A Broadway musical of Purple Rain. Huh.
I have affection for the movie, but the story is a little trite. What advantages does it have? Prince as a performer, obviously. Morris Day makes a good foil. There's a good rapport between Prince and the actors who play the Kid's band, the Revolution, who also happen to be Prince's actual band, the revolution. And Clarence Williams III is also an asset as the Kid's troubled father.
Most of these advantages are pretty much impossible to reproduce. Find a guy who looks sort of like Prince and can sing like him, and he still isn't the real thing. Maybe put him in a biopic.
2 comments:
Uh-oh, indeed.
Never mind finding someone to play Prince, an impossible task in my opinion, but who on Earth could portray all those other people you mention?
The movie itself still exists so why not just watch that on one of those huge tv screens that everybody seems to have these days? Why pay Broadway prices to see an imitation of how the movie felt decades ago. I still remember being in a Providence audience when Purple Rain opened in the city. It was very exciting. Seeing Prince in concert the two times we did were amazing experiences not easily replicated.
Speaking of biopics the same can be said of Bohemian Rhapsody and the noticeably false buck teeth of Rami Malek playing Freddie Mercury. No, we didn't see it but we didn't have to either. We did see Live at Wembly in 1986 and Mercury & Montserrat Caballé duetting the song Barcelona. He was definitely no bland easily understood character and absolutely positively neither was Prince.
Yeah, that's the thing. If you're casting a Shakespeare play then you have some room to play around, since the characters aren't stand-ins for people everyone has seen. Same for traditional musicals like Guys and Dolls. Not so when the original is still there on celluloid/video.
Apparently there have been some successful shows that adapt Hollywood movies like Back to the Future and Legally Blonde to the stage. Of course these are musicals based on movies that weren't. If you're working in the shadow of a movie where the best part is the songs, and the songs were some of the greatest he'd ever written, you're at a disadvantage. Unless I'm wrong.
I like Rami Malek in other things, especially Mr. Robot. The Bohemian Rhapsody movie looked to me like a TV movie that had gotten out of hand, though. From what I understand it was a troubled production where the director had to be replaced, so maybe someone decided to give it an Oscar just to throw it a lifeline.
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