(I misread a line once–)
happy 2 year anniversary to this shit. a continuation:
heads
Extraordinary Alla Nazimova in “Salome” (1923) her famous and supposedly all-gay production.
Watch Log Catch-Up: write-ups of recent watches They Shall Not Grow Old and Cabaret, which I’m realizing now have a certain thematic resonance. Double feature! Double feature!
Btw I also watched the first episode of Fosse/Verdon last week, because why not just veer entirely off my usual course and watch three dang shows at once, two currently airing. When was the last time I did any of this, I don’t even know.
Anyway, this is a hyper-specific sort of show (historical musical theatre personalities miniseries) that is almost certainly going to draw an equally hyper-specific audience, but I’m in that niche so here I am! In fact I rather grandiosely think I may be ideally positioned to enjoy it, having exactly the right amount of lay & professional theatre background to enjoy Sondheim jokes where no one ever says the name of the play, but not so much that I’m going to get distracted nitpicking Broadway history details, because I’m not that deep in.
(Incidentally, and right on the nose for the premiere episode, I had actually just watched Fosse’s Oscar win for the first time, the ‘72 Liza Minnelli Cabaret. But when I was living in New York I had seen the second Mendes/Marshall Broadway revival with Alan Cumming as the Emcee, somewhere in the winter of 2014-15 during Emma Stone’s run as Sally Bowles, taking over for, ironically, Michelle Williams. Watching Michelle Williams on a recreation of the movie set just a few weeks later picking out those exact 70s-as-30s costumes for their very game Liza Minnelli impersonator was surreal.)
But yes, Fosse/Verdon. This feels like a TV show made by theatre people who are really excited to be making TV for the first time, which make sense because it is! It has fun, slightly out-of-the-box stylistic ideas of the manner of those fresh to a field—for instance I LOVE that the show just throws you in and then bounces around in time to create these mosaic tone poems at the beginning and end. But I also felt more of the scaffolding than I would have with more experienced TV-makers. “Wait, did we just skip over a commercial break?” I asked of FX’s video player on more than one occasion, and we had not, it was just a seam.
There’s the politics of the very existence of the thing, as another show about a bad man who makes good art. But in the genus of dick geniuses, Rockwell’s Fosse is one of the less glamorized ones. He isn’t a cool asshole, he’s a sad and frustrating one because he’s so clearly and unhappily just fucking up everyone’s lives, his own and the people around him. But what really saves it from the ash heap of antihero shows I think, is that this show is called Fosse/VERDON. It’s half about her, and while we could probably use less projects about difficult men, I think we could use more highlighting the under-sung women of history, geniuses in their own right next to the men they supported. Gwen’s artistic (& managerial) brilliance is given equal weight to Bobby’s—it’s a partnership. And that’s what I signed up for: to watch Michelle Williams and Sam Rockwell be messy problematic dance legends.
Which brings me to the thing I actually said the most while watching this episode, increasingly as if I had a drink in my hand: “Let the boy dance!” Surely they will eventually?? You hire Sam Rockwell to be a scumbag who can MOVE. (You hire Michelle Williams to walk into a room filled with richly perfect period details and still be the only thing you want to look at, and that she already IS.)
Beatrice and Benedict are same-sex leaning disaster bisexuals who are both extremely surprised when they end up falling for someone of the opposite sex.
exeunt-pursued-by-a-bear said:
hot take: beatrice saying “he hath EVERY month a new sworn brother” about benedick is her teasing him for just having an endless string of boyfriends
Yes. Good. Excellent. Just as Shakespeare intended.
YES. YES. ALL TRUE.
I would also like to add that ‘And a good soldier to a lady. But what is he to a Lord?’ is Beatrice asking for confirmation that Benedick is a bottom
David Tennant and Catherine Tate best encapsulate the bi disaster vibes each of them give
Look at these dorks