Those of you who read my blog, and who know me, will realize that I'm not a person who likes shows, or movies, unless they reach my emotions. And lots of shows don't. They need to be both dramatic and funny. I have to actually feel what the writer wants me to feel, and what the actors pretend to feel. That actually doesn't happen as often for me as it does for most of the critics and for most of the public.
For example, Cats ran on Broadway for 18 years. During those years, my daughters, teenagers at the time, wanted to see it, and I agreed to drive them and some of their friends to New York to see the show. Since I needed something to do during the time they'd be seeing the show, I went ahead and bought myself a ticket to see it with them. It was in a theater made up to look like a garbage dump, and, for most of the show, I felt like a garbage dump was the perfect metaphor for the script. You know, if the script is boring, then no matter how good the performers are, the show is still garbage. Fortunately I was able to sleep during most of the show. I view that sleep with the appreciation that someone having his appendix out appreciates the sleep of general anesthesia. There was one mildly amusing special effect where some people made up to look a bit catlike rode through the air on a large thing that looked a bit like an auto tire. You couldn't see the wires, but you knew they were there. And there was one memorable song in that show that woke me right up, but then, back to some boring stuff about Jellicle cats, and, fortunately, I was able to go back to sleep.
But I'm not writing this blog entry to toss kitty litter on Cats.
One of the Broadway shows that deserved every accolade it got was A Chorus Line. I didn't see that on Broadway, but I saw the movie. It was an amazing show. Probably everyone reading this knows the plot and has heard the songs so I won't give a summary here. That was a show that got me involved with the characters. I felt like I got to know them, and I cared about them. I felt happy when they were happy, I laughed at the funny parts, and I cried when the writer wanted me to cry.
The director, Michael Bennett, came up with the idea for the show. He interviewed lots of dancers about their lives, picked out the ones with stories that would be dramatic and moving, and, with the help of his writers, edited those stories down to something that could be shown in one evening. It's no longer on Broadway, but there are still professional theaters in the US where you can see it, or you can rent the movie.
OK, so the show edited the life stories of people and made them interesting. Of course, it also had amazing music, clever lyrics, a great script, and outstanding actors. So why, you might ask, am I devoting a blog post to the show.
Actually, I'm not, exactly. Normally, I don't watch documentaries. That's not to say I don't appreciate good editing. I do, and documentaries are all about editing. And there are some documentaries that lots of people like. Not me, but lots of people. Al Gore won an Oscar for a documentary. I suppose lots of people liked it. I agree with the message of that documentary, but it was stilted and boring. Michael Moore does mildy amusing documentaries, but they're boring most of the time despite pretty good editing.
The documentary I'm writing about, Every Little Step, was made during the casting process for the 2006 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line. The concept, doing a documentary about the process of casting a Broadway show where the show is about the process of casting a Broadway show, is wonderful. Whoever came up with the idea of doing that probably thought, "Wow, this is a no-brainer. I wonder why someone else hasn't already thought of doing this? How can it lose? It has great music, and lots of amazing actors will come by and perform those great scenes, and that great music, for free. Whee!!"
Well, it could lose by not being well edited. But it was amazingly well edited. These are real people doing what the characters in A Chorus Line did. We get to see them audition for the show, talk about themselves like the characters do in the show, and, at times cry, and make us cry, about the things in their lives they're talking about.
And these dancers grew up singing the songs from A Chorus Line, visualizing themselves as those characters. This is where the editing makes the show so great. Out of the hundreds or thousands of hours of footage, the editors pick out events that happened months apart in the prolonged casting process, and put them into the final cut in such a way that we can appreciate things such as where one actress does a scene so well early in the process that she makes us, and the producers, cry, but seven months later, at the callback, she can't remember how she did the scene the first time, even when the producer takes her aside and says, "Just do it like you did it last time." But we can remember, and we can see the difference.
So I got involved with, and cared about, the Chorus Line characters and the dancers who were auditioning for the parts in the revival. Out of the hundreds or thousands of hours of footage, they edited it down to a standard movie length. I felt as involved with it as I'd normally feel with a scripted drama that's both dramatic and funny. I laughed at the funny parts, and I cried at the sad parts. Seeing the documentary, Every Little Step, was an experience, like the experience I had watching the movie, A Chorus Line, that I'll never forget.
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