YouTube and the Guggenheim teamed up to create a respected, juried art show of video work from YouTube. Back in July, anyone could enter a single video hosted on YouTube.  A jury of 11 respected artists selected 24 videos, which were unveiled tonight at a Guggenheim event.  Here is a complete list of jurors and selected work, with a few sample videos from the winners.

Jurors

Laurie Anderson
musician, inventor, filmmaker, performer

Animal Collective
band

Darren Aronofsky
filmmaker

Douglas Gordon
installation, video and film artist

Marilyn Minter
painter, video artist & photography

Ryan McGinley
photographer

Takashi Murakami
Painter, sculptor, video artist

Shirin Neshat
artist and filmmaker

Stefan Sagmeister
designer

Apichatpong Weerasethakul
filmmaker

Nancy Spector
Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
jury chair

Work Selected by the Jury

Post Newtonianism (War Footage/Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare Footage)
Josh Bricker — sqosh12

Moonwalk
Martin Kohout — lostpostservice

Words
Everynone (Will Hoffman, Daniel Mercadan) — dmercadante1

This Aborted Earth: The Quest Begins
Michael Banowetz, Noah Sodano — thisAbortedEarth

deuce
Monica Cook — monicacook

Strindberg and Helium at the Beach
Eun-Ha Paek, Erin Perkins — ErinPerkins

Die Antwoord — Zef Side
Sean Metelerkamp — stewartridgeway

Bathtub IV
Keith Loutit — keithloutit

Seaweed
Remi Weekes, Luke White — tellno1ne

Gardyn
Nick Bertke (Pogo) — Fagottron

Bear untitled — D.O. Edit
Christen Bach — Christenbach

Le Syndrome du Timide
Pierre-Axel Vuillaume-Prezeau — pehaboy

auspice
Bryce Kretschmann — squomb

I Met the Walrus
Jerry Levitan, Josh Raskin — imetthewalrus

Birdy Nam Nam — The Parachute Endings
Steve Scott, Will Sweeney — Nottoscalelondon

Wonderland Mafia
Lindsay Scoggins — waambat

Synesthesia
Terri Timely (Corey Creasey, Ian Kibbey) — territimely1

Ladybirds’ Requiem digest version
Akino Kondoh — akinokondoh

Notebook
Evelien Lohbeck — evelienlohbeck

Man With A Movie Camera: The Global Remake
Perry Bard — perrybard

Scenic Jogging
Jillian Mayer — JillianMayer

Taxi III Stand Up and Cry Like a Man
Lisa Byrne — lisabyrne700

Luis
Joaquin Cocina, Cristobal Leon, Niles Atalla — futureshorts

The Huber Experiments — Vol 1
Erik Huber, Matthew Huber — ErikHuber

Learn more and see all of the jury’s selections at
YouTube Play: Guggenheim Biennial for Creative Video

Related posts:

1. An Experiment – Syndicated Short Films from YouTube
2. Cornelius – Chimes Video

The PBS Newshour Art Beat reports that students of Haiti’s only film school, Ciné Institute, have kept filming after the earthquake, shooting and editing despite their own personal circumstances.

Ciné Institute Students Effort from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

Learn more

• Ciné Institute
• Ciné Institute online videos at Vimeo
• Conversation: Students from Haiti’s Only Film School Keep Their Cameras Rolling from PBS Newshour, Art Beat
• Haiti’s Film Students Find a New Mission by Salon

Related posts:

1. Short film for the day

In all the news reports of record-breaking crowds gathering to recreate Thriller’s signature dance sequence from beginning to end, I’ve heard no mention of Michael Peters, who choreographed Thriller with Michael Jackson.

Michael Peters was an award winning choreographer, winning Tonys and Emmys for his work, including choreography for Donna Summer’s Love to Love You Baby, Michael Jackson’s Beat It, Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield, Lionel Richie’s Hello, the film What’s Love Got to do With It?, and the original stage choreography for Dreamgirls. Michael Peters died in 1994.

People magazine did a story on him in 1984,
Michael Peters Is the Hot New Choreographer Who Makes Dancers Out of Video’s Rock Stars

Below is some of his well known choreography.

Thriller:

What’s Love Got to do With It?

Love is a Battlefield:

Beat It (Peters is the one in white):

Michael Peters and Michael Bennett win the Tony for Best Choreographer

Some other people you might not know about:
John Landis director, and his wife Deborah Landis, who designed the iconic red jacket for the video.

Buy the work of Michael Peters, Michael Jackson, John Landis, Dreamgirls, Lionel Richie, Pat Benatar, Donna Summer and Victor/Victoria.

Related posts:

1. Constanza Macras, Dorky Park – Back to the Present
2. The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein

A great look at a film detail often overlooked, but very important to a sci-fi film’s greatness… the design of hallways.

From Den of Geek, In Praise of the Sci-fi Corridor:

Corridors make science-fiction believable, because they’re so utilitarian by nature – really they’re just a conduit to get from one (often overblown) set to another. So if any thought or love is put into one, if the production designer is smart enough to realise that corridors are the foundation on which larger sets are ’sold’ to viewers, movie magic is close at hand.

Read more at Den of Geek.

I’ve noticed for quite some time that most media web sites and newspapers do not have an Arts section. The closest you find is Entertainment. The meaning of these two is of course very different, not because art can’t be entertaining, it can be. But art often has more purpose to it than that. By sticking only to “Entertainment,” the media avoids discussion of any of the other reasons for art, or the cultural criticisms it might be presenting. It takes the easy route, sticking to celebrity gossip and celebrity fashion, and not a bigger cultural context, or inclusion of any artwork whose main purpose may be something other than Entertaining.

If your TV station or newspaper covers only Entertainment and not the Arts, write them and ask why, and ask them to change it (not just the name of the section, but what they cover.)

Some examples of “Entertainment” and no “Arts”:

• Google News
• ABC News
• CBS News
• NBC News
• BBC News
• CNN
• Chicago Sun Times
• San Francisco Gate
• Seattle Times

Some great papers that still have an Arts section:

• The New York Times
• The Los Angeles Times
• The London Times
• The Washington Post

Related posts:

1. If You Get Points, Is It Art?
2. Artist Astronauts, Artist Cosmonauts, Artists in Space
3. A New Wave for Japanese Art

The other day, though not in the rest of the post, I linked to the New York Times story discussing that the studio had tested their own cut of Across the Universe without Julie Taymor’s knowledge. I don’t know how that turned out, but it must be mostly ok because her name is still on the film.

Most director contracts do not include right of final cut. Their only final resolution if they are unhappy with a cut the studio has created is to remove their name from the film. When this happens, in the past the film was credited as “directed by Alan Smithee.” As of 1997, the pseudonym changes from film to film. If a film isn’t complete, the studio can replace the director and the new name appears on the film, even when the first director may have originated the concepts and their work may be in the film.

Later, if rights to the film change, or a director gets more clout, a Director’s Cut might be released to theaters or DVD. Sometimes though even these Director’s Cuts are not the work of the original director.

Some directors, like Ridley Scott with Blade Runner, have worked most of their careers to get their cut of a film finally made.

Read more about director’s cut, Alan Smithee and a list of films recut by studios.

Buy films mired in artistic miasma:
Directed by Alan Smithee, Dune, Superman II, Poltergeist, American History X, and Blade Runner. Also check out An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, a movie premised on Alan Smithee starring Eric Idle.

Related posts:

1. Across the Universe, The Power of Myth, 1967

I was born after the 1960s. What I know is only from stories and grainy video, comprised of many heroic and striking moments, modern stories not unlike King Arthur’s Court or Hamlet. The difference is, these are modern stories from not that long ago, and you can see their effects clearly all around us.

When I think of the ’60s, I see beaded curtains opening onto a California beach. William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan play to smoky, turtle-necked fans creaking in wooden chairs. I hear Janis Joplin and Odetta. And I see violence, bombs off our shores, great leaders slain one after another, causing uprising until the Golden Gate summer, where before it ends, the environmental movement, the peace movement, the civil rights movement and much more are finally planted to take slow root.

The problem is, that’s not how it happened. It’s no more what happened than Shakespeare’s Richard II. There is some element of truth to it, but the characters and plots were refined to tell a story and teach great lessons. Joseph Campbell said that we don’t have modern myths to hold onto. The myth of 1967 tells otherwise.

The biggest cultural reflection of this budding myth bloomed as The Beatles. They obviously influenced lots of people, and helped carry the message right into now.

Across the Universe attempts to bring the totality of this starry eyed story into one place and tell it in the language of the myth itself — as a multicolored, trippy, musical journey about love and war from Liverpool to the East Village. It attempts to bring all these different people and places into one archetypal legend.

Julie Taymor has a long and respected history of creating experimental, very original works of art in many disciplines. She gained greater notoriety directing The Lion King on Broadway, and later the films Titus and Frida. You can see hints of some daring and beautiful ideas in Across the Universe, and I can only imagine what would have happened if the film took an even more experimental direction (not that it looks at all like a typical Hollywood film). But this ever pressing need to compromise between experimental daring and loosely knit clichéd myth ends up making a pretty bad movie. I can also only imagine the endless boardroom, film executive and Beatles meetings that destined it to compromise from the beginning.

Despite that, I’m very glad she made it.

I would rather an artist strive for something spectacular and fail than simply try something mediocre and succeed with no lasting affect.

Beyond the movie itself, there is a larger current – building art that looks at this hugely influential time beyond the bounds of history, in the language of archetypes and legend. The Beatles are beginning to appear frequently in strange places they would have never appeared before, like Cirque Du Soleil’s Love. It hints at what inventive combinations and new stories will be created as modern music reaches the end of its copyright, moves out of heavily controlled, money-motivated restrictions and into the culture’s hands, into the public domain. It’s one step of a giant cultural mash up that’s only just starting.

Learn more:
The Beats, Summer of Love, Joseph Campbell, Julie Taymor, NYT – Film Has Two Versions; Only One Is Julie Taymor’s

Buy something related:
work by Julie Taymor, Joseph Campbell, The Beatles, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Odetta or This Book is Free (Beneath the Diamond Sky)

Related posts:

1. The Rare Director’s Cut – Alan Smithee, Across the Universe, Blade Runner
2. Endurance Art – Six Hours is Too Long
3. Thank you Richard Florida for giving The Bohemians so much power. Now please tell us – when will we ever benefit from it?

Over the past few weeks, Elevator Repair Service has been in Portland and Seattle performing Gatz, their performance which involves the complete six hour reading of The Great Gatsby. I intended to go. But I just can’t bring myself to do it.

I’m up for any strange art thing, I mean I’m one of the odd kinds of people who would even hear “six hour performance” and seriously think about it. But you know, I have things to do. Laundry, walking in the park, making art, writing this blog, seeing other art, eating, etc. If I can’t bring myself to go to this thing, who does go to it? If I had gone, maybe I could have interviewed people in the audience and asked them.

There are other ridiculously long performances out there, like Philadelphia’s Brat Productions, which tours with a 24 hour marathon performance of Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano. The play isn’t 24 hours long, they just finish and start over again and again for 24 hours straight. I almost saw that one too (a long time ago), but I just couldn’t do it.

There are also abnormally long films. I love Peter Greenaway but have never brought myself to sit and watch The Falls because of it’s mere 3 hours 5 minutes running time, which really isn’t that long. (There’s a legend that the original cut and showing of the film was 6 hours long, but I can find no record of that online.) There are other truly long films, like The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World, running at 48 hours long. This seems more like ambiance and you could come and go if you wanted, drink heavily, take a nap, go clubbing with friends, then return where you left off.

And of course, opera is notoriously long. Get there at 6, leave at 11:30.

Certainly it is an amazing feat for performers, and acts to strengthen and train their focus and abilities. You could say the same for audiences, that it allows them to test their endurance, after which a three hour movie doesn’t seem so bad. For the ambient work, where you can come and go, eat, drink, talk with friends, the endurance isn’t really there. It’s incidental art that doesn’t require your full focus, and if a performer messes up or needs a break, nothing is broken.

In a time where most people find it hard enough to go see a two hour performance, busy with other things in their life, and someone like me won’t go who isn’t that busy and has devoted their life to art of various strange sorts — who and how many show up for a six hour performance? Why do they go?

Read more: Peter Greenaway’s The Falls, interview with Brat Productions about the 24 hour Bald Soprano, and a review of Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz.

Get: the work of Peter Greenaway, The Great Gatsby, long operas by Richard Wagner, great strange plays by Eugene Ionesco

Related posts:

1. Constanza Macras, Dorky Park – Back to the Present

I read a New Yorker story recently about the cult of Leica cameras. Some of the most famous photographs in history have been taken with Leica’s, and photographers love them. But at $4,000+ a pop, you’d better really love it, and you’d hope it takes a great photo.

…as the camera has evolved over eight decades, generations of users have turned to it in their hour of need, or their millisecond of inspiration. Aleksandr Rodchenko, André Kertész, Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Robert Frank, William Klein, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, and Sebastião Salgado: these are some of the major-league names that are associated with the Leica… Even if you don’t follow photography, your mind’s eye will still be full of Leica photographs. The famous head shot of Che Guevara, reproduced on millions of rebellious T-shirts and student walls: that was taken on a Leica with a portrait lens—a short telephoto of 90 mm.—by Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, better known as Korda, in 1960.

Years ago I read that George Lucas stopped making Star Wars films after Return of the Jedi because he didn’t want to have to build the special effects industry at the same time he was filming. Before he continued, he wanted the effects tools and infrastructure to be at his disposal, not having to invent them along the way. A lot of people think the later movies weren’t as good as the first set (if they liked them at all), even with modern effects and landscapes of a thousand robots. Was the wait worth it?

Many great novels in the last hundred years weren’t made into films until recently because they technically weren’t feasible. The tools that existed just couldn’t tell the story in film form, at least not with a reasonable amount of time and money. At least that’s what they’ve told us about Lord of the Rings and Narnia. But didn’t they make the Ten Commandments, Cleopatra and Ben Hur with casts of thousands before computer animation existed? Lord of the Rings and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were even made first as animated movies.

It took me a long time to find the right balance of art supply lust and actually getting things done. I’d think: If only I had a guitar, if only I had tungsten filters, a new watercolor brush, better paper, Maya 3D, an HD video camera, or a digital mixer… In the meantime, I wasn’t making much actual art, especially as the tools I thought I needed were so expensive it was a long shot I’d ever afford them.

Obviously I’m a great procrastinator, but the bigger question is still worth asking. When do you wait for the best tools or best circumstances, and when do you just go for it? When is quality important, and when does it just get in the way of doing something?

The first South Park was made with construction paper and magic markers.

Buy a Leica
or
construction paper and magic markers.

Related posts:

1. The Sci-Fi Corridors of Alien, 2001, Dune, Flash and More
2. Getting a $4500 Paraglider vs. Making One Out of Plastic Bags

In the late ’80s, Czechoslovakia became a democratic state, and in 1993 peacefully separated into two countries – the Czech Republic and Slovakia. With democracy came capitalism and advertising, and with capitalism and advertising came The Hypermarket. Hypermarkets are the world’s superstores, selling shoes and spinach, pipe wrenches and pumpkins, all you would need to buy under one roof. Compared to the scarcity of goods in the pre-capitalist Czechoslovakia, this abundance was a big change.

Just like people in other countries had become critical of rampant consumerism and advertising eroding their culture, many Czechs felt the same way.

Two filmmakers created a fake advertising campaign, including radio, tv, sales flyers, posters and a web site, to promote the new hypermarket named Czech Dream – Cesky Sen. They announced a location and an opening day; built a huge fake storefront in a field, made of a tarp and scaffolding; and 3,000 people showed up. They filmed the whole thing, from inception, ad design, recording the theme song, filming the commercials, to the day 3,000 people standing in front of them found out they had been lied to.

The film is well made, but like many odd art events, the real art happened in the field that morning with those 3,000 people. The film just documents creating that art.

Controversy about the film and the ad campaign stretched all the way to the Czech Parliament and Prime Minister. Government arts funding had been used to make the film (and the fake ad campaigns), which outraged a lot of people. Supporters of the film argued this was no different than the government’s expenses for the huge “join the European Union” ad campaign. Both were advertising an ideology, it was better to also show a contrary view. (Joining the European Union, because of easier trade with other EU nations, was thought by many Czechs to be a huge unwanted step towards materialism and consumerism.)

Like Adbusters, The Yes Men, and some Michael Moore films, the artists set up circumstances that most clearly show the point they want to make. The set up is what usually gets people really riled up, because people feel manipulated, and the films no longer retain an illusion of neutrality. (Documentaries are rarely neutral. How up front a film is about its bias varies.) They’re big, social, political practical jokes.

Lessons of the film: 1. Advertising is bad. 2. Buying things won’t make you happy. 3. Standing outside in a field on a sunny day is much better than going to a mall.

Buy something about anti-consumerism:
Czech Dream (US DVD release date December 4, 2007)
Words by Adbusters and founder Kalle Lasn
Work by Michael Moore

I went to an afternoon of flat track roller derby, and even though it’s a sport, I could care less who won or lost. A lot of us were there to be entertained. Roller derby is dramatic and theatrical. Lots of players and whole teams have strong characters (whether real or mythical), and the opening and half time shows are fun and over the top. You could see a lot of artistic types in the audience who don’t go to many other games. There’s something creative and entertaining drawing them in.

But when the main purpose behind a performance is to get points and be the winner, is it art?

Figure skating, ballroom dancing and DanceSport, color guard and some forms of gymnastics are all artistic performances where the main goal is to get points and win. In most cases, performers are required to play certain types of music, wear certain clothes, and use certain prescribed moves.

Most of the performers are clearly exceptional athletes, are very dedicated, and have great artistic skill. But many people, especially the “real artists,” look down on all this. For me the problem has always been the limits put on the work — why would you limit yourself to only certain moves or, for instance, being required to twirl a fake wooden rifle?

A lot of people have trouble with the motivation. If you’re there to get points, based on how well you perform predefined and accepted moves, where is your artistic voice, your unique viewpoint of the world? Another motivation is money. Money motivation also brings the artistic merits of TV shows, films and albums into question, even beyond TV art sports like American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, and On the Lot. Artistic authenticity and innovation are often the measures of success for modern artwork. Motivations for money, points and winning are contrary to real art.

You might say authenticity and innovation are the point system for modern art. But who are the hidden judges? What are the secret rules?

When artists apply for grants, panelists often look for predefined forms that, to them, define great art. When ballet dancers come on stage, the audience looks for a limited set of predefined moves that add up to what they think of as ballet. When donors give money to a theatre or opera, they vote with dollars for work that most fits what they think art should be. Curators, promoters, producers, executives, politicians, grantors, donors, boards of directors, ticket buyers, book and music lovers and others are all doling out points. Many artists don’t like to admit we’re influenced by these points. We are trying to win money or notoriety.

The perfect modern artist is someone whose work pops out like flower buds, for no other reason and purpose than the artist wants it to. Money or status have no influence whatsoever. These are people like Henry Darger, who painted in secret his whole life. He was pure, untainted by desire for money or fame.

But if you are authentic, and you aren’t influenced by your audience or worldly temptations, how do you know your art is doing what you intended? Are puppies and shaving creme really disturbing and life changing, or only to you? Do dinosaurs make everyone think of birds, or just paleontologists? Maybe your art is just boring, confused and badly made. How will you know if you don’t listen? How will you make better work if you aren’t willing to change and learn?

In modern art, forming a fake rock band or standing on a street corner and shouting curse words at drivers can both be art. Dressing like your grandmother while impersonating Nixon might be your authentic voice. Maybe in this confusing open ended anything-goes arena, the points we get are the only barometer we have for whether our work is to other people what it is to us. Once we get those points, we can decide to change, to work for more points at the possible smogging of our clear intents. Or we can decide to remain steadfast, and risk pulling a Van Gogh – dying penniless with no recognition. It seems Van Gogh was right. I think the key is that, after collecting the points, Success or Winning is just ultimately affecting the world as you wanted to, regardless of what other rewards that might come your way.

Maybe the art athletes have it all figured out. Get the rules in writing. By the end of the night, be called the winner in front of a cheering crowd, and get paid decently for all your skill and effort.

Get In the Realms of the Unreal, the fascinating documentary about Henry Darger; or From Ballroom To Dancesport: Aesthetics, Athletics, And Body Culture

Related posts:

1. No Art, Only Entertainment
2. 5 Points, Queens NYC
3. The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein

Each scene rolls on quietly with poetic light and ambient sounds, with the few words spoken coming from the Iraqi people themselves. Each of the three parts of the film focus on one person, and simply shows what they see and hear, as their voices sparsely speak about their lives. The first person is a Sunni boy living in Baghdad, the second is a Shiite militia-man, and the third is a Kurdish boy in Northern Iraq. There is no judgement to what’s captured. There is little plot, only getting to know each of these people and their worlds.

It’s surprising that anyone could get such personal and intimate access to these people, especially as a western director. Yet director James Longley is able to show each person’s hopes and fears up close. He lived in Iraq for two years to make the film. He went alone and filmed alone.

The children we follow at the beginning and end are wise, moving and heartbreaking. The eight year old boy says “When I grow up I want to live abroad, I dream about living somewhere beautiful.”

Between the governments of the world and anti-government factions, we often forget the majority of people outside these small groups are regular people trying to live their lives. The actions of these governments and factions take their tolls. In the United States, we are often shown the view from on high, but never down close with everyday people, who are trying to go on working and living among the danger and wreckage.

You can’t walk in someone else’s shoes or see through their eyes. But films like Iraq in Fragments take you a step closer to it.

More on the film – Cinematical

Get Iraq in Fragments

Related posts:

1. The Czech Dream, the Hoax Superstore of the Czech Republic

Tears of the Black Tiger combines the early Clint Eastwood Western with Hong Kong and Thai films of the 1950’s and 60’s. Though it sticks to plot and acting that retain high melodrama and graphic violence, it has fun with all of the genres that inspired it, with many hysterical scenes that border on parody. The cultural combinations deliver scenes like two cowboys throwing their guns aside to swear a blood oath in front of a giant Buddha.

The thing you walk away with though is the film’s bold appearance. Its saturated colors, striking graphic compositions, and painted backdrops make the movie seem painted instead of filmed.

The striking visuals and Thai cowboys aside, the plot is a sad one. The moral of the story, that life is suffering, only punctuated by moments of happiness, was hard to take at the end of such exciting visuals and action. Without giving anything away, the ending simply left me depressed.

The film isn’t perfect, it even gets slow sometimes, but it’s beautiful to watch, and shows the new things that can happen when cultural influences collide.

The film was released in very few U.S. theatres earlier this year, but is now on DVD. If you have a chance to see it on the big screen, take it.

Get Tears of the Black Tiger

More about the film: Wikipedia, Rotten Tomatoes

Some of the best funk and psychedelic music ever written was created for Italian B-movies in the 1960s and 70s. This music was compiled and released by Plastic Records in Italy. I discovered them through Tower Records (of all places) who carried a single album from their catalogue – Vroommm: Funk Cinematique. I visited the Plastic Records website often, but I was a poor artist and couldn’t get them yet. I heard samples from other titles like Phase 6 Superstereo, Stroboscopica, Harlem Shuffle: The Sound of Blaxploitation, and the one I wanted most, Space Mood & Electric Soul, funk mod Italian sci-fi.

Then when I could finally afford to order CDs shipped from Italy, Plastic Records Italy vanished without a trace. I have searched high and low but it doesn’t appear their catalogue was acquired by another company, the music vanished with them.

Dancers love using this in their work, it’s fresh, exciting and new even though some of it’s 40 years old.

I have continued searching for years in used CD bins of any new city I visit. I hit pay dirt only once, a Plastic Records compilation of Film Noir Detectives. I hate to write about this little secret, fearing that if I tell anyone else, people will scoop up the few used copies still floating around. But I do love it and want to share — and maybe someone will read this and tell me all this great music is still in print, from a new living label.

Related posts:

1. David Byrne’s Perfect City
2. Getting a $4500 Paraglider vs. Making One Out of Plastic Bags

The Producers and Hairspray both began as movies, became musicals, and then turned into movie musicals. I have little doubt the new musical Young Frankenstein will follow the same footsteps.

It’s still in previews and has its flaws, but mostly it’s a lot of fun. From some really funny moments to a giant Frankenstein lab with lightning, Romanian and swing dancing, and Megan Mullally, Roger Bart, Christopher Fitzgerald, Sutton Foster and Andrea Martin, it’s a good time. Unfortunately my dormant memories of Haunted Honeymoon and Transylvania 6-5000 kept popping up. Thankfully few people have seen these movies.

Regional theatres all over the US have had financial difficulties for over a decade. One of the problems is getting audiences interested in new work which wasn’t written by someone they already know, and doesn’t star someone they’ve already seen (preferably a star). The musical blockbusters on Broadway, based on films, with big name stars, is a way to attract enough audiences to pay for such big productions. But is this theatre a living artform if it continually recycles ideas? Certainly every idea is a combination of new and old, but when the producers only want to risk already proven plots and characters, less new work gets a chance on stage. Instead you get Carrie the Musical and Clueless.

All that said, I’m so happy I got to see Andrea Martin as Frau Blucher. (Even I fell for the well loved stars and characters.)

Related: Why are there so many Broadway musicals based on movies?

Get Young Frankenstein, The Producers, stuff with Megan Mullally, stuff with Andrea Martin, Haunted Honeymoon, Transylvania 6-5000, or the book Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops

Related posts:

1. Truce of Press and Theatre Previews
2. Across the Universe, The Power of Myth, 1967
3. If You Get Points, Is It Art?