Monday, October 18, 2010
LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN: What are your feelings about a Rocky Horror Picture Show remake from Ryan Murphy, and who do you think needs to play key roles? Suggestions of Matthew Morrison as Brad will be greeted with appropriate derision. Cf. pics from next week's Rocky Horror Glee Show episode, with Chris Colfer making an excellent-looking Riff Raff.
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I assume Lea Michele is Janet because she's Lea Michele and must always be the star. But oh how I think it's much more perfect for Jayma Mays. At least Jayma's getting "Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me."
ReplyDeleteChord Overstreet is brilliant casting for Rocky. He so looks the part.
Are they deliberately keeping Frank-n-Furter under wraps? Commenters are saying it's going to be Mercedes; if that's true that's just wrong on so many levels, particulary the one about waist-high. (And I'm NOT just saying this because the idea of Mark Salling in a corset and fishnets gives me fluttery feelings.)
Mark Salling will not be appearing in the episode, and it's widely reported that Mercedes is playing Frank (apparently, the network gave them trouble about having Stamos play Frank). Wiki has the whole cast, including which RHPS vets are appearing.
ReplyDeleteI would have thought sue would step in as Frank-n-furter.
ReplyDeleteAnd as far as a movie remake goes, I'll nominate Alison Brie, Armie Hammer and Alexander Skarsgard as Janet, Brad and Frank-n-Furter. Although it will probably end up more like Anna Faris, Ashton Kutcher and Russell Brand. Or Vanessa Hudgen, Zac Efron and Adam Lambert.
Effing Fox. Really, Ryan Murphy, this is a battle you should have fought. If you can't have FnF as a transvestite than what's the point of doing Rocky Horror?
ReplyDeleteAnd this makes two eps in a row without Salling. I am most displeased.
Whatever else it has become as a cult phenomenon and a culturally known quantity, Rocky Horror is still, at its heart, a musical about a cult of pseudo-aristocratic mad scientist alien transvestites who practice a coercive program of erotic enslavement against unsuspecting members of America's young professional class that have fallen cartoonishly behind the "Sexual Revolution" of the '60s and '70s. I'm just not sure that that's a movie that can be remade. Moreover, while the original was a conscious play on the tropes of the monster, beach party, and youth-in-peril movie genres, all of which were ripe to be lampooned when it first released, but so much of what it was -- is, became, whatever -- was nonetheless unintentional or unforeseen. How do you do that again on purpose? If it plays like a nostalgia piece -- liek a remake of Hair, for example -- what's the point? Boring. Superfluous. Yuck. On the other hand, how do you update it for contemporary issues, attitudes, social atmosphere? If that can be done successfully, I will be endlessly impressed.
ReplyDeleteExcellent points. But I'm going to bet that a lot of Glee's audience hasn't even seen Rocky Horror. So I'm interested to see (1) how Ryan Murphy does it (and whether he acknowledges the very themes you referenced) and (2) how it plays for everyone who hasn't seen it. I have no idea how that's going to go.
ReplyDeleteI think you update it by making Riff Raff the central character - an interdimensional Johnny Utah, torn by the seduction of Frank-n-furter's libertine lifestyle and his duty as an officer of the law (whatever law it is that Transexual Transylvania has, anyway.)
ReplyDeleteThen you play with the tropes of Vampire and Zombie movies - examine our contemporary need to identify with the underdog/outsider/percieved Other so extremely that we use it to excuse and glorify any behavior, no matter how depraved, distateful, or downright evil. There's a bit of Dollhouse in there as well, looking at the morality of building Rocky to be a perfectly willing sex slave, and where that slippery slope leads.
I don't think you plan for any kind of audience partici -(Say it!)- pation. That has to be earned.
I know MTV/Viacom has the rights and have been planning a remake for a few years now. I think the best thing they could do with it would be to do an all-star stage show, switching the audio during the musical numbers from the film to the performers (Pink as Columbia, Rihanna (the good-girl-gone-bad, get it?) as Janet...) That, I would watch.
ReplyDelete... That was me.
ReplyDeleteI didn't see the Broadway production in 2001-02, but they apparently did some interesting things, embracing the camp/participation factor, and bringing in a really diverse cast (Joan Jett and Dick Cavett in the same show?).
ReplyDeleteOh, I would dearly love to see Alison Brie as Janet. How perfect.
ReplyDeleteEric, you had me at "interdimensional Johnny Utah".
ReplyDeleteIs Salling off the show? I read a comment (not a reliable source, I know) that said that because he released his solo album recently on a label that is not the Glee album label, he's been ditched. I fervently hope that that is not true.
ReplyDeleteFox seriously nixed Stamos as Frank? Why, because he'd be a man in panties? I'm all for unconventional casting and for having Mercedes front and center, but I don't understand the point of doing a Rocky Horror tribute without a man in drag in women's lingerie. Also how are they going to dress Mercedes as Frank, given that she had a whole episode about how she didn't feel comfortable in a girl's cheerleading uniform? Something tells me they'll conveniently forget that character point.
ReplyDeleteAnd remaking it sounds like a bad idea, too. I guess Hairspray successfully went from an oddball cult classic to a slick movie musical, but that was with a true reimagining in a different medium in between.