When you see a theater production of a piece you know well and love well, after having seen wonderful and celebrated productions of the piece many times before, including the original Broadway production, and watched the dvd of that production and listened to the cd of its original soundtrack countless times… and then find yourself weeping often and for long stretches during the performance, more than ever before, it’s not just love of the piece and accumulated history with it that is so moving; something really special is happening at that moment on that stage with that performance and these performers. Such it was for me at Saturday’s matinee of “Sunday in the Park with George”.
Ed and I treated ourselves to the revival of “Sunday in the Park with George” concluding its limited Broadway run this weekend and starring movie star Jake Gyllenhaal and Broadway darling Annaleigh Ashford in dual roles as the painter George Seurat and his great-grandson, also called George, and as Seurat’s mistress/model Dot and her granddaughter Marie. (Robert Sean Leonard, no slouch as movie star or Broadway lead himself, shows up in a supporting role, his playbill bio dispensing with credits and simply stating “After I saw the original production of this musical I went directly to Colony records, purchased the tape, and then wore it out on my Walkman. I am deeply honored to be here.”)
Jake Gyllenhaal as George Seurat
The theater world reacted with happy surprise to discover how well Jake Gyllenhaal could sing the immensely challenging role of George during a concert performance last October (Annaleigh Ashford’s vocal bona fides and suitability for the role of Dot/Marie had already been fully established in Broadway musicals like “Kinky Boots”, just listen to her hilarious, powerhouse rendition of “The History of Wrong Guys” below*). A limited Broadway revival run was quickly arranged for February through April. In advance of performances, Jake Gyllenhaal posted the following rehearsal video with this message:
“This is what happens when Riva Marker (the badass president of NineStories) and I invite Cary Joji Fukunaga to rehearsals for our new Broadway musical. Check out this video we made!”
The experience of the live performance in the Hudson Theater Saturday combined with consideration of the “rehearsal video” above leads me to wonder whether a movie version of “Sunday in the Park with George” starring Jake Gyllenhaal may be in our future. This may all just be conjecture and wishful thinking on my part, but let me explain why the particular qualities of this revival convinced me that a wonderful movie version with these leads could be made of this idiosyncratic musical, and why the mere fact of the “rehearsal video” suggests to me Jake Gyllenhaal may be actively working to make that movie a reality.
The reason I am posting this today is because when it is Spring the Bailey fountain will start gushing water again periodically. It remains resolutely dry and still in the winter. Spring has officially begun, but it is still resolutely wintery cold in Brooklyn today. Freezing cold, with blustery winds. Perhaps posting this picture will help Spring hurry along. I’ve joked that this year winter has come in like a lamb and is leaving like a lion, because it was so mild in January and February but snow storms and cold alternated discombobulatingly with warm spells in March.
In the original we see Belle and Beast dancing a waltz while Angela Lansbury sings about the tale as old as time, but the music nonetheless remains steadfast in common time, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4… and the melody continues the rhythmic pattern set forth at the beginning of the song and followed through to the end, a phrase of four eighth notes followed by a longer note 
(Tale as old as time — Beauty and the Beast — da da da da daah — etc.)
An idyllic, relaxed take on snow. Not the snow storm but the cool calm snow blanketed mountain landscape afterwards. And Jake and Heath keeping warm by the fire, and keeping warm under the blankets too…
Abel Korzeniowski should have received an Academy Award for his aching string score for A Single Man, but alas he wasn’t even nominated. This track, Snow, in contrast to Santaolalla’s calm Snow, is agitated and ominous, in keeping with the snow framed nightmare vision of the deadly accident it accompanies.
Which starts with that haunting intro. And after a quick verse chorus verse chorus go around there is a quick fade out, just as the music hints at an intriguing coda. A coda that plays over Big Little Lies’ title credits, but is not included in the radio edit.
First, how did it happen? How does the film that won Best Director (Damien Chazelle) not also win Best Picture? Director/Picture wins used to be the norm at the Academy Awards. But it isn’t anymore. Ever since The Academy expanded the Best Picture list of nominees to be up to ten pictures, there have been more splits between Picture and Director than not. One reason, and I believe the main reason this year, is that the new system has votes for Best Picture tabulated differently than for all the other categories incl. Director. For Director, Academy members simply vote for one out of the five nominees. Whoever gets the most votes wins. But for Best Picture, because there can be up to ten movies (there were nine this year), Academy members are asked to rank their top five choices in order of 1-5 on what is called a “preferential ballot”. PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accountants who somehow got the wrong envelope into Beatty’s hands, never reveal vote tallies, but it is possible for “La La Land” to have received the same leading share (plurality) of votes for director and picture #1 rankings. Let’s pull a number out of the air : 35%. And let’s pretend “Moonlight” and its director Barry Jenkins both got the second most votes for Director and Picture #1’s : 30%. “La La Land” would win best director. 35% wins the plurality vote. But to win Best Picture, over 50% of ballots must end up in the winning movie’s column; so the amount of #2 placements “La La Land” and “Moonlight” received on the ballots that listed the other films on the #1 spot becomes very important. A movie may not get the most #1 votes, but if it picks up most of the #2 votes it can overtake the front runner. This is what apparently happened last year when “Spotlight” won Best Picture while the perceived front runner “The Revenant” received Best Director; and it appears to have happened again this year.
So that’s the likely how, but what’s the why? Sasha Stone at 
Notes from a Composer 