Hollywood is ruining musicals

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 20:25:00 +0000

Audrey Hepburn was famously inconsolable when she learned that her songs in "My Fair Lady," which she had practiced and recorded for months, were dubbed over by playback singer extraordinaire Marni Nixon. Hepburn needn’t have taken the dubbing personally, since the ubiquitous Nixon also served as voice double for Natalie Wood in "West Side Story" and Deborah Kerr in "An Affair to Remember."

But if the "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" star had been born several decades later, she wouldn’t have shed a tear, because those same studios that unceremoniously expunged her voice would have begged her to sing as Eliza Doolittle, regardless of her musical merit.

After the unexpected success of 2001’s "Moulin Rouge!" and 2002's "Chicago," a new breed of movie musical was born -- a genre I call the millennial musical -- in which all the songs are performed by musically untrained actors, with scant consideration of vocal caliber. This season's "Les Misérables" not only has its star-studded cast belting out all the tunes themselves, but raised the stakes further by having Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway and company sing them live on set, without the benefit of perfect acoustics or endless takes in a recording studio. (The resulting performances are, shall we say, a mixed bag.)

When Hollywood breaks into song!

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 20:00:00 +0000

There was a time, long ago, when Hollywood musicals were made with performers with genuine musical aptitude. It was the era of luminaries like Judy Garland and Julie Andrews. And when a big-budget extravaganza demanded a famous name who happened to have a lesser voice, they'd just film the star and let Marni Nixon or Andy Williams do the singing.

But ever since somewhere around the time Woody Allen studded his nostalgic 1996 romance "Everyone Says I Love You" with a bevy of decidedly unmusical A-listers, the movies have become a parade of less than triple- — or even double- — threat actors flaunting their show-tunes-loving sides. Sometimes it works – evidenced by the heady Oscar buzz for Anne Hathaway's going-for-broke performance in "Les Misérables," a role that basically boils down to one show-stopping "I Dreamed a Dream." But sometimes, right within the same film, well, Russell Crowe happens.

Salon.com > Russell Crowe

Hollywood is ruining musicals

When Hollywood breaks into song!