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on July 24, 2010
Michael Penny
Posted project update #5An Article about GLEN OR GLENDA.
Post CommentIt's not often someone is able to explain to an artist what he sometimes only has an vague intuitive awareness of himself. This is what Doug Bonner at his brilliant blog, BOILING SAND, has managed. Here's a link:
http://www.postmodernjoan.com/wp02/...
This is his post:There’s one obsession I’ve long pursued, while another obsession — for decades — has followed me around.
They finally collided.
Artwork influenced by movies has been a personal obsession: in the days before home video, I searched eight years for a public screening of Joseph Cornell’s ROSE HOBART; I spent last Christmas Eve at the house of a friend of Ed Ruscha where I was ecstatically wow’d by her collection of his works; back in my Chicago art studio days, I once created a large intermedia work on JOHNNY GUITAR featuring a huge portrait of Joan Crawford accompanied by handcuffs and an empty liquor bottle.
The cultural anomaly that eternally dogs at my heels is the life and work of cult director Ed Wood. Cast and crew members of Wood films, along with his serious aficionados, have waltzed in and out of my life at various interludes. And Wood himself lived a few blocks from my Hollywood pad back in the ‘seventies. Even his make-up man taught me in film school.
Ed Wood has once again tracked me down, but this time in the form of a musical. Clicking on the link to Michael Penny’s GLEN OR GLENDA: A New Musical led me on the path to a film’s redemption, a redemption far more complete and gratifying than the one attained by Glen and his two-sizes-too-small angora sweater in that movie’s final reel.
I have to admit, at first alarm bells went off in my head: the movie GLEN OR GLENDA is a self-contained punchline, so would a work based on the film simply milk the pre-existing laughs ad nauseum?
No way.
Reworking the film through a different medium supplies the original work its missing surface and texture. The music and theatrical tropes give a polished overlay that can prevent you from checking out when the original story gets too schizo.
The play (so far unproduced, to the best of my knowledge) employs both a projection of the original movie and a SWEENEY TODD-type chorus (as in the original Broadway play, not the Tim Burton film) that provides devilish commentary:
Glen or Glenda, Glenda or Glen,
Sometimes the Rooster, Sometimes the Hen,
Born to be Barbie, Doomed to be Ken,
This is the Story of Glenda or Glen!By creating a narrative arc that exists in another discipline and exterior framework, the Chorus/Ensemble finally gives authority to the conflicting/contrasting narrators’ voices (Dr. Alton, Bela Lugosi) from the film. In the movie, Lugosi’s ineffable screen character kicks off the film and periodically comments on the action from some rarefied mytho-poetic world that’s in desperate need of housekeeping, while Timothy Farrell’s Doctor Alton explains the nitty-gritty of Transvestism to Police Inspector Warren (‘thirties Warner Brothers leading man Lyle Talbot). [In true Ed Wood incompetency, Dr. Alton begins his explanation to Inspector Warren several screen minutes before they actually meet.] Those narration voices and points-of-view clash like pebbles in a hi-speed blender. Miraculously, the shrewd topping off of these conflicting voices by a musical Greek chorus doesn’t create an additional distancing from the story but instead brings something the movie GLEN OR GLENDA is sorely lacking: Cohesion.
This doesn’t mean you have to stop appreciating GLEN OR GLENDA as a laugh-a-thon. Instead this musical theater version (at least as presented at the creator’s website, with original music laid over the Ed Wood footage) keeps you from lapsing into viewer burn-out. When you watch the un-doctored Wood film in its entirety, after a while there are things that you know are hilarious but by now you’ve sat through so many numbing sequences that you can only muster a smile. Penny’s music adds that layer of transport and balm of continuity so that the ride is much smoother; the humor can be truly savored. [Plus his lyrics upgrade the laughs with some intentional humor in the script.]
In the opposite of how Wood’s technique falls apart, everything comes together in this project. For example, as the story unfolds, the arrangements become very bongo-heavy. The use of bongos are so apropos since they’re of the period — and the taught percussion gives the story a solid drive in places where Wood’s talents usually stalled.
The movie GLEN OR GLENDA was supposed to be an investigation into desire, yet it’s dispassionate and withdrawn. Penny’s version finally makes the vehicle into the Desiring Machine it was meant to be. The urges of creation, of transubstantiation and transcendence, of deep secrets begging to be revealed have now emerged in the work.
Michael Penny’s GLEN OR GLENDA: The Musical project can be sampled HERE.
Doug / PoMo Joan
A SIDE NOTE: I’ve been watching the DVD box set of the 1950s live TV drama program STUDIO ONE, which includes original on-camera commercials by former model and future consumer advocate Betty Furness demonstrating kitchen appliances. Through the commercials, filmed over the years, you can see the changes in women’s clothing from the early to late 1950s. It’s ironic that GLEN OR GLENDA was made in 1953, since it was shot at the nadir of attractiveness for women’s clothes. In the STUDIO ONE commercials, Furness looks frumpy, matronly and un-dateable in the early ‘fifties, yet by 1958 she looks like a hot co-ed. Sadly, as with everything Ed Wood touched, his filmic recording of men desiring these bulbous, awkward, unflattering ladies’ clothes adds yet one more WTF to the roster of headaches bestowed to his audiences. — DB
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on June 16, 2010
Michael Penny
Posted project update #4A Message to Kathy:
Post CommentDear Kathy,
Thank you for having passed it on, and even more, thank you for these very encouraging words. There has been some interest, though I think it confounds people's expectations. There was a theatre in Chicago that actually assigned a director to the project, but it didn't feel right. I think they wanted to mold it into something of a campfest. There is also, more importantly, a theatre in Baltimore looking at the piece. Some others as well, but it's all rather murky at the moment.
I'm glad you appreciate its quirkiness. I can imagine how surprising it would be for an audience coming to this piece, and instead of an Overture or an opening number or the rest of all the trappings of musical theatre...this intense, dark one act comedy(?) that opens the piece...and then this immense relentless musical avalanche! I thought of it to be like Hitchcock's Psycho, with this opposing somewhat unrelated story that jolts one into the principle narrative. This is what the musical portion of GLEN OR GLENDA attempts to be...its shower scene! I could imagine a performance with just these two characters from the Prologue, Satan and the Composer taking on all these parts...putting over this entire magical audition...with this phantom orchestra, and occasional flashes of this mysterious catastrophe of a film...which the two of them try to redeem...And perhaps succeed in doing so. Basicly, this is the idea, but of course, there are so many ways to approach this, I could even imagine a version in two acts by merely writing an additional scene at the top of the 2nd act.
I suppose this might be more information than you wanted, but you seem like a sympathetic ear. You can, no doubt, imagine the difficulty of putting over this apparently radical concept. It shouldn't be, of course. It's just letting content dictate form, rather than the other way around.
Anyway, regardless of any outcome, I'm more thankful than I can tell you without appearing ridiculous.
- Michael -
on June 16, 2010
Michael Penny
Posted project update #3Cinema Steve has posted about GLEN OR GLENDA on KICKSTARTER!
Post Commenthttp://stevemillerreviews.blogspot.com/2010/06/glen-or-glenda-musical-coming-soon.html
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
'Glen or Glenda: The Musical' coming soon?
Do you have any spare change under that couch cushion or in that car ashtray? Would you like to be part of musical theater and cinematic history? Then perhaps the show that writer/composer Michael Penny is trying to raise funds for will interest you.Penny is hoping to stage "Glen and Glenda: The Musical."
Click here to visit Penny's pitch-page at Kickstarter.com. There you can read a little bit about his ideas and the PBS-style "pledge rewards" you can get for your contribution to his project. He states that he is hoping to raise US$10,000 by August.
On the face of it, that sort of sounds like a set-up like the guys from "The Producers" might be trying to pull off, but I there might be a potentially good idea here. AT the very least, I'd love to see a version of "Glen or Glenda?" with a real soundtrack score. Further, as I said in my review of "Glen or Glenda?" target="blank" there's something special about this flick... and maybe Penny's adaptation can bring it out more clearly.
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on June 15, 2010
Michael Penny
commented on a projectThanks. This venue in New Orleans will actually open with GLEN OR GLENDA, but then of course it will be host to what I'm certain will be plenty of other productions. This is what I did in Durham with my previous venue, RINGSIDE. There I hosted literally hundreds of events. At first I actually thought I might know your friend, but I guess I must have been mistaken. You guys really seem to have a great presence. So much energy. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that you succeed with your project!
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on June 15, 2010
Michael Penny
commented on a projectNice project. Best of luck!
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on June 14, 2010
Michael Penny
Posted project update #2Thank you, Shield.
Post CommentDear Shield,
I used to have a lot of faith in words, but they seem so inadequate to express
what it feels like to have someone I don't know, just some very lovely person...
out there, somewhere, to demonstrate some hard faith in a dream.
Whether or not I ultimately succeed, this act of kindness I will cling to as my
shield against any bitterness.
Thank you so much.
- Michael -
on June 13, 2010
Michael Penny
Posted project update #1A Thank-you Note...
Post CommentTim,
I just woke up to this beautiful surprise.
I was so afraid I might have put you on the spot.
I can see that I'm going to have to somehow learn to say thank you and really get it across.
Well, I think you're just awesome to have pledged.
I was so fearful of the thing sitting out there with no money pledged to it.
Was wondering by what devious means I would have to get something on it...
and you solved it for me.
I'll always remember that you were indeed the very first person to stick your neck out on this.
It's seems not nearly enough to just say...thanks.
But thanks.
- Michael -
on June 12, 2010
Michael Penny launched a project
GLEN OR GLENDA - A New Musical by Michael Penny
A new musical version of Ed Wood's notorious cross-dressing epic, GLEN OR GLENDA, seeks angels for its premiere production!
Funding Unsuccessful (08/01/2010)
Michael Penny
Who am I...? Was born and grew up in Durham, NC. Have always been very musical. Taught myself piano when I was 7 from my sister's piano books. Began composing when I was 11. Studied composistion under Robert Ward at the North Carolina School of th... view more
