• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

You are here: Home / 2019 / June / Archives for 18th

Archives for June 18, 2019

No, but we lived the movie

June 18, 2019 by Terry Teachout

Yesterday’s posting in which I retold in exactly one hundred words the improbably melodramatic story of how Mrs. T and I met, fell in love at first sight, and fooled her doctors by finding happiness has been drawing a lot of traffic. Among other things, one of my Twitter followers read it and tweeted as follows:

This is wonderful. Now the question is which director, past or present, would be the best to make this movie. And which composer to score it.

Which led in very short order to the following responses:

• “I want Frank Capra, if only to guarantee them both a gloriously happy ending.”

• “Howard Hawks and Aaron Copland, respectively.”

• “Hawks. Play it for the laughs.”

•  “The ever-underrated Mitchell Leisen (Remember the Night, Midnight).”

• “I will leave the composer to Terry, who is infinitely more qualified than I am in that department, but surely Douglas Sirk would have to direct.”

My reply to that one: “Oh, GOD. (Tears hair.)”

•  “How about Preston Sturges, and the spin he could put on it? A little wry humor wouldn’t hurt, and he always did well with somewhat absurd, larger-than-life situations.”

•  “The answer is self-evident: the man who mastered both sentiment and wit is Leo McCarey.”

• “William Wyler, with a score by Hugo Friedhofer. The only other plausible choice would be Lubitsch with a score of Viennese waltzes. I could go either way, but I can’t see any contemporary director making it work. It’s too romantic and-old fashioned and there’s neither CGI in it nor repeated use of the word ‘fuck.’”

I love all these suggestions, but I’m struck by the fact that the directors mentioned above were without exception golden-age filmmakers. In fact, the movie that I find to be closest in spirit to the improbable tale of Mrs. T and me is Brad Anderson’s Next Stop Wonderland, a 1998 indie romcom which I described when it came out as “an irresistibly charming movie about young love…Simply by taking romance seriously (for there is nothing more serious than comedy), Brad Anderson has arrayed himself unequivocally on the side of the angels.” As for casting, I myself think Hope Davis should play Mrs. T, but she would be equally happy with Laura Linney. Catherine Keener would also be a good pick.

Alas, Anderson has long since gotten out of the romcom business—he now specializes in thrillers—but perhaps Whit Stillman could do Mrs. T and Me as a costume piece!

*  *  *

The theatrical trailer for Brad Anderson’s Next Stop Wonderland:

Lookback: on golden-age Westerns and their (mostly mediocre) musical scores

June 18, 2019 by Terry Teachout

From 2009:

“Westerns are timeless. The soundtracks rarely are.” Lileks tweeted that pithy two-liner a few weeks ago, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I love Westerns, but most of them have scores that are inoffensive at best, appallingly banal at worst. The exceptions to the rule are as rare as they’re noteworthy….

Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: Cyril Connolly on the danger of fraternizing with failures

June 18, 2019 by Terry Teachout

“The world is full of charming failures (for all charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others) and unless the writer is quite ruthless with these amiable footlers, they will drag him down with them.”

Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

June 2019
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
« May   Jul »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Stumbling down memory lane
  • Replay: Ginette Neveu plays Chausson’s Poème
  • Almanac: Mary Renault on love and hate
  • Almanac: Flannery O’Connor on mixed feelings
  • Snapshot: Rudyard Kipling speaks about writing and truth

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in