This thread doesn’t quite fit (it’s a discussion about media in the form of a rant, containing a general question. I guessed and put it here.)
So a buddy of mine and I were discussing lame movie musicals and, after mentioning “Can’t Stop the Music” and that Cole Porter one with Burt Reynolds and Cybil Sheppard (“At Long Last, Love”), he brought up “Paint Your Wagon” and I replied with my standard “True, but don’t forget that the stage version and the movie have nothing in common but some songs.”
He said “Yeah, but the songs are lame and the original stunk too, just not as bad.”
I started to protest, but realized: he was right.
“Where am I goin’?
I don’t know!
When’ll I get there?
I ain’t certain.
All thet I know
Is I am on my way
Got a dream, boy!
Got a song!
Paint yer wagon
An’ come along!”
Plus one more equally vapid verse, all repeated for 27 minutes (ok, actually about 4 minutes…but it feels like 27.) And while we’re at it,
"Hand me down that can o’ beans
Hand me down that can o’ beans
Hand me down that can o’ beans
We’re throwin’ them away
Out the winder go the beans
Out the winder go the beans
Out the winder go the beans
(We had?) a lucky day"
Repeated over and over. Y’got paid to write those lyrics, did you Mssrs Lerner and Lowe? Nice work if you can get it.
Apparently the talent that would bring us Camelot and My Fair Lady, and brought us Brigadoon, decided not to put much effort into Paint Your Wagon.
But the worst part is that I started thinking about the lyrics. Marion’s song “My White Knight” in Music Man shows nuances to her character and makes her better rounded. The soliliquy in Carousel does the same to Billy. He changes from a thug to a desperate man in that song. What do we learn about the characters in Paint Your Wagon?
…apparently that they’ve been eating mouldy rye bread and accidentily ingested proto-LSD given some of their songs:
“I talk to the trees
But they don’t listen to me
I talk to the stars
But they do not hear me”
…and you’re surprised? I gotta get you and Neil Diamond
( “I am! I said.
To no one there
And no-one heard at all
Not even the chair” )
together, since he’s also surprised that inanimate objects tend to be non-responsive.
But the weirdest song is the most famous. And the most incoherent.
“a-Way out here
They gotta name
Fer rain ‘n’ wind ‘n’ fire
Th’ rain is Tess
Th’ fire’s Jo
An’ they call th’ wind Mariah”
Where the hell are they? Floppsy-Bunsy Land? (“And Mr HappySun shined with ALLLLL his might on Floppsy-Bunny and dried him out after Mean Mrs Rain got him AALLLLL wet”)
Outside of particularly trecealy kid’s books, where else do natural phenomena get names? On the other hand, he’s disappointed that he’s being snubbed by plants, so there’s some consistancy.
I thought they were tough hard-bitten prospectors in the Yukon. Can you imagine a tough, hard-bitten prospector saying the following sentence?
“Hey Frank. Mariah wuz blowin’ pretty hard and now it’s Tessing on the Jo. Maybe I should put Jo out an’ come inside before it gets colder and Tess turns into Agnes. Or even Gladys! And tomorrow’s gonna be a bitch if it Gladyses. I don’t wanna shlep to work through 4 feet of Gladys. Shit! I just stubbed my toe on an Elizabeth that was covered by Gladys.”
Is this dialect (of naming natural phenomena after women) actually based on anything, or were they just looking for words that’d rhyme?
What in the world were Lerner and Lowe thinking? It wasn’t inexperience, they’d alread done “Brigadoon” and had two more classics coming. This is just…bad. (Although the stage version was less bad than the movie.)
Fenris