(Yeah, you gettin’ laid tonight, playa.”)
13-year-old Little Miss Sunshine star Abigail Breslin is set to play Helen Keller on Broadway next year. She’ll star in the revival of William Gibson’s play The Miracle Worker, a title sure to sound ironic to its subject if she were indeed able to recognize sounds.
“I am so honored,” the 13-year-old Breslin said in an interview. “It’s like the biggest thing in the world. … I have read the biography of Helen Keller. So I’ve always known the story, and it’s always been something I wanted to play.
“The Miracle Worker” was about three women — Helen, Annie Sullivan, the determined instructor who teaches the deaf and blind Helen how to communicate, and Helen’s mother (a role still be to cast), a woman who insisted against her husband’s advice of reaching out to this young teacher for her daughter. [THR]
Meanwhile, FilmDrunk was able to obtain an exclusive transcript of Breslin’s first big song and dance number in the show:
We complain a lot about how movies are all remakes and stunt casting and undisguised toy commercials, but all it takes is the occasional news out of Broadway to remind us that it could be worse. That crappy movie you wasted $12 on will probably spawn a crappy play with singing and dancing and Bob Saget playing the lead for one week only and no special effects. On that note, 83-year-old Jerry Lewis is set to make his theater directing debut on a musical version of his 1963 film The Nutty Professor.
With music by Academy Award, Emmy Award, Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Marvin Hamlisch and a book and lyrics by multiple Tony Award winner and Grammy nominee Rupert Holmes, the musical is aiming for a bow on Broadway in the 2010-11 season.
Lewis stated, “I was born with show business in my blood and working on Broadway gets it coursing through my veins like no other place can. Marvin and Rupert have given one of my favorite and most enduring films…a hilarious and gorgeous adaptation for Broadway and I could not be happier. Does this story sing and dance? You bet it does.” [Playbill]
It sings, it dances, it falls asleep on the couch and complains about the Orientals. I’m a-tellin ya, Bimbo, this heah hootenanny is the elephant’s eyebrows. Hold on… Cholly, I can’t hear a word this dame’s a-singin. Can someone replace the hydro tubes on her amplification box?
Will Ferrell’s Broadway show about Bush (You’re Welcome, America: A Final Night with George W. Bush) opened last night. The consensus seems to be that it was funny, but meh. Said NY Times, “I laughed, I yawned.” USA Today hated it, but their reviewer seems like kind of a cunt (with all due respect).
Ferrell’s monologue is a mixture of fact and fiction. While it is true that 71 percent of Americans disapproved of Bush’s job performance at the end of his term, Bush did not shoot up sleeping hobos with Novocain as a child. It is also unlikely that Bush has read Danielle Steel’s “Rogue” over 200 times. [NYC Theater]
[At one point] Ferrell, asks theatergoers to tell him their occupations, so he can give them the gift of his own pet names.
“Occupational therapist,” called out one woman at the performance I attended. “Helen Keller,” answered Mr. Ferrell as Mr. Bush, without pausing to think. “Bike messenger,” said another person. “I’ll call you Lance Armstrong,” responded Mr. Ferrell. But the coup de grâce came when a voice (not mine) yelled, “Reviewer,” and the man onstage answered, with the impact of a thrusting sword, “Obsolete profession.” [NYTimes]
Whoa, easy there, captain penis metaphor. Anyway, that’s what you would’ve seen if you lived in Manhattan and had $61-$301 to spend. All in all, not nearly as successful as the time Judy Dench crushed a ping pong ball with her anus. She’s an amazing lady.
Randy Quaid was banned from the Actor’s Equity union for life and fined $81,572 for basically keeping it too real on the set of Lone Star Love the Musical.
* Quaid hit an actor on the back of the head four times during performances. When the stage manager told him to stop, he smacked the actor again.
* Another actor was warned that if he made direct eye contact with Quaid onstage, he’d be fired.
* Quaid made "sexually inappropriate" comments onstage, repeatedly referring to an actress’ musical instruments as her "gynecological instruments." [I bet they'd have complained when I offered customers a "sanitary napkin" back at the deli too - jeez, it's just an adjective. -Ed.]
* The couple [Quaid and his wife, presumably - Ed.] tried to rewrite the script, to eliminate characters. Randy "felt free" to change blocking, lyrics and lines during performances, and repeatedly failed to show up for note sessions and rehearsals
But wait, theres more!
Quaid says the actors are part of a “pinko-commie organization” trying to destroy him. And it gets even better: Sources tell TMZ that Quaid’s wife Evi turned up at the Equity hearing for Quaid and “berated several Equity staff members, including a 76-year-old receptionist whom she allegedly kicked in the shins, drawing blood.” Evi says Equity staffers broke her finger while trying to bar her from the meeting; others say she was a screaming lunatic raving about a “Nazi plot” against her husband. [Gothamist]
Sources call the scandal, "The only interesting thing to happen to musical theater ever."
Why do we still have the theater? Don’t they know you can go film shit on location and do special effects and stuff and then play it back without the actors having to be there? Theater nowadays is pretty much like when rich people go camping. "Ooh, let’s drive out to the woods and pretend we’re poor!" Good idea, dad, you fucking yuppie.
[Thanks to RoboPanda, the most pleasant smelling FilmDrunkard, for the tip.]
