The Movie Musicals Thread: Now Dis. "Kiss Me, Kate" (1953)

I looooooooooooooooooooove Little Shop. Probably my favorite musical of all-time.

The original Off-Broadway production was fantastic, mind you, and no one but Ellen Greene can do the part justice, but I actually kinda liked Rick Moranis a little bit better.

 

I had no idea how well-loved this movie still is! I thought I was the only person left humming "Skid Row" to himself in the car, or "Somewhere that's Green" while doing the dishes. Now I see there's a whole cult following that I've unknowingly been part of!

 

It is impressive, but with the big plant, they did all the movements in slow motion and sped up the footage. If you watch Seymour in Mean Green Mother, you can tell

 

Oh well, I still love Audrey II. Can't go wrong with a giant plant puppet.

 

When my theatre group did this, the band sat in front of the stage dressed as hobos from Skid Row. But before the show, they meandered throughout the audience annoying the patrons. I remember that one well dressed couple walked into the auditorium, saw the band, turned around and left!

 

I got to be the plant in our high school production; rented the models used in the original Off-Braodway version, IIRC.

I was small and medium; you need a bigger person for big (there are three models).

 

It's a superb show to put on.

Going back to the movie, I'd like to give an honourary mention to Orin's entrance when he jumps on the Motorcycle, and when it lands, it stops instantly. Brilliant stuff.

 

How on earth would you do the plant in a non-professional play? I'm curious about the mechanics.

 

The one we had, the bottom didn't really move, and the puppeteer used his whole body to lift the top half up and down very rapidly. If you make the bottom half out of spongey stuff, you get the impression that it's animated every time the top half hits it.

We were naughty and put in "Mean Green Mother" (that's not available to amateurs doing the stage show as it was written for the film), and the poor guy got absolutely knackered. But he always got the biggest round of applause.

We also put in the masochist scene (again, despite it being in the Roger Corman film - played by a young unknown called Jack Nicholson), it wasn't put in the stage show. It was re-added for the 1986 film)

 

The small one is a hand-puppet in a pot, done from under the countertop.
The medium one is a pot one sits in, with "root booties" and your top-half operating the mouth to "sing."
The large one is someone standing inside and operating the whole plant with folks getting "swallowed" going through his or her legs.

 

My highschool actually did this as a musical and I fell in love with it. I love this movie, Steve Martin as a genius as the BA dentist, and I love the plant's rendition of "feed me".
Audrey's voice is pretty unique too, considering she was like "Rock a doodle" and I picked up on it the moment she spoke.

The way my school did it was that they made a plant out of felt,wood, just random parts. Then there was 2 people, or maybe one, inside operation two planks for each lip, and then they'd just move it to the words. Of course it was a little off, but it still looked good considering it was a highschool show like... 7 years ago.

 

The solutions are really quite brilliant. You don't always *need* CGI.

 

Little Shop of Horrors rules..

 

I haven't seen the Corman non-musical version with Jack Nicholson...I'd like to.

 

I saw it a while back. Not brilliant, but ok.

Forgive me if this turns out to be an urban legend, but as far as I recall, the Corman movie was filmed over just 2 days.


But it's amazing what great musicals are made from poor source material

Little Shop of Horrors
Phantom of the Opera
Aspects of Love



EDIT: Nicholson's only in it for a few minutes. He plays Bill Murray's role.

 

^ ^ ^ Phantom of the Opera? It's based on a beloved novel from the Age of Reason... or, if you like, a beloved film from the Silent Era. Hardly what I would term "poor source material".

 

Double post.

 

The novel of "The Phantom of the Opera" is from about 1910, not the Age of Reason. I've read it; it hasn't aged well, though it might well be the quality of the translation. But it certainly isn't 'poor source material'. Great plot. Gaston Leroux must have thought so too, because he ripped it off from George Dumaurier's "Trilby".

 

I stand corrected on Phantom's date of publication. I would opine, however, that Trillby (and its famous mastermind character of Svengali) served to inspire Leroux's conception of Phantom. There is so much in Phantom that is wholly original and unique, that it can hardly be said to have been "ripped off" from duMaurier. But that discussion is perhaps best suited for another thread.

 

The original source is probably the Faust legend, but as you say, we're off topic.

 

Moulin Rouge (2001)

(from wiki)

[image=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/26/MOULINROUGEF.jpg/215px-MOULINROUGEF.jpg]

Moulin Rouge! is a 2001 musical film directed by Baz Luhrmann, based largely on the Giuseppe Verdi opera La Traviata. It tells the story of a young British poet/writer, Christian, who falls in love with the star of the Moulin Rouge, cabaret actress and courtesan Satine, played by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, respectively. It uses the musical setting of the Montmartre Quarter of Paris, France. The film was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, and won two: for art direction and costume design. It was shot at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia.

In 2006, Moulin Rouge! ranked twenty-fifth on the American Film Institute's list of best musicals.

Plot

The year is 1900. Christian (Ewan McGregor), a British writer who came to Montmartre a year before, sits in a garret overlooking the closed-down Moulin Rouge. He has just begun typing on a new biographical work, detailing his love and loss of Satine (Nicole Kidman), a courtesan who has since died.

The audience enters into Christian's memories. It is 1899, and Christian arrives in Paris as a naive and idealistic writer in pursuit of his place in the Bohemian world. He chooses the neighborhood of Montmartre, Paris, knowing it to be the epicentre of the Bohemian world at the height of the Bohemian movement. His life plan is vague at best, but he fully embraces the Bohemian ideals of freedom, beauty, truth, and above all, love. The only problem, as he discovers, is that he has no idea what love is.

Fortunately, Christian is quickly acquainted with a group of Bohemian players who literally burst into his apartment. They are attempting to produce a theatrical production, "Spectacular! Spectacular!", which the Moulin Rouge's master Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) plans to put on at the cabaret. Unfortunately for them, the plot-line and lyrics to "Spectacular! Spectacular!" seem to have stagnated in their creative development, and the group is beginning to panic. When Christian suggests two or three changes to the script, the Bohemians are bowled over by Christian's natural talent for Bohemian poetry. The group agrees to add Christian to their group, and before the day is over, they take him to the Moulin Rouge (via the Green Fairy) in celebration.

While partying is its own justification to the Bohemians, their visit to the Moulin Rouge has a second motivation; they intend to present him to Satine, a beautiful courtesan and lead performer at the Moulin Rouge, in the hopes that she will be impressed with his talent and persuade Zidler to hire him as the play's writer.

Coincidentally, Zidler has selected the same night to introduce Satine to the Duke, whose wealth makes him the ideal financier for the production of "Spectacular! Spectacular!" and the conversion of the Moulin Rouge from a cabaret to a proper theatre. The lure for the Duke, as he explains to Satine, is two-fold: the profits made from the first production at the theatre, and exclusive retainer of Satine's services as the Duke's private mistress. To motivate Satine, Zidler capitalizes on her desire to become a dramatic actress, suggesting that becoming the Duke's mistress would pave the way for this career change.

However, it is Christian and not the Duke that Satine (mistakenly) takes to her chambers. After a comic set of misunderstandings, Christian summons his poetic gift and charms Satine. She declares that she has fallen in love with him, but is shocked to realize he is not the Duke she was set to seduce, but actually a penniless Bohemian poet/writer. ("Your Song")

Soon after, the real Duke (Richard Roxburgh) arrives and finds Christian and Satine together. Christian's quick wit and Satine's charm fool the Duke into believing that they were rehearsing "Spectacular! Spectacular!" The main cast improvises the plot of the show on the spot: a beautiful Indian courtesan has her kingdom invaded