cant talk rn obsessed over the design concept of this 2017 production of pinocchio as a stage play where pinocchio is the only character played by a human actor and the rest of the cast are portrayed as puppets ,,,
One of my favourite bits of media history trivia is that back in the Elizabethan period, people used to publish unauthorised copies of plays by sending someone who was good with shorthand to discretely write down all of the play's dialogue while they watched it, then reconstructing the play by combining those notes with audience interviews to recover the stage directions; in some cases, these unauthorised copies are the only record of a given play that survives to the present day. It's one of my favourites for two reasons:
It demonstrates that piracy has always lay at the heart of media preservation; and
Imagine being the 1603 equivalent of the guy with the cell phone camera in the movie theatre, furtively scribbling down notes in a little book and hoping Shakespeare himself doesn't catch you.
*puts hands on hollywood exec's shoulders, staring unblinking into their eyes* listen to me. you will never get people who hate musicals to like musicals by making your musical less of a musical. if you hide the fact that your film is a musical in the advertising, you're going to get a lot of low ratings from people who hate musicals and went into your movie not expecting a musical and got one anyway. people who hate musicals will hate them no matter how realistic and diegetic and lowkey you try to make it. they will hate musicals even if you completely excise anything complicated, over the top, silly, or even slightly challenging. they will hate musicals even if you cut half the songs. they will hate musicals even if you cast that a-lister who can't sing worth a damn. stop trying to market to people who hate musicals. they're a lost cause. your audience should be people who love musicals. this half-assed middle ground pisses off both camps. just embrace the fact that your movie is a musical. lean into it. don't try and trick musical haters into coming to your film when you could be marketing to the theater kids. better cringe than a coward.
Leitmotifs drive me insane, like I hear *repeated melody that has an association with a person, idea, or situation* and I go *tears up the fucking rug like a dog*
If you ever feel like you’ve made bad decisions just remember that somewhere out there is a theatre director at an all-white high school about to choose the spring musical
Any time somebody argues that you should avoid the use of obvious pop culture references and current slang in prose fiction in order to avoid "dating" the text, I'm reminded that our primary evidence for when several of Shakespeare's plays were written is that their dialogue quotes specific pieces of contemporary popular media, and that there's strong evidence many of the words he's credited by modern authorities with inventing are literally just contemporary youth slang. Like, if it's good enough for Shakespeare it's good enough for me, buddy!