Just a note to mention that ina movie mag called InFocus-due to the success of Chicago-the producers are thinking of remaking Damn Yankees,and doing a film adaptation of "Pippin"-a "passion project" as described from one of the producers-does anyone have any thoughts of a "Pippin" film??
I wish they wouldn't do it.
The video that is available of the stage show is just fine in it's simplicity.
I am a fan of Chicago the play and actually did like the movie very much - but I dunno, I just don't see this as working very well.
Yeah-it's such a theatrical production-I did the play at a summer theatre school program in high school(Pippin)-I don't know how they could do it-just leave it alone-I was just surprised by the idea-I have heard they are updating the music for Phantom of the Opera-it's sounding stranger by the minute-I really liked Chicago-Renee was a real surprise
I played the Leading Player when I was in college and I, too, have a hard time picturing this piece as a movie...it is a very theatrical piece which actually makes very funny references to the fact that it is a stage production and even involves the live audience to some extent.
shareHonestly, I only want to see a new Pippin if they can get Ben Vereen to do it again.
shareUhhh, is it me or this is too bizarre for a movie?
I mean, OK, sure, it most certainly can be done, but they have to know HOW to do it. It is really something very theatrical.
Oh well, here's to hope.
Ben Vereen is too old. I saw a vid of him in Fosse trying to do the now legendary "Manson Trio" dance routine. He had trouble keeping up with the younger dancers.
But, yeah, Pippin could be an interesting movie if made by the right people.
I saw a vid of him in Fosse trying to do the now legendary "Manson Trio" dance routine. He had trouble keeping up with the younger dancers.
You noticed that too? Yeah, Ben looked a little confused during that number.
Ben Vereen is too old to do this role now.
shareBen Vereen is too old now.
shareHOLLYWOOD REPORTER (online)
June 26, 2003
Miramax sets stage for 'Pippin' redo
NEW YORK -- In the wake of the success of "Chicago," Miramax Films has danced its way to another Bob Fosse project by acquiring feature film rights to the Broadway musical "Pippin." The musical -- which debuted on Broadway in 1972 and ran for five years -- follows the story of Pippin, the son of Charlemagne, ruler of the ninth century Holy Roman Empire. After experimenting with sex and politics and experiencing the lessons of war, Pippin learns that the meaning of life lies in true love. "This is a passion project for me, just like 'Chicago,' " Miramax co-topper Harvey Weinstein said. "I saw this approximately 30 years ago with the original cast and have always wanted to make it into a movie."
I think it can be done, if the viewer is willing to accept that the movie will not be the same as the play. I love this play because like pippin the audience is fooled by the leading players promises of glory. we are distracted by the beautiful sets and the colored lights, why not use the flash of the movie industry in this case, promising pippin CGI effects and close up's. Pippin the play uses the medium of the stage to tell the story, Pippin the movie should use it's medium in the same way. The story could make a great movie provided it doen't tie itself down too strictily to the source material, and changes it's setting from "a stage" to "a soundstage"
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtian."
As chicago was such a big success for such an average musical you think we would have seen a whole bunch of great musicals coming out because of it.
Well....wheres Les Miserables?
wheres Miss Saigon?
Wheres Jekyll and Hyde?
I could go on all day but I wont. Just dont expect Pippin anytime soon.
Hollywood is too busy with crap like THE PRODUCERS and DREAMGIRLS to be bothered with the classics.
At least we got a pretty good film in RENT.
You call Dreamgirls crap, but Rent good?
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There is a God and his name is Billy Joel.
These are some of my pics. for the parts, even though they would have to do it pefectly or it wouldn't work:
The Leading Player: Ben Vereen, Jessie L. Martin
Pippin; An Unknown, Michael Arden
Charlemagne: Tim Curry, Victor Garber
Fastrada: Madonna, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bernadette Peters,Rosario Dawson, Idina Menzel,Jane Krakowski
Lewis: Neil Patrick Harris
Berthe-Elaine Strich, Cloris Leachman,Angela Lansbury,Carol Burnett, Carol Channing, Carol Shelley, Bea Arthur, Debbie Reynolds
Catherine-Emmy Rosum, Anne Hathaway, Kristin Chenoweth
I love Jane Krakowski as Fastrada. I also like either Bea Arthur or Debbie Reynolds as Berthe. Chenoweth would also be my choice for Catherine. Neil Patrick Harris would be very funny as Lewis, but I would prefer to see him in a role where he'd get to sing. I like Jesse Martin as the Leasing Player and if they want to go a little younger, how about Usher?
shareThank goodness as of November 2006, a lot of predictions on this board haven't come true. So far.
I think a lot of the passion and liveliness is lost when you take musicals away from the people who've trained to do musical theatre and give the roles to people who didn't. Even though Martha Raye was 65 in this movie, I enjoyed watching her having fun on stage twenty times more than most of the Chicago movie stars.
All That Jazz worked because a lot of the original stage people transferred over to the movie.
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
Did anyone see the goodspeed cast? they were amazing! Andre Ward was better than Ben Vereen, in my opinion. Joshoua Park was great as Pippin, and Mickey Dolenz from "The Monkees" was Charlamange. I LOVED it. I'll put a link to the Godspeed opera house, which is where this cast is from. You can hear "Magic to do" and see various clips from the show. enjoy! ;)
see this link: http://www.goodspeed.org/shows/pippin.htm
You can attack me, you can send assains after me, thats fine. But nobody messes with my boyfriend.
hey shy girl! I did see it at goodspeed and I enjoyed it considerably. I love the music so much though! I would love it to be revived on broadway as I have never had the chance to see it there.
I just watched the version on DVD and was totally bored and disturbed. It had no life to it. The actors, Ben vereen included seemed to be hamming it up for the cameras. It was painful. I have listened to the original cast recording so many times and love it so much. I cant believe that the DVD could be so awful. I had heard it sucked but I guess I needed to see it myself to believe it.
Now I believe it.
I do agree that the goodspeed production was quite good though. Most of the goodspeed shows are enjoyable and professionally done.
You from connecticut shygirl?
oh and why so shy?
eh, its more of an oxymoron. I'm really not shy at all. No, I'm not from Connecticut, I saw it when it came to Michigan. I sent an email to the Godspeed theater asking them if they were planning on releasing a cd, of if we could download the music somewhere. I like the Godspeed cast so much better. :)
You can attack me, you can send assains after me, thats fine. But nobody messes with my boyfriend.
Let's keep our fingers crossed. I'm FOR a full stage recording, but a movie could also be nice.
http://www.voicesforrent.com/voices/?u=allennet1
Another vote for a full stage recording. I saw Pippin in 1973 shortly after Irene Ryan died, so I guess Berthe was played by Dorothy Stickney - I know Betty Buckley played Catherine. I remember seeing the 1981 version shortly after it was released on VHS and I almost cried - they cut so much and restaged several great scenes that I guess just ran too long or were too difficult to film.
I would love to see a recording of the full original musical without regard to time (I think it would still run under 2 hours).
It would probably be too much to ask for them to go back to some of the original staging. Two of my favorite scenes were the battle scene and Berthe's song. During the long instrumental portion of the battle the stage was bathed in red light and you could see the men fighting with raised swords while dozens of body parts were flying around above their heads (picture that scene with the music from the soundtrack CD - it was really funny). In Berthe's scene, the lyrics were on the backdrop just about center stage and Berthe was singing while riding on a swing about 6 feet in the air to the right of the lyrics.
As far as doing this as a film, the owners of the property can do whatever they want, but Pippin is a play and the performance on stage is a vital part of what it is. They could try to do the ending by stripping away to a bare set, but I think the living breathing presence of actors and audience is an important part of the experience. If they do make a film, it will either have to be done as a recording of a performance or it will be something very, very different from the Pippin we know. It still may be great, but I can't imagine it will share much more with the stage performance than its name.
The simplest way of filming it (as a film, rather than a recording of a stage production) would be to provide some sort of surrogate audience to whom the Players are performing onscreen -- perhaps on a medieval travelling pageant-wagon or something. At various points we would presumably move "into" the story they're telling, and thereby into full studio sets (or locations) representing Charlemagne's court, etc.
Given the style of the music and the storytelling, any director attempting this would be well-advised to steer clear of standard movie naturalism, even in these "interior" book scenes and songs -- "Glory," for instance, is at once a battle scene and a meta-theatrical comment on warfare, hence it's hard to imagine filming it on a real battlefield. I suppose you could intercut between the comically crude playing of the scene "onstage" (with obviously fake dummy "limbs" and puppetry, etc.) and startlingly gruesome shots of "real" battle. But sooner or later, the "real" story and the framing device would have to merge somehow, in order for the Finale to make any sense at all. These days, "comic book" movies like 300 and Sin City might provide some of the most useful clues as to how to go about merging reality with cinematic artifice in some manner that might be vaguely analogous to the theatrical style of "concept" musicals like Pippin. But I still think it would want to start out in some kind of theatrical setting, with a surrogate audience for the Players to perform to. Cutting away to "real" scenes, at some point fairly early on, seems simple enough; the trick then becomes how, and at what point, the ensemble Players (and especially the Leading Player) begin to invade the "real" story.
The only other options that I can see, offhand, are to either cut the Players entirely (in which case why bother adapting the musical at all? Unlike Sweeney Todd's chorus, the loss of which was bad enough, Pippin's Players really do seem to be its story's raison d'être), or else to structure the entire film rather predictably in the manner of Bill Condon's Chicago adaptation, with the musical numbers taking place (how or why, I couldn't really say) inside Pippin's head. Personally, I don't love either solution. But the challenges of trying to translate Pippin to film would nevertheless be intriguing, and there might be some other way it could work.
Here's my pitch for the film:
The real setting is the late 60's at Carnegie Mellon (nod to where Stephen Schwartz first conceived the show), where a soon-to-be graduate enters a circus (nod to the current Broadway revival) performed by the players telling the story of Pippin where the college student then starts to imagine the real story taking place with him as Pippin, because the two share something together, they are looking for their "corners of the sky".
All That Jazz worked because a lot of the original stage people transferred over to the movie.
Ummm..ALL THAT JAZZ was a never a stage show.
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I don't know how this musical would translate onto the screen.
There is so much direct-addressing to the audience, so many jokes that have to do with theatrical conventions, so many aspects that work only in a live-performance venue.
Talking to a camera never really works.
If they remove all that stuff, they would have to replace it with cinematic tricks of equal value - which probably would take it so far from itself to make it completely unrecognizable.
"Don't call me 'honey', mac."
"Don't call me 'mac'... HONEY!"
Talking to a camera never really works.
Did you ever see FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF?
There was a time when talking to the camera was accepted, even commonplace, but that era was long ago and it's tough to pull off.
Would Wayne Brady or Taye Diggs make an acceptable Leading Player?
I could see Chenoweth as Catherine, IMO that part should be played by someone old enough to be a mother (not Rossum or Hathaway) and perhaps slightly older than the actor playing Pippin.
I wonder if Lesley Ann Warren is still limber enough to play Fastrada. She would be tremendous!
I also thought of Leachman for Berthe; probably because she played Granny in the "Beverly Hillbillies" movie.
I couldn't peg who could play Charlemagne. Tim Curry or Victor Garber would probably work, but what about this choice: David Ogden Stiers? His voice is perfect for the part - think of him in Schwartz's "The Magic Show", or his voice work as Governor Ratcliffe in Disney's "Pocahontas" (also scored by Schwartz).
Dave
I do agree with you though that a lot of what happens in PIPPIN involves the live audience and would not translate onscreen at all.
shareAgreed. I think that's why I was disappointed with Sweeney Todd (don't get me wrong, it's a good movie)- 25% of that show involves the live audience, yet in the movie, the best song (Epiphany) was WAY BORING! Depp sang it very thinly and bored. And then the "ALRIGHT! YOU SIR!" part... what a gyp.
Pippin would NEVER translate well to a film. If there's one thing I learned in Musical Theatre, some shows should just stay on stage. Example- A Chorus Line. That was a HORRIBLE movie! THey butchered an awesome musical. I am lucky to own a very poor quality B&W tape of the original cast in '76 (I got it from my grandpa) and that was WAY better.
Pippin is one of the best musicals ever made, but a movie? No thanks. My school may be doing it next year, HELL YEAH! I'm so auditioning.
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