{"id":65,"date":"2015-09-18T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2015\/09\/18\/42movies-day-8-the-musical\/"},"modified":"2015-09-18T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-18T16:00:00","slug":"42movies-day-8-the-musical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2015\/09\/18\/42movies-day-8-the-musical\/","title":{"rendered":"#42Movies, Day 8: The Musical"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You knew this was coming, right?<\/p>\n<p><b>South Park: Bigger, Longer, &amp; Uncut (1999)<\/b><br \/>and<br \/><b>Frozen (2013)<\/b><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll talk after the trailers.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aes3Iz8QPgA?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/><small><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/aes3Iz8QPgA\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/aes3Iz8QPgA<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FLzfXQSPBOg?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/><small><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/FLzfXQSPBOg\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/FLzfXQSPBOg<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not going to explain or apologize for my love of musicals. If you can&#8217;t handle the singing and dancing, stop reading now.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of people aren&#8217;t into musicals. (Our friend <a href=\"http:\/\/kplusb.org\/#bryan\">Bryan<\/a>, for one, despite being a Disney superfan. Ironic.) Note that in the <i>South Park<\/i> movie trailer above, the only hint of the actual film being a musical is the Big Gay Al bit. Of course, if you&#8217;ve seen the TV series, you&#8217;ll know that musical numbers are a frequent occurrence; even <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Spirit_of_Christmas_(short_film)\">the original short<\/a> included a couple of songs.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe Paramount thought people who hadn&#8217;t seen the TV show would be less likely to want to see an animated musical than a for-mature-audiences cartoon. In any case, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone do a brilliant job of subverting both genres, which is not surprising considering their early film work <i>Cannibal: The Musical!<\/i> and their recent Broadway triumph <i>The Book of Mormon<\/i>. Not to mention eighteen seasons (and counting) of <i>South Park<\/i> episodes.<\/p>\n<p>(Speaking of which, the documentary <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt2076781\/combined\"><i>6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park<\/i><\/a> is a fascinating look at TV production. You can also check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1942971\/combined\"><i>Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show<\/i><\/a> for a broader overview of the industry.)<\/p>\n<p>The preview for <i>Frozen<\/i> touts its music but does NOT showcase &#8220;Let It Go,&#8221; perhaps because Disney never expected that particular song to be such a runaway hit. Sure, it&#8217;s designed to be a show-stopper, but it is by no means the best number in the book: it&#8217;s basically a rehash of &#8220;Defying Gravity,&#8221; Idina Menzel&#8217;s act one closer from <i>Wicked<\/i>, in terms of emotional beats; and the lyrics are, let&#8217;s be honest, not the best. (She literally says &#8220;the past is in the past&#8221; at one point, you guys. LITERALLY.)<\/p>\n<p>That song sells&mdash;boy, does it <i>sell<\/i>&mdash;but it&#8217;s in the recording, not on the page. (I still say &#8220;Love is an Open Door&#8221; should have gotten the Oscar nomination instead.) And my favorite lyric of the whole show, &#8220;like a girl who&#8217;s bad at metaphors,&#8221; actually comes from a song that was cut from the final movie. (It&#8217;s also a punchline which requires an elaborate setup in the preceding lyrics, but that&#8217;s part of the fun.)<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B00EDY5KTA\/curtiscchensfree\">deluxe version of the soundtrack album<\/a> includes demos of half a dozen numbers from earlier versions of the show, with commentary by composers Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, and it&#8217;s fascinating to see how the book changed during production. There are still traces of the &#8220;prophecy&#8221; plotline in the trailer above, but it&#8217;s definitely a stronger story without hokey supernatural predestination.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, Robert Lopez also worked on <i>The Book of Mormon<\/i>, which is again not surprisingly since he co-created the raunchy puppet musical <i>Avenue Q<\/i>. And some more connections for you: Christophe Beck, who composed the score music for <i>Frozen<\/i> (and <i>Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/i>, back in the day), was in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spizzwinks.com\/\">Yale Spizzwinks(?)<\/a> <i>a cappella<\/i> group alongside not only Robert Lopez, but also Internet musician <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathancoulton.com\/\">Jonathan Coulton<\/a> and my good friend <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/24400152\">Sean Gugler<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>Yes, yes, go ahead: sing <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/iJFGAX77zw4\">that other song that nobody wants to hear anymore<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/snout.org\/HotSheet\/CKL.jpg\" alt=\"Curtis\" title=\"Curtis\" border=\"0\" height=\"32\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You knew this was coming, right? South Park: Bigger, Longer, &amp; Uncut (1999)andFrozen (2013) We&#8217;ll talk after the trailers. https:\/\/youtu.be\/aes3Iz8QPgA https:\/\/youtu.be\/FLzfXQSPBOg I&#8217;m not going to explain or apologize for my love of musicals. If you can&#8217;t handle the singing and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[46,13,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-42movies21days","category-movies","category-video"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}