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Friday, July 30, 2010

Quick Note on "The Adults"

Hair, in large part, has always been about the kids' point of view. It's an antithesis to a lot of Establishment views. But Hair was not fully an anti-Establishment polemic. It tried to understand the adults' point of view as well, something that was lost (with time) due in large part to the Tom O'Horgan staging. With the film in my head being fairly realistic, one of the obvious questions to be posed is how the parents will be portrayed in my script.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Musical Arrangements

In 1979, when Hair was initially "adapted" (using that term loosely) for film, the show's musical arrangements were slightly revamped by composer Galt MacDermot to fit in with a more timely sound. The bass was more prominent, the horns were ever-present, and the soundtrack seemed at times to have a bit of a disco-fied, funky sheen. I agree with James Rado when he says on his website that the film's musical arrangements "definitely [...] lacked [...] the authentic 60's feel." Rado goes farther and considers it an error of judgment for any stage production to heavily base their orchestrations on the film's arrangements.

I don't completely agree with him on that point. In my opinion, the film had some inspired moments of musical arrangement that should really be considered "standard practice" when it comes to staging Hair. One example noted by even the film's detractors was Cheryl Barnes' dynamo performance of "Easy to Be Hard," which sounded better slower and with more vocal bravura (to say the least) than the rendition on the original Broadway cast recording. It seems to me that the folksy arrangement of the song on the Broadway recording is kind of fast, a little swiftly paced coming as it does after an argument between Berger and Sheila. (I do prefer the key of that Broadway arrangement, but that's another story and it really delves into minutiae.) Another arrangement I like from the film is the slightly lengthened version of "Aquarius," because it allows one to insert the new verses from the London 1993 version into it without making the song any longer than it already is.

It seems, in spite of James Rado's insistence that the sound of Hair's score should live in the Sixties, that there have nevertheless been attempts at updating the material. An early version of James Rado's website at www.hairthemusical.com, for example, listed a project called Boombox based on his and Gerome Ragni's lyrics and writings, including songs from Hair and new pieces composed by MacDermot, with an updated hip-hop flavor, in a paragraph on upcoming projects at the end of an article on Hair's history. (Don't look for it now; the project was scrubbed from the site. No clue if it's still in the works.) Similarly, when Michael Butler was looking to produce a touring revival in the early half of the 21st century, some articles on theater websites reported that MacDermot would be taking Hair's musical arrangements in a similar direction to Boombox, the production otherwise taking the same "period piece" approach. MacDermot is long used to hip-hop, his work having been sampled by such rappers as Busta Rhymes, Run DMC, Handsome Boy Modelling School, DJ Vadim, DJ Premier, Oh No, and MF Doom in some of their work.

The more I listen to parts of Hair, with MacDermot's later collaborations in mind, the more I see the funk roots. It's not like rap (or hip-hop) is a particularly new phenomenon. The original production of Godspell incorporated an early form of rap in the telling of a parable, suggested by a cast member who witnessed the birth of rap on the streets of Chicago in the early Seventies. Another (slightly more funky, for various reasons) rendition of rap was seen in Mae West's memorable delivery of the Otis Redding classic "Hard to Handle" as Letitia van Allan in the film Myra Breckenridge.

With this in mind, the temptation within me is clear. In large part, I don't want to stray much from the Sixties arrangements and feel, but would songs like "Colored Spade" benefit from this treatment? (Note that I am not saying Hud should channel Mae West [to me, that's really more Woof's job], just that the "patter" styling with the funk arrangement resembling early day rap/R&B would suit his number well.) It's an interesting thought, and one to be played with.

At the moment, I'm sort of taking the approach of Randy Bowser's 2000 production: listen to as many Hair recordings as one can, write down what parts of which arrangement to draw from, add in your own ideas, and (as per my last blog entry) when in doubt, throw in some DisinHAIRited.

DisinHAIRited -- The 411

In discussing my adaptation of Hair for film with devotees of the show and score, people who've worked on it in the past, or just plain theater buffs, they always tend to ask me one question: "Are you going to use anything from DisinHAIRited?"

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Claude's Trip

When I began discussing the overarching concept for the film of Hair, there was one point that I didn't want to touch until I had a definitive idea of how to achieve the proper effect on film: Claude's revelatory hallucination. The rest of the film is built on Claude viewing things through his camera, but when Claude gets high, it's going on in his head. It's not occurring in real time in a realistic space ("fluid-abstract world," ahoy!). Therefore, that makes it harder to show on film under the constraints of that concept. So, how do we deal with it?

Sunday, July 11, 2010

This is 1967, not 1968

The title of the blog, for anyone who follows Hair well, is based on a line in Berger's exchange with his school principal from the "Pocket Books edition." In case you haven't guessed, today's blog deals with the timeline of the film, an issue that stems back to the stage show, which has always been fluid with regards to time period.

Friday, July 9, 2010

The Ending (SPOILER ALERT)

SPOILER ALERT


If you haven't seen the play or are only a casual enthusiast (you know the songs, some of the story, seen the movie, etc.) and you don't want the play's ending to be spoiled, read no further please!

END SPOILER ALERT


Second-Guessing the Creative Mind

Over the years, as many fans of Hair can attest, James Rado, the surviving co-author, and Galt MacDermot, the composer, have made many changes to the show. So many changes have been made in fact that the script released by Tams-Witmark Music Library for amateur licensing, with a copyright date of 1995, has been excoriated by Mr. Rado for its "confusing textual material." He considers it a "big mistake" that the "superior revised version" is not being licensed. The question is, how much revision is too much?

Early Brainstorming: An Overarching Concept

The first step to writing a screenplay of Hair is making an essentially plotless show slightly more linear for the screen.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Welcome!

This blog is a story of one fan's effort to "write" a wrong.