Please Send The Sound of Music Live Show Away

The Sound of Music with Carrie Underwood. Courtesy of NBC.

Maybe this sounded like a good idea to someone. After all, The Sound of Music (with Julie Andrews) is a beloved film. And to many people, Carrie Underwood is a beloved singer. What could go wrong?

It would be bad enough to redo a movie of The Sound of Music, but wait! Let’s do it LIVE! on TV! With someone in the lead who has little or no stage experience, to say nothing of dramatic experience. What could go wrong?

Well, $9 MILLION later, we have this mess. Dreadful doesn’t even begin to describe it.

First most glaring were the garish sets. One cannot replicate the wonder of the Alps with cardboard and paint. The Alpine vistas were laughable. I’ve seen better, more magical views in community theatre productions. Also, the main piazza set was more suitable to Italy than Austria, where this is supposedly set.

Sure, every Alpine home has great open plazas to walk around in. (Not a drop of snow on them, either.) *eyeroll*

Second, and I admit I have a bias about this. I LOVE theatre actors. I am a firm believer that whoever originates the role on Broadway should have it in the movie. And I pretty much wish a pox on all the famous people who think they can walk the Broadway boards and it’ll be fine. Even worse, those who then scoop up Tonys for their celebrity more than their work COUGHScarlettJohannssonCOUGH.

So the idea of “American Idol” winner Carrie Underwood acting in a big, splashy theatre work on TV doesn’t exactly fill me with excitement. But I gave it the old college try. I went to this show with as much of an open mind as possible.

Which was pretty much slammed shut once Ms. Underwood attempted to act. Well, I wouldn’t call it “acting,” exactly. More like rushing through a bunch of lines to get to the song parts. The dreadfulness of Ms. Underwood’s acting actually made Lindsay Lohan’s Liz Taylor look like a Tony winner.

Zero chemistry between Underwood and the poor miscast Stephen Moyer (“True Blood”). At least Moyer could sing decently. He does have some stage background, but all his TV work must’ve made that a dim memory, cause he was pretty terrible in this. His singing ok, but he should stick to TV.

It’s supremely hard to care when the lead role (Underwood) is sinking like a lead weight, right there in the middle.

Thankfully, we had glorious stage performers, who do actually know how to do this, with Tony winner Laura Benanti (who was way better than she needed to be in a small thankless role) and Tony winner Christian Borle (also late of “Smash”), both acting up a storm around the lead weights of Underwood and Moyer. And the kids were good.

Glorious (five-time) Tony winner Audra McDonald (sharing the record for most Tonys won by an actor) belted out a superb “Climb Every Mountain.” So, it wasn’t all madness and bad acting. There were real glimmers of glory here.

But the bad stuff. Wow, so bad.

The final climactic scene, when the von Trapp family is hiding in the garden, they are pretty much, sitting there as plain as day, all someone has to do is shine a light on them. Of course, stupid Nazis, only search the convent building, and don’t go in the garden. Riiiiight. Ridiculous is a good word for that scene, as portrayed.

Oh God, Carrie Underwood was so bad that in many scenes, I could barely stand to look at her. Really leaden. Really dreadful.

And there seemed to be songs added. There was one, REALLY tasteless, about happy millionaires being trapped in their capital gains, that I really don’t remember from the Julie Andrews version. Although at least Benanti and Borle were singing it, so it was OK from that aspect.

So whoever squandered $9 Million on this monstrosity instead of putting good, talented hard-working actors to work in something decent, I hope you got your money’s worth. Please, though, don’t do this again.

#NBCFail

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What #NBCFail Tells Us About MSM Today

There are moments in a culture, when you realize that people (and people's viewing/listening habits) have surpassed the medium currently promoted. Film attendance put the nail in the coffin of theatre-going as a regular pasttime. Big-screen TVs caused film attendance to drop. Radio finally realized (too late) that the iPod had changed forever how people listen to music.

We have another of those moments now, although it's been going on for some time already.

And it kinda looks like this.

This image is significant in several ways.

Let me back up a bit. At this moment, in real time, I was on my computer, hooked up to the Internet that Tim Berners-Lee invented, as he was on this stage at the London Olympics, Tweeting "This is for everyone." And, on Twitter, it was like suddenly "everyone" (including me) was responding: "Thanks, Tim Berners-Lee! And isn't this amazing and incredible?" Here we are, in Canada and Brazil and China and Australia and Germany, all able to watch this amazing Olympics Opening Ceremony TOGETHER on the World Wide Web of his creation.

It was stunning poetry, and really touched my heart. Touched that it was nearly the finale of the genius creation that Englishman Danny Boyle had created, a poem to England if ever there was one. The images that he put forth, which I'd been watching (commercial-free) created a stunning portrait that seemed to (according to the Tweets I was reading) touch Englishfolk most of all.

The National Health Service and Harry Potter and Mary Poppins and the English countryside and MUSIC! Oh the MUSIC! Best of all, those dastardly boys of the late 1970s, reviled in their country at the time (spit on at gigs), the Sex Pistols, punkers now dressed up almost as Cabbage Patch dolls, pogoing in their leather jackets joyfully. A British commentator later intoned (paraphrasing), "They used to be banned, but now they are as much a part of Britain as anything else." Something that gets you all warm and fuzzy. (And the Queen was watching!)

The ceremony took my breath away. In many segments.

Subversive in many ways, brilliant in all. I need to rewatch the entire thing.

But all those countries that I mentioned earlier that were watching in real-time? Not among them? The United States. If you played by the rules in America (which, being a punk rocker, I don't), you had to wait NINE HOURS (on the West Coast) after the Opening Ceremonies to see them. And to see a MUCH edited version of them. That whole joyous Sex Pistols moment I described above? Not there. It showed the beginning of the song "Pretty Vacant" (they played the WHOLE SONG), and then cut to commercial. Came back just in the final words of that song.

Another significant thing not there? Really significant, considering that America is all about "stamping out terror" and all that in our propaganda, was a long segment dedicated to the terror victims of 7/7. I think it's safe to say that that moment resonates with every Brit the way 9/11 resonates with every American. And one would think that "terror" kinda resonates everywhere. It was a really poignant, special moment of the ceremony. I can just see the NBC exec, looking at the lineup on paper. "Nah, we don't need that. We can cram plenty of commercials in that part. Look how long it is!"

So you had to watch the whole thing nine hours after the fact, if you wanted to watch NBC's version. You didn't get to share that "This is for EVERYONE" moment with the rest of the world. (In fact, NBC commentator Meredith Viera didn't even know who Tim Berners-Lee WAS. Although she did have that nine hours to Google it, for heaven's sake, so there's no excuse.)

And if you didn't want to wait for the ceremony, for the first time ever, NBC is (supposedly) offering real-time coverage of the Olympics (with every event broken out). This, however, did not include the Opening Ceremoniues (one assumes they will also not include the Closing Ceremonies). The best you could get from NBC (initially) was photographs on their website from what was happening live.

People were on Twitter when this was happening, first complaining that NBC tape-delays its coverage, second that all it was giving anyone was photographs. NBC must have heard people, because soon, it started live Tweeting what was being broadcast. THAT YOU COULDN'T SEE. For nine hours.

Cause, you know, if you saw it, that would be lost revenue for them, and all those commercials they had packed in there at premium dollars.

Here's the thing, though, NBC. I'm a Internet user (thanks to Tim Berners-Lee). If I want to watch something right now, I can pretty much find a way to get it. And so I did. From the United States. So did lots of others, I'm sure.

And, I kept reading these lamenting posts from TV critics and commentators, who were trying to view it through normal (NBC-approved) channels. I felt bad. So I sent them the link. That someone had sent me. After all, This is For Everyone. :-) And that's how the Internet works.

For better Olympics coverage, every day of the Olympics so far, check out #NBCFAIL on Twitter. It tells of all the ways that NBC is screwing up. They seem to be endless.

One thing is sure. The people have moved on in their viewing habits. One day, NBC will figure that out.

http://georgemckay.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/CND-sign-at-olympics.jpg

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