The Death of the Hollywood Movie Musical
1,527,141
Published 2018-08-31
“Roadshows command premium prices and the exclusive firstruns presumably whet appetites for the subsequent runs at regular prices. And they justify financially the greater length, high costs, starrier casts, and whatever else is big about bigness. The roadshow contagion is now so epidemic that almost any picture deal which comes along is very carefully mined for its intermission potential.”--Charles Champlin, The Los Angeles Times, 1967
Twitter: @thelindsayellis
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All Comments (21)
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"How Millennials are killing the roadshow."
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“It’s a streaming world. I don’t like going outside.” This aged like fine wine.
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Lindsay Ellis, 2018: The Hollywood Movie musical is dead. Cats, 2019: viciously beats its rotting corpse with a stick
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Movies killed the plays, television killed the movies, and the internet killed the television. oh and video killed the radio star
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Its amazing to me how the lesson is never 'Make good movies and people will go see them' but 'Ah! This gimmick will work forever!'
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So, in fifty years, people will be making essays on some yet unknown piece of technology about the downfall of Superhero Movies.
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Wow, that Dr. Dolittle sounds like a nightmare. I'm sure no studio will ever attempt to make another big-budget Dolittle film ever again!
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I can't believe you introduced The Sound of Music as "the big guns" without using that gif where Julie Andrews opens fire with twin Uzis.
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I genuinely guffawed at “I want to work with an actor — a real actor!” said over the clip of him talking to a seal.
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Them kids and their need to binge watch Bonanza on the 17 inch Westinghouse television set that's at a modest price. Can't appreciate musical roadshows.
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I think the problem with Doctor Doolittle and in fact all movies is that "the giraffe stepped on his own cock" wasn't part of the marketing material, nobody says that line in the movie, and nobody sings about said incident. Who knows where movie musicals would be if it had been.
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Funny how Hello Dolly was basically the bringer of the apocalypse for movie musicals of the time, and then it shows up in the post apocalyptic wastes of Wall-E, which are full of garbage produced by mankind. You can read a lot of jokes into that
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Lindsay, you overlooked one giant marketing elephant in the room: The soundtrack album. My mom played the shit out of my fair lady, the sound of music and west side story and we knew all the songs by heart before we even saw the movie. This was the era when people started to get the ability to listen to high fidelity stereo at home.
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I really love how they do good movies and assume it's a trend, then do bad movies and assume the trend has passed. They just have to blame abstract things even when they don't make sense.
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Lindsay: "The first canary in this coal mine actually came from the Disney Company with The Happiest Millionaire..." Me: "Huh. Never heard of it." Lindsay: "...that bombed so spectacularly you've never heard of it."
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WALL-E’s favorite movie ruined the 1960s musical trend... his favorite thing is trash. What an iconic little dude.
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"Oh boy... Here comes the big guns!" " THE HILLS ARE ALIVE "
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Please tell me "Like a turd in the wind" Is the new "See how i glitter?"
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I find it hilarious that Dr. Dolittle of all musicals ended up killing tie-in merch to the point where Fox later signed away those rights to George Lucas for Star Wars, only to learn the hard way that Star Wars was a perfect merchandising vehicle and they just signed away the film's biggest revenue stream.
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I love the idea of a studio caring about the historical accuracy of a movie about King Arthur. And then almost bankrupting themselves pursuing that idea.
