Results tagged “musicals”

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The difference between an “eccentric” and a poseur is, I think, a matter of empathy. An eccentric inspires fondness and even a little reverence, in part because the true eccentric isn’t putting on airs. He really is what he is. A poseur does it for the attention, and in such a way that you can tell they could just as easily be doing anything else.

Jazzman / bandleader / multimedia artist Sun Ra was as genuine an eccentric as could be, in much the same way that Wesley Willis or Jandek or Armand Schaubroeck were unfakeable. Any one of them could have taken shorter roads to drawing attention to themselves, but all of them, Ra included, wanted to express what they felt was themselves rather than simply wink at the audience. And when Ra did wink at the audience, it was in such a way that it didn’t blow his cover. His showmanship was not a pose in itself, but one of the genuine forms his eccentricity took — something, again, that can’t be faked.

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Critically assailed and praised in about equal measure, Pink Floyd The Wall is also monumentally exhilarating and depressing in about equal measure — and I'm fairly sure that's the idea. Director Alan Parker (of Fame, Midnight Express, Angel Heart and Mississippi Burning), along with Pink Floyd's Roger Waters and animator/illustrator Gerald Scarfe, produced this filmed adaptation of Pink Floyd's epic and massively successful two-disc album only to discover that they were both far ahead of their time and in way over their heads. But they also made no apologies for its excesses, and unlike a lot of other band-related movie projects it wasn't designed as a cheap publicity stunt to capitalize on the success of the artists.

Up until the mid-Seventies, musicals on film had been limited to adaptations of Broadway productions — The Sound of Music, Sweet Charity, My Fair Lady. When the idea of the rock concept album or rock opera started to come more into vogue, an idea more or less pioneered by The Who with Tommy, the idea of transposing a themed rock album to film took hold — and in fact, that did happen with Tommy, courtesy of director Ken Russell, in 1975. Many people found it goofy, and there is a lot of inherent camp value in watching Jack Nicholson and Ann-Margret have no more than two notes of range between them, but it was directed, photographed and performed with great gusto.