by Nathaniel R
Real life theater friends Ben & Beanie, doing a musical theater movie adaptation together. But they won't be done with it for another 20 years
While The Film Experience was in the pro-Boyhood camp in 2014 we were never among its biggest fans. It was hard to be in that club given the massive stanning for a movie that was winning Best Picture prizes left and right in its year. But today we love it more than we ever have now that it's given the king of longform cinema, Richard Linklater, the funding and confidence to attempt the coolest or most foolish movie musical ever. As you may have heard he's now embarking on an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's most beloved flop Merrily We Roll Along to be filmed over the next 20 (gulp!) years...
If you've never seen the Sondheim show the gimmick is that the show moves backwards in time so you start with three jaded and estranged middle-aged people in showbiz (a movie producer, a playwright, and a theater critic) and you move (mostly) backwards until they're young best friend twenty-something dreamers with no idea what's really ahead for them for the show's gorgeous finale. All that being said, Merrily We Roll Along is to Sondheim shows what, oh, One From the Heart is to Francis Ford Coppola... a highly ambitious but super-duper niche production that doesn't quite work, unless you make a lot of concessions for it, but which is also genuinely loved by more than a few super-fans who will do just that! Get it?
UPDATED WITH CORRECTION VIA BEN PLATT'S TWITTER SINCE MULTIPLE SITES HAD GOTTEN WHO HE WAS PLAYING WRONG: The film will star Ben Platt (of "Dear Evan Hansen" fame though you also know him from the Pitch Perfect movies or Ricki and the Flash, if you haven't seen him on Broadway) as Charlie the playwright, Blake Jenner (Everybody Wants Some!!) in the central role of Frank, the songwriter turned movie producer, and Beanie Feldstein as their theater critic friend Mary. That's righti! This makes Richard Linklater's Merrily We Roll Along also an elaborate in-joke with Greta Gerwig & Lady Bird fans since Beanie's character Julie played the role of Mary in the high school musical within that perfect movie.
Lady BIrd's musical theatre kids
The most common instantaneous response to this project online seems to be snarky cynicism, with people claiming its foolish to assume movies will still be around in 2040, let alone the world. It's true that the Planet Earth is being overrun by fascists and may well become unliveable soon due to climate change before this movie wraps production. But frankly, we believe that the apocalypse is the only thing that will truly kill the cinema (which has survived everything that's happened to it to date) so we choose to believe that we'll still be around to see Merrily We Roll Along in 2040 (if we survive both old age and climate change) when it premieres in whatever way movies do premiere in that far flung possibly dystopic future.
Stephen Sondheim definitely won't be around to see Merrily We Roll Along: THE MOVIE! since he's 89 years old at the moment. However, we think this news must still delight him. How cool would it be to know that your art will survive you, not just in theory but quite specifically since a twenty-year project based on your art is already in the works (along with the assumption that your shows will be revived as long as musical revivals exist). Not that Sondheim couldn't live to be 109 -- the oldest living person right now is 116 years old! -- but it's unlikely, no matter how much we'd like him to be immortal.
The original Broadway cast of Merrily We Roll Along, then and now...
For those of you who are interested in Merrily We Roll Along we highly recommend the documentary Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened (2016) which features the cast of the original stage production looking back at the doomed musical (which made it through just 16 performances on Broadway).