Musicals—18

As we continue to look at 70s musicals, there are a few more from Broadway that were quite successful— Fiddler on the Roof [1971], Cabaret [1972], Grease [1978], The Wiz [1978], Hair [1979] and All That Jazz [1979]. The 70s was a time when musicals were often still winning Best Picture awards.

Another phenomenon in the 70s that was to be repeated through the decades is the concert film— Tommy [1975] being a prime example.

As mentioned before, there are some musicals you can’t aspire to—you can’t take a Broadway musical or a singing group’s songs and make them into a musical. If those musicals and musical groups are successful, they’ll have very important writers working on their projects.

But you can do what another musical in the 70s tried to do—take a time in history, a location, and throw a couple of characters into that time and place and see what happens. That musical was New York, New York [1977] by Earl Mac Rauch and Mardik Martin. The film wasn’t a hit—at all. But it’s interesting because of what it tried to do.

The story of the film begins in 1946 on V-J day when a saxophone player, Jimmy, meets a singer, Francine and the two end up thrown together in a job—he plays, she sings—and then they develop a relationship. And all of this happens in New York—and the town is very much a character in the film. And as we’ve discussed before, because these two characters sing and play an instrument, the songs have a reason for being in the film.

Here’s a clip of the film that’s worth a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spKekOaHa4k

Interesting, huh? Two people who are very different, in particular, a guy who’s off-the-wall in many ways and is so volatile that you wonder what he’ll do next. And a woman who’s sort of everywoman, just looking for love in the cold, cruel world. She’s more grounded, and he’s way up in the clouds. Will this ever work out?

The problem with this film is that you sort of don’t WANT it to work out. He’s just too weird—and we never figure out why. You want him to change and be more responsible—hard to have sympathy for someone who walks away from his kid and his responsibilities and leaves a sweet woman in the lurch. So, basically, we love her and hate him—so the typical “oh I hope they get together by the end of the film” just isn’t here and we kind of don’t want them to get together at all—we want to save her the agony.

So a cautionary tale, here. Make your characters wild and unpredictable, but don’t make them SO far out of the norm that they become people we hate.

It’s a fine line. Willy Wonka, who we talked about last week, was irascible and unpredictable and often not the nicest guy around—but we saw a bit of a softer side that made him seem more real and less of a “type.” And that’s the problem with Jimmy’s character—we never get under his skin enough to see what led him to be the guy he is… we never really feel for him.

When it comes to musicals, you want your audience rooting for your characters, caring about them…so make that a priority as you develop the characters for your musical.

Copyright © Diane Lake

24Nov19

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