthday party kits and princess everything under the sun. The princess business is already booming, and this movie is sure to kick it into even higher gear (I hear there are already Macy’s tie-ins).

I’m all for girl-power, feminist-revisionist fairy tales, and when, at the end of Enchanted, it’s up to Giselle to save her mister in distress, it should be a lot more triumphant than it is. There were so many opportunities to be clever and smart here, and Adams’ utterly captivating performance (sincere and silly in equal measure, knowing and hearfelt and, yes, enchanting) could have take the movie to a much more finely etched portrait of female empowerment and charm. But the script (and the heavy-duty special effects) ultimately disappoints.

And may I chime in with all the 10-year-old girls and complain that we don’t get to see the final, most important wedding (there is a wedding, but it’s not really the one we want to see). And there should be a great final musical number, not a soundtrack song by Carrie Underwood.

Here’s the official Enchanted Web site. There are film clips and behind-the-scenes glimpses.