Joan Crawford is a terrifying vision in fishnets in the late 60s camp masterpiece BERSERK

There's nothing certain in show business," Joan Crawford tells us in the aptly titled 1967 gem Berserk. "We've eaten caviar, and we've eaten sawdust." Connoisseurs of Bad Big-Top Movies We Adore like Big Circus, Carnival Story and The Greatest Show on Earth can be certain of one thing, though: Berserk --  which features Crawford looking even more butch and self-enchanted than usual -- offers up the tastiest mouthful of sawdust to be found anywhere in this demented genre.

When 59-year-old circus ringmaster Crawford (a terrifying vision in her trim tuxedo jacket and fishnet stockings) introduces her world-famous high-wire soloist, the audience is definitely not ready for what happens next: the high wire snaps and coils around the performer's neck, leaving him dangling above their upturned faces. Oblivious to the human tragedy, a post-show Crawford busies herself with the night box-office receipts. "How can you be so cold-blooded?" asks her business partner. "We're running a circus, not a charm school," Crawford growls, going on to point out that the violent death will be good for business. Then she changes tack. "What can I do to cheer you up?" she queries. "I just may let you tuck me in tonight." God forbid! Even with Vaseline smeared on the lens and strategic shadows cast across her face, our star looks, at best, like a short, male senior citizen in elaborate drag.

The next day, who should turn up but a high-wire soloist in need of a job. The suspiciously useful newcomer is strapping studmuffin Ty Hardin, who is soon embroiled in a torrid affair with Crawford, despite the fact that he's 22 years her junior. The biggest scare in this whole movie is the appearance of a postcoital Crawford, done up in a negligee and a big-hair wig. "Long ago I lost the capacity to love," she purrs, very believably indeed. "If you want me to spell it out for you, I will. What we have is no more than a greeting card. Maybe not as friendly." Just as you're thinking that's not exactly what you'd say if you looked like an aging female impersonator and had somehow gotten Ty Hardin into bed, Hardin replies, "You're playing a dangerous game!"

When Crawford's business partner is murdered, the circus performers get agitated. The magician -- obviously the thinker in the group -- announces, "It is clear to me there is a killer loose." Enter blowsy, badly bleached blonde tootsie Diana Dors (who was at one time hailed as England's answer to Marilyn Monroe -- i.e., Jayne Mansfield with bad teeth). As the magician's new paramour/assistant, Dors expresses her view that bosswoman Crawford is the killer. Overhearing this, Crawford snaps, "You slut!" Whereupon Dors demonstrates the accuracy of this assessment by boozily coming on to Hardin. You may want to memorize Hardin's reply for your own future use: "You're peddling your merchandise at the wrong booth." When Hardin tosses Dors out on her rear -- literally -- a high-water mark in cinema cattiness is reached as an onlooking circus babe croaks, "You must be more careful, you'll damage your brain!" Happily, a nail-scratching, wig-pulling catfight ensues.

Enter Crawford's unhappy teen daughter (Judy Geeson) who's just been expelled from charm school. "Let me stay here with you," she pleads to her mom. "The circus is in my blood like it's in yours." Speaking of blood, the next big-top demise occurs when the magician saws Dors in two for real. Now even Crawford is afraid. "I've got the jitters!" she confesses to Hardin. "I'm not made of stone!" Actually, wax is what we were thinking.

Doing what anyone whose circus is being torn asunder by a psychopath would do, Crawford throws a gigantic party, at which she confesses to Hardin that she's made him her partner: "You'll have 25 percent of the circus and 100 percent of me." When charm school dropout Geeson appears to be sulking her way through the shindig, Crawford wonders out loud if the girl is spoiled. "You certainly never lacked anything," she points out. "No, except what I needed most... you!" the teen shrieks, bolting into the night. "I have an eerie feeling the killer will strike again at any moment," Crawford murmurs. Hmmm. Is this just a doting mom's wishful thinking? We don't want to spoil the ending for you, but suffice it to say that Berserk parallels its star's real life in some amusing ways. The on-screen Crawford often had her hands full with pesky teen daughters -- think Mildred Pierce, Strait-Jacket, Della -- but for cinematic subtext on the offscreen Crawford's doubts about her adopted daughter Christina, Berserk is unsurpassed.

Note: If you do happen to catch Berserk, be sure to note circus owner Crawford's special booth for Pepsi-Cola, a company in which the real-life Crawford was a major stockholder. Given the homicidal goings-on of the film, Pepsi's slogan on the booth -- "Come alive with Pepsi" -- is a brilliant touch.

CHRISTMAS 1981 - Seven year old Bobby Johnson makes his first snowman -- and the beginning of the Johnson family's downward spiral into a deep holiday depression that would last for decades to come.

Well...
at least
they had six
relatively
carefree
years.

ON THOSE NIGHTS WHEN YOU JUST HAVE TO GET YOUR REST . . .

Armageddagain: ‘2012’ writes a new chapter in the destruction manual

We like to imagine that the director Roland Emmerich had a key transformative experience at the age of 7, when a relative visiting from Bavaria accidentally trampled his scale model of the Reichstag. Suddenly a light bulb went on over our young Teuton’s head as he realized: People will pay for this.

In what exact sense he may have meant that remains ambiguous, but Emmerich now stands as our premier Hollywood Disastermeister, nuking and zapping historical landmarks in Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, and other works of taste and forbearance. He has long since surpassed the previous title-holder, producer Irwin Allen (The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno), to become the Cecil B. DeMille of his generation, purveying jaw-dropping sensation yoked to cheap sentiment and appallingly (or is that appealingly?) flimsy characterizations.

Allen, after all, only turned an ocean liner upside down. In 2012, Emmerich flips our entire planet on its head. The result is a state-of-the-art multiplex three-ring circus whose special effects stagger the senses and play like a video game, whose human drama aims for the cosmic and lands waist-deep in the Big Silly. Call it “Apocalypse Really Soon,’’ or, better yet, “Airport 2012.’’

What’s the rumpus? Not the end-times foretold by the Mayan calendar, but those darn solar neutrinos, streaming from the sun and heating up the Earth’s core to a point where the crust has broken free and the continental plates start doing a merry dance. A few teacups get chipped: California slides into the sea and Yellowstone Park blows straight up into the sky. And that’s just the opening act.

Emmerich and his co-writer Harald Kloser get the “science’’ of the movie out of the way fairly quickly, starting their tale in 2009 as US government geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) journeys to India to get a first-hand peek at the planetary core from the bottom of a copper mine. It may look like a giant Jacuzzi to you, but you’re not a scientist in a Hollywood movie.

Helmsley races back to Washington to warn President Wilson (kindly Danny Glover) and cabinet secretary Carl Anheuser [Bush?] (meanypants Oliver Platt) while 2012 races to introduce us to the rest of the movie’s overcrowded passenger list. A disaster movie needs an Everyman, so we have John Cusack as Jackson Curtis, a divorced dad and author of failed sci-fi novels that everyone in the film seems to have read.

Camping with his kids (Liam James and Morgan Lily) in Yellowstone brings Jackson in contact with both the geologist’s team and a conspiracy theorist (Woody Harrelson, mining his tabloid crackpot persona for all it’s worth) who explains everything and has a map for it. This cues the main action of 2012: Jackson, his estranged wife Kate (Amanda Peet), her plastic-surgeon boyfriend (actor-director Tom McCarthy, who must be wondering what on earth he stepped in), and the kids skedaddling from one literal hot spot to another as the ground caves in just behind them.

Much of the movie takes place in the air (the boyfriend’s an amateur pilot) as our plucky survivors barrel between tilting buildings and beneath collapsing freeways. The carnage in 2012 is distant and PG-13; Emmerich keeps us back from individual human suffering because that’s just not box-office. Civilization here is a high-end ant farm, and its death is the occasion for wonder, pity, and popcorn. We do zoom in on a few individual tragedies, most of which befall the ethnic and the old. The sinful, too: the pop moralism of 2012 isn’t far from that of the “Left Behind’’ series or any classic Hollywood western.

Glimpsed in the chaos of 2012 are some welcome hambones: Harrelson, as mentioned; the wattle-shaking Platt; George Segal as a cruise-ship entertainer who really should have called home earlier (one of the film’s many inadvertent laughs); Zlatko Buric as a corrupt Russian industrialist whose voice seems to emanate from a vodka-soaked crypt beneath the Kremlin; Beatrice Rosen as the industrialist’s goodhearted bimbo mistress, not quite as smart as her lapdog; the dog itself, who gets a hilarious scene toward the end and who in fact may be the Shelley Winters of this particular enterprise.

Did we mention the airborne giraffes? Or the Tibetan Buddhists who join our heroes mostly to provide new age spiritual validation and a climactic thumbs-up? Or Thandie Newton as the President’s daughter, making goo-goo eyes at Ejiofor and struggling with the potted dialogue, which at times seems to have been poorly translated from the German? When Jackson and Kate stop in the middle of a cataclysmic deluge to discuss why their marriage failed, the melodramatic double-vision of 2012 turns actively ridiculous. Forget the Mayans - Humphrey Bogart had it right: The problems of two people really don’t amount to a hill of beans in this movie’s crazy world.

Anyway, admit it, we’re here to see the Sistine Chapel come crashing down on thousands of screaming digital extras, or the Washington Monument totter and fall, or Caesar’s Palace tip into a fiery pit of magma (repent, ye weekend gamblers!). The attraction of disaster movies - which by definition have to get bigger and bigger if we’re still to feel them - is that they allow us to imagine our own extinction from the cheap seats, jolting us with spectacle, reframing our perspective, sending us home safe and sound.

In the wake of 9/11 (whose iconography this movie toys with in the form of collapsing skyscrapers and ash-covered faces), the need for entertainment apocalypse seems weirdly keener. 2012 is only a movie, and reassuringly so: It’s one huge, overlong, cornball Armageddon - a work of shlock and awe. In one scene Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen on TV declaring that “Da vurst iss ofah,’’ but he couldn’t be more wrong. Roland Emmerich is just getting started.

If 2012 falters, it does so in its running time. It could lose a subplot or two. But at least Emmerich's denouement is nicely compact, with a final exchange that is at once absurd and as beautifully succinct a reassurance as the famous “Nobody’s perfect!” that ends Some Like it Hot. This is next-level nutjobbery by a filmmaker at his peak. He can end our world any time.

We interrupt this blog for a brief word from Ms. Karen Walker...

"Honey, when you were born, you were born in a gay tree.
And then you fell out and hit every gay branch on the way down.
And then you fell on top of a gay man.


And then you did him."



erm...uh...
thank you, Karen...





And now
we return you
to our blog.

The long-awaited return of CARRIE THE MUSICAL?

Tony Award winner Sutton Foster and Tony nominees Marin Mazzie and Jennifer Damiano will take part in the industry presentation of the 1988 cult musical Carrie.

Yes, my dumplings, there actually was a Broadway musical based on Stephen King’s CARRIE!

Carrie (1974) was Stephen King's first published novel. The book follows a shy teenage girl who is raised by a fanatic Christian fundamentalist mother in a small Maine town. Carrie soon discovers she has telekinetic powers and ultimately uses them to take revenge on the classmates who taunt and humiliate her throughout the novel. Carrie was later adapted into a 1976 film starring Sissy Spacek in the title role, with Piper Laurie as her mother and Betty Buckley in a featured role as the gym teacher.

Fame songwriters Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford collaborated with Carrie screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen on the musical adaptation which premiered in London at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988 starring Linzi Hately as Carrie, with Tony winner Barbara Cook as her mother. The cast also featured Tony nominee Charlotte d'Amboise, Gene Anthony Ray and Darlene Love.

Terry Hands directed the production that featured choreography by Debbie Allen, both of whom repeated their work for Broadway. The musical proved challenging to mount, with numerous special effects and the crucial plot point of dousing its leading lady with buckets of fake blood.

Carrie arrived on Broadway at the Virginia Theatre in April 1988 with Betty Buckley (a veteran of the 1976 film) replacing Cook in the role of Margaret White. Much of the original London principal cast, including Hately, d'Amboise, Ray and Love, reprised their performances.

Capitalized at over $7 million, Carrie gained cult status for being such an expensive and short-lived Broadway venture. After being derided by critics and leaving audiences divided, Carrie closed on Broadway after playing only 16 previews and 5 performances.

For those of you too young to remember this 1988 debacle, may I recommend Ken Mandlebaum’s magnificent book NOT SINCE CARRIE which details the show’s rise and fall along with hundreds of other flops throughout the decades. (For theater afficionados and collectors of flop musicals, there simply is no substitute.)

From Mandelbaum’s book:

“What makes CARRIE so unique in flop musical history is its combination of soaring, often breathtaking sequences and some of the most appalling and ridiculous scenes ever seen in a musical. It alternately scaled the heights and hit rock-bottom. CARRIE also had non-stop energy and, unlike so many flops, was not dull for a second.”

“While the response of those who saw CARRIE varied wildly, the response of those who missed it was uniform. Never have so many people who missed a flop musical wished so fervently that they had seen it. Many of those who did see it found themselves unable to stop talking about it, and live tapes of the score were widely circulated and treasured. When flop musicals opened during the season that began with CARRIE, critics and audiences had to admit that the new flops did not begin to live up to the standard set by CARRIE. CARRIE was fascinating, thrilling, horrible, and unbelievable. The ads said, “There’s Never Been A Musical Like Her” – and there never would be again.”

While Broadway has had it’s share of musical triumphs, it has also seen hundreds of musicals that had brief runs, lost millions of dollars and broke the hearts of their creators and performers. The legendary catastrophe Carrie has inspired websites, blogs, unauthorized productions, rip-offs and imitations and even a petition to the authors asking them to release the performance rights. There are also countless live bootleg recordings of the entire show - both on audio and video, which has led a growing legion of fans to wonder just what went wrong.

Well, they may not have to wonder anymore. As of today it has been announced that this infamously short-lived 1988 Broadway musical will have a private reading in Manhattan in November. Stafford Arima (Altar Boyz, Tin Pan Alley Rag, Somewhere in Time, London's Ragtime) will direct the Equity reading; the industry presentation is Nov. 20. Musical direction is by Stephen Oremus (Wicked, 9 to 5).

Variety reports that Tony-winning producer Jeffrey Seller (In the Heights, Avenue Q, Rent) has reunited composer Michael Gore, lyricist Dean Pitchford and book writer Lawrence D. Cohen to take another look at the property.

The cast will feature Foster (Shrek, Thoroughly Modern Millie) as gym teacher Ms. Gardner, Mazzie (Passion, Ragtime) as Margaret White, Molly Ranson (August: Osage County) as Carrie and Damiano (Next to Normal, Spring Awakening) as Sue.

Also revealed are "American Idol" finalist Diana DeGarmo (Hairspray, The Toxic Avenger) as Chris, Matt Doyle (Spring Awakening, Bye Bye Birdie) as Tommy and John Arthur Greene (West Side Story) as Billy.

The Carrie ensemble includes Corey Boardman (Next to Normal, Altar Boyz), Lilli Cooper (Spring Awakening), Katrina Rose Dideriksen (Things to Ruin), Benjamin Eakeley (Sweeney Todd), Emily Ferranti, Kyle Harris (The Cure), Philip Hoffman (A Catered Affair), Kaitlin Kiyan (Hair), Max Kumangai (What's That Smell?), Mackenzie Mauzy (White Noise), Preston Sadleir (Mrs. Sharp), Jonathan Schwartz (The Fantasticks) Bud Weber and Sasha Weiss (Jerry Springer).

On a personal note, I just adore Carrie the musical and hope that this time it works. The score is simply fantastic and no matter how it turns out, this is one theatrical event that promises to be most memorable.

LOVE NEVER DIES - The Sequel That Gaston Leroux Somehow Forgot To Write. (click here for official website)

Ever since Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical megahit Phantom of the Opera became a money-making juggernaut, the composer has feverishly been consumed with trying to top himself (if not artistically, then - at least - financially).

And so he gave us Aspects of Love (1989), which enjoyed a long (if undeserved) run in London’s West End. However, when the show transferred to the Great White Way in 1990, it received rather lackluster reviews. In fact, New York Times theater critic Frank Rich wrote “Whether Aspects of Love is a musical for people is another matter.” (well...  ouch.)

Aspects of Love closed after only 377 performances, losing its entire $8 million investment and, according to the New York Times, “Making it perhaps the greatest flop in Broadway history.” (Although Cyrano the musical (1993) managed to topple that record.)

Next up for ALW was Sunset Boulevard. Most people are familiar with the famous Billy Wilder film starring William Holden and Gloria Swanson. It is classic cinema of the first magnitude and if you haven’t ever seen it, stop reading this and go rent it immediately. As to the Lloyd Webber incarnation, here was a show where the offstage shenanigans threatened to overshadow the onstage plot.

Originally cast as faded silent film star Norma Desmond was American diva extraordinaire Patti LuPone (Evita). Nobody believes that LuPone is more talented than Lupone herself, so it must have come as quite a shock to her when the show closed down for repairs, (after the London critics savaged it), and she was not asked back for the revamp. Instead, the producers brought in steely-voiced belter Betty Buckley (Cats). Buckley received excellent notices and LuPone sued and received a reported $1 million.

Simultaneously, the producers had a production of the Sunset revamp running in LA starring film star Glenn Close. When the stars of this production were ready to bring the show to Broadway, it was announced that Faye Dunaway would replace Close in LA. But alas, this was not to be. Lloyd Webber deemed that Dunaway’s voice was not up to snuff and he opted to close the LA production. Dunaway deemed this a breach of contract, also sued and won a reported cool million.

In his book The Hot Seat, Frank Rich noted that these lawsuits contributed to Sunset Boulevard setting the record for the most money lost by a theatrical endeavor in the history of the United States. According to The New York Times, operating costs soared far beyond the budget and the “Broadway production has earned back, at best, 80 percent of the initial $13 million”. Running costs and advertising fees exceeded ticket sale intake. The road companies also generated large financial losses. Rich puts the final figure near or above $20 million lost, making the show what he termed a “flop-hit,” as it ran more than two years.

Lloyd Webber’s next two shows (Whistle Down the Wind (1996) and The Beautiful Game (2000)) never even made it to Broadway and it would be five years until Broadway received his next effort, 2004's The Woman in White.

The Woman in White was based on the famous novel by Wilkie Collins. With lyrics by David Zippel and a book by Charlotte Jones, it ran for nineteen months in the West End and three months on Broadway in 2005, making it one of Lord Lloyd Webber’s least successful shows.

And now, God help us, The Phantom of the Opera is coming back - but this time, he'll be haunting the amusement park at New York's Coney Island. Star composer Andrew Lloyd Webber announced Thursday a long-awaited sequel to his massively successful Phantom, one of the world's best-loved and longest-running musicals.

'Till I Hear You Sing' video sung by Ramin Karimloo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTyRIoS3G8s

Love Never Dies Press Launch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq_tkxWV-QY

"There's unfinished business," Lloyd Webber told journalists assembled for a teaser - a new song featuring the titular Phantom, played by Iranian-born Canadian Ramin Karimloo, and his love interest, Christine, played by American actress Sierra Boggess - "I don't regard this as a sequel; it's a standalone piece,"

The new musical will be called Love Never Dies. It is due to open in London in March. It will also be staged in New York beginning in November 2010 and will open in Australia in 2011. The musical picks up a decade after the original's conclusion, and has the Phantom trading his customary hideout beneath the Paris opera house for Coney Island, the iconic Brooklyn amusement park known for its roller coasters and "Nathan's Famous" hot dogs.

Lloyd Webber said he wanted to produce a sequel because the original's ending, which sees Christine leave the brooding Phantom for his rival, Raoul, was unsatisfactory. "Christine goes off with this boring guy, the Phantom disappears," Lloyd Webber proclaimed. He said he wanted to set the piece at Coney Island because, at its turn-of-the-century heyday, it was "the eighth wonder of the world." "Think of Vegas and then triple it," he continued.

Lloyd Webber sketched out an outline of the plot, saying the Phantom made his way to Coney Island after losing Christine. The Phantom rises from one of the attractions at a freak show to control the entire complex, without ever losing his love for Christine.

Other characters from the original also reprise their roles. The original hit musical, a longtime fixture on the London and New York stages, featured elaborate staging and songs such as "The Music of the Night," and "All I Ask of You." Based on the French novel by Gaston Leroux, the play is the longest-running show on Broadway, beating out Webber's other dubious hit, Cats, in 2006 and reaching an unprecedented 9,000 performances on the night of Sept. 17. Producers say it has been seen by more than 100 million people worldwide and has been translated into 15 languages and staged in 25 countries, including Brazil, China and Poland. The album of the show has sold more than 40 million copies.

But musical sequels on Broadway have tended to flop.

Annie, which opened in 1977, was one of Broadway's biggest hits, but Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge closed during its 1989 out of town tryout in Washington. The sequel to Bye Bye Birdie, a Tony-winning hit in 1960, died on Broadway in 1981 after only four performances. And does anyone recall the 1994 sequel to The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas?

Anyone?

Mr. Lloyd Webber avoided trying to predict the sequel's success. "I'm very happy with the piece and that's enough for me," he said.Love Never Dies had a difficult birth. The composer abandoned a previous attempt at a sequel more than decade ago, saying the story wasn't right. Frederick Forsyth, who the Lloyd Webber  said helped him with the idea, eventually published a novel, The Phantom of Manhattan, in 1999.

Director Jack O'Brien acknowledged that tampering with such a wildly popular music and theater franchise was dangerous. "No one's going to thank us for doing this," he said. "We're playing around with people's memories." But he defended the sequel, saying the years of back-and-forth made it a more solid work.

Naturally, a success would be another coup for the musical megastar, whose hits include Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. Lloyd Webber's entertainment empire has made him one of Britain's richest men, with an estimated wealth of $1.2 billion, according to The Sunday Times of London Rich List

So could there ever be a sequel to the sequel?

Mr. Karimloo, who plays the Phantom, said he wasn't against the idea."Maybe somewhere warm," he said, joking that the Phantom "seems like an L.A. kind of guy." The composer was less enthusiastic. "There isn't going to a sequel set in Tahiti," he said. "I don't see how the story could possibly continue." Unless, of course, Love Never Dies manages to beat the odds and becomes a hit. But given Lord Lloyd Webber's track record since Phantom of the Opera opened, there almost seems little chance of that.