Month: October 2007

THE TRAILER FOR SWEENEY TODD!!

(SUGGESTION: Watch the trailer before reading my thoughts below. I don’t want to influence your experience of it.)

A few things catching my eye here:

I think it LOOKS great. I do. I said that already. I love Alan Rickman, Johnny Depp. I SO want to love this movie. You have no idea. Still …. I can’t help but notice ….

It’s a 2 1/2-minute clip and there is virtually NO singing. We hear Sweeney singing the bit I mentioned before, “I will have vennnnngeance; I will have salvaaaation!” but nothing else. I mean, did I miss something?

There was none of this:

Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd.
His skin was pale and his eye was odd.
He shaved the faces of gentlemen
who never thereafter were heard of again.

There was none of this:

Mrs. Mooney has a pie shop.
Does a business, but I notice something weird.
Lately, all her neighbors cats have disappeared.
Have to hand it to her!
What I calls,
enterprise!
Poppin’ pussies into pies!

There was none of this:

Do they think that walls can hide you?
Even now I’m at your window…
I am in the dark beside you,
buried sweetly in your yellow hair!

There was none of this:

Pretty women
Fascinating…
Sipping coffee,
Dancing… pretty women
Pretty women
Are a wonder.
Pretty women!

Or THIS:

No one’s gonna hurt you, no one’s gonna dare
Others can desert you,
Not to worry, whistle, I’ll be there!
Demons’ll charm you with a smile, for a while
But in time…
Nothing can harm you
Not while I’m around…

NOTHING. NUH-THING. I know I got swept away there but, damn, Sweeney just SOARS with great music, great lyrics. I mean, them’s just the tip of the ol’ iceberg, there.

When you make a movie of a musical — one that is generally considered the most operatic of Sondheim’s work, no less — how can you make a trailer with only ten seconds of singing?? The show is almost entirely sung!

This, I think, is an ill omen.

Omen.

Ill.

I sat here after watching it a few times and asked myself, “Why, Tracey? Why would they create a 2 1/2-minute trailer for ‘Sweeney’ and wildly de-emphasize the singing?” and I came up with the following three reasons.

1) The moviegoing public, in general, doesn’t like musicals. They’re a hard sell these days. So why not just market the movie as a dark and violent revenge tale featuring Johnny Depp? Everyone loves Johnny Depp. He can open a movie, no problem. Get the butts in the seats and let ’em find out about the music later. By then, the butts will have already plopped down their ten bucks. This seems like a short-sighted solution, but maybe that’s it.

2) The singing isn’t good. This will be bad news for lovers of musicals and Sweeney in particular. The rabid, crazed, can’t-see-straight fans like me. So just market the movie trusting that the crazed fans (like me) will show up anyway (I will!) on the hope, the blessed, shining hope, that the singing will be good. Maybe even, uhm, great. Let ’em find out the truth after they’ve plopped down their ten bucks.

I will pray every night between now and December 21st that this is not true. IT IS NOT TRUE; RIGHT, GOD??

3) The music part of this musical has been drastically cut back, because the caliber of the singing isn’t great. Seriously, it needs to be GREAT — in my opinion — for Sweeney. It is a DAMN. HARD. SHOW. TO SING. My voice has never worked as hard as it worked for Sweeney. I’m not sure my voice could even SING those notes again. I swear. It is a WORKOUT.

Anyway, I notice, watching this trailer, little bits of dialog added that I know aren’t in the original script. This makes me wonder if music has been traded for dialog. If this is true, it’s a HUGE bummer to me. I know I’m an obsessed, rabid fan and maybe people just write off the ramblings of obsessed, rabid fans. (Actually, it goes beyond that for me. Whatever level is beyond obsessed and frothing is what I am, I suppose. That’s just how it is and I can’t help it.) Still … I do know this: Everything you need to know to follow the plot of Sweeney is revealed in song — brilliant songs, dark songs, hilarious, moving songs. If you know the soundtrack, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Some of the most bloodpounding, beautiful music you’ll ever hear. To sacrifice it for more dialog is a crime to me. Flat-out wrong. I hope I’m wrong on this one. I hope I’m wrong on these last two, actually.

I desperately want to be wrong. Please prove me wrong, Sweeney.

(Oh, wait. I forgot: Uh, what is WITH the Elfmanning of the music?? I don’t know what that is for the first minute and a half of the trailer, but it ain’t from the original Sweeney. I’m sorry. I smell an Elfman and I want him to go away.)

Oh, man. Oh, man. OhmanohmanohmanohmanohMANNN! The movie version of “Sweeney Todd” is coming this Christmas and I am literally wiggly with anticipation. But fretful, too. Like smelling-salts fretful, Auny Pittypat fretful. Like I’m not sure it’s gonna be done RIGHT. And, yes, it is a VERY BIG DEAL to me.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before — well, not suure, but mostly sure — but I did a production of “Sweeney Todd” in Seattle years ago. It was a joint production of the Seattle Light Opera and The Seattle Repertory Theatre, so there was a general tingliness in the Seattle theatre community over this upcoming production. At the time, I was a young and feckless college graduate — with a Bachelor’s in Theatehhh, no less. I mean, I was an actress with a piece of paper that proved it, goldurnnit. I was also deeply in love or something with The Weirdo who would later be Fiance #2 and one of our main pastimes — ahem! — was listening to the soundtrack “Sweeney Todd.” Because, basically, lounging around crappy apartments and listening to angsty soundtracks is all part of the initiation rite into the brotherhood of actors worldwide. You dare not call yourself an actor unless you’ve done this, repeatedly, with others, spontaneously singing the parts uproariously together OR spontaneously ignoring everyone else in the room and doing your own thing to the music. This, my friend, means you are a theatre geek, you are ON YOUR WAY, you have earned your right to start treading the boards. Oh, and I had done that. All of that. Obsessively, with “Sweeney Todd.” And all of this added up to an overall fatheadedness that made me brash enough to think I could just mosey on down there and audition.

Uhm, I’m getting far afield here. I’ll save the rest of that story for later. I will! This post was supposed to be about these posters. I want y’all (I am Southern! See my acting??) to tell me which one you like best, mmkay, and I will shove my opinions down your throats.

Sweeney #1

While I like the atmosphere of this one — the huge sloping window, the portrait in the background, the austerity of the room — I don’t like Sweeney’s pose here or the blood on the floorboards. Ooooh, people are being killed here, oooooooh! Ya think? There’s a lyric in Sweeney Todd that goes like this: Sweeney was smooth, Sweeney was subtle, Sweeney would blink and rats would scuttle. Yes, Sweeney WAS subtle. Sweeney was a killer, but he was careful about it. “Set a sort of a scene, he did.” So I don’t care for the blatant look-at-my-crotch pose. It doesn’t work for me. Not subtle, too forward. To me it says, “I am Johnny Depp. Notice my crotch, my chair, my razor. Pay no attention to my Edward Scissorhands wig with the Bride of Frankenstein white streak.” And if Sweeney would blink and rats would scuttle, then I can only imagine that this spreadeagled pose could singlehandedly (singlecrotchedly?) cause the mass migration of the entire rat population of London.

Sweeney #2

This is the one MB and I recently saw in the theater. I prefer this misty Sweeney, walking away from us, razor dangling from his hand. It’s more subtle. More mysterious. Quietly menacing. I feel like if you don’t know Sweeney, you’d look at this image and say, “Who is this guy? What’s that in his hand? What’s he up to?” I like that. I love the mood. Sets a sort of a scene, it does. BUT for me, they ruin it with the giant BEWARE at the top of the thing. I feel the marketing here. I can hear the bunch of guys in suits sitting around a table and saying, “But lots of people don’t know Sweeney. We want them to KNOW they should be scared, that they will want to be SCARED. If they’re not strongly BEWARED, they won’t come and that would be bad and ACK! ACK!” Whereupon, all the besuited dudes start sweating and pulling at their ties and the decision is made.

BEWARE.

BEWARE, goobers!

But that’s just me. What do y’all think? (Okay. Please. Someone just hand me the Oscar, already.)