I recently watched D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary on the creation of the Origial Cast Album of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company. If you’re interested in musicals or Sondheim it’s well worth a look. And it’ll only require 60 minutes of your life. It’s interesting to watch the process by which they recorded this thing – both the numbers that seemed accomplished with relative ease (for example, Pamela Myers’s powerful rendition of “Another Hundred People”) and those that were a terrible chore (getting a useable version of Elaine Stritch singing “The Ladies Who Lunch”). I love both those songs, and there are some other good one on here too (like amusingly dark take on relationships, "The Little Things You Do Together").
The documentary is interesting in another way too - at least for someone my age who’s been pretty knowledgeable and aware of movies, TV, and theater throughout his life. This was made before I was born, and yet it’s filled with people that I’ve seen and heard about for years. I mean Stritch is still a huge star, and Dean Jones and Barbara Barrie were all over the movies and TV shows of my childhood. I don’t know how many times I watched Beth Howland inhabit the role of Vera on the old sitcom Alice, and I’ve seen Charles Kimbrough in a host of things for ages, though I suppose I most associate him with Murphy Brown. Seeing all these people (relatively) younger and engaging in an entirely different type of performing is interesting to watch.
And of course there’s one other thing about the documentary that makes it interesting to watch – the clothes, make-up, and hairstyles. 1970 was a very specific time in terms of these matters, and observing these people in that milieu brings up a number of observations. For example, how in the hell did the cravat ever become popular? And is there anything we can do to ensure that cravats never come back? Posted by armand at February 15, 2006 03:26 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Movies