I suppose it was only a matter of time until we
got a Tom Cruise musical--and a cruise missile of a musical it is. Repurposing
rock hits into narrative arcs can only be classified as naked commercialism.
It's not like these songs were crying out for dramatic context--they're AM
radio fare. The movie's poster comes at you like those cheap TV ads for K-tel
records, the big names flying at you--Tom Cruise! Mary J. Blige! Catherine Zeta
Jones! Alec Baldwin! Foreigner! Journey! Guns N' Roses! Bon Jovi! "Nothin'
But a Good Time" promised. But in fact the movie has a lot of (uninspired)
story--tho less than the stage show, astonishingly, whose libretto by Chris
D'Arienzo was a virtual season's worth of melodrama stuffed between 24 musical
numbers--a good many of which are mash-ups of two or three songs by disparate
bands. Such a long-winded book prevents any mistaking the show for a rock
concert masquerading as theater. And great effort has been made to use familiar '80s hits in a context that defines
the characters and/or advances the plot; in other words, like a real Bway
musical. This was something of a surprise to me, having come to another, less
cohesive prejudgment based on what little interest I could muster to consider
this in the Bway canon. The mere mention of the heavy metal bands whose songs
make up the score was enuf to kill my interest in its tracks. Or should I say,
traxxx?
Being a Bway baby didn't preclude my taking
interest in other genres of music as I emerged from the cocoon of childhood,
including--prominently enuf--"rock" in manifestations of pop, reggae,
ska, new wave, salsa, world beat and electronica. Whereas musicals are a finite
study (perhaps a dozen new a year), rock is a countless universe of bands with
a dizzying spectrum of banality to sophistication. With so much volume how do
we ever find our way to our own musical gods? Or do they somehow find us?
Surely our friends & peers influence our taste, or at least introduce new sounds
into our lives. Some relationships are built entirely around the appreciation
of music. It was my high school friend, Bill (and later first roommate in New
York) who began my education down the slippery slope with such hippies as The
Mamas & the Papas and Spanky & Our Gang before acclimating me to the
likes of Grace Slick, Santana, Pink Floyd and Rick Wakeman. What does our taste
in music say about us? Does it in some fundamental way, define us? Is it as
ephemeral a question as one of nature vs nurture? Music has been an incalcuable
factor in my life--I couldn't imagine living without it. But for the most part,
the score of Rock of Ages fires very
little in my brain's pleasure center.
Is it unfair to surmise a certain demographic
drawn to the catalog of bands chosen here? (White, blue-collar, parochial,
testosterone driven?) Was the impetus for the show from (D'Arienzo's) musical
affection, or was this a wholly commercial opportunity seized? In either case
the question remains: did the score (as chosen) dictate the characters, the
sensibility, the milieu and the story? Or did the script come first, seeking
songs to make its points? My guess is the former--for it's hard to take the
narrative seriously. A sort of A Star is Born of the LA rock scene; the
story revels in the finer points of sleaze even as it wants to wink at it in
parody. It's still a little difficult for me to accept the pic as a period
piece--but in fact it is set some 25 years ago, which ages the music more than
I can readily recognize. I mean this: in 25 years pop music evolved from The
Andrews Sisters and Benny Goodman to Janis Joplin and The Rolling Stones. If it
doesn't seem to me so radically different now from the '80s; then call me
ignorant of current rock. At any rate the core audience here was aging adults
whose youth was steeped in this soundtrack.
After tryouts in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Rock of Ages tested the waters Off-Bway
for a few months before transferring to Bway in March 2009--where it ran as
long as Man of La Mancha--until
January 2015. The show was rushed to the
screen faster than any in memory; with the film coming--and going--midway thru
its Bway run. Such optimism wasn't built on Chris D'Arenzio's book, given the
fundamental changes made, and the addition of two other scribes (Allan Loeb
& Justin Theroux--yes, Jennifer Aniston's mate) --to wrestle a new
screenplay. Much of this might have something to do with attracting Tom Cruise
to playing Stacee Jaxx. In the stage musical Jaxx is entirely despicable and
ends up a has-been. The film paints him more ambiguously. Indulgent &
excessive beyond parody, he also wants to be the pic's soul--a psuedo-zen freak
with spiritual powers; he not only retains his status but succumbs to a blonde
wife with (at coda) baby on board. Curiously, the young wannabe rock stars,
Sherrie & Drew on stage wind up heading for the suburbs; whereas on film
they, of course, find stardom. Wisely cut was a subplot with a German father
& son (villainous developers after the Bourbon Room club); whose conflict
is the son's passion for confectionary baking. The film invents instead a
morality-spouting adulterous Mayor, whose wife campaigns to close the club with
a fervor equal to her once devotion as groupie (and bedmate) of Jaxx's.
D'Arienzo demonstrates no talent for names.
Stacee Jaxx? Wofgang Von Colt? Constance Sack? Drew Boley? A boy band called Z
Guyeezz? A glass of beer and two friends could improve on this on any given
night. But not apparently a trio of screenwriters. When Sherrie meets her idol,
Stacee, she gets off this gem: "When my hamster died your music really
helped me pull thru." Yes, I know it's meant to be ridiculous, but really?
Much of the script seems to have been written around a bong. Such as when
Sherrie and Drew trade notes on how far their fortunes have fallen:
--"I'm
a stripper at the Venus Club"
--"I'm
in a boy band"
--"You
Win."
Club owners Dennis & Lonny are thrown the
one uncliched character surprise: they realize their attraction for each other,
and act on it, unabashedly. It's not really very convincing, coming off more as
patronizing--but as it celebrates rather than condemns queerness--in a
(arguably) heterosexually-aimed piece of entertainment, it's hard to object to.
But there's only manufactured conflict, nothing of any substance, or really,
even interest. Was there ever such an outcry over rock in the '80s that had the
religious right protesting on the Sunset Strip? The flimsiest of devices parts
lovers Sherrie & Drew--he thinks she fucked Jaxx; she thinks the spotlight
has turned him into an instant asshole; Jaxx himself has an unlikely reckoning
confronted by a journalist. It's all as random as Dennis & Lonny's sudden
passion for each other.
Hough defines the country girl gone Hollywood-rocker with exactitude down to
her still blushing youth. For her love interest, Shankman determined that
Mexican TV actor and singer Diego Boneta would score as Zac Efron did in Hairspray. He's fine as well, but Boneta
appears to me underage for getting in, letting alone working a bar. Which makes
Baldwin & Brand look like codgers. Their slow burn for each other adds some
fresh humor, even tho it never feels very real. Mary J. Blige models a series
of wigs while running a strip joint; Catherine Zeta-Jones gets to sing Pat
Benatar while feigning Republicanism; and Paul Giamatti disappears into the
role of slimey agent, complete with world's most pathetic pony-tail.
Unfortunately, none of them are very interesting characters.
To great extent one's enjoyment of this pic,
depends on one's taste for the chosen brand of rock. Half a dozen songs were
familiar to me from the '80s zeitgeist, but I ran a very different soundtrack
during those years: Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, Paul Simon, Sade, The B-52s,
Blondie, The English Beat, Springsteen Madness. Along with...Evita, Dreamgirls, Nine, Rags, Little Shop
of Horrors, Chess. But in truth I listened to more rock in those days than
Bway--which felt evermore in decline, or worse: irrelevant. Rock of Ages hit the summer market on
the Ides of June 2012--but even a starry cast (and Tom Cruise to boot!) didn't draw
a millenial audience. The film scraped up $38 million domestic, but less than
$60m worldwide--falling far short of its $75m cost.
It had been two and half years since Nine--the last Bway musical transferred
to screen, and a great deal had transpired in my life with a nod to the future.
A smart agent sold my deceased mother's house in San Jose instant-quick, and
for above asking; which in turn allowed me to put a serious bid on the house
I'd eyed in Palm Springs, struggling in a bottomed-out market, now in a short
sale. I came out like a bandit--first-time homeowner in what felt like my
spiritual homeland since I was nine years old. Fully furnished and equipment
stocked, I was set from the start to accommodate vacation rentals until my own
retirement & relocation. In the meantime, that allowed for my own extended
desert getaways, which effortlessly drew friends from both coasts and Chicago.
Times were good. Obama had taken reigns from the idiot Bush; my job was as
secure as it was unobtrusive; Greg was stable if not terribly active; my entire
known family was dead and scattered to the wind and I had at last unshackeled
myself from the slavery of ambition. I conceived & commenced this very
blog--which became more pleasure than project and has smoothly driven these
last 7 years of my creative life. 2011
was also the year I finally broke my 28 year streak of passport storage. The
impetus was a maiden voyage on a luxury cruise line sponsored by Playbill
magazine, a Bway-themed cruise with top Big Street talent sailing around Italy
in September. It was compelling, and easy to convince Larry Rubinstein to join
me. But prior to sailing I granted myself a continental mini-Grand Tour,
hitting London, Paris, Rome, after a quick dash thru New York, where I had just
enuf time between visits with friends to catch The Addams Family (even with a replacement cast
it was de regiuer--as "mi familia" of
course.) and Catch Me If You Can,
which I loved even more than in Seattle, but which sadly, puzzlingly, didn't
catch on in NY. Far less memorable was the single West End show I caught, Betty Blue Eyes--a pleasant if minor
musical based on a minor 1984 British film, A
Private Function. (Even the Brits were now adapting their old movies.) What
I most wanted to see, Matilda, was
still a month off. I lucked into a discount rate at Claridges and ran all over
London for 3 nights--which was but a tasty sample of a town that feuled my
imagination for over half a century. I suspect my British obessesion was first
perked (again at age 9) by an hour-long sitcom from ABC in the fall of '62
called Fair Exchange--which left a
strong impression upon me, despite airing for only several months. A NY &
London family swapped daughters for a school year. Culture shock ensued. Paris
was an embarrassment of landmarks, but I came away from my whirlwind trio of
days, feeling the place somehow cold. That was instantly corrected upon arrival
in Rome--as I'm always comfortable around Italians, which is more than I can
say for the French.
The Regent cruise introduced these eyes to a
series of Mediterranean jewels: Portofino, Monte Carlo, Sorrento, Amalfi. The
Playbill contingent proved to be only about 120 out of 700 passengers, but we
got to know a few. As the online face of all-things-Bway, Seth Rudestky was
familiar to most of us already, and as Camp Counselor he quickly matched Larry
& I up to John & James from London, who aside from bonding so nicely
(and having such great senses of humor) were only over time revealed to me to
be well-connected British theater folk. It was nice at this stage of life to
enjoy them merely as people and not calculated opportunities to exploit. Among
the marquee names on our cruise none was more exciting to me than Andrea
Martin--whom I had worshipped for decades (for
her catalog of characters on
SCTV and other comedy shows) long before she stepped on a Bway stage and earned
Tony nominations for each of her five Bway musicals--and winning twice. Aside
from considering her a comic genius I felt I had a deeper understanding of her
as an Armenian-American woman; as she had much in common with a friend of my
parents, who I'd grown up knowing only too well, and who in 1970 took me and my
high school pal, Bill, from Syracuse (my birthplace and her home) to Niagra
Falls, Toronto and up to Montreal--all the while revealing herself a character
worthy of Andrea Martin. It was a thrilling treat to watch the genius behind
Edith Prickley and Pirini Schleroso, work up close, of course, but it was even
better to engage with her offstage. Yet there was a moment in one of the
Playbill informals where we did some improv that afforded me the chance to reference
a rather obscure (but choice) bit from Andrea's SCTV days with but a gesture.
Our eyes locked as she got my reference, and it was all either of us could do
from breaking up entirely. Something in the bolt of that moment between us was
so private, yet in full view of an audience made it all the more electric. Her
friend, Debra Monk accompanied her on the cruise (without performing), and the
4 of us later spent an afternoon at Peggy Guggenheim's museum in Venice after
sloshing down the Grand Canal in a motorboat. Also on board ship were Christine
Ebersole (who would figure in later travels) and Brian Stokes Mitchell who arrived only on
the final night, but lingered long after his lovely concert to
chat up our group, allowing me to impress upon him how good (divorced from its
ill-fated, manic produc-tion) the score was for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown--something he didn't seem
aware of had come thru on record. It was nearly the end of the cruise before we
got acquainted with Jeff & Karen Seltzer, dedicated theatre fans--and in
Jeff something of an archivist after my own heart--they too, would figure
later. If the world was opening up to me again it wasn't thru the cinema or
theater. Rock of Ages doesn't satisfy
as either a Bway or film musical, nor
did it draw fans of these bands in large numbers. But there will be no end of
rock music and musicians featured on Bway, some misguided fast flops, some
immensely successful.
Report
Card: Rock
of Ages
Overall
Film: C+
Bway
Fidelity: B
Songs from
Bway: 19
Songs Cut from Bway: 11
Additional
Songs: 5
Standout
Numbers: "Don't Stop Believin'"
"Can't Fight This
Feeling"
Casting: Starry
for something so trashy
Standout
Cast: Hough, Boneta, Brand
Sourthumb
Cast: Catherine Zeta-Jones
Cast from
Bway: None
Direction:
Crisp, lively, worthy of better material
Choreography: Strictly MTV
Scenic
Design: Florida for Hollywood
Costumes:
Rock 101
Titles:
Over opening numbers
Oscar
noms: None
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