#roger does theatre

[jessieren]

Looks like Roger has started working on Churchill in Moscow at the Orange Tree

[uniiiquehecrt]

Voice actors are NOT the same as actors.

It takes a specific kind of skill-set and training to be able to warp and meld the voice. It takes a certain kind of talent and dedication to hone that talent into the ability to meld the voice and invoke emotion with one's voice alone. Actors are used to using their voice secondarily to their body language and their facial expressions. It's all mirrored back on camera. They do have nuance. But it's a different kind of nuance and a different kind of training to produce that nuance.

Voice actors might get their likeness transposed on their character's design, and maybe their mannerisms might seep into the character's animation. But when it's all said and done: their presence is in their voice. They are bringing a character to life, showing that emotion in their voice, trying to keep a specific accent, drawl, pitch, tone in that voice and keep it consistent for their recording sessions.

The voice actor is like a classically trained musician who can play first chair in a competitive, world-renown orchestra. The actor (who fills the voice actor's role) is like a moot who played violin in beginner and intermediate high school orchestra and thinks they can get into Juilliard with that 2-4 years of experience.

This doesn't mean that the HS orchestra moot can't play. They can even be really good at it. Maybe they won competitions and sat first chair. But they are not in the same league as the person who's been training their whole lives and lives and breathes to hone their craft using the instrument and all of the training they've ever acquired to perfect it. They are not meant for the same roles. They are not in the same caliber. You do not hire the HS equivalent when you want to play complex music in a competitive orchestra.

Actors are not the same as voice actors.

And furthermore, actors - especially big name actors - taking the roles of animated characters for big budget films or TV pilots makes no sense anyways when - at least in the case of TV pilots - there's not a point to hiring a big budget actors anyways. That money could be used elsewhere (like paying your animators), and the talent that is brought onto the screen for X character could then be hired on to voice said character no recasting required.

I wouldn't say voice acting as a profession is in danger exactly, but it's certainly being disrespected and overlooked for celebrity clout, and this has ALWAYS been an issue. Shoot, even Robin Williams knew that much - which is why he tried so hard not to be used as a marketing chess piece for Aladdin and got royally pissed off when it happened anyways. People shouldn't go to any movie (but especially not animated films) because "oh famous actor is in it". People should go because it's a good movie and the voice acting is good.

People who honest to god think that voice actors are replaceable because "oh well anyone can voice act" or "I like xyz celebrity so naturally it'll be good" ... Honestly I just wish you'd reassess your priorities because you're missing the point and are part of the problem.

Voice Actors ≠ Actors.

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

Also don't think anyone has said this (thats a joke) but like, art styles aside:

The animation, expressions, movement, everything of ATSV is IMPECCABLE.

Like insanely, ridiculously, almost mind bogglingly good.

[This is a MEDIUM length post]

The main strength is the Emotion -

In terms of animation, the range of emotions Miguel is capable of expressing is like... crazy good. Gwen's emotions ARE UNSPEAKABLY IMPRESSIVE.

LIKE...ANIMATING HER FUCKING BREATHING???? AND BLINKS!! AS AN EMOTIONAL CUE. HELLO???!!

And the movie hinges on this - almost every scene has an emotional cue that HAS to hit. Whether is Jess's looks of hesitation or Peter B.'s looks of horror.

And this may seem like the most ridiculous comparison ever made but like...

The Bee Movie and Across the Spider-Verse came out FIFTEEN YEARS APART.

THE BEE MOVIE...THIS MONSTRASITY that has plagued humankind - was made less than two decades from THIS:

The fact that we progressed that far as a society (pun intended) in that short of a time will never not baffle me.

I genuinely cannot name any other animated movie that:

Has multiple styles throughout the duration

Can seamlessly change styles without the viewer immediately noticing (like Gwen returning to her universe)

Show two or more animation styles on screen at the same time (and no, Roger Rabbit and Space Jam don't count - that's half live action lol)

Just off the top of my head - ATSV shows up to three styles in one scene: I'm mainly thinking of the scene that shows Hobie (customized - style 1), Peter B. (standard - style 2), and Miguel (a light stylized - style 3).

It can be brought to four if you want to count Miles/Gwen, though their style isn't visible.

I can think of a couple scenes that genuinely blew me away in terms of animation -

One being Rio's 'What-EVER?!' because of the little stance correction and head bob she does, because it's such a natural thing to do. And it adds so much to an already perfect line.

It's something someone would genuinely do IRL without even noticing.

Another I LOVE is Pavitr and Hobie roughhousing.

Like, I can't yell about these five seconds of animation more.

It's SO fluid it looks like Motion-Capture and I left the theatre googling is any Mo-Cap was used in the movie (and from what I can tell - no, it's all original animation).

The way Pavitr falls to the side and bumps them - This not only being a natural reaction to Hobie and his weight, but it also LOOKS natural. So much so you can see it affect Hobie's model too. The movement has kinetic energy on both models -

Which is AMAZING CONSIDERING THEY'RE ANIMATED ON LIKE FOUR DIFFERENT TIMES.

In this shot alone, there's the guitar, vest, AND Hobie, all of which have their own animation rules. Plus the outline on his guitar AND him. And then there PAVI too, who's running at a higher frame rate, touching and interacting with Hobie.

So much so that Hobie's model nearly wraps himself around Pavi. Pavi's hair is moving, Hobie's guitar is moving, there's movement in the background - and it looks GREAT.

PLUS THE CAMERA IS MOVING AND GOSTLING. IT'S NOT A STATIC SHOT. The models and camera are moving AS IF THEY'RE REAL when they're not.

That's - My..I CAN EVEN COMPUTE THAT.

But by far, I think the range of expression used on Miguel is like... Chef's kiss.

(of course I was gonna trick you into reading another post about Miguel. Uh-huh that's what's about to happen)

Like... are you kidding me?

NAH DEADASS ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????

The whole later half of the movie hinges on Miguel looking buckwild crazy insane and they NAIL that. And like-

Oh my god what the actual fuck

?????????????????????????? I........ I have nothing to add. After that picture......Nah... LMAOOO

(left: actual photo of Moche watching this happen)

But Anyway chile, This movie is like.. genuinely a modern marvel.

If Marvel gave Tim Gunn 4 billion dollars and five years, whatever live-action rendition he would have made would not even compare to ATSV on any conceivable level - that's how good it is so jot that down.

And like...don't even get me started on Hobie..his design..his representation...girl I will start crying in this Arby's do not play with me

I just felt that needed to be said.

you get what I'm saying yall know what I mean iight coo

Here's a picture of Hobie to cleanse your palette.

Bye.

[vintagetvstars]

Henry Winkler Vs. Wayne Rogers

Propaganda

Henry Winkler - (Happy Days) - The Fonz created cool. He’s a greaser with a heart of gold; a totally swoon worthy bad boy. And he’s a talented mechanic - I wish I could fix all appliances the way he does.

Wayne Rogers - (M*A*S*H, Stagecoach West, City of Angels) - "He just had this warmth and gentleness to him that made him sooo attractive no matter at what age..." Full text propaganda below the cut.

- No Negative Propaganda Please -

Master Poll List | How to submit propaganda | What is vintage? (FAQ)

Additional propaganda below the cut

Henry Winkler:

I had a crush on him when I watched Happy Days reruns when I was a kid. He was also an executive producer on So Weird, which is one of my favorite childhood shows.

Look, he's The Fonz, what more is there to say?

Wayne Rogers:

He just had this warmth and gentleness to him that made him sooo attractive no matter at what age. If his good looks and his charming smile (and those curls ahh!) aren't enough to convince you to vote for this nice, funny, 6ft tall man, then let me hit you with some random information What i adore is the duality of this man! First he served his duty in the navy and was about to study law when he accompanied a friend to a theatre play one evening and was so amazed by the art of acting that he decided to achieve an acting career instead. When he wanted to leave MASH after only three seasons -although the contract said for him to stay much longer-, they couldn't do anything about it bc he hadn't even signed it in the first place (there was a paragraph in it that he strongly disagreed with). If that isn't badass idk what is! And later in his career, not only did he act, write and produce all kinds of TV, movie and stage productions but he also started a successful financial business. Also (at least when he was older) he supposedly went for a swim in the sea EVERY morning. Btw when he was still getting started and was financially struggling, he shared a flat in New York and an overcoat for auditions with (also still struggling) colleague Peter Falk.

[secondaryartifacts]

At the age of fifteen, Louise Brooks began her career as a dancer and toured with the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts. After being fired, she found employment as a chorus girl in "George White's Scandals" and as a semi-nude dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies in New York City. While dancing in the Follies, Brooks came to the attention of Walter Wanger, a producer at Paramount Pictures, and was signed to a five-year contract with the studio.

Dissatisfied with her mediocre roles in Hollywood films, Brooks went to Germany in 1929 and starred in three feature films which launched her to international stardom: "Pandora's Box" (1929), "Diary of a Lost Girl" (1929), and "Miss Europe" (1930); the first two were directed by G. W. Pabst.

Brooks recalled that "when we made 'Pandora's Box', Mr. Pabst was a man of 43 who astonished me with his knowledge on practically any subject. I, who astonished him because I knew practically nothing on every subject, celebrated my twenty-second birthday with a beer party on a London street."

Brooks claimed her experience shooting "Pandora's Box" in Germany was a pleasant one: "In Hollywood, I was a pretty flibbertigibbet whose charm for the executive department decreased with every increase in my fan mail. In Berlin I stepped to the station platform to meet Mr. Pabst and became an actress. And his attitude was the pattern for all. Nobody offered me humorous or instructive comments on my acting. Everywhere I was treated with a kind of decency and respect unknown to me in Hollywood. It was just as if Mr. Pabst had sat in on my whole life and career and knew exactly where I needed assurance and protection."

When audiences and critics first viewed Brooks' German films, they were bewildered by her naturalistic acting style. Viewers purportedly exited the theater vocally complaining, "She doesn't act! She does nothing!" In the late 1920s, cinemagoers were habituated to theatre-style stage acting with exaggerated body language and facial expressions. Yet Brooks' acting style was deliberately subtle as she knew the close-up images of the actors' bodies and faces made such exaggerations unnecessary. When explaining her acting method, Brooks posited that acting "does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation." This innovative style continues to be used today by film actors but, at the time, it was surprising to viewers who assumed she wasn't acting at all.

Film critic Roger Ebert later noted that, by employing this acting method, "Brooks became one of the most modern and effective of actors, projecting a presence that could be startling."

The result of her appearances in the two films by Pabst was that Brooks' became an international star. According to the film critic and historian Molly Haskell, the films "expos[ed] her animal sensuality and turn[ed] her into one of the most erotic figures on the screen—the bold, black-helmeted young girl who, with only a shy grin to acknowledge her 'fall,' became a prostitute in 'Diary of a Lost Girl' and who, with no more sense of sin than a baby, drives men out of their minds in 'Pandora's Box'."

Brooks is regarded today as a Jazz Age icon and as a flapper sex symbol due to her bob hairstyle that she helped popularize during the prime of her career. (Wikipedia)

Happy Birthday, Louise Brooks!

[the-kestrels-feather]

I know I'm SO late to the party, but In light of the hbomberguy video, I wanted to drop a list of some of my favorite video essayists on here who are all great. Some are well known, some of them not, but all deserve a lot of love thrown their way!

Any creators I know are Queer will have a * next to their names if that's what you're looking for! (Note some of them might not have a star that should, that's not me trying to invalidate anybody I just didn't know, please feel free to correct me!)

Dominic Noble- book content! Has a series called Lost in Adaptation that judges how faithful movie adaptations of books were to their original source material, but also does some reviews/summaries as well. Very publicly denounced JKR after she was revealed to be a TERF and stated he will no longer review anything by her on his channel. Also deleted ALL of his HP videos after finding out she was a TERF (which were his most popular videos), so I have a really deep respect for him tbh. Former Channel Awesome member who publicly denounced them on several occasions, and an all around swell guy.

*Overly Sarcastic Productions- channel run by 2 people who go by Red and Blue. History and Mythology/Literature content, as well as analysis of tropes and media! I've been told their History content can be a bit... Iffy, but I'm not a Historian so I don't know, however if they get something wrong they're good about correcting it for what that counts for. Very interesting to listen to, I've watched Red's Videos roughly 100 times each. Also has a podcast.

*Strange Aeons- fandom/Tumblr history mostly, as well as some history, and weird businesses too. Reads a LOT of cursed content for her channel.

*Lindsay Ellis- Media/film analysis. obviously not as unknown as some of the others on here, but I absolutely adore her content and will forever be sad that she isn't on YouTube anymore.

Cruel World Happy Mind- MLM/explanation of controversial figures. I'm not sure how best to explain her content, but she seems genuinely lovely and is interesting to listen to. Also a victim of Illuminaughtii's ire and deserves some love. The video she made on Blair is a bit outdated since she made it at the start of when this all came to light, but imo it's definitely worth a watch. Her talking about her interaction with Blair genuinely broke my heart.

*Night Mind- Analog horror/Unfiction/ARG content! Analyzes and explains various internet horror pieces, and also has a very nice voice to listen to.

*Lola Sebastian- Film/Media Analysis!

Li Speaks- Deep dives into various nostalgia, mainly flash games!

*Princess Weekes- Media/film/literary analysis!

abitfrank- summaries and analysis of various "darker" children's content such as Coraline (book and movie), Nightmare Before Christmas, and various dark fairy tales

Hello Future Me- writing advice and world building information!

Curious Archive- deep dives into the various bestiaries of video games and the animals in real life that they're similar to, I love his Subnautica video!

In Praise of Shadows- Horror media analysis! Will often focus on specific franchises, but also covers things like horror comics and tropes as well.

Wait in the Wings- theatre! Deep dives into the back stories behind the production of various musicals! His video on Rogers the Musical that he did for April Fool's last year is comedy fucking gold

Weird Reads With Emily Louise- conspiracy theory/cult/weird thing analysis! Looks at things from an objective and skeptical view, and is very in depth. Recently served as a consulting producer on an HBO Max documentary on the Love has Won cult.

Ask a Mortician- death content! Covers various historical events and darker stories of death from the view of a Mortician.

*Izzzyzz- deep dives into fandoms, as well as well as different video games and kids' virtual worlds.

Disney Dan- Disney content! Covers the history of different mascot costumes at Disney and Disney-like parks! Has collaborated with Definctland in the past too!

Yesterworld- theme park content! Discusses history behind rides and parks, as well as some Disney movies. I think has also collaborated with Defunctland and Disney Dan?

Legal Eagle- legal content! Breaks down news about ongoing legal cases in a way that feels approachable. I like him because both my parents are paralegals and his videos have helped me understand what they mean when they're talking about work a little bit

Super Eye patch Wolf- media video essays! Mostly about anime/manga and video games, but also covers things like influencer scams and pro wrestling. His "what the internet did to Garfield" video is SO GOOD

*Jessie Gender- Media Analysis, loves Star Trek

*Laura Crone- Media Analysis video essays, her videos on the Swan Princess are fucking great I highly recommend!

*Lady Emily- Media Analysis, did a whole video on Spuder-Man turn off the dark that is SO good. Co writer for Sarah Z

Tale Foundry- covers different forms of fiction, their xenofiction video is great, as is their Angelarium one!

Defunctland- Theme Park ride and Children's TV History channel!

Jenny Nicholson- one of the sort of "big three" commentary channels with Lindsay Ellis and Sarah Z imo, covers all sorts of stuff but her most recent one is a 3 hour video on the theme park Evermore Park!

*Sarah Z- Fandom history and Media analysis! I really enjoy their content, the Johnlock Conspiracy and DashCon videos are my favorites!

Li Speaks- Flash games/virtual world analysis mostly! She has a very soothing voice to listen to, if you played like. Any MMOs or virtual worlds growing up I Highly recommend. I've watched her video on Horseland SO many times.

*Codex Entry- Video game coverage! Her videos on Pathologic are great if you're like me and wanted more after the Hbomberguy video!

Wendigoon- ARG/Spooky content! One of the early proponents of the Mandela Catalog and best known for his conspiracy theory iceberg, but has also covered things like various weird/unsolved crimes, Assassination conspiracies, and other things. His videos on Faith, Blood Meridian, The Mandela Catalog, and his Religion/Cult iceberg are some of my favorites

Dino Diego- Dinosaur fiction, like movies, video games, books, short stories, etc. his 2 videos on West of Eden and Winter in Eden are two of my favorites!

Haley Whipjack- I don't know how to describe her content really? She does a lot of deep dives (her Shrek one is my favorite), currently doing a recap of Once Upon a Time by season that is very fun. She's an elementary school teacher by day (that's not me dozing her she talks about it on her channel), and so she has fun unhinged teacher energy!

Other channels that are a sort of collection of different people talking about different things rather than 1 or 2:

TEDx

PBS

The Exploring Series

[meraki-yao]

Watching Agatha All Along again after giving up on Marvel for three years made me think about why I gave it up in the first place.

I was so deep in the MCU. I cried so much during Infinity War that I struggled to walk out of the cinema. I watched Endgame on the first day that it was released. My diary was a CACW notebook. Part of the reason I took up STEM subjects was because of Marvel.

And then after watching MoM in theatres, I stopped.

I'm trying to phrase and figure out what made me give up something I was so invested in, something I loved so much. I think I know why.

The MCU period I was active in gave me characters that I ended up loving, and the later period took them away.

My two favourite characters were ruined. Their character arcs and core characters undone. I'm worried about my favourite too.

I hate it when the sequel undermines the previous works.

When I think of Steve Rogers, I don't think of the guy who chose to either fuck up the entire timeline of the MCU or sat quietly and watch the world in turmoil, his allies die tragically, and his best friend left to a fate worst than dead to get with a girl he wasn't even dating, a woman who had a life of her own and moved on.

I think of Steve from CATWS, the guy from Brooklyn who still does the right thing in a time when morals are blurred. The Steve who is kind, compassionate and brave. The Steve who inspired the base-level employees of SHEILD to follow his example and not bow down in the face of tyranny. The Steve who just had one mission, and that was standing up to bullies.

When I think of Wanda, I don't think of the insane, manic witch/evil goddess who killed thousands mercilessly even though there was a harmless solution, who after all she lost, somehow only wanted her children who she had for three days instead of also her love and her twin.

I think of Wanda, the girl who lost it all, who's family was all killed, who was denied a burial for Vision, who was left alone and abandoned in the world, with so much love in her heart that no longer had a place, a person to go to. The girl who feels so much so deeply that it bended reality. The girl who had to learn, who had to give up her dream, but did so, because at the end of the day, she is a kind person, who doesn't want to hurt people. She was wrong, she takes time to understand and accept the harm she's caused (as we all do), and then makes it right. She tries to be good. Despite everything, she tries.

The later stages of MCU took these two characters that mean so much to me personally, and ruined them.

And I'm fucking mad at them, because it disrespected all the work that made me love them in the first place, and it was preventable. (The original script for MoM where Wanda helps Strange but repeatedly gets tempted by the Darkhold is a much more convincing narrative.)

And I'd say the same applies to others: Natasha, Thor, Bruce, even Strange (although I feel like they never really figured out what they wanted to do with Strange's character)

I miss my characters, I miss my MCU.

[maraschinocheri]

Happy 39th birthday to the London production of Les Misérables (which officially opened on 8 October 1985 at the Barbican Theatre, though previews began at the end of September)! By way of celebrations, scans from the 1985/86 / 1986/87 Royal Shakespeare Company Yearbook, which honoured the success of the Barbican production and its transfer to the Palace Theatre by making Colm Wilkinson and Michael Ball during 'Bring Him Home' its cover stars. The annual RSC Yearbook summarised productions in all of the company's (at the time five) theatres and on tour with production photography and critical commentary from newspapers and other media. Text from the pages above is under the cut below, with bracketed extra information to clarify some references.

Not since Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd back in 1979 has there been a score which soared out of the pit with the blazing theatricality of Les Misérables, and to those of my tabloid colleagues already in print with feeble and fainthearted objections to the show, I have but this to say: remember the demon barber. Sweeney, too, we were once told; was too dark, too savage, too downbeat a theme for a musical. Six years on, that show has won more awards and been acclaimed to more opera houses than any other in the entire history of the American musical. Les Misérables, in a brilliantly intelligent staging by Trevor Nunn and John Caird, will achieve a similar kind of long-term success …

[The Times’/Punch’s Sheridan] Morley went on. ‘… The greatness of Les Misérables is that it starts out, like Sweeney and Peter Grimes, to redefine the limits of music theatre. Like them it is through sung, and like them it tackles universal themes of social and domestic happiness in terms of individual despair.’

[The Financial Times’ Michael] Coveney talked of the allying of ‘Nickleby*-style qualities of ensemble presentation to a piece that really does deserve the label ‘rock opera’, occupying brand new ground somewhere between Verdi and Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was not, he thought, a company celebration like Nickleby, ‘but an appreciation of those values along with the musical experience gathered by the team (Trevor Nunn, John Caird and David Hersey) on Cats and Starlight Express.’ To that extent, he went on, the show was an important one, ‘bridging gaps between musical and opera, and subjecting rock musicians to RSC tutelage while last year’s Clarence [in the RSC 1984 production of Richard III], Roger Allam, is unveiled in the role of Javert as an outstanding performer in the musical idiom.’

[*The RSC's landmark 1980 production of an adaption of Charles Dickens’ The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby]

[The Guardian’s Michael] Billington posited that if you fillet any great nineteenth-century novel, ‘you are left with melodrama.’ Les Misérables, he said, jointly produced by the RSC and Cameron Mackintosh at the Barbican, becomes exactly ‘high class melodrama.’ It was staged ‘with breathtaking panache by Trevor Nunn and John Caird. It is impeccably designed by John Napier. It has a lively score by Claude-Michel Schönberg. But it is three-and-a-half hours of fine middlebrow entertainment rather than great art.’ Billington claimed to have ‘conned’ the novel sufficiently ‘to realise that it is a towering masterpiece about social injustice, redemption through love and the power of Providence.’ What the musical offered, he went on, ‘is the hurtling story of Jean Valjean, the paroled prisoner who becomes a provincial mayor, who is relentlessly pursued by the policeman Javert and who achieves heroic feats of self-sacrifice at the 1832 Paris uprising. What you don’t get is the background of moral conflict that makes this more than a classy adventure story.’ In this he thought, Hugo’s novel was infinitely more dramatic than the musical.

[The Times’ Irving] Wardle spoke of the temptation in such circumstances for anyone who has read the novel ‘to quarrel with any adaptation for its omissions and liberties instead of judging the adaptation on its own merits.’ In this instance, he maintained, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg had done a capable gutting job. ‘They present a clear outline of the epic contest between Jean Valjean, the saintly ex-convict, and his implacable pursuer Javert: including Valjean’s defeated attempt to save the wretched Fantine, and his life-long devotion to her daughter, Cosette, only to lose her to a young love, Marius, amid the Paris barricades of 1832.’

The adapters had cut corners with boldness and ingenuity, Wardle believed, and had found fresh situations where Hugo’s are theatrically unworkable. They had also preserved the essential sense that Valjean and Javert are two of a kind, belonging, as Hugo puts it, to the ‘two classes of men whom society keeps at arms length: those who prey on it and those who protect it.’

Coveney maintained that the organization and placement of the continuously revolving stage was ‘beyond praise’, with John Napier’s design doing as much honour to Hugo’s Paris as he lavished on Dickens’s London [in Nickleby]: ‘Two huge trucks rumble on and form a barricaded wall which, just as Hugo describes, seems to contain a city in itself, a fantastic jumble of chairs, barrels, planks and people, a teeming segment of a revolutionary catacomb.’

This alternative society, Coveney said, was presented without sentiment ‘as indeed are its urchin sentinels, the daughter of Thenardier (a devastating waif performance by Frances Ruffelle) and Gavroche … sweetly and surely sung by an admirable child actor and just when you feel the production is slipping by allowing a [writer of Oliver] Lionel Bart-ish point number, he is shot full of bullets and left to sing plaintively on the wrong side of the barricade.’

The music, [The Sunday Times’ John] Peter though, ‘has a fresh, astringent lyricism and a powerful, ballad-like drive: number after number makes robust contributions to character and drama.’ The best performances, in Peter’s opinion, came from Alun Armstrong and Susan Jane Tanner as the ‘horrible Thenardiers', Patti LuPone (Fantine) and Frances Ruffelle (Eponine). But this was, he pointed out, ‘essentially a company musical rather than a star vehicle. If it transfers to the West End where its masterful theatricality would outshine almost anything else on offer, it might show people that success in this genre doesn’t depend solely on expensive star turns.’ The transfer to the Palace, of course, came swiftly after the Barbican opening.

[The Observer’s Michael] Ratcliffe described Schönberg’s score as ‘all tinselly arpeggios, stabbing staccato, pile-driving trumpets and thinly-disguised hymns.’ In polite terms he said, it was ‘electric, trailing a range of references from high-tech Bizet and Massenet to the air-time acceptable, and Celtic Fringe Folk.’

Some scenes, said Coveney, go straight into operatic form, ‘for example the apprehension by Javert of Valjean at Fantine’s deathbed, or a beautiful garden trio for young lovers in Valjean’s garden hideaway.’ There was also a ‘startling thematic echo of Rigoletto as Valjean ponders the son he might have had.’ Colm Wilkinson’s Valjean was in Coveney’s opinion ‘a remarkable study in impassive acquisition of self-knowledge … He [has] particularly fine and lyrical use of his upper register. Above all he transmits palpable goodness without sounding like a prig or a boar [bore?].’ [The Sunday’s Telegraph’s Francis] King thought Wilkinson not only sang the role with eloquence ‘but – far more difficult – brings out the essential goodness of a much-wronged man.’ The outstanding voice of the evening in King’s opinion, was that of Patti LuPone as Fantine.

The band under the stage and the musical direction of Martin Koch include some rumbling brass premonitions of disaster as well as some very fine work on synthesizers, brass and strings. The score also underpins such exciting production movements as the arrival of the barricade, the suicidal leap (done by the bridge flying up as Mr Allam free falls on the spot) and the descent to the sewers with lots of dry ice and naked banks of light not equalled in impact since Mr Hersey did something similar in Evita.

In short, this is an intriguing and most enjoyable musical, fully justifying the mixing of commercial resources with RSC talent and personnel, even if not all that many RSC actors are involved.* Being now acquainted with the demands of the score, I see why that should be so. [Morley]

[* The RSC members who appeared in the Barbican production were Roger Allam, Alun Armstrong, and Susan Jane Tanner. Other RSC members at this time joined Les Mis in later companies, among them David Delve, who would replace Alun Armstrong as Thenardier.]

[vidavalor]

I don't think that Aziraphale fell in love with Crowley during The Blitz. I think Aziraphale *realized for sure that he was capable of romantic love* during The Blitz... because Crowley had shown that he was. These are two different things...

This is a bit long... Controversial opinions below...

Aziraphale has always had a thing for Crowley, since the beginning or damn near it. We see evidence of liking his attention and enjoying talking with him in the Garden. We see joy at seeing Crowley and nervousness about getting his attention ("still a demon then?") in Ancient Rome. We see him absolutely *loving* having Crowley wrapped around his finger at the Globe Theatre and we see naked lust and damsel fantasies when he's checking him out in The Bastille. Having feelings for Crowley is not something that just suddenly happened during The Blitz, imo... they are fundamental to who Aziraphale has always been... but Aziraphale does not think himself a very good angel.

To Aziraphale, an angel is a being of love so why *wouldn't* he love Crowley? He loves *everyone*-- fallen or not, human or animal or etheral or supernatural. His *entire identity and only job* is built around love and spreading it. At some point, he began to realize that what he felt for Crowley was different than what he felt for others and, as his study of humanity progressed, he would note the things it seemed to be like. Aziraphale loves humanity to absolute bits and that includes all the fun things they've uncovered to get up to, from books to super gay gentleman's clubs to Parisian crepes. Aziraphale absolutely noticed that he's attracted to Crowley. He absolutely knew that the things he felt about Crowley were things that these humans were writing about in love songs, except that *it couldn't be, not really, because that would be wrong* because he's *not* a human.

He's an *angel*.

And Crowley is a fallen angel-- a *demon*.

They are beings who cannot feel these things of humans, not fully. Is this denial on Aziraphale's part? Oh, heavens, yes. Because what kind of angel would he be if, instead of just spreading love everywhere, he actually went and *fell* in love with, of all creatures, a *demon*? What kind of angel wants to roger said demon into next Tuesday? The same kind of angel who likes to indulge in pleasures in a way that is definitely not de rigueur in sanitized, open floor plan Heaven. Does *Crowley* care that Aziraphale eats too many sweets and loves the pleasures of a good book? Of course not but Crowley is a demon so he should be into indulgence. Aziraphale doesn't expect Crowley to understand that the things they share in common-- the love of music (if different types), of the stars, of words (books, plays), of food (Aziraphale eating it, Crowley watching Aziraphale eating it) and really just *humanity* as a whole--... these things make Crowley a perfectly fine demon but Aziraphale a very, very bad angel. While Crowley rather likes that Aziraphale is different from other angels, *Aziraphale* doesn't like that about himself all the time. This is why it takes until The Blitz for Aziraphale to let himself admit that the romantic love he feels for Crowley is, in fact, romantic love... he can't admit it until Crowley, through Crowley's own actions, shows him.

It happens during The Blitz because *Crowley* shows him that *demons* are capable of romantic love. Not only capable of it but really rather quite *good* at it, if they are of such a mind. Crowley's act of saving the books is what does it. Aziraphale knows that Crowley will always come to rescue him. The Bastille proves it. He not only knows it but he goes out of his way to set up scenarios for Crowley to come to his rescue. What sets The Blitz apart is Crowley saving Aziraphale's books. It is an act of such pure, unselfish, unconditional love that Aziraphale cannot see it as anything *but* that. Crowley has been bringing Aziraphale presents for millennia. He's rescued him more times than either of them can count. They've spent centuries in one another's company and performed literal miracles to make one another happy and safe and comfortable but the reason why it's the books during The Blitz that changes everything for Aziraphale is because everything else, if Aziraphale was of mine to, could be spun as Crowley being a demon and trying to keep Aziraphale close for his *own* reasons.

Aziraphale isn't really an idiot. He knows the wily ol' serpent feels the same way about him as he does about them. It's been centuries upon centuries. He's noticed Crowley's love and adoration and desperate, pining want-- he's just never *allowed himself to assume that these things aren't just demon-y traits*. He thinks Crowley *is just like this* lol. That everyone gets this version of Crowley. And since they barely interact with one another in front of other people lest they get caught fraternizing, there's not really anyone to ever argue against this point.

Ever notice how Aziraphale thinks Crowley is the smoothest, slickest tempter known to man? He's *Asmodeus* to Aziraphale. He's a seductive snake who lured all of humanity out of the garden. Aziraphale thinks himself just an angel (the one who failed at guarding said garden, mind you) and not an especially good one at that. Crowley is *tempting*... because he's temptation personified. (Demonified?) Aziraphale thinks he is *tempted* by Crowley because he is weak and a bad angel. To Aziraphale, Crowley isn't *capable* of things like romantic love because Aziraphale has been taught that all angels are just beings of pure love of God-- a kind of non-sexual, generalized love for all of God's creatures-- and Crowley is a fallen angel. Not only was he not capable of romantic love when he was an angel but he certainly couldn't be now that he's a *demon*, right?

But then Crowley saves the books. Oh, the books...

And the only reason he would is for Aziraphale. The books are old but there are other copies. It's not all the world's knowledge; it's just Aziraphale's favorites from his prophecy collection. Just his own, very human, very earthly, possessions, rescued from a fire by the romantic hero who has also come to rescue him. Just a little miracle of Crowley's own-- using his powers and risking the wrath of Hell to comfort Aziraphale and make him happy.

It's obviously not the first time Crowley has done so but it's the first time that Aziraphale has had *no other excuse* in his mind for why Crowley did what he did for Aziraphale. The Arrangement? Benefitted Crowley. Spending time with Aziraphale? Benefitted Crowley by keeping Aziraphale invested in The Arrangement. Flirting with him, bringing him little gifts? The Arrangement, The Arrangement, The Arrangement... But the books?

Crowley didn't have to do that. He had come to rescue him. The dashing hero kink was already fufilled for Aziraphale. But saving Aziraphale's beloved books and the soft "little miracle of my own" and "lift home" and Aziraphale realized that, Demonic Chief Seductress of Hell or not, Crowley was in love with him.

Not just fond of him. Not just flirting with him or bemused by Aziraphale's lust and indulging him. Not just friends, even.

In love with him.

Demons could fall in love.

And if demons could be in love, then angels...

The Blitz is also *way* different from the era circa The Bastille, when Aziraphale decided that maybe millennia of being flirted with by Asmoseus himself was too much for any one angel to withstand without actively indulging in a bit-- and their long history and everything up to that point confirming that Crowley was soft for him (FOR HIM, a terrible, little, nobody angel!) made him feel safe enough to play a bit more of a heavier hand... even if that, too, was a bit terrifying. When Crowley asked Aziraphale to lunch in the modern era in S1, telling him they could go anywhere Aziraphale wanted to go (a call back, we would learn, to the Soho car "I'll take you anywhere you want to go" scene), what does Aziraphale say?

He doesn't say London in the '40s. (Admittedly, who would want to be there then, romance with Crowley notwithstanding?) Nor any other time. He says:

"Paris. 1793." to which Crowley replies with a little knowing smile:

"Ah. The Reign of Terror."

Yeah, Crowley's not *just* referring to the actual, historical Reign of Terror here. He's referring to *Aziraphale's* reign of terror. *Their* reign of terror. Aziraphale's whole lusty arc, from crepes to "learning The Gavotte" here as he upped the ante on their relationship for the first time...

"Was that one yours or mine?" Crowley asks, putting Aziraphale a bit at ease after knowing that admitting to Paris 1793 was a bit of open honesty by telling him that Aziraphale wasn't the only one scared out of his mind then. (Was that bit of our history primarily my terror or your terror? is what Crowley's really asking. Which one of us was fucking it up then, do you remember?... Not that they don't remember. They both do. Crowley is trying to say that the fear isn't one-sided-- that Aziraphale isn't the only one for whom all of this has always been terrifying.)

Aziraphale says he can't remember (might not be true) but that it doesn't matter because "the crepes were lovely" and Crowley smiles.

Because Aziraphale is calling him lovely. Says their date was lovely and he was lovely. Crowley all like...

The reason why Aziraphale wants to go back to lunch on the post-Bastille date is not just the crepes (though they were really good but you cannot tell me that the French haven't gotten better at making them since the 1700s lol. I'm sure there's a better creperie he and Crowley could have lunched at in the modern era.) He wants to go back there because, in a way, as complicated as it felt, it was *simpler* because Aziraphale thought he understood what he and Crowley were then.

He thought Crowley was temptation personified and that he, Aziraphale, had finally gone full Eve and wanted to give in. He thought it was lust. A little bit of rescue kink. Eyes raking him over. the fun, daring game of playing at the seduction *of temptation itself*. The power of knowing that Hell's Seductress in Chief was weak *for him*. That's a sexy lunch. Those are some *damn good crepes* lol.

Finally, Aziraphale had it figured out, right? He was a being of love since he was an angel so he loved all beings and that included Crowley but not in the way the humans sing and write about, no, cannot be, because he's an angel... but... angels-- bad ones, like himself-- did appear to be open to temptation and Aziraphale has been on Earth since the beginning and struggles to define the difference between temptation and pleasure. Is moaning over this blueberry muffin sinful-- or is it marveling at the work of God's creatures? How could his favorite symphony not be of God? How could God have created sexual attraction between the humans and not made it holy? Still... none of that meant that having these human-like feelings *as an angel* made them okay. Angels were supposed to think like Gabriel. They weren't supposed to want to sully the celestial temple of their corporations with gross matter-- in any way, shape or form. So what did it say about Aziraphale *to* Aziraphale if he liked art and food and if he got all sorts of hot about how Crowley looked at him?

And then not that long after that (not that long for them) came the 1800s and Crowley wanting holy water, right? Aziraphale defaulted to the idea that Crowley's motivations *had* to be selfish on Crowley's part. He was a demon so they *had* to be. It couldn't be about protecting the two of them. Holy water could kill Crowley-- it could kill other demons. Crowley's request was a subtle suggestion that *he might be willing to kill other demons to protect Aziraphale, an angel* and that went against *everything* Aziraphale knew to be true and he completely panicked. He made it entirely about Crowley's own, occasional, suicidal ideations (which do exist) and ignored the other potential reasons because it was too much for him to admit that Crowley's hurt-- his loneliness, his terror-- might be because Aziraphale had gotten this all very, very wrong. He might have just spent the last few decades leading Crowley on, thinking that the fraterization was what the demon would want, not thinking that anything more was possible. Because it *couldn't* be possible for Crowley to feel those things *because then Aziraphale would be capable of them, too*. So long as Aziraphale pretends that Crowley the Fallen Angel is incapable of more than mischief and self-serving arrangements and demonic lust, then Aziraphale can remain comforted in his feelings that he isn't capable of feeling not *angelic, generalized* love but *romantic, very much unplatonic* love for *his hereditary enemy*. A *human* would have been easier for Aziraphale to understand and maybe even solicit more sympathy should anyone find out but *Crowley*?

It would mean he wasn't just a bad angel, by Heaven's standards.

It would mean he doesn't know what an angel *truly is*.

When Crowley shows Aziraphale during The Blitz that he loves him-- that he's *in* love with him-- that every longing look was just that, that every spark of desperate lust in his yellow eyes was just that, that demons are fallen angels and angels can feel these human things and that that's what they are feeling-- these human things-- Aziraphale doesn't fall in love.

He was already in love.

He allows himself, for the first moment in their history, to *be* in love with Crowley, even if it's existed the whole time.

But...

By Soho in the '60s, he and Crowley both know. They know the other knows how they feel. Crowley, back in the '40s, thought Aziraphale was more ready than he was after the whole Reign of Terror through the Holy Water Incident. He thought he just had to show Aziraphale that how he felt was pure and true and he did do that. It's just that it completely upended everything Aziraphale thought he knew about himself and his place in the universe and challenged everything he had ever known or been taught. He needed time to work through that. He asked Crowley for time. He brought him the holy water-- in that cute little tartan Thermos-- to say he understood.

You're mine, see, and I'm yours. I'm just not ready for this. And I'm not sure if I ever *should* be ready for it... is the general attitude he conveys.

He didn't give up on the idea of him and Crowley and that is really beautiful when you consider that the no-longer-deniable truth of it basically was killing Aziraphale, as it made him feel like he failed at the only thing he was ever supposed to be, which means he failed at his whole purpose in life.

Maybe one day we could go for a picnic... or dine at the Ritz.

It's still a pipe dream for Aziraphale in the '60s. These are very romantic things he wants to do with Crowley. These are dates they could go on. This isn't just lust and it's not just friendship anymore. He knows Crowley's in love with him. Aziraphale has never denied having feelings of his own in return but he might never have said them more directly than with his little tartan Thermos and his daydream date ideas. The general vibe is I wish we could have this but I don't really see how and you wanting to just try it scares me. What if I fall? What if it turns out that everything I know isn't true?

It already was untrue and Aziraphale knew it. In a way, in the future, he'd tell Crowley he wanted to go back to 1793 Paris for that crepe date and start it all over again. They had 11 years-- nothing, to them-- until the end of the world. He's telling Crowley they shouldn't work together to stop it-- It's ineffable! It's God's plan! I've already interfered enough being an angel who is hopelessly lusting after and madly in love with bloody Asmodeus! If you think I'm stopping Armageddon so I can keep drinking wine and hanging out in my bookstore with you, you're mad!...

...but he's also saying to Crowley at the same time...

...I now know we are almost out of time and I regret thinking I would have countless more millennia with you to work this out. I wish we could go back and try again. I wish I had known what it was like to be with you before it was all over.

To which Crowley responds by taking him to the damn Ritz lol. (Twice, by S1's end.)

As if he's saying: can't time travel to 1793, Angel, but we can definintely make the most of every moment left.

After which... Aziraphale invites him back for Chateauneuf-de-Pape, in a situation we think might connect to S2's post-Blitz scene, based on the trailer. Just as Aziraphale is saying to Crowley that he wishes he had done things differently and Crowley gives him the opportunity to do things differently going forward by dining with him at the Ritz, it goes back to the Blitz as they walk to the bookstore, because it always will...

...because that is the first moment Aziraphale admitted he was in love because it was the first moment he truly knew that Crowley was in love with him and that the things they both felt are, in fact, romantic love.

[fibula-rasa]

(Mostly) Lost, but Not Forgotten: Omar Khayyam (1923) / A Lover’s Oath (1925)

Alternate Titles: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam, Omar

Direction: Ferdinand Pinney Earle; assisted by Walter Mayo

Scenario: Ferdinand P. Earle

Titles: Marion Ainslee, Ferdinand P. Earle (Omar), Louis Weadock (A Lover’s Oath)

Inspired by: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, as edited & translated by Edward FitzGerald 

Production Manager: Winthrop Kelly

Camera: Georges Benoit

Still Photography: Edward S. Curtis

Special Photographic Effects: Ferdinand P. Earle, Gordon Bishop Pollock

Composer: Charles Wakefield Cadman

Editors: Arthur D. Ripley (The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam version), Ethel Davey & Ferdinand P. Earle (Omar / Omar Khayyam, the Director’s cut of 1922), Milton Sills (A Lover’s Oath)

Scenic Artists: Frank E. Berier, Xavier Muchado, Anthony Vecchio, Paul Detlefsen, Flora Smith, Jean Little Cyr, Robert Sterner, Ralph Willis

Character Designer: Louis Hels

Choreography: Ramon Novarro (credited as Ramon Samaniegos)

Technical Advisors: Prince Raphael Emmanuel, Reverend Allan Moore, Captain Dudley S. Corlette, & Captain Montlock or Mortlock

Studio: Ferdinand P. Earle Productions / The Rubaiyat, Inc. (Production) & Eastern Film Corporation (Distribution, Omar), Astor Distribution Corporation [States Rights market] (Distribution, A Lover’s Oath)

Performers: Frederick Warde, Edwin Stevens, Hedwiga Reicher, Mariska Aldrich, Paul Weigel, Robert Anderson, Arthur Carewe, Jesse Weldon, Snitz Edwards, Warren Rogers, Ramon Novarro (originally credited as Ramon Samaniegos), Big Jim Marcus, Kathleen Key, Charles A. Post, Phillippe de Lacy, Ferdinand Pinney Earle

Premiere(s): Omar cut: April 1922 The Ambassador Theatre, New York, NY (Preview Screening), 12 October 1923, Loew’s New York, New York, NY (Preview Screening), 2 February 1923, Hoyt’s Theatre, Sydney, Australia (Initial Release)

Status: Presumed lost, save for one 30 second fragment preserved by the Academy Film Archive, and a 2.5 minute fragment preserved by a private collector (Old Films & Stuff)

Length:  Omar Khayyam: 8 reels , 76 minutes; A Lover’s Oath: 6 reels,  5,845 feet (though once listed with a runtime of 76 minutes, which doesn’t line up with the stated length of this cut)

Synopsis (synthesized from magazine summaries of the plot):

Omar Khayyam:

Set in 12th century Persia, the story begins with a preface in the youth of Omar Khayyam (Warde). Omar and his friends, Nizam (Weigel) and Hassan (Stevens), make a pact that whichever one of them becomes a success in life first will help out the others. In adulthood, Nizam has become a potentate and has given Omar a position so that he may continue his studies in mathematics and astronomy. Hassan, however, has grown into quite the villain. When he is expelled from the kingdom, he plots to kidnap Shireen (Key), the sheik’s daughter. Shireen is in love with Ali (Novarro). In the end it’s Hassan’s wife (Reicher) who slays the villain then kills herself.

A Lover’s Oath:

The daughter of a sheik, Shireen (Key), is in love with Ali (Novarro), the son of the ruler of a neighboring kingdom. Hassan covets Shireen and plots to kidnap her. Hassan is foiled by his wife. [The Sills’ edit places Ali and Shireen as protagonists, but there was little to no re-shooting done (absolutely none with Key or Novarro). So, most critics note how odd it is that all Ali does in the film is pitch woo, and does not save Shireen himself. This obviously wouldn’t have been an issue in the earlier cut, where Ali is a supporting character, often not even named in summaries and news items. Additional note: Post’s credit changes from “Vizier” to “Commander of the Faithful”]

Additional sequence(s) featured in the film (but I’m not sure where they fit in the continuity):

Celestial sequences featuring stars and planets moving through the cosmos

Angels spinning in a cyclone up to the heavens

A Potters’ shop sequence (relevant to a specific section of the poems)

Harem dance sequence choreographed by Novarro

Locations: palace gardens, street and marketplace scenes, ancient ruins

Points of Interest:

“The screen has been described as the last word in realism, but why confine it there? It can also be the last word in imaginative expression.”

Ferdinand P. Earle as quoted in Exhibitors Trade Review, 4 March 1922

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was a massive best seller. Ferdinand Pinney Earle was a classically trained artist who studied under William-Adolphe Bougueraeu and James McNeill Whistler in his youth. He also had years of experience creating art backgrounds, matte paintings, and art titles for films. Charles Wakefield Cadman was an accomplished composer of songs, operas, and operettas. Georges Benoit and Gordon Pollock were experienced photographic technicians. Edward S. Curtis was a widely renowned still photographer. Ramon Novarro was a name nobody knew yet—but they would soon enough.

When Earle chose The Rubaiyat as the source material for his directorial debut and collected such skilled collaborators, it seemed likely that the resulting film would be a landmark in the art of American cinema. Quite a few people who saw Earle’s Rubaiyat truly thought it would be:

William E. Wing writing for Camera, 9 September 1922, wrote:

“Mr. Earle…came from the world of brush and canvass, to spread his art upon the greater screen. He created a new Rubaiyat with such spiritual colors, that they swayed.”  … “It has been my fortune to see some of the most wonderful sets that this Old Earth possesses, but I may truly say that none seized me more suddenly, or broke with greater, sudden inspiration upon the view and the brain, than some of Ferdinand Earle’s backgrounds, in his Rubaiyat. “His vision and inspired art seem to promise something bigger and better for the future screen.”

As quoted in an ad in Film Year Book, 1923:

“Ferdinand Earle has set a new standard of production to live up to.”

Rex Ingram

“Fifty years ahead of the time.” 

Marshall Neilan

The film was also listed among Fritz Lang’s Siegfried, Chaplin’s Gold Rush, Fairbanks’ Don Q, Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera and The Unholy Three, and Erich Von Stroheim’s Merry Widow by the National Board of Review as an exceptional film of 1925.

So why don’t we all know about this film? (Spoiler: it’s not just because it’s lost!)

The short answer is that multiple dubious legal challenges arose that prevented Omar’s general release in the US. The long answer follows BELOW THE JUMP!

Earle began the project in earnest in 1919. Committing The Rubaiyat to film was an ambitious undertaking for a first-time director and Earle was striking out at a time when the American film industry was developing an inferiority complex about the level of artistry in their creative output. Earle was one of a number of artists in the film colony who were going independent of the emergent studio system for greater protections of their creative freedoms.

In their adaptation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Earle and Co. hoped to develop new and perfect existing techniques for incorporating live-action performers with paintings and expand the idea of what could be accomplished with photographic effects in filmmaking. The Rubaiyat was an inspired choice. It’s not a narrative, but a collection of poetry. This gave Earle the opportunity to intersperse fantastical, poetic sequences throughout a story set in the lifetime of Omar Khayyam, the credited writer of the poems. In addition to the fantastic, Earle’s team would recreate 12th century Persia for the screen. 

Earle was convinced that if his methods were perfected, it wouldn’t matter when or where a scene was set, it would not just be possible but practical to put on film. For The Rubaiyat, the majority of shooting was done against black velvet and various matte photography and multiple exposure techniques were employed to bring a setting 800+ years in the past and 1000s of miles removed to life before a camera in a cottage in Los Angeles.

Note: If you’d like to learn a bit more about how these effects were executed at the time, see the first installment of How’d They Do That.

Unfortunately, the few surviving minutes don’t feature much of this special photography, but what does survive looks exquisite:

see all gifs here

Earle, knowing that traditional stills could not be taken while filming, brought in Edward S. Curtis. Curtis developed techniques in still photography to replicate the look of the photographic effects used for the film. So, even though the film hasn’t survived, we have some pretty great looking representations of some of the 1000s of missing feet of the film.

Nearly a year before Curtis joined the crew, Earle began collaboration with composer Charles Wakefield Cadman. In another bold creative move, Cadman and Earle worked closely before principal photography began so that the score could inform the construction and rhythm of the film and vice versa.

By the end of 1921 the film was complete. After roughly 9 months and the creation of over 500 paintings, The Rubaiyat was almost ready to meet its public. However, the investors in The Rubaiyat, Inc., the corporation formed by Earle to produce the film, objected to the ample reference to wine drinking (a comical objection if you’ve read the poems) and wanted the roles of the young lovers (played by as yet unknown Ramon Novarro and Kathleen Key) to be expanded. The dispute with Earle became so heated that the financiers absconded with the bulk of the film to New York. Earle filed suit against them in December to prevent them from screening their butchered and incomplete cut. Cadman supported Earle by withholding the use of his score for the film.

Later, Eastern Film Corp. brokered a settlement between the two parties, where Earle would get final cut of the film and Eastern would handle its release. Earle and Eastern agreed to change the title from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to simply Omar. Omar had its first official preview in New York City. It was tentatively announced that the film would have a wide release in the autumn.

However, before that autumn, director Norman Dawn launched a dubious patent-infringement suit against Earle and others. Dawn claimed that he owned the sole right to use multiple exposures, glass painting for single exposure, and other techniques that involved combining live action with paintings. All the cited techniques had been widespread in the film industry for a decade already and eventually and expectedly Dawn lost the suit. Despite Earle’s victory, the suit effectively put the kibosh on Omar’s release in the US.

Earle moved on to other projects that didn’t come to fruition, like a Theda Bara film and a frankly amazing sounding collaboration with Cadman to craft a silent-film opera of Faust. Omar did finally get a release, albeit only in Australia. Australian news outlets praised the film as highly as those few lucky attendees of the American preview screenings did. The narrative was described as not especially original, but that it was good enough in view of the film’s artistry and its imaginative “visual phenomena” and the precision of its technical achievement.

One reviewer for The Register, Adelaide, SA, wrote:

“It seems almost an impossibility to make a connected story out of the short verse of the Persian of old, yet the producer of this classic of the screen… has succeeded in providing an entertainment that would scarcely have been considered possible. From first to last the story grips with its very dramatic intensity.”

While Omar’s American release was still in limbo, “Ramon Samaniegos” made a huge impression in Rex Ingram’s Prisoner of Zenda (1922, extant) and Scaramouche (1923, extant) and took on a new name: Ramon Novarro. Excitement was mounting for Novarro’s next big role as the lead in the epic Ben-Hur (1925, extant) and the Omar project was re-vivified. 

A new company, Astor Distribution Corp., was formed and purchased the distribution rights to Omar. Astor hired actor (note, not an editor) Milton Sills to re-cut the film to make Novarro and Key more prominent. The company also re-wrote the intertitles, reduced the films runtime by more than ten minutes, and renamed the film A Lover’s Oath. Earle had moved on by this point, vowing to never direct again. In fact, Earle was indirectly working with Novarro and Key again at the time, as an art director on Ben-Hur!

Despite Omar’s seemingly auspicious start in 1920, it was only released in the US on the states rights market as a cash-in on the success of one of its actors in a re-cut form five years later.

That said, A Lover’s Oath still received some good reviews from those who did manage to see it. Most of the negative criticism went to the story, intertitles, and Sills’ editing.

What kind of legacy could/should Omar have had? I’m obviously limited in my speculation by the fact that the film is lost, but there are a few key facts about the film’s production, release, and timing to consider. 

The production budget was stated to be $174,735. That is equivalent to $3,246,994.83 in 2024 dollars. That is a lot of money, but since the production was years long and Omar was a period film set in a remote locale and features fantastical special effects sequences, it’s a modest budget. For contemporary perspective, Robin Hood (1922, extant) cost just under a million dollars to produce and Thief of Bagdad (1924, extant) cost over a million. For a film similarly steeped in spectacle to have nearly 1/10th of the budget is really very noteworthy. And, perhaps if the film had ever had a proper release in the US—in Earle’s intended form (that is to say, not the Sills cut)—Omar may have made as big of a splash as other epics.

It’s worth noting here however that there are a number of instances in contemporary trade and fan magazines where journalists off-handedly make this filmmaking experiment about undermining union workers. Essentially implying that that value of Earle’s method would be to continue production when unionized workers were striking. I’m sure that that would absolutely be a primary thought for studio heads, but it certainly wasn’t Earle’s motivation. Often when Earle talks about the method, he focuses on being able to film things that were previously impossible or impracticable to film. Driving down filming costs from Earle’s perspective was more about highlighting the artistry of his own specialty in lieu of other, more demanding and time-consuming approaches, like location shooting.

This divide between artists and studio decision makers is still at issue in the American film and television industry. Studio heads with billion dollar salaries constantly try to subvert unions of skilled professionals by pursuing (as yet) non-unionized labor. The technical developments of the past century have made Earle’s approach easier to implement. However, just because you don’t have to do quite as much math, or time an actor’s movements to a metronome, does not mean that filming a combination of painted/animated and live-action elements does not involve skilled labor.

VFX artists and animators are underappreciated and underpaid. In every new movie or TV show you watch there’s scads of VFX work done even in films/shows that have mundane, realistic settings. So, if you love a film or TV show, take the effort to appreciate the work of the humans who made it, even if their work was so good you didn’t notice it was done. And, if you’ve somehow read this far, and are so out of the loop about modern filmmaking, Disney’s “live-action” remakes are animated films, but they’ve just finagled ways to circumvent unions and low-key delegitimize the skilled labor of VFX artists and animators in the eyes of the viewing public. Don’t fall for it.

VFX workers in North America have a union under IATSE, but it’s still developing as a union and Marvel & Disney workers only voted to unionize in the autumn of 2023. The Animation Guild (TAG), also under the IATSE umbrella,  has a longer history, but it’s been growing rapidly in the past year. A strike might be upcoming this year for TAG, so keep an eye out and remember to support striking workers and don’t cross picket lines, be they physical or digital!

Speaking of artistry over cost-cutting, I began this post with a mention that in the early 1920s, the American film industry was developing an inferiority complex in regard to its own artistry. This was in comparison to the European industries, Germany’s being the largest at the time. It’s frustrating to look back at this period and see acceptance of the opinion that American filmmakers weren’t bringing art to film. While yes, the emergent studio system was highly capitalistic and commercial, that does not mean the American industry was devoid of home-grown artists. 

United Artists was formed in 1919 by Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith precisely because studios were holding them back from investing in their art—within the same year that Earle began his Omar project. While salaries and unforgiving production schedules were also paramount concerns in the filmmakers going independent, a primary impetus was that production/distribution heads exhibited too much control over what the artists were trying to create.

Fairbanks was quickly expanding his repertoire in a more classical and fantastic direction. Cecil B. DeMille made his first in a long and very successful string of ancient epics. And the foreign-born children of the American film industry, Charlie Chaplin, Rex Ingram, and Nazimova, were poppin’ off! Chaplin was redefining comedic filmmaking. Ingram was redefining epics. Nazimova independently produced what is often regarded as America’s first art film, Salome (1923, extant), a film designed by Natacha Rambova, who was *gasp* American. Earle and his brother, William, had ambitious artistic visions of what could be done in the American industry and they also had to self-produce to get their work done. 

Meanwhile, studio heads, instead of investing in the artists they already had contracts with, tried to poach talent from Europe with mixed success (in this period, see: Ernst Lubitsch, F.W. Murnau, Benjamin Christensen, Mauritz Stiller, Victor Sjöström, and so on). I’m in no way saying it was the wrong call to sign these artists, but all of these filmmakers, even if they found success in America, had stories of being hired to inject the style and artistry that they developed in Europe into American cinema, and then had their plans shot down or cut down to a shadow of their creative vision. Even Stiller, who tragically died before he had the opportunity to establish himself in the US, faced this on his first American film, The Temptress (1926, extant), on which he was replaced. Essentially, the studio heads’ actions were all hot air and spite for the filmmakers who’d gone independent.

Finally I would like to highlight Ferdinand Earle’s statement to the industry, which he penned for from Camera in 14 January 1922, when his financial backers kidnapped his film to re-edit it on their terms:

MAGNA CHARTA

Until screen authors and producers obtain a charter specifying and guaranteeing their privileges and rights, the great slaughter of unprotected motion picture dramas will go merrily on.

Some of us who are half artists and half fighters and who are ready to expend ninety per cent of our energy in order to win the freedom to devote the remaining ten per cent to creative work on the screen, manage to bring to birth a piteous, half-starved art progeny.

The creative artist today labors without the stimulus of a public eager for his product, labors without the artistic momentum that fires the artist’s imagination and spurs his efforts as in any great art era.

Nowadays the taint of commercialism infects the seven arts, and the art pioneer meets with constant petty worries and handicaps.

Only once in a blue moon, in this matter-of-fact, dollar-wise age can the believer in better pictures hope to participate in a truely [sic] artistic treat.

In the seven years I have devoted to the screen, I have witnessed many splendid photodramas ruined by intruding upstarts and stubborn imbeciles. And I determined not to launch the production of my Opus No. 1 until I had adequately protected myself against all the usual evils of the way, especially as I was to make an entirely new type of picture.

In order that my film verison [sic] of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam might be produced under ideal conditions and safeguarded from intolerable interferences and outside worries, I entered into a contract with the Rubaiyat, Inc., that made me not only president of the corporation and on the board of directors, but which set forth that I was to be author, production manager, director, cutter and film editor as well as art director, and that no charge could be made against the production without my written consent, and that my word was to be final on all matters of production. The late George Loane Tucker helped my attorney word the contract, which read like a splendid document.

Alas, I am now told that only by keeping title to a production until it is declared by yourself to be completed is it safe for a scenario writer, an actor or a director, who is supposedly making his own productions, to contract with a corporation; otherwise he is merely the servant of that corporation, subject at any moment to discharge, with the dubious redress of a suit for damages that can with difficulty be estimated and proven.

Can there be any hope of better pictures as long as contracts and copyrights are no protection against financial brigands and bullies?

We have scarcely emerged from barbarism, for contracts, solemnly drawn up between human beings, in which the purposes are set forth in the King’s plainest English, serve only as hurdles over which justice-mocking financiers and their nimble attorneys travel with impunity, riding rough shod over the author or artist who cannot support a legal army to defend his rights. The phrase is passed about that no contract is invioliable [sic]—and yet we think we have reached a state of civilization!

The suit begun by my attorneys in the federal courts to prevent the present hashed and incomplete version of my story from being released and exhibited, may be of interest to screen writers. For the whole struggle revolves not in the slightest degree around the sanctity of the contract, but centers around the federal copyright of my story which I never transferred in writing otherwise, and which is being brazenly ignored.

Imagine my production without pictorial titles: and imagine “The Rubaiyat” with a spoken title as follows, “That bird is getting to talk too much!”—beside some of the immortal quatrains of Fitzgerald!

One weapon, fortunately, remains for the militant art creator, when all is gone save his dignity and his sense of humor; and that is the rapier blade of ridicule, that can send lumbering to his retreat the most brutal and elephant-hided lord of finance.

How edifying—the tableau of the man of millions playing legal pranks upon men such as Charles Wakefield Cadman, Edward S. Curtis and myself and others who were associated in the bloody venture of picturizing the Rubaiyat! It has been gratifying to find the press of the whole country ready to champion the artist’s cause.

When the artist forges his plowshare into a sword, so to speak, he does not always put up a mean fight. 

What publisher would dare to rewrite a sonnet of John Keats or alter one chord of a Chopin ballade?

Creative art of a high order will become possible on the screen only when the rights of established, independent screen producers, such as Rex Ingram and Maurice Tourneur, are no longer interferred with and their work no longer mutilated or changed or added to by vandal hands. And art dramas, conceived and executed by masters of screen craft, cannot be turned out like sausages made by factory hands. A flavor of individuality and distinction of style cannot be preserved in machine-made melodramas—a drama that is passed from hand to hand and concocted by patchworkers and tinkerers.

A thousand times no! For it will always be cousin to the sausage, and be like all other—sausages.

The scenes of a master’s drama may have a subtle pictorial continuity and a power of suggestion quite like a melody that is lost when just one note is changed. And the public is the only test of what is eternally true or false. What right have two or three people to deprive millions of art lovers of enjoying an artist’s creation as it emerged from his workshop?

“The Rubaiyat” was my first picture and produced in spite of continual and infernal interferences. It has taught me several sad lessons, which I have endeavored in the above paragraphs to pass on to some of my fellow sufferers. It is the hope that I am fighting, to a certain extent, their battle that has given me the courage to continue, and that has prompted me to write this article. May such hubbubs eventually teach or inforce a decent regard for the rights of authors and directors and tend to make the existence of screen artisans more secure and soothing to the nerves.

FERDINAND EARLE.

---

☕Appreciate my work? Buy me a coffee! ☕

Transcribed Sources & Annotations over on the WMM Blog!

See the Timeline for Ferdinand P. Earle's Rubaiyat Adaptation

[an-sceal]

I keep seeing punditry asking if Cocaine Bear is a good movie. Y'all, I went to a theatre and paid for a ticket to see a movie called COCAINE BEAR. In return, I received one hour and thirty-five blessed minutes filled with a BEAR ON COCAINE. "Good" as an arbitrary designation does not apply!

"Based on true events" it says. And you know what? In 1985, there was definitely a bear, on cocaine, somewhere in the Chatahoochee National Forest. That happened. (The bear, found deceased, is stuffed and on display somewhere.) It didn't say, "The official, authorized biography", it said "based on true events".

The practical effects were fun. The guy in the bear suit was obviously having a hell of a time. I saw *spoilers* intestines. There was humour and tension and chemistry. Two teenagers did the cinnamon challenge 35 years too early, with uncut Columbian cocaine.

Is Cocaine Bear a GOOD movie? Fuck, dude, I don't know! I'm not Roger Ebert! But I sure as hell got what I paid for, and that's rare enough that I'll take it.

[jamman42]

Characters/storys I think if they were real they would be a buzzfeed unsolved ep

Steve Rogers

Ok think about Amelia Earhart and how no one has found the plane? Imagine a symbol of power for the US in wwII just disappears one day, some say he crashed into the Arctic, others say he was captured yada yada. Such a case they would cover if cap was found a couple years later than he was. Bucky might also work with this mind set

Crowley and Aziraphale

Video title would prob be ‘ mysterious husbands that have appeared all throughout history’ Crowley has been EVERY WHERE IN HISTORY however he changes his look alot. However Aziraphale hasn’t really hidden himself or changed, ever. So he would be the weird nice man that the entire street thinks has been around since the 1800s and does not like customers at all. Imagine all the pieces and statues that Corey has probably had done of himself throughout history. It just looks like the same dude except one isa picture from the 1900s and the other is a statue from ancient rome. It would be an awesome ep

Hannibal/ The Chesapeake Ripper

Watch the show. No one knows who this killer is?? (Other than us watching the show but even then I can barely tell) Plus the copycat killers. He has a very specific style of killing and is very theatrical but is impossible to find, they would probably say he is a theatre major . All the theories would be very interesting to watch

The Winchester brothers

I have not seen supernatural (I know im uncultured) but my friend loves it and to my understanding, two brothers just go around the country trying to investigate paranormal activity with a man who might be an angel, and ‘fist fighting god’ (what the hell??) according to my sources. Maybe they would just be friends with Shane and Ryan and make a cameo on the show.

Trying to figure out any superhero identity (dc, marvel, ect)

Id imagine all the dumb theories and maybe even trying to get them on the show and investigating them. Spiderman would DEFINITELY get on the show just to fuck with em, especially toms spiderman bc hes a genz icon

The tardis/ the doctor

A box that just appears throughout history, no matter the time period despite being made in the 1950s , people would FREAK OUT. Like Rose Tyler for example she was missing for what a year ? And came back with a strange man out of a police box. A person called the doctor that is worshiped throughout history and sometimes there are photos of the same person in completely different times.

Thats all i could think of at the moment please tell me if you have more <3

[uwmspeccoll]

Shakespeare Weekend

This weekend we explore Shakespeare’s comedy, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the thirty-sixth volume of the thirty-seven volume The Comedies Histories & Tragedies of William Shakespeare, published by the Limited Editions Club (LEC) from 1939-1940. The Two Gentlemen of Verona is believed to be one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, written between 1594 and 1595. The story is heavily inspired by Montemayor’s pastoral romance The Seven Books of Diana (1559) and was first published as a play in the First Folio of 1623.  

French artist Pierre Brissaud (1885-1964) illustrated The Two Gentlemen of Verona with his chracteristic water-color drawings. Brissaud came from a family of artists and followed in their footsteps, training at the École des Beaux-Arts. He found great success in creating Art Deco prints for advertising firms and fashion magazines including Vogue. Brissaud was drawn to The Two Gentlemen of Verona for the challenge of capturing the city’s stunning architecture and ambiance and his work does not disappoint. In Brissaud’s water-color drawings, the characters play out their scenes against intricate architectural details and immersive landscapes. Atelier Beaufume reproduced Brissaud’s drawings for publication using actual watercolors resulting in the velvety colors appearing as if they glow upon the page. 

The volume was printed in an edition of 1950 copies at the Press of A. Colish. Each of the LEC volumes of Shakespeare’s works are illustrated by a different artist, but the unifying factor is that all volumes were designed by famed book and type designer Bruce Rogers and edited by the British theatre professional and Shakespeare specialist Herbert Farjeon. Our copy is number 1113, the number for long-standing LEC member Austin Fredric Lutter of Waukesha, Wisconsin. 

View more Limited Edition Club posts. 

View more Shakespeare Weekend posts. 

-Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[seasidesandstarscapes]

Much Ado About…Well, Everything

Summary: Roger falls in love while Chuck is waxing poetic

Rating: G

Genre: Canon Era, Falling in Love, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Slice of Life, Shakespeare References

Words: 1434

A/N: for @sparrow-in-the-field !!! It was so much fun writing these two. Thank you for the prompt!!

~

AO3

or

The shell house is abuzz when Roger gets there.

He didn’t think he had slept in that late, but everyone else is already there, voices colliding in an echoed din.

When Roger joins his team, a piece of paper is immediately shoved under his nose. Chuck’s grin is wide, bright, and Roger wonders if Chuck got any sleep the night before.

“Stub, Shorty, and I got the parts. You better be there,” Chuck all but throws the flier at Roger before bounding off to hand out some more.

Roger blinks, looks at the bold text, the obscene amount of exclamation points. He remembers the off-comment Roger made about trying out for the local theatre’s spring play, but he thought it was a joke.

“What part?” Roger asks when Chuck eventually takes his place next to him.

“Benedick. Shorty is Claudio, Stub got Leonato.”

Roger tries to think back to his high school English classes, but he never was one for Shakespeare.

“You’ll help me practice, won’t you?” Chuck smiles.

With a swallow, heart beating in his ears, Roger nods.

He’s not going to survive to opening night.

~

The thing is, Roger never meant to fall in love with Chuck.

In fact, he doesn’t know how it happened. One day Chuck was just a friend and the next, Roger couldn’t keep his head on straight.

Had Chuck’s smile always been that beautiful? Was his voice that deep this whole time? Roger turns on his head trying to figure it all out.

It doesn’t help that he has no one to talk to about this. He’s sure he’s the only one on the team who’s like this. The unspoken side of the world no one wants to acknowledge. So, he has to fester inside himself, try to deny his feelings.

Except, it’s harder than it looks. Chuck is so casual with his arm thrown about Roger’s shoulder. When they’re out drinking, Chuck doesn’t even think as he leans in close to speak in Roger’s ear over the blaring band in the corner.

Roger shivers as Chuck’s fingers dance along his neck.

“She’s a looker,” Chuck points to the singer, a blonde bombshell in a form fitting dress.

She is pretty, Roger can see that, but it doesn’t stop the envy in his chest. “Yeah, she probably has a boyfriend already.”

“Yeah,” Chuck sighs wistfully. “Ah, well. We’ll find our girls someday, won’t we, Rodge?”

Roger knows there won’t be anyone but Chuck. At least not for many years. He forces a smile, nods before taking a sip from his drink.

Chuck has taken to rubbing circles in Roger’s shoulder now. It’s maddening, but Roger doesn’t move away. For just a little while he can pretend this is something more.

They take a few minutes to enjoy the bar scene, people-watching the variety of couples, bright colors against the dim lamplight. Roger sees one woman lay her head on her man’s chest as they’re dancing and his heart aches.

He won’t ever have that chance. He won’t know love like she does.

“Thinking about stealing her away?” Chuck’s voice rumbles in Roger’s very soul.

Roger closes his eyes, inhales sharply. Chuck’s breath tickles his ear and Roger thinks he feels lips just graze the outline.

“Thinking I should be getting back,” Roger mutters. “We. Practice tomorrow.”

Chuck gives a small laugh, slaps Roger on the back. “Ever the wise one. Shall we?”

Getting to his feet, Chuck throws his coat over his shoulder, raises a brow at Roger. Nodding, Roger shoves on his hat and follows.

They walk back to the dorms in relative silence and thank god for that. Roger’s mind is abuzz, all he wants is to just tell Chuck the truth. But then everything would fall apart.

When they reach their respective rooms, Roger looks back and freezes when he sees Chuck doing the same.

“Night, Roger,” Chuck all but purrs.

Roger uses all his strength to stop his knees from buckling, steadies himself on the door. “Night, Chuck.”

He rushes into his room, slams the door shut which makes Joe lift his head just a little from his bed. He mutters something but falls back asleep to Roger’s relief.

In the darkness, Roger finally takes a breath. He’s in a losing battle and he doesn’t know what to do. So, he trudges over to his dresser, gets ready for the night.

Maybe a good night’s rest will help.

~

“Alright,” Chuck slams down a thick booklet in front of Roger. “I need help.”

Roger glances from the table to Chuck. Here he was just having a nice moment in the sun room and now Chuck’s come to disturb the peace. Not that Roger is truly mad at him.

“Thought you were rehearsing with Stub and Shorty,” he frowns.

“Yeah, but they aren’t cutting it and I can’t get this part right.”

Roger doesn’t trust this excuse but he picks up the script anyway and flips through the pages. The amount of lines Chuck has is astounding and Roger’s stomach flips. How he must sound on stage, his voice shaking the auditorium, reverberating in everyone’s hearts.

“Which,” Roger clears his throat. “Which part?”

Chuck takes the script from Roger’s hand, turns to the last few pages. “From here.”

Roger raises his brows but starts where Chuck instructed. Chuck is a natural, he has all his lines perfect, even his cues, so what his plan is underneath all this is beyond Roger.

“Soft and fair, Friar. Which is Beatrice?”

“I answer to that name. What is your will?” Roger winces.

His reading is stilted but in his defense, he’s not supposed to be a masterful actor.

“Do you not love me?”

Roger pauses, glances up at Chuck. He forgets the script, swallows as Chuck stares right into his eyes.

He does. With all his heart.

Then, Roger shakes himself, tries to get back to the lines.

“Why no; no more than reason.”

Shakespeare himself is taunting Roger and if he could go to England, he’d do it in an instant to yell at the dead man.

“Why, then your uncle and the prince and Claudio have been deceived; they swore you did,” Chuck makes his way over to the couch, oh so slowly sits next to Roger.

“Do…do you not love me?” Roger stumbles over the line.

This is all too real. His heart threatens to burst out of him, the script crumpling in his tight grip.

“Troth, no; no more than reason.”

The next moment is a dream. Chuck leans in, his breath gracing Roger’s lips. Roger knows they shouldn’t, knows he should push him away but he just can’t. He wants this so much, he’ll destroy everything just to have Chuck.

He sighs when Chuck kisses him. It’s just like he thought. Chuck is harsh, but calm, guiding Roger through their bated breaths.

Roger falls easily, melts when Chuck takes his face in both his hands. They follow each other in their embrace, a reluctance to part until they absolutely must.

“How long?” Roger asks as their foreheads press together.

“I don’t know,” Chuck admits, voice just above a whisper. “Maybe always.”

Roger nods, covering one of Chuck’s hands with his own. He’s going to wake up any minute now. But as the seconds pass, Chuck doesn’t fade. They’re still in the sun room, the script long forgotten on the floor.

“Your…,” Roger points to it. “What about your lines?”

Chuck laughs, bright and loud, pulling Roger into a tight hug. “Rodge, opening night is next week. I think I’d be in deep shit if I didn’t have my lines all but perfect.”

Roger’s eyes go wide. It was a ploy after all. He’s not mad though. If this is what gets Chuck by his side, then Roger loves him all that much for it.

He joins in with Chuck’s laughter, loves the way Chuck stares into his eyes. The calloused hands on his skin are perfection and Roger wonders how he ever lived until this moment.

With a devilish grin, Chuck leans in close to Roger, breath hot on his ear.

“But…we can always rehearse some more,” Chuck murmurs.

Roger bites his lip, soaks in Chuck’s rich, tantalizing voice. With just one nod, they scramble from the sun room, tear off to Roger’s dorm. Joe’s always out with Joyce after all. As Chuck pulls him into another kiss, Roger flies into the clouds.

Sitting in the crowd next week will be torture but at least Roger will know that all the love Chuck recites will be for him and him alone.

[noys-boise]

very interested in hearing more about hungarian rent!!! were there any notable bits you liked about it? id love to see rent performed one day, so jealous!

this is probably gonna be long I'm sorry but I've been wanting to rant (pun not intended) about this since sunday

so first of all i feel like i should mention this isn't the first time there's been a hungarian production of rent. they did a run in 2003, which even got a cast recording, it just simply wasn't? very good? like i wasn't even born yet so i didn't see it but I've listened to the songs and the translations ranged from fine to just straight up atrocious and questionable (such as accidentally implying that Mimi thinks her dad has hot hands and almost completely removing the love part of seasons of love which feels like it would be the entire point??) i think most of the problems stemmed from a random older hungarian guy doing the translations. i doubt that man was qualified for a show like rent in anyway

but flash forward to 2024. the redemption. the miracle. on december 14th and december 15th, they performed rent in hungarian for the first time in over a decade and i happened to be there on the latter of the two performances (important to mention hungarian theatres will not play a show every day, you have to check for specific dates so it's normal that they only performed it twice so far)

I was completely blown away. it felt like it was done by people who fully understand what rent is. I couldn't even tell you one favorite part so I'm just going to praise this show for several paragraphs now.

first of all, my biggest issue with the first attempt at hungarian rent and my biggest issue with most hungarian shows: the translation. i never thought I'd hear a hungarian translation of a musical i love, let alone of RENT of all things, but i swear i don't have a single lyric to complain about. notably, the translator, Cseh Dávid Péter, also played Roger. btw something i loved is a lot of background workers such as the set designer and social media manager and etc were also in the ensemble, but the moment i found out Cseh Dávid Péter translated the entire show, after seeing his performance as Roger REALLY surprised me because by the way he's also a phenomenal actor and an even better singer. My mouth was literally agape during One song glory without exaggaration.

but I don't want to praise just him even though he quickly became one of my favorite actors I'm not going to lie, the entire cast was great. extra shoutout to Ekanem Bálint and Pásztor Ádám for the sheer amount of Collins-Angel chemistry they had because i swear, Collins was doing literal heart eyes anytime he looked at Angel it's SO adorable. I also want to mention that in an extreme white majority country they still managed to find a Black actor to play Collins and he was perfect, so I find that very cool, I never see actors of color in hungarian theatre normally. okay maybe one nitpick i have with the cast, Joanne's actress (can't remember her name rn) didn't quite hit all the high notes which left me a tiny bit underwhelmed but that's maybe because I love Tracie Thoms so much I don't think anyone will live up to her for me.

okay so here's some truly random bits that stuck with me:

Mimi cat coding has always been a big part of rent for me but in this had Maureen dog coding, which i guess there's a bit of in the original at the beginning of act 2 but this translation had more of that. like in tango Maureen, they call her a dog that's salivating for the bone as a metaphor for her promiscuity

I cannot stop thinking of this bit of costume design, after Angel's death, Roger was wearing a shirt that said "I believe in angels"

in contact, the last thing Angel does while dying is reach out for Roger and Mimi's hands and unites them

this isn't really a fun fact within the show itself, more just about it, but Gadó Anita and Cseh Dávid Péter, who played Mimi and Roger, are together in real life, which i think is really cool

when Roger plays his guitar in La vie boheme, instead of saying "that doesn't remind us of Musetta's waltz" Mark says "Puccini is rolling in his grave" which i found funny

i can't really think of more to add right now but yeagh hungarian rent good 👍👍👍 and it's really special that they even could do this show in hungary, given the current political climate around lgbt+ representation in media. they did an amazing job though, none of it felt toned down or censored at all, the lyrics were also as direct as in the original, it felt great

[godmerlin]

Tagged by @the-tenth-arcanum

9 people you'd like to get to know better

three non romantic duos:

Alright... Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson. I love them they are bffs 🩷

Merlin and Gwen! I've never really seen them as anything but platonic even if I've made jokes or comments that may seem like I could see them romantically. Of course Gwen had an innocent crush on Merlin but who can blame her?

Dean Winchester and Charlie Bradbury. My beloveds. Best friendship on the show. 😭

a ship that might surprise others: i am unfortunate swine and love buffy/giles 🤣🤣🤣 shhh that's probably it though.

Last song: nightswimming - R.E.M.

Last film: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice lol I haven't watched a lot of movies lately. But I do believe I haven't seen one since I went to the theatre for that.

Currently reading: don't hate me but I'm not currently reading any books. Because my vision is fucked and when I try to read books the words move on the page...so I've been reading a lot of fanfic because on my phone I can take my glasses off and close one eye and it sort of doesn't do it. I know I could read e-books but I have sooooo many real books i haven't read and ugh yeah I have an eye appointment for the end of the month hopefully things get fixed!!!! Then I shall read again!!!

Currently watching: well I'm trying to rewatch Merlin again. But I'm also finally watching. Heartstopper and and Agatha all along and ummmm rewatching a ton of colin shows too. It's all whatever my brain is capable of which sometimes isn't a lot.

Currently consuming: like...food? Because nothing...I just drank water, does that count? Is this even what this question is about??? I don't know. Lol

Currently craving: I don't even know. Happiness! Lmfao I'm not joking but that's lame...but also just knowledge with what the hell is happening to me. 🙃

I don't know who to tag I'm so sorry I suck but I'm always terrified to tag people in these things I want to get to know every one if my mutuals though lol