Entertainment
We found Black cinema’s wild, fearless and underappreciated director Christopher St. John
Fifty years in the past, Christopher St. John directed “High of the Heap,” a movie a few D.C. police officer named George Lattimer. This was only a 12 months after “Shaft” minted a troublesome Black detective with type to burn — and St. John in a supporting position because the Black radical chief Ben Buford. St. John additionally starred in “High of the Heap” as Lattimer, who’s much less a crime fighter with a knack for fixing instances and catching crooks than a beat cop who’s principally depressing about his lot in life and daydreams about being the primary Black man on the moon.
For those who’ve by no means heard of “High of the Heap,” there’s nothing fairly like its wild, fearless mixture of genres and tones: race commentary, Afro-Futurist satire, cop-on-the-beat melodrama and fantasy sequences that begin trippy and finish with gut-punching grief. The boldness of the movie evokes the work of Melvin Van Peebles (“Candy Sweetback’s Baadasssss Music”), who was a up to date of St. John’s. But “High of the Heap” has remained scarce in movie histories and in cinemas.
That’s beginning to change. A restored model of “High of the Heap” had an anniversary revival run at BAM Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn final month, and the movie is being featured on the brand new Blacknuss Community streaming channel. It additionally may be seen on Shout Manufacturing unit TV, Tubi, the Black Movie Archive and Amazon. In 2020, the New Yorker’s Richard Brody known as “High of the Heap” “a serious discovery” and “a vital work of Afrofuturism.”
The highlight comes none too quickly for St. John, an actor-director who — like so many Black filmmakers earlier than and since — discovered his inventive street run out all too shortly.
Regardless of some optimistic evaluations, and a slot on the 1972 Berlin Worldwide Movie Pageant alongside works by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Pier Paolo Pasolini, “High of the Heap” was lumped in with a wave of blaxploitation motion pictures, with out attaining the identical cult standing as “Superfly” or “Throughout a hundred and tenth Road.” St. John didn’t direct a second function, and regardless of theater work, his roles tapered off because the Nineteen Seventies went on.
Nonetheless, after stumbling upon the bizarre movie, I couldn’t resist monitoring down the person behind it — the movie’s director, author, producer and star.
“It’s a fierce form of film,” says a genial and chatty St. John, now 82, reached at his dwelling in Cincinnati. “‘High of the Heap’ didn’t belong with all these motion pictures within the blaxploitation period. But it surely managed to avoid wasting itself!”
In conversations on and off since final spring, he mirrored on his profession’s challenges, sporting his coronary heart on his sleeve. However he saved returning to a downright buoying perspective that with “High of the Heap” he’d completed one thing particular.
‘Energy from creating’
St. John remembers taking part in hooky from college to go to the films, and searching as much as Sidney Poitier, whom he met years later by likelihood.
“I used to be a Black child rising up in Bridgeport, Conn., and I used to be afraid of every little thing,” St. John says. “And I didn’t know something. However my energy got here from creating one thing.”
Like a whole lot of different aspiring actors, he headed to New York, breaking away from his household of seven siblings, an overworked mom and a father who died younger. His path from the stage to “High of the Heap” within the Sixties and ’70s was not exceptional within the thriving Black theater scene. Van Peebles and Ivan Dixon (“The Spook Who Sat by the Door”), to call simply two, additionally constructed theater careers as well as to directing function movies.
An opportunity audition led St. John to an Actors Studio membership and a front-row seat for a few of the nice skills of the previous and future. However the stress of the theater audition grind took its toll.
“I’d faux I used to be a troublesome man however I’d go dwelling and keep there, decompress at evening,” says St. John, who had been an completed carpenter earlier than pursuing theater. “I bear in mind Bobby De Niro had a guide the place he would write every little thing down: what he did, who he noticed, what he was doing. I by no means did that. However possibly I ought to have!”
Following his personal energies, St. John based a theater in an area he found off forty second Road. On the time he was working for a cloth and rug firm, however he constructed out the house so he and others would have a spot to rehearse and workshop productions.
His private breakthrough got here when he landed a task in “No Place to Be Any person,” Charles Gordone’s provocative Broadway play about an African American bar ownerand a surrounding ensemble of characters. Primarily based on Gordone’s recollections of working in a Greenwich Village bar, the play starred Nathan George and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. St. John, who initially performed a supporting half, took on the lead position when George moved on to Hollywood.
“It’s a really powerful play. Chuck didn’t mince phrases. He mentioned issues in that play that might simply be like a torrential rain!” St. John says. “And it entered my consciousness. Issues inside me — what had occurred to me, my household, all of the Black individuals I’d ever identified — it introduced all that stuff up.”
St. John’s coaching with Lee Strasberg on the Actors Studio, he says, underlined how a lot he had repressed. “By the point I did ‘High of the Heap,’ it was all in full bloom.”
“I feel the theater background makes all of the distinction on this planet. Christopher labored on organizing individuals, on the units. You do as a lot constructing as you do directing,” says Floyd Webb, a Chicago movie programmer who for a very long time chased “High of the Heap” for Chicago’s Blacklight Movie Pageant and landed it final 12 months.
However first got here “Shaft,” St. John’s huge break as a movie actor, for higher or worse. As he remembers it, his agent known as him to audition for the position of Shaft.
Arriving on the audition, he discovered he was up for an additional half, Buford, the Harlem militant who helps Shaft. He walked out.
“Strolling dwelling I mentioned to myself, ‘What did you do? Leaving an element in a giant Hollywood film!’” St. John says. However the director, Gordon Parks, known as him up and urged him to take the half.
It’s a pivotal position, serving to Richard Roundtree’s take-no-prisoners detective monitor down a gangster’s kidnapped daughter and mount a full-scale assault on a mobbed-up lodge. St. John cuts a hanging determine onscreen however he brings a low-key focus to Buford, coming off extra as a consternated neighborhood chief than a fiery radical.
St. John wasn’t known as again for the “Shaft” sequels however poured all of his inventive energies into “High of the Heap” and its conflicted protagonist.
A poster for 1972’s “High Of The Heap” directed by and starring Christopher St. John.
(LMPC by way of Getty Pictures)
Radical unhappiness
“I like your film, however why don’t you make it a few baseball participant?”
That, St. John remembers, was one potential producer’s response to creating “High of the Heap.” As soon as once more, St. John walked out. He secured one other producer, although he knew he was being valued for the dollars-and-cents draw of his “Shaft” affiliation.
But if anybody was anticipating cash-in blaxploitation, “High of the Heap” was not it. The film opens on a grimy lot the place a raucous demonstration is in progress. Lattimer is considered one of a number of law enforcement officials known as to interrupt it up. Spattered with mud, Lattimer wonders what he’s even doing there. His first line: “Bulls—.”
What follows isn’t a one-man crackdown on the criminals of Washington, D.C., however a wierd drama with an ache, a unhappiness that feels virtually radical.
We see Lattimer handed over for a promotion and getting impatient together with his pleasant white associate (Leonard Kuras, a pal from the Actors Studio). He’s given room to be a sophisticated character, at instances absent as a husband and father, and seeing a dancer (singer Paula Kelly) on the facet. St. John provides him a pent-up frustration, stalking into and out of scenes, a storm brewing that may result in anger or tears, we will’t inform. He fends off a racist cab driver (Allen Garfield, one other New York colleague); close to the top, he goes on a automotive chase that’s frantic and hopeless without delay.
George’s chorus within the film is a form of declaration of independence: “I can do any goddamn factor I would like!” He says it even when, or particularly when, his choices appear slender.
“I feel that’s a hopeful response to the truth that he faces,” says Mark A. Reid, a professor on the College of Florida and writer of “Redefining Black Movie.” “I feel he’s caught within the center. ‘Shaft’ is a superhero. This man is extra human. He’s actual.”
St. John had two brothers who had been cops. One was shot and killed by somebody that they had grown up with. He remembers placing on his brother’s uniform simply to see what it was like. “I simply went exterior and began strolling round,” St. John recollects. “And I seen how individuals would relate to me.”
In “High of the Heap,” Lattimer play-acts in satirical daydreams, imagining himself as the primary Black astronaut. He “rehearses” a moon touchdown in a studio, solutions questions at a press convention with wry humor and has a weird fantasy with a Swedish nurse. In different phrases, he does “any goddamn factor” he desires.
Subsequent to this, the movie’s home dramas can really feel somewhat old school, however St. John places these disparate components along with soar cuts and different modifying thrives. Van Peebles’ work involves thoughts, however St. John locates his causes nearer to coronary heart.
“Effectively, that was my life. It’s not only a straight linear story. It’s about how on an internal degree, I used to be a lonely little boy,” St. John says. “That’s how I acquired by means of my life up to now.”
Past blaxploitation
The climax of “High of the Heap” stays outstanding amongst police dramas of the time. George imagines himself going dwelling to Alabama for his mom’s funeral however discovering a disappointingly empty city. The scene arouses his rage, then his grief. As an alternative of a crowd, his mom seems, sitting on a chair in the midst of a dusty avenue. They commune, the digicam circling.
For St. John, a whole lot of unprocessed emotion over the previous decade went into that scene.
“I used to be afraid to go to Alabama myself as a human being as a result of I had learn all concerning the horrible issues that had occurred,” St. John says, recalling the lingering wounds of the struggles within the civil rights motion. He additionally remembers touring by means of South Carolina and being chased out of a rural gasoline station at riflepoint.
Taking pictures this scene together with his display mom (Beatrice Webster) in “High of the Heap,” he says, “I knelt down and I simply began crying actual, actual, heavy tears.”
The fantasy sequences had been apparently an excessive amount of for the movie’s since-deceased producer, Joe Solomon, who ran the exploitation outfit Fanfare Movie Productions. St. John remembers a giant combat with Solomon simply earlier than taking pictures. The language in Lattimer’s speeches — their heartfelt rage — had been toned down, in keeping with St. John. Scenes together with his character’s son had been reduce — which St. John, father of a younger son on the time, took to coronary heart.
“He mentioned to me, ‘What the hell form of film are you making?’ He was pissed off. As a result of he was making an exploitation film,” St. John says, “and I used to be not.”
The movie was launched, that includes a rating by J.J. Johnson (“Throughout a hundred and tenth Road”), however St. John felt shortchanged in his share of the movie’s field workplace. He grew disillusioned after the conflicts together with his producer and was exhausted by the expertise.
“I bear in mind I had a close to breakdown due to that,” St. John says. “This was speculated to be my nice film.”
But there have been optimistic notices, and among the many movie’s followers had been two main lights of Black cinema on the time, Invoice Gunn (“Ganja & Hess”) and St. Clair Bourne (“Paul Robeson: Right here I Stand”).
Extra lately, critics have rediscovered the movie on DVD or streaming. Reid compares its experimentation to Cinema Novo in Brazil, or to singular impartial portraits akin to “The Final Black Man in San Francisco.”
St. John continued to behave right here and there over time. He remembers auditioning for “Girl Sings the Blues” and “The Final Element” (“a high-quality film!”), and writing a spec script for “Ironside.” He was commissioned to direct a documentary about an Indian cult chief, however the journey was deeply traumatic and the movie took years to complete. His son, Kristoff St. John, grew as much as be an actor — a star fixture on “The Younger and the Stressed” — however sadly died at 52 in 2019.
St. John finally left Los Angeles and receded from present enterprise, although he nonetheless works on screenplays and hopes to launch his documentary. He appears to be the final man standing, outliving his collaborators on “High of the Heap” and securing a spot within the historical past of American impartial movie.
“My internal soul mentioned you form of do one thing that you simply actually, actually, actually consider in,” St. John says. “And that’s how my profession went.”
I haven’t been this excited about a movie star in a long time. Partly because we haven’t had anyone new in ages who exudes that delicious ineffable movie-star It. It’s not just about looks, though of course a pretty face doesn’t hurt. No, it’s about the effortless charisma. The paradoxical insouciance, like they’ve just accidentally stumbled into being the sexiest damn thing you’ve ever seen onscreen, and aren’t even aware of the effect they’re having.
I’m talking about Glen Powell, of course. (Even his name is right outta the Golden Age of Hollywood.“Glen Powell and Rita Hayworth star in the most thrilling movie of 1942: City of Secrets!”) He first made me sit up and take notice as astronaut John Glenn in 2016’s Hidden Figures. He’s not in that film much, and I didn’t even mention him in my review (though I did sneak him into the image illustrating my writeup; I just had to), because that movie ain’t about his character. But when I say he made me sit up and take notice, I literally mean I went bolt upright in my seat the moment he appeared onscreen and gasped (quietly, in my head), “Who is THAT?”
Maybe that’s the definition of a movie star: When they’re onscreen, you can’t take your eyes off them.
Anyway, Powell is rightfully finally breaking through this year with well-deserved leading roles, in the rom-com Anyone But You (which I have not seen yet but hope to soon), in crime comedy Hit Man (which is brilliant; review asap), and now the disaster drama Twisters. I’m happy for him! I’m happy for us all — we deserve a new movie star to remind us why we fell in love with movies. But it’s a real mixed bag for me when I say that he’s the best thing about Twisters. Because at this point, I will take whatever Glen Powell is on offer, and he does not disappoint here: he’s charming, funny, and has an improbably delightful shit-eating grin to rival Harrison Ford’s (my previous movie-star high-water mark for improbably delightful shit-eating grins).
I just wish Twisters were worthy of what Glen Powell is bringing.
I get why They — the big Hollywood They — saw easy cash in revisiting 1996’s Twister. It was a huge hit that has since become iconic for many good (and some not-so-good) reasons. It shaped the industry’s previous generational paradigm shift: its spring release date followed by instant box-office success helped move the supposed “summer” movie season for blockbusters back to early May. (Difficult as it may be for today’s youngsters to imagine now that big loud brash movies come year-round, there really did used to be a discrete season for big FX-laden crowd-pleasing genre flicks, and that season was [Northern Hemisphere] summer.) Twister represented a visual-effects breakthrough, with its heavy usage of nascent CGI: all those stormy goin’-green skies and all those tornadoes had to be created digitally, and those FX mostly still hold up almost 30 years later. The movie even inspired a boost in people studying meteorology at the university level! It was later the first feature film to be released on DVD, which surely helped cement the popularity of the format and ensured that the movie would become, in more recent years, something of a (misnamed) cult classic, not least because of its early appearances by actors who went on to become cinephile favorites, including Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jeremy Davies, as well as enduring beloveds Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, and Cary Elwes.
Twister was, dare I say it, a perfect storm of a blockbuster. But it could have simply been rereleased in summer 2024. Sure, revamp it for IMAX or whatever, if an excuse is required for a rerelease. People would have paid for that. I would have paid for that, even though I’ve seen Twister easily a dozen times, mostly on a small screen at home. (Though I did see it that summer of 1996, and loved it instantly. I have no specific memories along these lines, but I’m pretty sure it was one of the movies that I was having Big Thoughts about at that time, to the point where I was, like, Yeah, I should probably do some film criticism. Which I started doing a year later, and I reviewed the film in 2000.)
Instead we got Twisters, and look: no one was asking for a sequel, but a sequel would have been very much welcome if Twisters was able to make a case for itself. Like, why have you gathered us here for another go at this story at this particular point in time? The one reason — the best one, the big one — might be because, a quarter of a century later, we could now admit to the cyclonic elephant in the room in Twister: it was an early climate-change movie, with its “record outbreak of tornadoes” and insanely dangerous, even grading on the tornado curve, weather-that-is-trying-to-kill-you. (For another undeclared early human-impact-on-the-planetary-environment drama, see also 2000’s The Perfect Storm, about unprecedented extreme weather and fished-out oceans.) Maybe nobody realized it at the time — though I would be astonished if the first screenwriter on the project, Michael “Fuck with Nature at Your Own Peril” Crichton, did not — but looking back now, the 1996 film is quite obviously an attempt to 1) reckon with increasingly dangerous and unpredictable weather, and 2) try to learn how to live with it.
So it’s genuinely astonishing, deeply baffling, and almost embarrassing to sit through Twisters and not see a single solitary acknowledgment of global warming onscreen. Director Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) has stated that this is deliberate: “I just don’t feel like films are meant to be message-oriented,” he told CNN. I’m not sure he appreciates that releasing a movie like Twisters in 2024 and not mentioning climate change is absolutely sending a message: of denial of reality, of an ostrich-like desire to bury one’s head in the sand rather than face literal existential danger.
Goddammit.
Anyway, that means that Twisters is a hugely cowardly missed opportunity for us, as a culture, to finally grow the hell up about the damage we have done and continue to do to our pleasant Earth.
This is not the only way in which Twisters is absurdly coy. The movie cannot even decide if it’s a genuine followup or merely a furtive remake. Screenwriters Mark L. Smith (Overlord, The Revenant) and Joseph Kosinski drop in numerous sly callbacks to Twister but not a single overt one.
When meteorologist Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) flies out from New York City to Oklahoma at the behest of her former storm-chaser colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos: The Bad Guys, In the Heights), to help him deploy a (genuinely cool-seeming) 3D-radar technology that will hopefully get much-needed detailed scans of active tornadoes, she has to keep telling his team, some of whom are also her former colleagues, that she’s “not back!”… just as Bill Paxton’s storm-chaser–turned–meteorologist Bill does multiple times in Twister. Oh, Smith and Kosinski shuffle the rebranding around a bit: Kate isn’t just Bill but also Helen Hunt’s Jo, in that she lost someone important to a twister; Javi is also Cary Elwes’s Twister “corporate suckup” Jonas. But Twisters frequently indulges in for shot-for-shot and beat-for-beat xeroxing of the 1996 flick. It also sneaks in Dorothy, the tech for lobbing little sensors into a tornado for recording just what the heck is going on inside the funnel, with no mention of where it came from. The technology seems to be settled and considered reliable here, while it was solidly experimental in the ’96 film; proving it could work was the geeky backbone of the previous movie.
And that’s where there was a tiny opportunity to insert just a hint of awareness of the fact that, ahem, the 1996 movie, like, exists. I’m not asking for a lot here! Maybe a single line of dialogue that mentions, say, that Kate and Javi are former students of Jo’s, and that’s how they have access to Dorothy. And re global warming? When Javi is trying to convince Kate to come back and help with his 3D-imaging project, he mentions that these massive tornadoes are “getting worse every year.” Okay, yes, but WHY? We don’t need a thesis on climate change, but maybe just drop in something about how atmospheric CO2 is up dramatically since 1996, why not? (C’mon, this shit was easy.) The unwillingness of this movie to confront the real world, when it also desperately wants to be set in the real world, is frankly bizarre, and indicative of nothing so much as pandering to anti-science bullshit.
Oh, and speaking of anti-science… there is a real and not-very-subtle anti-academic vibe going on here. Powell’s Tyler and his wacky team — who are, let’s be honest, much more of a feather with the university goofballs who were unquestionably the heroes 30 years ago — are most definitely not people with degrees or credentials. Instead, they are “hillbillies with a YouTube channel,” self-styled “tornado wranglers” who sell T-shirts and mugs with slapped-on logos at their storm-chaser stops. Yes, they are redeemed, somewhat, eventually, but so is corporate-suckup Javi… and yes, it’s good that the characters are less black-and-white than in the 1996 movie. But it’s impossible to imagine that Tyler’s gang — which includes the awesome Sasha Lane’s (How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Hellboy) Lily and the also awesome Katy O’Brian’s (Love Lies Bleeding) Dani — will have anywhere near the staying power in the pop-cultural mindset as Jo’s band of misfits. That’s not on the cast — they’re splendid and it’s clear that they are doing their best to bring the same gung-ho cheese and the cheerful eccentricity (which isn’t even all that eccentric!) — but the movie muffles them. They are a sideshow, not the heroes. They are also emblematic of an attempt to capture lightning in a bottle twice, which happened organically the first time and isn’t something that can be done deliberately on repeat.
That said, Kate’s work-in-progress science project to tame a tornado by throwing a bunch of superabsorbent baby-diaper chemicals up into the funnel is at least a fresh idea here, and as clever and inventive as Dorothy was in 1996. (Tyler has his own intriguing notion about how to tame a twister.) The tornado action is intense, in a theme-park sort of way. But it’s almost irresponsible for a movie about extreme weather to be nothing more than a bit of fun fluff anymore. With only the smallest of tweaks, perhaps Twisters wouldn’t feel reckless in all the wrong ways.
more films like this:
• Twister [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV | Max US]
• The Perfect Storm [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV | Paramount+ US]
Entertainment
How the creator of 'Gilmore Girls' reinvented 'Once Upon a Mattress' for a new generation
It was a text from Sutton Foster that got Amy Sherman-Palladino to drop everything. The Tony-winning actor was leading a new production of “Once Upon a Mattress,” a musical take on “The Princess and the Pea” that in previous incarnations starred Carol Burnett and Sarah Jessica Parker. Might the creator of “Gilmore Girls,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and Foster’s own “Bunheads” take a pass at the stage show’s script?
“For Sutton Foster, anything,” Sherman-Palladino recalls. What was supposed to be a quick punch-up gig for a two-week Encores! stint has turned out to be the scribe’s Broadway debut, as the production — about a queen who discourages her son’s wedding prospects with impossible tests, and a swamp princess who takes on the challenge — has begun a four-month run at New York’s Hudson Theatre before moving to Los Angeles’ Ahmanson Theatre in December.
The revival, directed by Lear deBessonet (“Into the Woods”), also stars Michael Urie, Ana Gasteyer, Will Chase, Brooks Ashmanskas, Daniel Breaker, Nikki Renée Daniels and David Patrick Kelly. And Sherman-Palladino, who left the stage behind to pursue her TV dreams, has joined a burgeoning club of writers updating classic musicals for new generations (Amber Ruffin and “The Wiz,” Larissa FastHorse and “Peter Pan”).
Between rehearsing “Once Upon a Mattress” and shooting her Prime Video ballet-centric series “Étoile,” the showrunner-turned-librettist got candid about rewriting a musical’s book on a tight timeline, ridding a fairy tale of its misogyny and bringing physical comediennes back to Broadway. This conversation has been edited and condensed.
You made an early career choice between writing for “Roseanne” and attending a “Cats” callback. Since then, you’ve consistently cast stage actors and snuck musical numbers into your TV shows. How does it feel to finally be working on a theater project?
It’s completely bananas. I just lucked into the fact that this wonderful person in my life named Sutton Foster texted me one sentence — that was the extent of the negotiation, I drove a hard bargain — that has changed everything, and now I’m getting to be a little part of a world I admire so much. What world am I in that my job is to sit at this table read and listen to these people harmonize around me like this?
Had you seen the musical before?
I had never seen it. I knew some of the music — “Shy,” “Happily Ever After” — and I think I’d seen a version on television. What I did know is Carol Burnett. There’s not a lot of women who have that comedy, that big voice, that command of the stage — well, except this kid named Sutton Foster who’s been running around.
Sutton and “Mattress,” that’s perfect casting. The first thing she said to me was, “I want to be so gross, I want to be as disgusting as possible, I want to be this true Swamp Thing that crawled out of the muck.” And yet you fall in love with her, even with s— in her hair and leeches on her back. Nobody finds moments of humanity in insanity like Sutton Foster, and in this she’s certainly at her most insane.
Sutton Foster, center, and the Broadway cast of “Once Upon a Mattress.”
(Joan Marcus)
When you first signed onto the rewrite, was Broadway in the conversation?
I thought this was just for City Center, where they rehearse for like two weeks and then perform for two weeks. I may have had two weeks to get them the draft — a fun couple of weeks of writing jokes and lobbying hard for one classless d— joke, come on, Lear, let me get one in! It’s amazing to watch because it’s so fast and frenetic, and the fact that they can pull it off at all and at the level at which they pull it off, it’s such a thrill. So I thought it was over, and then suddenly, it’s going to Broadway. Well, I had all this other stuff I wanted to put in it, so can I put it in now?
Sometimes, these things take years to get to Broadway, and in that time you do try things and throw out things and put things in. But the whole thing has happened unbelievably fast. I think part of the reason that everybody thought it could go to Broadway so quickly is because it felt like Michael Urie and Sutton [as Prince Dauntless and Princess Winnifred, respectively] had been rehearsing for months. From day one, they were so in the pocket of being weird together and speaking each other’s language that it was a kind of magic.
I managed to shove a few more things in there that I had really, really wanted to, but in my dream of dreams, we would have had a proper time frame to really dig deep. But for me, nothing is ever done. I look at the “Gilmore” pilot, and I’m like, can I rewrite that? I remember when they sold “Gilmore” to Netflix, I said, “Can I remix the whole thing? Because I was never really happy with the sound on it.” And they’re like, “Yeah, can you not call us again? It’s a done deal, lady, you’ve got to move on.”
How did you go about rewriting the book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller and Marshall Barer, especially in such limited time?
Making everybody happy was hard. Over the years, there have been several kinds of incarnations of this show: The structure was changed, some characters were left out, and there was actually not one definitive blueprint to follow. So I’m working off of production drafts and working with three different estates, and the originators aren’t around to explain, “That’s what this very shorthand stage direction meant.” And at the same time, I’m in production. I’m on set on [forthcoming TV series] “Étoile,” [where] my [assistant directors] would get a glimpse of the [“Mattress”] script and go, “Who’s Winnifred?!” No, don’t look over there, your script is over here! It was insane, keeping everything straight.
I wrote a movie version of “Gypsy” — which has never seen the light of day, but I’m still hopeful — and I remember getting on the phone with Stephen Sondheim, and after all the wonderful compliments, he goes, “I just have a few thoughts, if you want to hear them.” I’m like, “Oh my God, of course!” And he goes, “I want to hurry, because page one…” It was like 15 hours, and it was the best 15 hours of my life.
That’s what you always want to be able to do, is really rip through things. This was not the project for that. It was very, very fast, and you never get to do everything you want to do at that speed.
Amy Sherman-Palladino, pictured at the Critics Choice Awards earlier this year.
(Amy Sussman / WireImage)
What’s the hardest thing about updating a text tied to multiple estates?
They’re all protecting their own legacies, and you end up having to work within the confines of other people in control of your destiny. Sometimes it’s a good exercise to do that: On “Gilmore Girls,” we had zero money. “The Drew Carey Show’’ would send over their extra water and half a sheet cake if someone had a birthday over there. I mean, it takes place in Connecticut, and we’re in Burbank where there’s no snow!
Learning to craft a world and a story and seven seasons of a journey out of nothing and with nothing — that lean, mean training prepares you for anything. My job is to fight the battles that I feel are worth fighting, and to keep fighting them so that the cast feels supported by the material and Lear has what she needs to do something we’re all proud of.
I was so f— naive — I went through a draft and changed all the things I’d change in a [TV] script, and some of it was as little as changes for spacing on the page or moving the comma so the person doesn’t pause at the wrong time, not realizing that they had to redline everything for the estates. It’s one of those dumb things that was so automatic for me, but I’d just made Lear’s world 15 times harder. So I apologize, Lear, I love you, it was not on purpose.
This musical, as beloved as it is, had its share of misogynistic material. How did you approach the update for a new generation?
That was the most important thing. It is a fairy tale, which does have a lot of, “I gotta marry a prince in the end,” but that’s not the [universal] female journey anymore, which is a great thing.
We wanted to lean more into the naivete of Winnifred, somebody who has a vision in her mind of what happily ever after is. She’s got this ridiculous speech about how it means you get to do gymnastics and climb trees, but it’s the end of that monologue where she says, “You get a pal” — you have someone to share this life with. She doesn’t want someone to put her on a pedestal, to dress her up in pretty clothes and look at her like an object. She wants someone to share s— with and laugh with, someone to look at all of her weirdness that she can’t do anything about because that’s who she is, and go, “I think you are special.”
That journey of love and acceptance, of wanting to belong someplace and having someone see you for the greatness that you are, even if you did crawl out of the slime — that’s the princess journey.
This is a female-led musical driven by broad, physical comedy — a type of show Broadway hasn’t seen much lately. How do you feel it will be received by today’s ticket-buying audiences?
I think all of us are aligned in the fact that you’re not going to walk out of the show having learned any lessons. We’re not teaching you d—. You gotta learn that somewhere else. If you want to break it down and make it sound deeper than it is, it’s about being different and finding the one person who sees what’s cool about you. But it’s just a fun show. There’s nothing you’re taking away from “Oh, Mary!” either, except that, for an hour and 20 minutes, you’re going to laugh your ass off and it’s gonna leave you on a high.
Broadway is best and thrives the most when everything is represented: the dramas that make you feel hard things or change your perspective or make you cry, the shows that really make you feel s— about yourself. Sometimes, you gotta walk out of a theater feeling like absolute crap, and that’s just part of the theater experience.
But there’s also a place in theater where, for a few hours, you’ve forgotten that your kid won’t talk to you, politics are madness and the world is falling apart. It hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s all waiting for you the minute you walk back out, but you’ve had something joyous that makes it OK to wake up the next day and go into your challenging life. So why not be someplace wonderful for a couple hours?
Michael Urie and Sutton Foster, center, with the Broadway cast of “Once Upon a Mattress.”
(Joan Marcus)
Are negotiations underway to have your version be the licensable “Mattress” moving forward?
There’s been discussions about it. I don’t think they wanted to take that step at this moment. Which, to me, says I gotta prove it, because if this version scores with audiences, maybe people will want to do this version. If not, then maybe people are like, “As long as she sings ‘Shy,’ I’m good.”
That’s the gig. I can’t worry about that because I have too many other things to be nauseous about. But I would love for that to happen because I love the show. And, I’d love to take another pass at it, if they’d let me, and probably another pass after that.
What was given to me by Sutton and Lear was a gift. I embrace this gift wholeheartedly and I hope I’ve done well by them. That’s all I can control at this moment. But I want to do more theater, because there’s nothing like it. It’s dangerous, anything can happen, so it’s not for the faint of heart. But I want to do more of the things that are truly and utterly terrifying, and theater is terrifying in the best way.
What advice would you give to another writer tasked with updating a classic musical?
Valium. Get a vat of Valium, up the dosage, just do it. Every time you get that call about your latest draft, just have that bottle right there. It’s gonna make everything go so much smoother.
For Prophet Film Review
Recapping the Film
I spent this past Saturday evening watching the film For Prophet. Under the direction of Mark Steward Iverson, For Prophet sheds light on a Christian’s struggle to surrender to God’s purpose for their life.
Ben Marten plays the main character Damon Fisher. He wrestles with his faith due to significant loss and recurrent adversity which weighs him down.
The weight of his problems is not unbearable for his readers thanks to Valentina Garcia and Enrico Natale. These two do a phenomenal job of providing comedic relief through their contrasting roles.
The Presence of Comic Relief and The Angel Raphel
I like the comedic relief the film offers because it brings humor to serious subjects that can trigger viewers.
That said, the comedic relief became annoying and unnecessary in certain scenes. The reason is that it made certain characters appear incompetent and clueless.
One being I was clueless about before watching For Prophet, was the angel St.Raphel. The Archangel St. Raphael appears in Tobit 5:1-22 as the angel responsible for guiding Tobias safely on his journey.
Writers do an excellent job of recognizing viewers who are not Catholic may be unaware of who this being is. They do this by explaining who St. Raphael is during a pivotal point in the movie.
Perhaps creators were using this Judeo-canonical reference to offer “biblical” support for viewers questioning the authenticity of the angel.
I also learned the name Raphael means healing of the Lord. Creators use the name to incorporate irony into the movie as several characters are broken by life’s trials.
Significant Themes in For Prophet
The theme of brokenness acts as a mirror reflecting the negative attitude one can have toward God after enduring devastation. This reminds me of Naomi as she wants to stop living up to her name and embrace bitterness because of grief (Ruth 1:15-16).
The theme of grief is connected to spiritual warfare. Ben Marten and Enrico Natale do a great job of depicting the stronghold Satan can have on a person’s life. Specifically, when unfortunate circumstances cause someone to lose faith in God.
The writers also do a great job highlighting how the decision to obey God’s call can make you seem crazy.
Alas, it is through the craziness of obedience that God’s purpose manifests. The main character receives a breakthrough as he embraces his calling as a prophet by fulfilling his divine assignment.
Irony resurfaces as the prophet exposes the impure motives of an unsuspected villain. This theme aligns with scripture as Jesus also exposes religious leaders who appear holy but have vile hearts (Matthew 23:1-36).
Cultural Adaptation
The Use of Modern Communication
Good and vile hearts are a part of human nature in every society. Themes such as grief, loss, doubt, justice, joy, and faith are also a natural part of humanity.
The producers of For Prophet do an excellent job of presenting a somewhat biblically-based film in a modern context. I would have loved to see St.Raphel communicate with Damon through more than regular conversation.
Doing so would have been consistent with the way everyone else communicates in the movie. Allowing St.Raphael to communicate through social media or a cell phone would have also added to the humor of an angelic being adjusting to life on earth.
While happy about the film’s ability to include themes and modern forms of communication, they miss the mark ethnically.
The Absence of Ethnic Diversity
Creators could have done a better job of hiring an ethnically diverse cast resembling the melting pot America has become. A more diverse cast would send the message that people of all ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds need God.
While not the producer’s intent, the lack of apparent ethnic diversity makes Damon Fisher seem like the great white hope. Damon is the hero in a town where only two affluent African Americans reside and no other culture is represented.
This suggests that only Caucasians and a few “lucky” African Americans need to trust in God. This is not the portal of racial reconciliation and unity that the Bible presents about the Kingdom of God (Acts 17:24-26).
Theological Inaccuracies?
Poor Portrayal of St. Raphael
In addition to providing an inaccurate picture of the Kingdom of God, For Prophet also misrepresents angelic beings.
While humorous, the creators should not have made St. Raphael incompetent and less important than other angels. Dumbing down St.Raphael seems disrespectful to Catholic viewers who honor the angelic being for its role in the Lord’s work.
Along with dumbing down St.Raphael, writers also misrepresent the angel by suggesting it was sent to earth because of sin.
This is theologically inaccurate since the only angels cast out of heaven rebelled against God (Revelation 12:7-9). This is also theologically inaccurate because Tobit 5:1-22 shows St. Raphael was sent to assist Tobias not learn a lesson.
For Prophet’s Misunderstanding About Death
Another theological inaccuracy revolves around death. Though a comforting thought, when one dies they will not be participating in everyday activities in heaven.
Instead, those who receive eternal life will be before the Lord’s throne worshiping him forever (Revelation 5:13). The beauty within this is the reality that we will be free of the cares, sorrows, and sicknesses of human life (Revelation 21:4).
While I do have some issues with For Prophet, overall it is an encouraging film that can strengthen one’s faith.
Do you intend to watch For Prophet? I would love to read your thoughts about the film. Your comments and feedback are greatly appreciated!
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