Stage Door: "Fun Home" & "An American in Paris"

The Tony Award Nominations are exactly one week from today, so we really ought to talk about the musicals that might be vying for top honors. Both of today's shows have movie connections, albeit one more tenuous than the other. Both are also likely nominees in the Best Musical category, which is the Best Picture of the Tony Awards. Yes, there are 3 other top prizes (Play, Revival of a Play, Revival of a Musical) but Musical is the most coveted prize and the one with arguably the biggest impact on legacies and box office. Ten musicals are eligible in this category for the 2014/2015 season and I'd be surprised if these two won't comprise half of the four-wide nominee list. 

Two fine "new" musicals after the jump...

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Q&A Part 1: Avatar the Musical (Not Really) & Instant Classics

For this week's "Ask Nathaniel" party, I asked people to be inspired by the theater (Tony season is upon us) or by the science fiction genre. I promised 10 questions. 10 answers but that's too long. So here's part one of two: 4 questions today. 6 tomorrow. here we go...

I started drawing myself as a Na'vi but got bored when I realized my lack of hair meant I couldn't ride dragons. Unfinished.STEVE: Do have fear that the million Avatar sequels that will happen will ruin the magic of the original for you?

NATHANIEL: I love Avatar but it will ruin itself. Technological breakthroughs rarely age well because there's always another technological breakthrough around the corner to make the previous one look antique. The exception is something like Star Wars because its success wasn't really about how "new" it looked. In fact, it was successful because it was so good at being an old thing (adventure serial) and using old techniques in improved new ways like models and matte paintings and whatnot. I think it's quite funny that the upgrades when they "fixed" the Star Wars trilogy later on actually made them seem less timeless. Computerized Jabba the Hut for example totally places you in the exact moment of when CGI looked like that. Puppet Jabba is forever.

Plus will those three Avatar sequels actually happen despite the current plans? James Cameron has only made two films in the past 20 years and he's already 60 years old. I realize he's planning to shoot them simultaneously but if he weren't he'd be wrap up a full Avatar quadrilogy in 2044 or so and then retire and/or die at 90.

JAMES: What witches do you think Meryl Streep was offered when she turned 40?

OMG I LOVE THIS QUESTION. I have ignorantly never questioned this  despite the fact that Meryl Streep has been quoted about this a few times. [More...]

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Finger-Linking Good

No Screen
Indie Wire Patricia Arquette will pen a memoir on her career and single motherhood  
EW A chocolate sculpture of Benedict Cumberbatch. eek.
Tony Awards what's eligible? We'll be revving up more theater posts for Tony Season (everything is about to open... April being the theater's December if you will)
NY Times profiles the "Hand to God" playwright Robert Askins. ("Hand to God" is the latest risque puppet comedy post Avenue Q -- though not really like it otherwise -- and it's very funny)

Big Screen
IndieWire Manoel de Oliveira RIP (1908-2015)

Small Screen
Buzzfeed the greatest article ever written about the Starz series Outlander Season 1
Melanie Lynskey teases a second season of Togetherness. Did you watch it? So funny-sad and endearing
AV Club the 7 defining pitches of Mad Men

Computer Screen
Dartboard Patton Oswalt goes on an epic twitter rant about comedy and our delicate sensibilities in 2015
Variety thinks Marvel & Netflix have nothing to worry about with the impending launch Daredevil though correct me if I'm wrong... this review of 5 episodes (no spoilers) doesn't really say if it's any good or not, does it? 

Today's Must Watch
MISSI PYLE WANTS TO F*** YOU UP. Watch this amusing commercial and then help Missi raise funds to shoot her music video (multiple celebrity cameos promised) for her awesome revenge anthem "I Wanna Fuck You Up" -- Consider your donation a thank you for her awesomely generous guest blogging day right here at TFE. Yes, I am donating. Although I haven't decided who I want to fuck up the most. You can name your target in her video!

Cast This: Carole King Musical Headed to the Screen

Manuel here bringing you news of the latest Broadway musical to make the leap to the big screen. Yes, we’re still waiting on more Wicked news, I’d love an update on that McG version of Spring Awakening I keep willing to disappear, and I can’t be the only one excited to see what Bill Condon is going to do with animated gem and Broadway smash Beauty and the Beast but the news come courtesy of Sony Pictures who will be adapting Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. 

As the helpfully blunt title tells us, the musical is a jukebox biopic of the famed songrwriter. I’m sure they’re hoping for a Mamma Mia! type hit and less of a Jersey Boys type miss, but that will likely come down to execution, marketing, buzz and many other elements we can ignore at this early step of the game.

the great singer songwriter Carole King back in her heydayJessie Mueller won the Tony award for Best Actress at last year’s Tonys and while she’s clearly very talented (she was my Cinderella at the Shakespeare in the Park’s production of Into the Woods a few years back), I’m guessing they might go with a bigger name for this star-vehicle. Unless they hope King is enough of a name to get people into seats?

Anyone care to play casting director?

Does Beautiful have a friend in you as it hopes to charm your mom into going to the movies to hum along to King’s tunes?

Stage Door: Bradley Cooper in 'The Elephant Man'

Jose here for a special weekend edition of Stage Door, starring one of our Best Actor nominees...

The stage directions for Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man strictly call for “no prosthetic makeup” to be worn by the actor playing the severely deformed character of Joseph Merrick. It's only during a scene in which surgeon Frederick Treves explains to the audience what his deformities consisted of, that we get to see the actor playing Merrick become “the Elephant Man”.

Seeing Bradley Cooper play the part of Merrick, it's tough to believe it's as same actor you've just seen in his Oscar nominated role as Chris Kyle in American Sniper. [More...]

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