Slashdot Mirror
The Princess Bride Musical
adamy writes "Maybe a good thing, maybe a bad thing. William Goldman has started collaborating on a musical version of the time-honored classic. Guess the only thing left to do now is go through the pockets and look for loose change."
Can anyone explain what the connection is between the "Princess Bride," and something a typical Slashdot reader would be interested in?
Yes. That would be "The Princess Bride". Next?
Why can't people come up with NEW ideas? Geeze, we have remakes of Psycho, the Fog, etc, etc. Nothing new. Nada. Oh, except maybe Serenity........
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
I thought it was going to be weird with the entire script sung, but it was actually really interesting and the ways in which the tempo of the songs could be used to increase dramatic tension or emphasize humor was very cool.
Hopefully this interpretation of the Princess Bride does justice to the movie which did justice to the book.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Anybody want a peanut gallery perspective on this? It's inconceivable that this would be a bad thing. I trwoo luv the film, and I have a feeling, that if done in the right type of way, it could be done brilliantly. Like Spamalot and the Producers, it's smart to choose a film that has massive repeat value, material that has that 'i could see this a million times' quality. Other possible film to stage adaptations, in this vein, now that I think of it : Clue. Goonies. Lost Boys. Bad stage adaptations of films? I don't think they exist. So quotable. However, if they screw up, they should prepare to die. Why are you smiling?
News for Nerds
Yeah, so there's a fairy-tale love story in there. There's also fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes and miracles. Oh, yeah, and the whole thing's a satire.
But you're not the first one to think it was a kissing book.
There are many divergences that take place in the adaptation of any book to film project. Even the universally acclaimed LOTR had scenes that were not in the book. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But it's a problem inherent in putting abstract images into concrete ones. Sometimes it needs a little tweaking.
A good example of a movie that took largescale divergences from the book is Stephen King's "Dolores Claiborne". The movie's child abuse plot added an entirely new dimension to the story which did not originally exist in the book. It "completed" the story and made for compelling cinema.
On the other hand, you could have crap like the man/elf love subplot tacked onto the original story which flies out and hits the audience like a ton of bricks because there is no continuity between it and the rest of the story.
When used as filler, introduced or removed scenes rarely benefit the film. But when used to fill in the gaps or to make the story more readily watchable on the screen, the film gets better.
Monty Python, Evil Dead, The Princess Bride, the A-Team, The Bush Administration...
"Nerds!"
"I do not think that means what you think it means."
Nerd, as a stereotypical or archetypal designation, refers to people of above-average intelligence whose interests (often in science and mathematics) are not shared by mainstream society. -From Wikipedia
Imagine if you would, for just a moment, that there is more to life than linux, sco, microsoft, google, nintendo, sony, etc. Imagine too, that someone out there, might be interested in this.
However, slashdot does need a "Culture" section for these kinds of articles(ie, Serenity, the Raiders of the Lost Ark remake, Spamalot, etc...)
Erm, wouldn't the story of a pretty girl who rewards with her devotion the poor and unlucky but hard-working and cleverly inventive young lad with a taste for ironic word-play be of significant interest to your generic young male geek?
Or have their mating habits changed?
Ah, but does he see himself that way? Or does he see himself as a swashbuckling daredevil with a heart of gold and a silver tongue (or at least silver keyboard)?
It's no more anti-male than Indiana Jones is anti-history. If you grew your entire opinion about the subject from one movie, you might end up a little warped. For those of us capable of appreciating a movie that contains certain departures from everyday life (which make it more *interesting* than everyday life), it's thoroughly enjoyable to watch.
The worst thing about the movie is its title. It could've just as well been called The Swordsman's Accomplices, or Adventures of the Dread Pirate Roberts. In that way, it's sort of like the Cowboy Junkies, whose music has nothing to do with cowboys or junkies, or even junk. If you can get past the name, there's treasure to be had.
It sems to me that one route to greater understanding in this situation is a giant off-topic thread about nerd, geek, and hacker movies.
I was introduced to The Princess Bride, along with Monty Python and the Evil Dead series and Noises Off and several others, in high school. Whoever decided to place me in the drama teacher's homeroom did me quite a favor; those kids were some of the most interesting people I could've ever hoped to know.
Getting "in" jokes is a big part of belonging to a community. It's easy, reading this thread, to tell who's seen the movie, and who's judging it by its name alone. In the spirit of openness, and off-topicness, I'd like to suggest a big off-topic thread where Slashdotters suggest movies and books that you really should see or read, even if they're not four-star classics, because they'll help explain some common references and in-jokes of our culture.
To my high-school list above, I'd like to add:
Let the off-topicness commence!
slashdot core -> science -> geology -> quicksand -> lightning sand -> princess bride -> Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Montoya) -> Mandy Patinkin was in Pinero(2001) with Benjamin Bratt -> Benjamin Bratt was in The Woodsman(2004) with..............Kevin Bacon!!!
It's hardly a chick flick. Who gives a rat's ass about Buttercup anyway? She was Westley's motivation, sure, but Inigo was my favorite character. Revenge is cooler than romance any day. Especially for a movie I first saw when I was 12 or something.
If you're so convinced it's "a kissing book", I suppose you felt no swell of outrage when Inigo Montoya related the story of his father's death? No grin when Westley revealed that he was not left-handed either? No, you weren't paying attention, because there was a girl in the beginning of the story. While the rest of us were waiting for Vizzini to keel over from the poison, or laughing at Miracle Max's antics, you were terrified of getting cooties from the girl who hadn't even been on screen for the last dozen scenes or so.
When Inigo delivered the line he'd waited his lifetime to say, and he finally had Count Rugen cornered, and the rest of us teetered on the edges of our seats waiting for the denouement, and we bit our lips and took deep breaths and tasted the sweetness of revenge as he declared "I want my father back, you son of a bitch", we cheered and sighed and thanked the universe that sometimes things do work out in the end, but you were wisely avoiding all of that, content to ignore the movie because paying attention might mean you were enjoying a "chick flick".
Dear parent poster, I regret to inform you that you're tragically misinformed about what "chick flick" means. In a chick flick, all the male characters, save for maybe one, are abusive, neglectful, or ignorant. Tune into Oxygen sometime and you'll see plenty of them. The general point of such movies is to reassure the audience that you can only be a decent human being if you have a uterus. Female characters in such movies are universally noble, smart, and caring, though somehow they always end up being the victims of male characters, whose motives are always shallow and whose actions are always vicious. If Slashdot ever posts about one of those, please let us know. But until then, don't try to assert that the Princess Bride falls into that category, because I assure you, it does not.
Get your facts straight before bashing a movie revered by the overwhelming majority of Slashdotters, not to mention the general population. For starters, try watching it.
The problem with this isn't Goldman (obviously). Nor is it the idea, which is solid musical theatre territory for a lot of reasons.
The problem is the composer, Adam Guettel. He won a Tony Award this year for his score to The Light in the Piazza, but is--and will forever be--better known for being the grandson of Richard Rodgers, of Rodgers & Hammerstein and Rodgers & Hart fame. Piazza had/has snob appeal in a way that generally only Sondheim musicals these days do, which means it's generally hard to get a fair reading on its quality from anyone. It's one of those "important" shows that "important" people see and even more "important" people like.
Or at least they're supposed to. Because that didn't happen in this case. The show won six Tonys, but it hasn't exactly taken New York by storm.
Because, for all his talents as a musician (which are considerable, though I don't believe any sensible person can consider them equal, or even close to equal, to his grandfather's), Piazza is very cold and distant. It's about love, specifically the romance between a young developmentally disabled girl and an Italian boy who speaks almost no English, but examines the subject in a lot of theoretical and intellectual ways that--for most people--don't really strike the heart. Richard Rodgers could do that without thinking, and his compositions resonate today and will probably long after we're all gone. They're universal, they're simple, they're true. Guettel's music is none of these things. His greatest claim to theatrical fame is Floyd Collins, semi-based on the story of a prospector who gets trapped in a cave and dies.
What does all of this have to do with The Princess Bride? Nothing. And that's precisely the point. Guettel is currently the "hot" thing, but he's not right for this. He can't write swashbuckling. He can barely write unbridled romanticism without resorting to tricks (nonsense syllables instead of lyrics or havng characters sing in Italian when they should be singing in English). He writes very heavy, he doesn't write light, he doesn't write fun. And what is The Princess Bride if not fun? It needs irreverence, it needs a devil-may-care quality about it that would make it (I would guess) more the purview of someone like David Yazbeck (The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) or Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Once on This Island, Ragtime).
It's unlikely to get any of what it needs with Guettel writing the songs for it. So, everyone, don't get your hopes up too much--Goldman knows what he's doing, so his end of the bargain will no doubt be held up. But Guettel, as notorious for being a slow writer as he is someone who can't connect to his characters on the simplest, most heartfelt level, can't be expected to do the same. If we ever see this--which is a big if at this point; lots of shows have a way of getting announced and then vanishing--I have a feeling it will have a rocky road to success, if it even finds success at all.
--Matthew
"If the lights of Broadway blind me, I won't mind..."
C.S. Lewis once remarked that originality is overrated.
And I think he has a point. It's not that it's a bad thing, it's just that as a literary standard it's rather unobtainable, at least in the superficial way it's used as a tool of literary odium. From there it becomes the kind of brain dead dogma that can dismiss a project like this sight unseen.
If this is the true standard, Puccini was an unoriginal hack because La Boheme had been published as a (not very good) novel first. Shakespeare plagiarized a lot of his best stuff from Christopher Marlowe and Plutarch. The most relevant example of course is Mozart, who set Beaumarchais' stage play, Le Mariage de Figaro to music. What a crime against art! And while you're at it, you can get Oscar Hammerstein for lifting "Carousel" from Farenc Molnar.
Or course, Picasso once said, "Mediocre artists borrow, great artists steal." So maybe there's no such thing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.