“I’ve stood on bread lines with the best,
Watched while the headlines did the rest,
In the Depression, was I depressed?
Nowhere near.
I met a big financier,
And I’m here.”
Well it turns out last year’s program of global superhero oddities didn’t exactly net us the mainstream recognition and billion-dollar box office gross we were hoping for, so this year Spectacle is turning the limelight on another quintessentially American art form: musical theater.
With Tony Awards season in full swing and some of Hollywood’s best and brightest back treading the boards up and down Broadway, we figured now is as good a time as any to appeal to New York’s illustrious theater elite to fill the coffers of our humble little black box theater. So this month, we’re bringing stage to screen with five cinematic gems spotlighting the shows, songs, and stars of the Great White Way, all in the hopes of raking in some of that sweet, sweet green.
But fear not, lowly moviegoers, because even though The Legitimate Stage is the theme behind this installment of $pectacle $ells Out!, these are far from mere proshots or taped rehearsals. On the contrary, each work presented here has its own unique cinematic flair rendering them specific to the medium. Because Spectacle is still, after all— or at least until we’re able to get in good with the Shubert Organization— a movie theater.
So, curtain up!
Light the lights!
We’ve got nothing to hit but the… “play” button in VLC…
This June, everything’s coming up $$$pectacle for me and for you~
“Can’t Hum the Tunes”: Songwriting Legends at Work
This program features two short documentary works showcasing the work and creative processes of a few of the most renowned songwriting talents in Broadway history.
MONDAY, JUNE 2 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 8 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 20 – 5 PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 26 – 10 PM
MONDAY, JUNE 30 – 10 PM
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THE BROADWAY OF LERNER AND LOEWE
Dir. Norman Jewison, 1962
United States. 51 min.
In English.
First is this 1962 made-for-TV musical special celebrating the fruitful collaborations of lyricist/librettist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe. Hosted by Maurice Chevalier, the film features a cavalcade of Broadway stars, including Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, Robert Goulet, and Stanley Holloway, performing a selection of the duo’s work from iconic shows like MY FAIR LADY, CAMELOT, and GIGI. Each number opens with the performers, writers, and directors in dialogue before seamlessly unfolding into full-on musical productions, aided by some incredibly deft multi-camera direction courtesy of a little-known NBC segment director named Norman Jewison.
SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH… STEPHEN
Dirs. Bob Portway & Anthony Lee, 1990
United Kingdom. 50 min.
In English.
Second is this 1990 Omnibus special featuring an intimate conversation with Stephen Sondheim as he mounts the West End premiere of his seminal 1984 musical, SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE. Rather than just provide a behind-the-scenes look at the production, the film acts as a meditation on the same themes of creativity, commitment, emotional connection, and community explored in Sondheim’s musical through the work of pointillist painter, George Seurat. It’s no surprise that Sondheim, a titanic talent with a genius-level intellect, finds profound connections between his own work and Seurat’s, expounding on how every song, every word, every note he writes is a choice in and of itself, not unlike to how every dot Seurat laid to canvas was a “conscious decision to make it green and not blue”.
DON’T PLAY US CHEAP
Dir. Melvin van Peebles, 1973
United States. 102 min.
In English.
FRIDAY, JUNE 6 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 14 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 19 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 27 – 10 PM
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Trinity (Joe Keyes Jr.) and Brother Dave (Avon Long) are a pair of devilish imps looking for a party to break up. They come across one in Harlem being thrown by Miss Maybell (Esther Rolle) in honor of her niece Earnestine’s (Rhetta Hughes) birthday. Assuming human form, they infiltrate the party and attempt to wreak havoc by drinking all the alcohol, eating all the food, and insulting the guests, only for their efforts to be met with good-natured dismissal. As Trinity begins to fall in love with Earnestine, his and Dave’s mission to break up the party turns into a race against the clock, lest midnight strike when they’ll both be turned into the thing they’ve only pretended to be: human.
Written, composed, directed, and produced by Melvin van Peebles, DON’T PLAY US CHEAP took a rather unusual path towards becoming the stuff of Broadway legend. Van Peebles originally mounted the production, a musical adaptation of his 1967 French-language novel La fête à Harlem, in San Francisco in 1970 with no real intention of a Broadway run. Instead, following the unexpected success of his independently-financed 1971 feature, SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG, van Peebles opted to adapt the musical for his next film project. Filming was completed in early 1972 however, unable to find a distributor, van Peebles decided to bring the production to Broadway anyway, debuting at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in May of that year as the “lighter” half of a stage musical diptych that also featured van Peeble’s much darker-themed AIN’T SUPPOSED TO DIE A NATURAL DEATH, which opened on the same stage just a few months later.
Van Peebles’ film— shot before the Broadway production was even conceived but released after it had already closed— received a short theatrical run in 1973 before finding new life on home video decades later. Since its revival, the work has been lauded by theater and film audiences alike for van Peebles’ unique staging of the musical numbers, often featuring solo performers backed by the full cast in arrangements that underscore their communal nature, and for its richly allegorical book and script, the subjects of which have been interpreted as metaphors for everything from the FBI’s attempts to dismantle the Black Panther Party, to free love, to class conflict, to above all, black resiliency, joy, and determination in the face of contemporary adversity.
OH! CALCUTTA!
Dirs. Jacques Levy & Guillaume Martin Aucoin, 1972
United States. 122 min.
In English.
MONDAY, JUNE 9 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 13 – MIDNIGHT
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No program of musical theater oddities would be complete without one of the most notorious productions to ever grace Broadway. Originally conceived in 1969 by British theatre critic Kenneth Tynan, and with music & lyrics composed by Peter Schickele (aka PDQ Bach), Robert Dennis, and Stanley Walden, OH! CALCUTTA! consists of a series of risqué sketches about sex and sexual mores, authored by a who’s-who of theatrical heavyweights from Sam Shepard and Samuel Beckett to Edna O’Brien and Jules Feiffer to, for reasons unclear, a newly solo John Lennon.
This 1971 filmed version of the show’s original Broadway iteration keeps much of Jacques Levy’s original direction intact, with co-director Guillaume Martin Aucoin skillfully adapting its sketch format for a more elaborate and visually versatile medium. The filmed version was originally intended to be shown via closed-circuit video projection at local theaters around the country, however plans for that were scrapped when many cities and towns banned its exhibition in the wake of protests over the material. Instead, the film received a short theatrical release in 1972 as the B-movie to Ralph Bakshi’s FRITZ THE CAT before receiving new life on Broadway a few years later via a hugely successful 1976 revival run.
To say that a bawdy, sophomoric, partially-nude musical revue debuting during the Summer of Love was a product of its time would be an understatement. Yet despite the controversies surrounding nearly every one of its releases (including obscenity charges leading up to its 1970 West End debut), the show ultimately lived a long and healthy life on Broadway, running for over 7,000 combined performances between its original run and 1976 revival, briefly holding the record for longest-running show in Broadway history before being swiftly memoryholed once we reached the era of producer-driven big budget megamusicals.
IT’S A BIRD… IT’S A PLANE… IT’S SUPERMAN!
Dir. Jack Regas, 1975
United States. 92 min.
In English.
MONDAY, JUNE 2 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 14 – MIDNIGHT
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No, this isn’t a holdover from our previous superhero installment of $pectacle $ells Out!. Believe it or not, this is an entirely original (albeit short-lived) theatrical work featuring America’s favorite Big Blue Boy Scout.
Three years before Christopher Reeve’s iconic big-screen turn as the character, audiences were treated(?) to this made-for-TV adaptation of one of Broadway’s most notorious flops. The original musical, composed by the late Charles Strouse with lyrics by Lee Adams and book by David Newman & Robert Benton (both of whom, ironically, still went on to co-author the 1978 film adaptation) opened in March of 1966, and closed just a few months later after a mere 129 performances, at the time earning the title of Broadway’s biggest box office bomb with an unprecedented $600,000 in lost revenue.
Needless to say, the producers of this 1975 TV special were a bit wary of adapting the musical in its original form and insisted on major overhauls to the production, which included significantly re-writing the book, eschewing much of the supporting cast, cutting out several musical numbers, and re-imagining others to fit a more contemporary, kid-friendly sensibility, for better and worse (mostly worse). But what this adaptation lacks in integrity, it more than makes up for in sheer camp value and unfettered silliness, replete with tap-dancing villains, a comically insecure Man of Steel, and a budget so non-existent that most of its special effects (including Superman “flying”) take place off screen. While fans of the Donner film may not appreciate it, “fans” of comic book-to-Broadway shitshows like SPIDER-MAN: TURN OF THE DARK or BARBARELLA most certainly will.
