"This has probably been answered over the years here, but who allows these directors to make these changes to original properties?"
The estates of the writers - sometimes their progeny, sometimes not. Most of them will OK almost anything, if the potential profit is sufficiently significant. There's no such thing as a person who thinks they are "rich enough."
It's been said a million times before but - any director who thinks they know how to write better than their writer(s), ought to just write their own piece. O'Brian's actions here are the sort of thing every writer with any self-confidence and integrity abhors.
There are better years and worse years, but Broadway has always played host to a good number of shows that are little more than tired clichés wrapped in shiny paper, with which mass audiences are most comfortable. Perhaps the ratio of clichéd to fresh has been growing, who can say?
It's a good point, though, that to compare musical theatre today to that of the 1960s is specious; back then, musicals were light popular entertainment, and songs from the scores o
The script for Angels (at least the script published prior to the Broadway opening) specifies that Joe strips everything off. And that wasn't a stage manager's note, it was Kushner's physical action (I've heard this from the horse's mouth, in a public talk). David Marshall Grant refused to do full nudity, which is why the original Broadway staging didn't have it.
Interesting to note that Mantello has cut the intermissons for both his plays this year, and both run about two hours. Has he developed an antipathy to them?
That may be true, although there have been many performers and shows nominated long after their closing date. In any event, I am skeptical that Rannells would have superseded any of this seasons featured actor nominees.
Not that anyone cares about such a thing as "logic" or "sense" with a lowbrow, immoral show like this (that glamorizes and trivializes crime and murder) - but Sonny is a contemporary of Cologero's parents. Palminteri today (in real life, not in the old posted photos) looks about 25 years older than the actors playing those roles.
It's sort of like Joan Crawford playing her daughter's role on The Secret Storm.
I think it would be much like trying to revive Cactus Flower or Forty Carats or Mary, Mary or Sunday in New York or A Hole in the Head - these were all contemporary light comedies that reflected the spirit of their time very well. Today, they would be period pieces. None could be truly successfully "updated," and why would you anyway, instead of writing a light comedy that truly reflects our current
GeorgeandDot said: "No one is free of prejudice. That's just fact and liberalism of the early 1900's is more conservative by today's standards."
Both sides of that statement are absolutes, and neither is a universal truth. The first half is particularly doctrinaire,and sounds much like the Christian dogma that no one is born without original sin. Both ideas assuage a human need for guilt and self-flagellation. One is taught in church, the other in Fr
GeorgeandDot wrote: "Sorkin's version of Atticus isn't a man entirely free of prejudice and does question what he's doing. It seems like a bit more of a realistic approach to a liberal man of that era."
I won't pretend to define "realistic" (although most people seem to think they know what is and isn't "real," generally based upon the limitations of their personal experiences), but no matter if this is or isn't &q
