Last night, while I was out seeing something else (which I’ll be writing about later today), “Julie Taymor” was trying to salvage her reputation. This clip shows the predicament she’s in — for now.
A couple of updates, both of them about seeming Edens that are becoming despoiled before us:
First, on my posts about Mike Daisey’s show “The Agony & The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” which I posted about here and here, I submit this interview with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak about the show. Wozniak was profoundly moved — and troubled — by what he saw, and is struggling with what to do about it. Which made me think of Wallace Shawn’s lifelong struggle with guilt about, well, seemingly everything. Except Wozniak seems determined to do something about it, but isn’t yet clear what that something will be.
Secondly, I direct you to another take on what I’m calling “Dark Archie,” a recent trend toward updating Archie and his Riverdale pals to the dark side, as was done with every other character in comics in the 1980’s. Here was my initial take on that, and here was the update. Now someone provides us with this trailer of what a movie about the teenage Dark Archie might look like. With regard to Jughead, Moose, and Dilton, it all now makes so much sense.
Can’t swing the money to see that Broadway show featuring everybody’s favorite web-slinger? You’re in luck: Here’s information about the five-buck Spider-Man alternative, which in addition to being super cheaper, includes beer.
This weekend I was supposed to take my wife and two kids to a mountaintop family resort in Banning, CA for RV camping, fishing, barbecuing, hiking, and playing in the snow — man-made snow that they were having trucked in. But my wife broke her toe, so hiking was out; then they informed us that the fishing was off because they had to drain the lake to clear reeds; then we were informed that the man-made snow was canceled because rain looked likely; and just when my wife and I were trying to envision four days and three nights in an RV with squabbling siblings and no wifi, I was contacted by two board members of the resort and the executive director that maybe we shouldn’t come because it looked like there was going to be a massive snowfall — of snow generated the old-fashioned, natural way — and we would be either snowed in, or stuck on the mountain trying to get in. So instead we stayed home and watched “Fringe” and other things Friday night.
On Saturday, newly unscheduled, I decided to tackle some chores:
A week and a half ago, I proposed that the Spider-Man musical might have been better if they’d had an actual Spider-Man writer involved. Sounds like the producers have now gotten one of those involved — and, importantly, it’s one who is also a playwright.
The unanswered question is: What could be changed in the script that could make the show better? In my experience, every production gets its own culture — its own informing ethos — that is distinct from what’s in the script; Apple and IBM may both make computers, but they do them rather differently, and what we see is a reflection not just of the different plans on paper, but of the different company cultures. A theatrical production is mounted by a production company, and that company culture is difficult to change. Once you get too far into the rehearsal process, it’s difficult to change directions, and “Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark” is a show that, more or less, for better or worse, seems to have opened, and long ago. (It has also been widely reviewed, and savagely panned.) Add to that that this is supposedly the most technically demanding show in Broadway history; what significant changes can be made when you’ve already got that much physical hardware in place? And finally: With a show that is already legendary for the injuries incurred in some very dangerous stunts, how much will producers want to risk in changing how the rigging and pyrotechnics and whatnot work in relation to the script?
It’s a lot to overcome. I hope they can work it out.
The Los Angeles times provides a roundup of the critical response to the Spider-man musical. Let’s just say that the Sinister Six never presented Spidey with this much of a problem. I’d still like to see it. Maybe just so I could say that I saw it. Because I’m starting to doubt that it’s going anywhere else.
It looks like the major critics have abandoned waiting for “opening night” — whenever that will be — of the musical “Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark,” and are now running reviews. Their calculation, no doubt, is this: The show is doing major box-office business, it’s big talk in theatre circles, and it’s essentially being reviewed daily on the internet by people who’ve seen it. So yet again, old media and its old way of doing business is responding too slowly to new dynamics.
So the “professional” reviews are in, and they are punishing. The LA Times’ Charles McNulty calls it “a teetering colossus,” a “frenetic Broadway jumble,”and “an artistic form of megalomania.” In his review for the New York Times, Ben Brantley shares his paper’s decision making process in going ahead with a review, before swooping in for the first strike:
But since this show was looking as if it might settle into being an unending work in progress — with Ms. Taymor playing Michelangelo to her notion of a Sistine Chapel on Broadway — my editors and I decided I might as well check out “Spider-Man” around Monday, the night it was supposed to have opened before its latest postponement. You are of course entitled to disagree with our decision. But from what I saw on Saturday night, “Spider-Man” is so grievously broken in every respect that it is beyond repair.
Of the many effects in the show, he adds: “But they never connect into a comprehensible story with any momentum. Often you feel as if you were watching the installation of Christmas windows at a fancy department store.”
To me, two things are worth noting from these reviews:
As I was working on the previous post (about Mr. Rotten v. Mr. Lydon, and two John Constantines), I was sent the video below. I’ve watched it, and the artwork is unmistakably that of Neal Adams. Neal Adams was one of the hero-artists of my youth, responsible for the most amazing comic-book art of the period, and the most visually impressive story arc (The Kree-Skrull War in “Avengers”). Now he’s sketching fast-food heroes for Taco Bell, for what I’m sure is many multiples of remuneration. I am not opposed to this — many of my friends, especially in dance, go off and do corporate so they can continue doing art, and I write corporate six days a week. (And on the seventh, I rest.) There is a fine tradition in supporting your art with commerce. I just wish this were cleverer.
In the current story arc of the Vertigo comic book Hellblazer, John Constantine, who was originally modeled by Alan Moore after the young Sting, travels back to the 1970’s to rescue his fiancee and winds up meeting his earlier self. Each of them is repulsed by what he sees. Constantine the younger is a punk, with a mohawk and piercings and attitude to match; the current Constantine is a fattened fifty-something with not much to show for himself. The results of this bad team-up are hilarious, especially when the twentyish fiancee winds up sleeping with the younger Constantine, but returning to present-day life with the version who is more than twice her age. Each Constantine feels like a cuckold — to himself.
I thought of this today when I read this piece about Johnny Rotten, who has a penchant for doing home repair, and who is peddling a new book of his sketches — for $750. I don’t begrudge Mr. Rotten, born John Lydon, his success. I’m glad he’s still with us, and I look forward to that eventual new PiL album and tour. But I would enjoy seeing an encounter between Johnny Rotten circa 1977 and John Lydon in 2011 purchasing plumbing supplies in the local hardware store.
Even with this latest disaster, I’m rooting for that Spider-Man musical.