I'm a straight male who likes musicals. But I like straight musicals. Guys and Dolls, ON the Town, Oklahoma, Chicago, etc. Everything after Chicago has basically been a gay-female-Jewish we-hate-white-straight-Christian-males onslaught that makes for crap musicals. You don't really enjoy it when every show you see makes you the bad guy. Plus most of them suck these days (e.g. gay Jewish Sondheim won every award on Broadway and yet his crap writing and songs make one's ears bleed and make one groan with boredom).
Wicked, however, despite ostensibly doing the same hate-whitey stuff, was fantastic. I think the songs (Defying Gravity and Popular are two timeless classics) and the original cast (I saw it with the original case of Chenoweth and Menzel) and the basic plot even men can enjoy (ugly duckling v. pretty popular girl for the boy) make it watchable and compelling. Yes, the goat-man subplot sucks (its a clear metaphor for stereotype threat, which makes it sillier with each passing year) but its quickly forgotten even in the original stage production. I saw it multiple times on purpose.
Now, for the life of me, while I knew they would make a movie out of it and make the Wicked Wicth black in the movie (the metaphor of skin color is too on the nose), I cannot believe they didn't find a pretty black girl for the role. Someone in the mold of 90's singer Brandy Norwood---a pretty black girl with great pipes who can act serviceably and smile nice for the cameras---would have been ideal for this role.
Its not that hard to find a pretty black chick who can sing well and can do a decent job acting for a musical. Heck, even the black Little Mermaid chick from the live action disaster last year would have been good. But not only did they go black, they went ugly freakish are-you-a-tranny black chick, who also dresses in a way to uglify herself. This guarantees straight men won't be seeing this except to please the wife. Very poor choice in casting for a musical that wants to have legs.
It's funny that I have never considered The Blues Brothers to be a musical but of course it is. It's one of my favorite movies and I enjoy the songs but they only work because it's the old legendary black soul singers performing them; I don't think they would work with a no-name cast. Meanwhile one doesn't specifically need Carol Lawrence* to perform "I Feel Pretty" or "One Hand, One Heart" to enjoy WSS.
*Still alive at 92 while Natalie Wood died at 43, although it turns out Wood did not perform her own singing in the movie version of WSS. Also, there is an old joke where the punchline is "I guess Wood doesn't float"
in fairness some of the songs are covered by the Blues Brothers themselves which is a bunch of amazing studio/tour musicians plus the amateur vocals of two comedians.
There was a movie that was a bunch of non-Beatles singing Beatles songs. All were inferior to the Beatle's own studio performance except one. I think it was "Mr. Kite"? I liked it better so I looked up to see who the actor was and it was, in fact, Bono.
Yes, the Blues Brothers backing band was one of the greatest collections of session artists ever assembled; the whole conceit of the band wouldn't have worked without them.
In Across the Universe (2007) Bono performed Across the Universe.
Steve, are you going to let this friend of the playground attack me and then delete any response I have to him? Pretty unfair. He took a shot, I should be allowed to take one in return, or delete his nonsense and ban him for starting stuff.
Lots of straight guys, such as JFK, enjoy musicals. Right after Jack's assassination, Jackie named his era after a Broadway musical he particularly enjoyed: Camelot.
I read the books (there are three, as I recall), but I won't bother watching the movie. The decision on the lead's demographics is not true to the book, similar to The Dark Tower, which failed miserably. When will they cast a white guy in the lead of a movie version of Uncle Tom's Cabin?
I’ve never seen the show, but Wicked clearly has a number of excellent songs with melodic complexity that complements the dramatic themes. It stands in contrast to some other box office hits like Lion King with its AI-generated music or Hamilton with its predictable politically-correct chanting. I challenge anyone to hum their favorite melody from these hits.
"Disney’s recent live-action Snow White and Wicked consider it politically inappropriate to depict little people. " I guess "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox story" got it wrong with the song "Let Me Hold You Little Man":
You shout for me to put you down
But I'm marching today for your cause
I'm banging the drum
Your big day will come
When they remake The Wizard of Oz
"Think of Sarah Jessica Parker in 1991’s L.A. Story."
She was very attractive in that film, as was the city of LA. Neither has aged well. At least in Parker's case it's the normal course of life, while in LA's it's self-destruction.
Neither actress looks attractive. While black don't crack, the black actress clearly has the heavier features and I'm guessing (because I have no intention of seeing this) the voice of a middle aged woman.
If they were insisting on the diversity card, it would make more sense to cast a mulatto or quadroon black young lady as the good witch and put the white actress in the green airbrush makeup with some red lipstick. The solid green over-emphasizes the lips and nose, and of course the red lipstick would have looked clownish.
It actually looks like they deliberately mucked up the makeup job on Ariana to avoid the uncomfortable contrast.
Of course, it's really just an insoluble problem because the Wizard of Oz is fundamentally white American culture, written around the Yankee and Midwestern American characters Frank Baum grew up around. But we have made the policy choice that there is no such thing as white American culture.
Totally agree that they picked two unattractive women for these roles. The black lady would be more suited for some character in the Marvel universe as part of an alien race, and Ariana Grande looks anorexic as opposed to girlish. Not sure what machinations led to their casting.
Disagree. Ariana Grande is attractive. However, she is a natural tan, darker-featured Mediterranean brunette and they made her an unnatural, off-putting, anorexic white pale-skinned blond in this film---like if Tim Burton had directed and had been unable to recast her and put her on diet pills. Or if she was an Hispanic girl appearing on a Univision telenovela and been forced onto starvation rations. Likely because filmmakers hoped that, by making her pretty looks off-putting, they could get audiences to buy that a guy like Fiero would ditch Grande for the black monster in green skin. Shah, right.
Of course, they could have just cast Grande in the witch role and cast a pretty blond girl in the Glinda role. A man switching to the cute Grande from an annoying career-minded compromising cute blond would have made sense, even if Grande wasn't as pretty as the blond, because she's still attractive.
But Hollywood went full retard on the ugly witch role, and apparently needed Grande, so they tried to make her off-puttingly pretty to make up for it. It failed.
Right. The blonde looks anorexic and vaguely Hispanic. Ariana Grande isn't bad, but the role of the Funny Blonde is the big leagues: Marilyn Monroe, Carole Lombard, Cameron Diaz, Reese Witherspoon, Sofia Vergara, etc.
Its a pity they couldn't find a pretty young hungry blond starlet to have this be her big break.
But the problem with that was: (1) This was made during the woke tyranny, and the blond role isn't some 2-D hateable thing, so having a white pretty blond use this for her stardom was infinitely problematic to the movie makers; (2) knowing the Wicked Witch would be black, they apparently wanted some type of name singer in a role to make sure people lined up for it, and Grande fit the bill.
The smarter thing they should have done was reverse this: find a pretty black radio pop tart and make her the Wicked Witch (thus guaranteeing a "real" singer in the cast for credibility and getting some guaranteed buzz/interest from her fans) and then get an unknown talented blond for the Glinda role.
'Tis a pity. Emma Stone in her youth would've nailed it. So would've Witherspoon, although she's less pretty than most Hollywood blonds but a better actress. Dove Cameron might have worked if she could sing. Heck, maybe Sydney Sweeney might have nailed it today, although I don't know her range and the role is more of a cutesy-blond than bombshell role, so she'd have to tape down her chest.
Great article. I am worried the entire thing will function as an advert for Ozempic for the (predominantly) young and female audience. Some are saying the two leads are struggling with “competitive anorexia.” Not an expert (and have yet to see the film) but if you watch them in interviews together something doesn’t feel right.
I think the way they're doing interviews is an act for marketing.
Putting them together, making them react emotionally to vague emotional statements, putting them in weird outfits during them, having those weird expressions on their faces---its a code for gays and women to see the movie, not straight men. Straight men just think the interviews are weird, but gays and women think these statements and this movie coming out is the most important event of the year.
Homosexuals and Broadway-obsessed women tend to have unnaturally large emotional attachments to musicals they love. A great musical can actually emotionally move them no matter how many times they see it. Some may spend a fortune seeing a beloved musical live every week, or even every night, and if a movie is made of it they will watch it endlessly on DVD if its any good. I knew one woman who saw the original Les Miserables musical in NYC anytime she could scrape together the dough, even if it meant cutting down her food budget; she would cry at the same times during every performance. Another I knew would endlessly play The Sound of Music on her VCR when she was feeling depressed.
So this kind of emotional over-the-top interview style works for these kinds of women and gays who loved the musical. As I've said, its a first rate show with excellent music and an easy plot of two frenemies fighting over a guy, which strikes a chord with many of the target audience.
As far as I can tell, the movie seems to be doing a very good job of pleasing its target audience: anyone who liked the musical at some point in the past 20 years (which, between Broadway and touring production and cast album sales, is a lot of people). Everyone in my family (we all saw the original Broadway cast in 2004) liked the movie. If you were dragged to Wicked (the play) and didn't like it, I can't imagine you'll enjoy the movie. But the movie's creative team deserve at least some credit for not screwing it up. After all, you could do a perfectly good job of making a movie musical and then screw it up by miscasting one of the leads (like making Russell Crowe Javert in Les Mis).
By far my least favorite aspect of the movie was Ariana Grande's hair. Change the famous line about her being "blonde," and you could've gotten away with her hair being a prettier, more natural shade. But ultimately, I think both she and Erivo gave very good performances, in the only two roles that really matter in this movie.
Also, I read the novel many years ago, and as I recall, it's explained that the upper-class Munchkins tended to be a more normal height, presumably due to marrying other relatively tall Munchkins.
Finally, as far as the comment about union stagehands goes, my sister worked in various jobs in the theater industry for quite a few years, and the most absurd thing I learned was how much Broadway box office employees were making. Even about a decade ago they were making almost $100k a year.
In (I'm now reminded) 2003, a couple who are friends of ours and live in Concord, MA invited us for early-evening drinks at their suite at the Waldorf Astoria here in NYC. Sounded like fun, and he's a big wine-lover so we thought we'd bring along a very nice bottle we'd gotten as a wedding present the year before--the kind of thing I'd never shell out for myself.
So we arrive at the Waldorf (to paraphrase Wallace Stevens https://lyricstranslate.com/en/wallace-stevens-arrival-waldorf-lyrics.html) and knock on their door to discover like fifteen people somewhat weirdly sitting in a circle and celebrating (as we were soon to discover) the opening of a Broadway show many of them were about to attend, based on a novel by one of the gay guys in the room. This I gather was Gregory Maguire, a friend of the host couple's from up in Concord; reasonably enough I guess, he was gleefully soaking in the attention and obviously psyched for the impending debut of Wicked.
This was not at all what we'd anticipated, and my wife and I undelightedly drank something other than the fancy wine we'd brought while being pretty titanically bored and (in my case at least) annoyed by the monolithic conversation, veering from Broadway-infused excitement to the predictably uniformly prog politics of everyone there: not my jam, nor my wife's.
We fled at the first reasonable moment feeling gypped in more ways than one. But hey: belated congratulations to Mr. Maguire on hatching a dynamite franchise.
This line is comedy gold: “The Stonewall Riot that conventionally marks the beginning of the Gay Lib era was just hours after Judy Garland’s funeral, when emotions were running high”.
Seriously, imagine a culture centered around facilities where you take drugs and pitch and catch with strangers all night. They literally fucked themselves to death and demanded decades of medical research be devoted to their preventable chronic wasting disease.
Like most addicts, homosexuals (who are addicted to degenerate sex as a cope for their early life sexual trauma) live in denial about how much their addiction causes their own problems.
To this day gays dispute this, claiming it was "just a coincidence" that they happened to riot the same night their beloved gay icon had her demise. They claim gay rights talk "had been brewing for years", etc.
Homos never can own up to their embarrassments, and will lie to the end.
Steve you were in rare form today, calling cheugy Hamilton fans “rich obama voters” was so catty and cutting (also “face made for cheap seats”!) You made me smile, I hope you have a joyous thanksgiving
I wouldn't call "rich Obama voters" catty, but rather apt and succinct. How many Hamilton fans don't hit both those marks? I'd bet low-single digits percentage.
Anyway, I came here to likewise compliment the "face made for cheap seats" shot.
I've been trying to dial back my directness--which is often just mean--for awhile now, and who better to practice on than Erivo? Her [redacted] visage is everywhere these days, and always causes an involuntary groan of disgust from me. When anyone nearby asks what's wrong, I'd try soften my natural inclination to harsh insults with "she's not terribly easy on the eyes." However, I may now resort to Steve's euphemism. Thanks Steve!
> the essence of witchiness is a face that looks attractive when young but isn’t likely to age well: Think of Sarah Jessica Parker in 1991’s L.A. Story or Madonna in 1985’s Desperately Seeking Susan.
SJP was 33-38 during the original run of Sex and the City but even then I thought HBO was putting us on when they cast her as the leader of the clowder. As for Madonna it is no lie that Roseanne has aged more gracefully than she has
So, in the land of Oz, are there differences in violent crime rate between the white and green citizens? What is difference in grades and graduation rates at the witch academicy between whites and greens? How about between the normally sized and the faux-midgets (since they are the stand-in Asians)?
And, after looking at the facial features of the two witches who are supposedly sisters, I would be questioning the parentage narrative that they have been given. I would suppose that the green father had a quickie with the mother and then disappeared back to the Ozland equivalent of Wakanda. So, the rich Obama voters will likely love this one, too.
yeah, you'd think even the intended audience for the message would get that it isn't the skin color that inspires racism; it's just an obvious marker that intensifies it.
So I guess this movie is all about how it is unfair that green skin is less attractive than white?
The story is she's green because her father had a strange potion made when he slept with her mother. No one else in Oz is green, so she's a race of one.
I'm not sure if the people who made the musical realized they were equating "racism towards blacks" with "birth defects" but oh well.
I commend you Steve on distinguishing dwarves from midgets. Ever since we lost our precious midget reserves to genetically engineered human growth hormone back in the 80s, people have come to use the terms interchangeably.
Dinklage is a very talented actor and also a hypocrite. He advocated against using dwarfs in the Snow White remake while he continues to book an endless stream of high paying roles.
On one hand, I agree with you: Dinklage appears to be holding down the careers of other little folk to horde roles for himself.
On the other hand, I disagree with you: Dinklage has worked pretty hard to take roles and carve a career that both acknowledges his dwarfism but yet also demands his characters have respect and/or power: Game of Thrones, Avengers: End Game, X-Men: Days of Future Past, etc. Even in the light-heated Elf, where Will Farrell mistakes him from one of Santa's elves, Dinklage is all-business at first and then rageful at the slight, garnering his character respect as he assaults Farrell.
I think if Dinklage is a true believer in removing stigma from little people, then DInklage would think that he *has* to speak out against roles he finds exploitative, or else he'd think of himself as cowardly.
My seventeen year old daughter saw it last night. She said it was way too long.
I'm a straight male who likes musicals. But I like straight musicals. Guys and Dolls, ON the Town, Oklahoma, Chicago, etc. Everything after Chicago has basically been a gay-female-Jewish we-hate-white-straight-Christian-males onslaught that makes for crap musicals. You don't really enjoy it when every show you see makes you the bad guy. Plus most of them suck these days (e.g. gay Jewish Sondheim won every award on Broadway and yet his crap writing and songs make one's ears bleed and make one groan with boredom).
Wicked, however, despite ostensibly doing the same hate-whitey stuff, was fantastic. I think the songs (Defying Gravity and Popular are two timeless classics) and the original cast (I saw it with the original case of Chenoweth and Menzel) and the basic plot even men can enjoy (ugly duckling v. pretty popular girl for the boy) make it watchable and compelling. Yes, the goat-man subplot sucks (its a clear metaphor for stereotype threat, which makes it sillier with each passing year) but its quickly forgotten even in the original stage production. I saw it multiple times on purpose.
Now, for the life of me, while I knew they would make a movie out of it and make the Wicked Wicth black in the movie (the metaphor of skin color is too on the nose), I cannot believe they didn't find a pretty black girl for the role. Someone in the mold of 90's singer Brandy Norwood---a pretty black girl with great pipes who can act serviceably and smile nice for the cameras---would have been ideal for this role.
Its not that hard to find a pretty black chick who can sing well and can do a decent job acting for a musical. Heck, even the black Little Mermaid chick from the live action disaster last year would have been good. But not only did they go black, they went ugly freakish are-you-a-tranny black chick, who also dresses in a way to uglify herself. This guarantees straight men won't be seeing this except to please the wife. Very poor choice in casting for a musical that wants to have legs.
Where is our Gilbert & Sullivan?
> I'm a straight male who likes musicals
Yeah, like a three-dollar bill
hahahhaha!
I don't dig most of the Broadway stuff and have never seen a musical performed live. My favorites are thus:
1)West Side Story (I have a few used copies of the original Broadway cast album but don't like the movie as much)
2) Singin' in the Rain
3) The Blues Brothers
Please rate my gay
It's funny that I have never considered The Blues Brothers to be a musical but of course it is. It's one of my favorite movies and I enjoy the songs but they only work because it's the old legendary black soul singers performing them; I don't think they would work with a no-name cast. Meanwhile one doesn't specifically need Carol Lawrence* to perform "I Feel Pretty" or "One Hand, One Heart" to enjoy WSS.
*Still alive at 92 while Natalie Wood died at 43, although it turns out Wood did not perform her own singing in the movie version of WSS. Also, there is an old joke where the punchline is "I guess Wood doesn't float"
in fairness some of the songs are covered by the Blues Brothers themselves which is a bunch of amazing studio/tour musicians plus the amateur vocals of two comedians.
There was a movie that was a bunch of non-Beatles singing Beatles songs. All were inferior to the Beatle's own studio performance except one. I think it was "Mr. Kite"? I liked it better so I looked up to see who the actor was and it was, in fact, Bono.
Yes, the Blues Brothers backing band was one of the greatest collections of session artists ever assembled; the whole conceit of the band wouldn't have worked without them.
In Across the Universe (2007) Bono performed Across the Universe.
Steve, are you going to let this friend of the playground attack me and then delete any response I have to him? Pretty unfair. He took a shot, I should be allowed to take one in return, or delete his nonsense and ban him for starting stuff.
Junior high school persiflage.
I have now compared your masculinity to that of JFK's. Satisfied?
Lots of straight guys, such as JFK, enjoy musicals. Right after Jack's assassination, Jackie named his era after a Broadway musical he particularly enjoyed: Camelot.
I read the books (there are three, as I recall), but I won't bother watching the movie. The decision on the lead's demographics is not true to the book, similar to The Dark Tower, which failed miserably. When will they cast a white guy in the lead of a movie version of Uncle Tom's Cabin?
I’ve never seen the show, but Wicked clearly has a number of excellent songs with melodic complexity that complements the dramatic themes. It stands in contrast to some other box office hits like Lion King with its AI-generated music or Hamilton with its predictable politically-correct chanting. I challenge anyone to hum their favorite melody from these hits.
In fairness, Hamilton is rap so technically no melody, right?
"Disney’s recent live-action Snow White and Wicked consider it politically inappropriate to depict little people. " I guess "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox story" got it wrong with the song "Let Me Hold You Little Man":
You shout for me to put you down
But I'm marching today for your cause
I'm banging the drum
Your big day will come
When they remake The Wizard of Oz
"Think of Sarah Jessica Parker in 1991’s L.A. Story."
She was very attractive in that film, as was the city of LA. Neither has aged well. At least in Parker's case it's the normal course of life, while in LA's it's self-destruction.
Neither actress looks attractive. While black don't crack, the black actress clearly has the heavier features and I'm guessing (because I have no intention of seeing this) the voice of a middle aged woman.
If they were insisting on the diversity card, it would make more sense to cast a mulatto or quadroon black young lady as the good witch and put the white actress in the green airbrush makeup with some red lipstick. The solid green over-emphasizes the lips and nose, and of course the red lipstick would have looked clownish.
It actually looks like they deliberately mucked up the makeup job on Ariana to avoid the uncomfortable contrast.
Of course, it's really just an insoluble problem because the Wizard of Oz is fundamentally white American culture, written around the Yankee and Midwestern American characters Frank Baum grew up around. But we have made the policy choice that there is no such thing as white American culture.
Totally agree that they picked two unattractive women for these roles. The black lady would be more suited for some character in the Marvel universe as part of an alien race, and Ariana Grande looks anorexic as opposed to girlish. Not sure what machinations led to their casting.
Disagree. Ariana Grande is attractive. However, she is a natural tan, darker-featured Mediterranean brunette and they made her an unnatural, off-putting, anorexic white pale-skinned blond in this film---like if Tim Burton had directed and had been unable to recast her and put her on diet pills. Or if she was an Hispanic girl appearing on a Univision telenovela and been forced onto starvation rations. Likely because filmmakers hoped that, by making her pretty looks off-putting, they could get audiences to buy that a guy like Fiero would ditch Grande for the black monster in green skin. Shah, right.
Of course, they could have just cast Grande in the witch role and cast a pretty blond girl in the Glinda role. A man switching to the cute Grande from an annoying career-minded compromising cute blond would have made sense, even if Grande wasn't as pretty as the blond, because she's still attractive.
But Hollywood went full retard on the ugly witch role, and apparently needed Grande, so they tried to make her off-puttingly pretty to make up for it. It failed.
Right. The blonde looks anorexic and vaguely Hispanic. Ariana Grande isn't bad, but the role of the Funny Blonde is the big leagues: Marilyn Monroe, Carole Lombard, Cameron Diaz, Reese Witherspoon, Sofia Vergara, etc.
Its a pity they couldn't find a pretty young hungry blond starlet to have this be her big break.
But the problem with that was: (1) This was made during the woke tyranny, and the blond role isn't some 2-D hateable thing, so having a white pretty blond use this for her stardom was infinitely problematic to the movie makers; (2) knowing the Wicked Witch would be black, they apparently wanted some type of name singer in a role to make sure people lined up for it, and Grande fit the bill.
The smarter thing they should have done was reverse this: find a pretty black radio pop tart and make her the Wicked Witch (thus guaranteeing a "real" singer in the cast for credibility and getting some guaranteed buzz/interest from her fans) and then get an unknown talented blond for the Glinda role.
'Tis a pity. Emma Stone in her youth would've nailed it. So would've Witherspoon, although she's less pretty than most Hollywood blonds but a better actress. Dove Cameron might have worked if she could sing. Heck, maybe Sydney Sweeney might have nailed it today, although I don't know her range and the role is more of a cutesy-blond than bombshell role, so she'd have to tape down her chest.
Right, Wizard of Oz is extremely American.
Great article. I am worried the entire thing will function as an advert for Ozempic for the (predominantly) young and female audience. Some are saying the two leads are struggling with “competitive anorexia.” Not an expert (and have yet to see the film) but if you watch them in interviews together something doesn’t feel right.
I think the way they're doing interviews is an act for marketing.
Putting them together, making them react emotionally to vague emotional statements, putting them in weird outfits during them, having those weird expressions on their faces---its a code for gays and women to see the movie, not straight men. Straight men just think the interviews are weird, but gays and women think these statements and this movie coming out is the most important event of the year.
Homosexuals and Broadway-obsessed women tend to have unnaturally large emotional attachments to musicals they love. A great musical can actually emotionally move them no matter how many times they see it. Some may spend a fortune seeing a beloved musical live every week, or even every night, and if a movie is made of it they will watch it endlessly on DVD if its any good. I knew one woman who saw the original Les Miserables musical in NYC anytime she could scrape together the dough, even if it meant cutting down her food budget; she would cry at the same times during every performance. Another I knew would endlessly play The Sound of Music on her VCR when she was feeling depressed.
So this kind of emotional over-the-top interview style works for these kinds of women and gays who loved the musical. As I've said, its a first rate show with excellent music and an easy plot of two frenemies fighting over a guy, which strikes a chord with many of the target audience.
As far as I can tell, the movie seems to be doing a very good job of pleasing its target audience: anyone who liked the musical at some point in the past 20 years (which, between Broadway and touring production and cast album sales, is a lot of people). Everyone in my family (we all saw the original Broadway cast in 2004) liked the movie. If you were dragged to Wicked (the play) and didn't like it, I can't imagine you'll enjoy the movie. But the movie's creative team deserve at least some credit for not screwing it up. After all, you could do a perfectly good job of making a movie musical and then screw it up by miscasting one of the leads (like making Russell Crowe Javert in Les Mis).
By far my least favorite aspect of the movie was Ariana Grande's hair. Change the famous line about her being "blonde," and you could've gotten away with her hair being a prettier, more natural shade. But ultimately, I think both she and Erivo gave very good performances, in the only two roles that really matter in this movie.
Also, I read the novel many years ago, and as I recall, it's explained that the upper-class Munchkins tended to be a more normal height, presumably due to marrying other relatively tall Munchkins.
Finally, as far as the comment about union stagehands goes, my sister worked in various jobs in the theater industry for quite a few years, and the most absurd thing I learned was how much Broadway box office employees were making. Even about a decade ago they were making almost $100k a year.
In (I'm now reminded) 2003, a couple who are friends of ours and live in Concord, MA invited us for early-evening drinks at their suite at the Waldorf Astoria here in NYC. Sounded like fun, and he's a big wine-lover so we thought we'd bring along a very nice bottle we'd gotten as a wedding present the year before--the kind of thing I'd never shell out for myself.
So we arrive at the Waldorf (to paraphrase Wallace Stevens https://lyricstranslate.com/en/wallace-stevens-arrival-waldorf-lyrics.html) and knock on their door to discover like fifteen people somewhat weirdly sitting in a circle and celebrating (as we were soon to discover) the opening of a Broadway show many of them were about to attend, based on a novel by one of the gay guys in the room. This I gather was Gregory Maguire, a friend of the host couple's from up in Concord; reasonably enough I guess, he was gleefully soaking in the attention and obviously psyched for the impending debut of Wicked.
This was not at all what we'd anticipated, and my wife and I undelightedly drank something other than the fancy wine we'd brought while being pretty titanically bored and (in my case at least) annoyed by the monolithic conversation, veering from Broadway-infused excitement to the predictably uniformly prog politics of everyone there: not my jam, nor my wife's.
We fled at the first reasonable moment feeling gypped in more ways than one. But hey: belated congratulations to Mr. Maguire on hatching a dynamite franchise.
This line is comedy gold: “The Stonewall Riot that conventionally marks the beginning of the Gay Lib era was just hours after Judy Garland’s funeral, when emotions were running high”.
WHO CAN FORGET THAT DAY...!
Seriously, imagine a culture centered around facilities where you take drugs and pitch and catch with strangers all night. They literally fucked themselves to death and demanded decades of medical research be devoted to their preventable chronic wasting disease.
Like most addicts, homosexuals (who are addicted to degenerate sex as a cope for their early life sexual trauma) live in denial about how much their addiction causes their own problems.
Admitting it truly is the first step.
To this day gays dispute this, claiming it was "just a coincidence" that they happened to riot the same night their beloved gay icon had her demise. They claim gay rights talk "had been brewing for years", etc.
Homos never can own up to their embarrassments, and will lie to the end.
Steve you were in rare form today, calling cheugy Hamilton fans “rich obama voters” was so catty and cutting (also “face made for cheap seats”!) You made me smile, I hope you have a joyous thanksgiving
I wouldn't call "rich Obama voters" catty, but rather apt and succinct. How many Hamilton fans don't hit both those marks? I'd bet low-single digits percentage.
Anyway, I came here to likewise compliment the "face made for cheap seats" shot.
I've been trying to dial back my directness--which is often just mean--for awhile now, and who better to practice on than Erivo? Her [redacted] visage is everywhere these days, and always causes an involuntary groan of disgust from me. When anyone nearby asks what's wrong, I'd try soften my natural inclination to harsh insults with "she's not terribly easy on the eyes." However, I may now resort to Steve's euphemism. Thanks Steve!
> the essence of witchiness is a face that looks attractive when young but isn’t likely to age well: Think of Sarah Jessica Parker in 1991’s L.A. Story or Madonna in 1985’s Desperately Seeking Susan.
SJP was 33-38 during the original run of Sex and the City but even then I thought HBO was putting us on when they cast her as the leader of the clowder. As for Madonna it is no lie that Roseanne has aged more gracefully than she has
So, in the land of Oz, are there differences in violent crime rate between the white and green citizens? What is difference in grades and graduation rates at the witch academicy between whites and greens? How about between the normally sized and the faux-midgets (since they are the stand-in Asians)?
And, after looking at the facial features of the two witches who are supposedly sisters, I would be questioning the parentage narrative that they have been given. I would suppose that the green father had a quickie with the mother and then disappeared back to the Ozland equivalent of Wakanda. So, the rich Obama voters will likely love this one, too.
yeah, you'd think even the intended audience for the message would get that it isn't the skin color that inspires racism; it's just an obvious marker that intensifies it.
So I guess this movie is all about how it is unfair that green skin is less attractive than white?
The story is she's green because her father had a strange potion made when he slept with her mother. No one else in Oz is green, so she's a race of one.
I'm not sure if the people who made the musical realized they were equating "racism towards blacks" with "birth defects" but oh well.
Way too fucking long. Sometimes the "normie take" is the correct one. I've never been so many phones out during a movie before.
I commend you Steve on distinguishing dwarves from midgets. Ever since we lost our precious midget reserves to genetically engineered human growth hormone back in the 80s, people have come to use the terms interchangeably.
Drives me battier than "Begs the Question".
Dinklage is a very talented actor and also a hypocrite. He advocated against using dwarfs in the Snow White remake while he continues to book an endless stream of high paying roles.
On one hand, I agree with you: Dinklage appears to be holding down the careers of other little folk to horde roles for himself.
On the other hand, I disagree with you: Dinklage has worked pretty hard to take roles and carve a career that both acknowledges his dwarfism but yet also demands his characters have respect and/or power: Game of Thrones, Avengers: End Game, X-Men: Days of Future Past, etc. Even in the light-heated Elf, where Will Farrell mistakes him from one of Santa's elves, Dinklage is all-business at first and then rageful at the slight, garnering his character respect as he assaults Farrell.
I think if Dinklage is a true believer in removing stigma from little people, then DInklage would think that he *has* to speak out against roles he finds exploitative, or else he'd think of himself as cowardly.
So I'm torn.