All You Have to Do is Dream

Dreamgirls is opening on December 25! A very big Christmas present for gay boys of all ages! I didn’t see the original ‘cause I wasn’t in New York yet and I didn’t see the first revival ‘cause I was stupid. I had just blown into town and thought “well, it’s not the original, how good could it be?” (see Catch the Original Version of Everything, November 3, 2006). Well, now it’s been 25 years and the film is in the can, as they say, and the stage show has become the stuff of legend. What can I tell you? I saw the legendary Carrie (“There’s never been a musical like her”), but I missed out on this legend. Then again, if I had seen the revival in 1987, I would have seen Lillias White as Effie, and judging by her off-key and over-the-top performance in the recording of the 2001 Actors Fund benefit of the show, when she is telling you she’s not going you’d probably be praying she would!

But now, Jennifer Hudson is playing Effie in the movie and Eddie Murphy told Denzel Washington that Ms. Hudson “is stealing the movie” (during an interview for Déjà Vu as posted by Sheila Roberts on www.moviesonline.com). And when I saw Babel there was a trailer for Dreamgirls and when I heard the first strains of “No, no, no, no way, no, no, no, no way I’m living without you…” I got chills so bad I was afraid I had a fever.

“Hey Sam,” I can hear you saying now, “isn’t this all a whole lot of hype? Aren’t you just another shill for this movie I’ve been hearing way too much about already?” Um, no, I’m not a shill. And if you feel you’ve heard way too much about this film already, you’re just not a gay boy at all! I’m excited (as are countless others) because this film took so long to make and for a while looked like it would never be made. “Well, Evita took a long time to make, too, and that was a real dud, wasn’t it?” I can hear you saying. Yes, yes, that’s true. But Evita starred Madonna, who may have looked just like Eva Peron, but she couldn’t sing the score the way it was written. In Dreamgirls, Beyoncé Knowles stars as Deena Jones, and from the accidentally leaked versions of One Night Only and the title track, I know for a fact she can sing the score the way it was written. I’ve also read many, many articles that tell me Beyoncé worked many, many 15-hour days in order to get all of Fatima Robinson’s choreography right. Now, if girlfriend is working that hard on this film and putting her diva ego aside to do it, you know she gonna light a fire!

“Hey Sam,” I’m sure you’re saying now, “you make it sound so good I can’t wait until December 25 to see it! What am I gonna do?” Well, aren’t you glad you came to this blog? If you live in New York (and who doesn’t?), Los Angeles or San Francisco, you can line up to see this Oscar front-runner on December 15! Wait a minute; you actually don’t have to line up at all. There’s reserved seating! DreamWorks (is that too perfect, or what? and Paramount) are producing a roadshow which will feature the film by itself without all those nasty previews and television commercials and annoying “Did you turn off your cell phone” announcements. Audience members will also be given a 51-page color program to remember the experience by. Of course, as anyone who has no patience (well, I have a friend named Patience, but she’s not as excited about Dreamgirls as I am) can attest, if you want something before everyone else gets it, you’re gonna have to pay for it. So the roadshow is coming to town with a hefty $25 ticket price. But hey – need I remind you of the 51-page color program? And no, I don’t think it’s going to turn up on eBay in a few months for $5.00 + postage, Mr. Smart Mouth!

So what does any of this have to do with Matt? Matt’s not in Dreamgirls, is he? He’s not, no. And for a very good reason. Director Bill Condon knew if he put Matt in there it would be much too fabulous and yours truly would have a coronary and then there’d be no blog to tell everyone how fabulous this film is! Isn’t Bill a wise, wise man? But Matt has always been a dream of mine ever since he came out on the stair landing with his shirt off in The Rainmaker. This picture isn’t from that infamous moment, but I spent a long time Googling to find a still from that scene and I’m afraid no matter how many different variations of “Matt Damon, gorgeous, naked, chest, The Rainmaker” I enter in the search engine the proper picture just isn’t popping up. That’s too bad, really, because it truly was a sight to behold. Yes, that momentous event took place in a 1997 film and Matt had been making movies for 9 years already, but that was the moment that warmed the cockles of my tasteful little heart to such a degree that I spent countless nights dreaming about him and countless dollars seeing his films in theaters, on video and on DVD. I only hope one day you'll be able to look back on the moment you first decided to spend countless hours dreaming about and countless dollars on merchandise for Dreamgirls.

For Your Consideration

Warner Brothers has put up a For Your Consideration site for the blockbuster The Departed. They’re pushing it for Best Picture and Best Director, and in the Best Supporting Actor category, they’re throwing their weight behind Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg and...Matt Damon. Matt?!! For Supporting Actor?! Are they kidding? This picture is practically all about Damon’s character!

Colin Sullivan is the focus right off the bat when mob man Frank Costello buys the young boy’s support with a bag of groceries. From there, Matt looks really sexy in a police officer’s uniform and seems fraught with worry over his duplicity with his girlfriend and everyone he works with. At times, you believe he’s going to go straight and help the cops take Costello down and other times you’re positive he’s taking the whole gang of Staties out of the picture. He’s a nasty, nasty character, this Colin Sullivan. And if he wasn’t quite so beautiful I’d want nothing at all to do with him. But Matt’s gorgeousity helps cover his underhandedness. It's a part of his character!

And the way this guy can deliver a line! When he tells Vera Farmiga he would stab somebody with an ice pick if it would get him a date with her it made me so jealous of her I wanted to stab myself with an ice pick. And the way he delivers his last line (“Okay…”), as though he expected everything to turn out just the way it did, and that he was somehow relieved about it, well it gave me chills, I tell you, chills!

So it doesn’t matter and it’s all politics anyway, right? Well, yeah. That’s true enough. I mean, Matt probably has a shot at Best Actor for The Good Shepherd (coming December 22). And everyone knows your chances diminish if you’re nominated twice in the same category. And Warners is obviously waiting to see if Blood Diamond (opening December 8) gets Leonardo DiCaprio the acclaim they’re expecting before they pencil his name in for Best Actor on the FYC site for The Departed (the site now shows the Best Actor category with no name attached).

Movie studios spend mucho dinero at this time of the year trying to bring gold home, and although they don’t think Matt has the Midas touch in the leading man category, perhaps Universal will mount their own campaign to tell the world Matt’s the Best Actor when The Good Shepherd comes out (again, that’s December 22). Or maybe De Niro, who directed The Good Shepherd, will spend his own dinero to get Matt noticed?

Regardless, the important thing is that I know Matt was the best actor in The Departed, and that I know he’ll also be the best actor in The Good Shepherd, and quite possibly the best actor in all of Hollywood this year. What are you gonna do? Throw Steve Carell in Little Miss Sunshine at me? Puhleeze! Or maybe you’re one of those people who think Ryan Gosling pretending to be a crackhead was a revelation? Um, yeah, okay. If you’re a crackhead!

Perhaps I’m biased (to hell with “perhaps,” you know I'm biased), but Matt gave such a fantastic performance in The Departed, I’d be happy to give him a gold statue right now! But hey, if Matt would so much as call me, I’d immediately turn into a statue and he could paint me gold and put me on his mantel. Or anywhere else he might want to put me. Anywhere at all.

Catch the Original Version of Everything

Company is a musical by Stephen Sondheim (score) and George Furth (Book) that opened on Broadway in April, 1970. I was too young to see it, so I just had to grow up with the amazing songs from the original Broadway cast recording running through my head and no idea what the staging looked like or how the characters related to one another. My rendition of The Ladies Who Lunch in the 7th grade talent show sure had folks in the keystone state shaking their heads over me. Who knew Elaine Stritch could reach a 12-year old?

Company is a series of vignettes strung together in the hopes that light will be shed on the state of matrimonial bliss. But it was written by people who didn't have any experience with matrimonial bliss, so it came off a bit on the anti side. And since I grew up in a world that denies me the opportunity for matrimonial bliss, I'm thrilled to raise my voice with the original Broadway cast recording on such cynical anthems as The Little Things You Do Together, You Could Drive a Person Crazy, Another Hundred People and Getting Married Today. Performances by Dean Jones, Beth Howland and Pamela Myers were unforgettable.

The show was revived by the Roundabout Theatre Company in 1995 and the press made quite a fuss over Veanne Cox in the Beth Howland role (singing the tongue-twisting, show-stopping Getting Married Today), but other than that, the news was not so good. Boyd Gaines, who played the lead role of Robert, was plagued by vocal challenges and a lingering illness and Debra Monk was plagued with having to be constantly compared to Elaine Stritch - and constantly coming out on the losing side of the comparison. The director, Scott Ellis, it was suggested, was not as successful with this show as he was with his prior revival of She Loves Me. The Roundabout being a subscription house, and this being a highly-aniticipated revival of a Tony-winning Sondheim show, tickets were hard to come by. So I didn't get to see whether the critics were right or not.

Now, Company has been revived again, this time by John Doyle, the British director who poured new blood into Sweeney Todd last year. Mr. Doyle comes from Newbury, in the UK, where he has staged everything from Kander and Ebb's Cabaret to Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers. The thing of it is, he has staged them with actors playing their parts and their musical instruments. So, for instance, Patti LuPone as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd played the tuba while she sang God, That's Good. In my opinion, this can work as an interesting new concept, but as a standard practice, not so much.

So I wasn't able to see Company in its pure, untainted form. No, I had to suffer through the indignity of April, the charmingly naive flight attendant, blowing away on a tuba before her tryst with Robert, as well as Marta, April and Kathy blowing the doo doo doo doos in You Can Drive a Person Crazy on their Alto Saxes - so instead of reminding me of The Andrews Sisters, the whole thing smacked of halftime at a high school football game. These band geeks are wonderful singers, and accomplished musicians, but really, John, when I see a show on Broadway at $100 a ticket, I like to see actors acting and musicians...in the orchestra pit!

Raul Esparza plays Robert in this production, and although he certainly hits all the right notes, he sure does it loudly. And he's got this interesting little habit of whining some lines right through his nose, just the way Barbra Streisand and Rufus Wainwright do. But when he starts reaching for those higher notes - look out New Jersey, 'cause Raul's belting is gonna shake the tar off your turnpike! I'm thinking anyone who goes to this show and rents one of those devices that helps you hear better, would be well advised to turn the sound waaaaaay down whenever Raul steps forward, or risk never hearing your child's first words or your boyfriend saying "I love you" or even the door buzzer in your apartment.

This time around, Barbara Walsh has the extremely unenviable task of taking up where Elaine Stritch left off. And Barbara gamely tries to channel Elaine, skulking around the stage all night as if she's had a hundred too many, passing judgment on everything and everyone like Clarence Thomas trying desperately to prove himself in his first year on the Supreme Court. I don't know whether Ms. Walsh was actually attempting to impersonate Elaine Stritch or if she just can't think of another way to play Joanne, but the unfortunate result was that it was a wan copy of a bold original.

So yeah, for the most part, it was great fun to watch Company being performed live on stage in front of me. But what I really wish is that I could have seen the show as it was intended, with actors focusing on playing their scenes instead of playing clarinets and trumpets. The moral of this story is that you should try to see the originals whenever you can. Or else you might end up seeing John Lloyd Young as Jason Bourne in Bourne Free! Or Hugh Panaro in The Talented Mr. Ripley Plays the Tuba. This is why I'm glad Matt makes movies, so I can always see his original performances. Well, I did miss his scintillating turn as Humpty Dumpty in Bravo Cappuccio! at the New England Drama Festival, and it does seem unlikely they'll make a film out of that. Unless Nicole Kidman becomes available to play Chicken Little and Mark Wahlberg frees up his schedule to take on the part of the Big Bad Wolf. After his recent critical drubbing, though, I don't think we could expect Sean Penn to have anything to do with all the king's men. I'm just not sure we can get a project like this green-lighted anyway, what with big studios trying to cut corners wherever they can these days. So yeah, you can see how important it is to catch the original version of everything.