Tale of Two Cities musical film?

[MCfan2]

Posted: 9/19/17 at 3:16pm

Just ran across this article:

http://www.newstrib.com/lifestyle/video-oglesby-native-to-turn-a-dickens-classic-into-a/article_4a7b45c0-9d4e-11e7-be67-ab46b245f1a0.html 

Everything sounds pretty vague and up in the air right now, and who knows if it'll ever pan out, but it's interesting to know they're trying. 

[johannabarker]

Posted: 9/20/17 at 11:55am

Why do my messages keep getting deleted? All I think is that anyone who employs James Barbour (google why) should not be supported.

[JAS]

Posted: 9/20/17 at 12:24pm

johannabarker said: "Why do my messages keep getting deleted? All I think is that anyone who employs James Barbour (google why) should not be supported."

Because you're using an article that doesn't even MENTION James Barbour to promote your own agenda? 

[MCfan2]

Posted: 9/20/17 at 12:42pm

Sorry if I started a kerfuffle. I didn't mean to. I know there was contention about all this when it was on Broadway, and I understand that, but my expectation (and my hope) is that this movie, if it gets made, will have a whole new cast. 

[bdn223]

Posted: 9/20/17 at 1:07pm

A Tale of Two Cities was one of the most misguided literary musical adaptions of all time. The book is very much an ensemble piece with numerous fleshed out characters, almost all of which go through some sort of growth or lack there over over the course of the book. If one were to have to pick a protagonist or at least the conduit of the plot, it is an easy choice of Dr Manette, Lucie Manette, or possibly Charles Darnay.  Jill Santoriello was a self proclaimed stay at home mother turned composer and it showed. She decided to make Sydney Carton the sole protagonist, despite being absent from the action for much of the book and his main purpose is to be a daulistic foil for Charles Darnay. This can be seen by the ending with his death, instead of the epilogue where we see the impact the revolution has on Paris and the Manette/Darnay family. In doing so we are seeing the plot through the eyes of a bystander who just happened to be in court room one day, instead of through the Manettes and Charles Darnay former members of the aristocracy trying to atone for the evil they saw and did nothing to stop. 

Add to that instead of orchestrating the most famous opening sentence in literary history (It was the best of times....)  into a brilliant opening number she began it with a prologue that summarized Book 1 Recalled To Life, that we come back to see 2 more times throughout the musical. The opening sentence, instead became a throw away line while they set up the guillotine. 

Then the show didn't even feature a guillotine, which was just disappointing to say the least.

In truth the shows biggest problem is that Jill Santoriello, decided to streamline the plot by zeroing in on very specific plot lines. This is in complete contrast much of the praise for the book, which Dickens created so many interwoven plot lines, that somehow all made sense and played off of one another. The book was written like a house of card, so even taking out a single card or plot makes the story fall apart. The book is not a character study, it is a plot driven soap opera and this is a problem for a 2.5 hr musical where one needs be able stop pause the action for a song that comments on the characters or plot instead of advancing it. 

I could go on and on about all of the problems with Ms Santoriello's adaption, but just trust me when I say it wasn't good. She completely forgot that she was adapting A Tale of Two Cities, instead of a cheap romantic fan-ficton novel of A Tale of Two Cities.

When I saw it I remember thinking this would of made an amazing epic play and unlike a Shakespearean drama all of the action would actually take place on stage. I think that even more so now with plays like Wolf Hall, and Cursed Child, and hope the National theater decides to take a stab at it.

[MCfan2]

Posted: 9/20/17 at 1:28pm

To be fair to Santoriello, the majority of adaptations do tend to make Carton the focus. He is the most dynamic character. I have to disagree, in fact, with the idea that the book's characters are fleshed out. Many of them aren't. This isn't a criticism -- ATOTC is my favorite novel, and Dickens is my favorite novelist. But he did something different with these characters than he usually did; he made many of them simple, almost stock characters, in order to concentrate more fully on the plot and the historical background. (This is boiling it way, way down, but that's the gist of what he did.)

So the more dynamic characters -- Carton, Madame Defarge, even Jerry Cruncher to some extent -- do tend to stand out, and adapters grab on to that. So many adaptations have made Carton and Cruncher drinking buddies, or made Carton take Stryver's place as Darnay's lead counsel, or things like that, just to give him more time and attention. It sort of works against Dickens's strategy of letting him sneak unexpectedly into the hero's role, but you can hardly blame them for being interested in him and wanting to push him front and center.

(Forgive me for this long spiel. I really do love Dickens, and will ramble about him all day long if someone doesn't stuff a sock in my mouth. )

[johannabarker]

Posted: 9/20/17 at 2:27pm

This musical was bad, I listened to audio of it and James Barbour's "performance" killed it. How many times to producers have to learn that the genre "books we had to read in high school" is not going to succeed? I hope this falls through, as I think it will.

[SomethingPeculiar]

Posted: 9/20/17 at 2:34pm

Is this guy "out of sight, out of mind"?

The show lasted 60 performances, lost ~ $12 million, and had pretty bad reviews. It looks like Sharp has produced 2 Broadway shows (Tale + Catered Affair) and the U.K. concert version of Tale.

Who's going to spend MILLIONS to make a film version of a problematic failure? And who's going to go see it? Unless Spielberg, Cumberbatch, and Beyoncé magically decide to do it...

 

(Sort of on the subject, but remember that giant behind-the-scenes series that Broadway.com did on the show back in 2008? That was really cool.)

[newintown]

Posted: 9/20/17 at 2:52pm

Sadly, Tale wasn't hilariously bad, it was just an amateurish bore - a tacky, lowbrow Walmart imitation of Les Miserables (a show whose brow is already rather close to the ground). It's nice that Sharpe has a project of sorts, but I admit to deep doubts that this fringe showbiz wannabe is really going to get a movie of this pedestrian property made.

I also admit that I'm interested in hearing how they found the $$ to be lead producers on Tale (they were mere investors masquerading as producers on Catered Affair, a not-at-all-unusual pose these days).

[Dollypop]

Posted: 9/20/17 at 4:59pm

There have been so many misgivings about this project that they're changing the title to A SALE OF TWO TITTIES.

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 9/20/17 at 6:44pm

The fact that he states "we don't have to worry about the writing because it's already written" is probably one of the more troublesome statements he makes about the project. You can't just plop the stage script on a camera and expect it to work without any effort (take a look at The Producers for an example of that going awry). They are different mediums, as many will point out, and have vastly different requirements for the writing. Even a seemingly simple project will go through numerous revisions and writers before being ready for to be filmed.

[sueb1863]

Posted: 9/20/17 at 8:57pm

You want to make a movie musical about the French Revolution, make a movie out of the recent musical version of The Scarlet Pimpernel. It'd be a lot more fun. The plot needs some work, especially the ending, but I think it'd make a much better film.

ATOTC has a few good songs but it's mostly a grim slog. If I want to see that story, I'll watch the 1935 classic version with Ronald Colman. It's one of my favorite movies.

[MCfan2]

Posted: 9/20/17 at 10:17pm

I do love Colman, but I think the best Carton we've had so far was Dirk Bogarde in the 1958 British film. I wish it were better known. (Here in the U.S., I mean. I don't know how well known it is in Britain.)

[sueb1863]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 6:21am

I've seen parts of that one, I'll have to check the whole thing out. I think it's on YouTube.

As for this movie version of the musical, I wouldn't hold my breath. A few years ago there were two separate adaptations of ATOTC announced and neither one has happened so far. I can't see anyone wanting to invest in what would have to be an expensive movie version of a flop musical.

[MCfan2]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 10:15am

Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm sick of having ATOTC movie/miniseries adaptations announced and then hearing nothing more for years. It's been so long since we had a good one!