The Hobbit has begun filming, and here is a behind-the-scenes tour led by Peter Jackson. This tour includes Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Andy Serkis, Aidan Turner, and others.

So excited. This is really happening!

We saw an absolutely wonderful documentary yesterday: Every Little Step, about the recent Broadway revival of A Chorus Line. If A Chorus Line is a musical about people auditioning for a musical, then Every Little Step is a documentary about people auditioning for a revival of a musical about people auditioning for a musical.

Yeah, pretty meta.

I saw the original production of A Chorus Line when I was a kid, and I don’t remember much about it. After watching this documentary, I could kick myself for not seeing the recent Broadway revival. I really, really wish I’d seen a production of the show when I was old enough to appreciate it.

A Chorus Line was a groundbreaking musical when it opened at the Public Theater in 1975 — it transferred to Broadway later that year — but by the time I was a kid growing up in New Jersey in the 1980s, it was an institution. It had always been around and always would be, ensconced forever at the top of the ABCs, the New York Times’s daily alphabetical listing of current Broadway shows.

My parents took me to see A Chorus Line on my 10th birthday, in December 1983. I’d started acting in school plays a couple of years earlier; they’d seen A Chorus Line back when it was new, and I guess they thought I, a budding performer, might like it. But they must have forgotten how much of an “adult” show it was. I can’t tell you how embarrassed I was as a 10-year-old boy to be sitting with my parents, listening to a woman sing about “tits and ass.” I was mortified.

That’s the only thing I remember about seeing the show.

I looked at my Chorus Line Playbill this morning — I have the Playbills for almost every Broadway show I’ve ever seen — and according to the cast list, when I was 10 years old I saw the original “Paul,” Sammy Williams. He was apparently still in the show in 1983, eight years into its run. I wonder if he left and came back or if he’d been in it the whole time? Anyway — his performance was wasted on me. I saw the original Paul and I don’t even remember!

Which brings me to one of the most amazing moments in the documentary, which is when Jason Tam, during his audition, performs Paul’s monologue. The performance is so moving that the panel is fighting back sobs. Once the audition is over and he leaves the room, Bob Avian — the original co-choreographer and the revival’s director — lets go and breaks down in tears. I was choking back tears myself, as were other people in the audience.

It wasn’t until watching the documentary yesterday that I really thought about A Chorus Line in the context of its time and place: New York City, 1975. Post-Watergate, pre-disco; post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS. (About halfway through that 12-year gay golden era, in fact.) A few years ago I wrote a piece for the New York Blade about my impressions of a documentary called Gay Sex in the 70s. I linked to it on my blog and wound up getting schooled for my naivete by a few people who had been around during that decade. I admit that I used to feel uncomfortable about gay life in the 1970s. The era just seemed so distant, so foreign, so weird — right down to the mustaches. (A few people made fun of me for remarking on the mustaches.) But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve wished I could go back 35 years in a time machine and just walk around the Village and take everything in. I realize that may sound silly to someone who actually lived through the 70s. But I didn’t live through the 70s.

And I wish I could go back in time, turn invisible, and visit the Public Theater in the spring of 1975, where people were discovering A Chorus Line for the first time.

I can’t recommend Every Little Step highly enough. If it’s playing in your area and you love theater, go see it.

Not to be a snob, but it’s funny to read anecdotes about people who went to see “Sweeney Todd” this weekend and walked out after figuring out that it was a musical.

…about 15 people walked out of the theater during the film. When it started one of the three *loud* women behind me said “Sh!t, this ain’t a Goddamned MUSICAL is it?” then they proceeded to giggle and moan for the next 20 minutes until they finally left. (Thank GOD!)

– TalkinBroadway

The first show I ever did in college was Sweeney Todd. After perfoming in conventional musicals in high school — Annie Get Your Gun, Anything Goes, and The Music Man, this was quite a shock. How am I supposed to sing this crap? I thought. Are all college musicals like this?

The show was put on by a group called First Year Players, which does shows in which the entire cast consists of first-year students. (UVa calls its students first-years through fourth-years.) I was in the chorus. At the first rehearsal, the director decreed that none of the males could cut their hair or shave for the duration of the show — two months. I refused, because I was feeling like enough of an outsider at UVa and I didn’t want to make it worse by appearing to be a crazy mountain man. Finally the director relented and let me be clean-shaven.

Our production was what the director called “Brechtian.” I didn’t know anything about Brecht at the time. All I knew was that we framed our production as a show within a show. We were all homeless people putting on a production of Sweeney Todd. Instead of one stage, we had three mini-stages placed among the audience. When the audience came into the theater,
we were already wandering around the stages and the audience members, pretending to be homeless people.

It was strange. And it was the most difficult theater music I ever had to learn. But it was lots of fun and it’s the most prominent memory of my first semester of college.

So I’ve always felt a special connection to Sweeney Todd.

Matt and I saw the movie today. I felt that I was well-versed beforehand in the idiom of Tim Burton’s production, having watched a couple of “making of” specials and seen several clips online. I already knew that Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter (particularly the latter) were doing very different interpretations of their roles, that all iterations of “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” were cut.

So what did I think of the movie? Well, on the one hand, I’m just thrilled that they made a movie of Sweeney and that millions of people will be exposed to Sondheim’s wonderful score and lyrics. And the movie has great production values — it deserves Oscar nominations for art direction, cinematography, costumes, and maybe makeup and directing. And it was nice to see an actual kid playing Toby. And Alan Rickman was absolutely fantastic as Judge Turpin.

And the movie was so bloody it was wonderfully comical — it made me think of “The Lieutenant of Inishmore,” Martin McDonagh’s blood-soaked Broadway play of last year.

And I enjoyed the cameo appearance by Anthony Stewart Head.

On the other hand, I thought Johnny Depp was rather one-dimensional as Sweeney. I actually liked Helena Bonham Carter’s nontraditional interpretation of Mrs. Lovett more than I liked Depp’s Sweeney. I didn’t hate Depp in the part — I actually liked him quite a bit, and it’s hard for me to hate him in anything — but I would have preferred someone more dynamic in the role.

I missed the choruses of “more hot pies” and “god that’s good” in the song “God That’s Good.” I know Burton cut all the chorus parts for timing reasons, but the movie included all the orchestrations for that song, with nothing sung over it, so given that no time was saved there, he might as well have included the chorus for at least that one song.

And the movie ended way too abruptly. No patty-cake, no policemen, no nothing.

Still, despite the flaws, it’s a top-notch movie, and probably the best film interpretation one could expect. And it will introduce millions of people to the show — for that, I’m thankful.

P.S. My favorite line from a “Sweeney” movie review so far: “Depp’s Sweeney comes across as one more mournful Burton wacko… and his ivory-pale face is crowned by a stiff black mane with a white blaze in it. If you had sat Susan Sontag down and broken the news that not everyone in New York reads Hegel, you would have got the same effect.”

Here are the opening credits to Sweeney Todd.

I can’t wait I can’t wait I can’t wait I can’t wait I can’t wait I can’t wait.

But god it looks like it’ll be bloody.

Last night Matt and I saw The Farnsworth Invention, the new Aaron Sorkin play about the invention of television. It got me thinking about the history of broadcasting, which then got me thinking about the opening scene of the movie Contact, which is one of the coolest movie openings ever — as we pull away from Earth, we come into contact with older and older radio waves, umtil we reach the silent infinite void that existed before anything was ever broadcast.

I looked for it on YouTube, and of course it’s there.