tenlittlebullets | Glöckner, and French Les Mis.

Entry tags:

Glöckner, and French Les Mis.

Homg. So, as I'm sure I've bitched about a thousand times, my computer is experiencing ongoing fail including the inability to play mp3s. Well, I am really fucking sick of not being able to listen to most of my music, so I set up an exchange with a couple of my friends: I give you music, you burn my stuff to CD so I have access to it. And--I haven't listened to Der Glöckner von Notre-Dame in almost a year, and now I have it on CD and I am reliving how much utter WIN it is. For serious. I've never actually seen the Disney movie, and I don't think I ever ever want to because I can't bring myself to think of any of that music as being part of a "kiddie movie." It's hard to articulate, but--Glöckner is so wonderful and dark and beautiful, and I don't want the movie to become my mental image of it. Yes, the conflicts and character motivations have been substantially changed from the book, but I feel like Glöckner isn't disrespectful to the book--unlike a version where Esmeralda miraculously survives and Quasimodo is too virtuous to push Frollo off the tower and Phoebus is a snarky hero instead of a womanizing jackass and Clopin is a glorified clown. Hell, I even like the gargoyles when they're there to play Hobbes to Quasimodo's Calvin instead of being silly kid-pleasing comic relief.

So I don't know. I've heard the animation for the movie is spectacular, but it feels almost like it would ruin Glöckner for me.

Also burned to CD: the bootleg of the Québec Les Mis. FINALLY. Since the PRC translations are almost done (all but four and a half songs are translated and put on HTML pages and ready to go up on my website), I'm playing with the idea of transcribing the parts that weren't on the CD, so that the full French libretto could be made available. It's something I've wanted to do for a while, but really wasn't feasible with nothing but eighteen-year-old Paris bootlegs to go on. I'd still need help from fluent French speakers for some parts, but the Québec audio is clear enough for me to get a lot of it without help.

There's also the question of whether I should be putting the French libretto and/or the translations on my website at all, because so far the site is scrupulously free of copyright infringement*. It would be really unpleasant if Cammack & Co. decided to stage another crackdown on sites that reproduce the lyrics and I got hit with a C&D or DMCA takedown notice on a site whose domain I own and which is therefore my responsibility and also directly connected to my real name. Make no mistake, the translations are still going up, but I'm wondering if I shouldn't do it through Freewebs or something so any trigger-happy lawyers would have to go through a lot of shit (and at least two subpoenas) to go after me personally. And who'd want to go to the trouble of getting subpoenas when you can just get Freewebs to take down the infringing material?

* Yes, this is why the site doesn't have my scans of the Montréal production photos. It's also why I host my trade list elsewhere. And I just realized some of the icons I have on the site are made from production photos, but those are small fry, and Cammack's lawyers can't exactly Google them like they can with lyrics.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" had always been one of my favourite movies (though I detested the humiliation scene, and always fast-forwarded over it), but I don't think I'd recommend you to watch it. Der Glöckner really is a fundamentally different piece, as you say, and while first watching the movie and then fall for the musical worked very well for me, I doubt the opposite could possibly have happened.

Frollo is WIN in the movie though:)

Noooooooooooooooooooooo... I hate Movie Frollo. He's nothing but a prototypical flat evil character: selfish, racists,cruel, manipulating...
When I read the book I was amazed to find out that he actually was a kind and good person before the Esmeralda affaire started (and that he even had an enjolraic side)

Do you remember whether Movie Frollo had backstory? He's still a hateful, cruel, self-righteous, abusive villain in Glöckner, but at least in that version they gave him a couple lines to suggest that he was once an idealistic young priest who got caught up in some twisted desire to "save" his city from the nasty impure sinners he saw all around him. So... still a self-righteous twat (and I love that in the book he's fully aware that he's going down a bad road and just can't stop himself, whereas Movie Frollo seems to see everyone's sin but his own), but at least he had a hint of some motivation besides "I am a villain and must do evil things."

No, no, backstory. He is evil because he was drawn that way and nothing more.

And about Hugo's Frollo, it's not just that couple of lines about how he was young and idealistic. It's also his humanity (or at least the humanity he had when he young and he wasn't caught yet in alchimy and such). He probably is (was)the most human character in the novel. The way he absolutely adores, and cares and spoils his little brother? Also, he is the only one who takes pity on baby Quasimodo, and takes care of him, raises him, teaches him and treats him with respect.

And apparently I can't read.
Orestes talks about Glöckner!Frollo and I answer her with a whole speech about Hugo's Frollo.
Sol, just ignore my previous post.

Well, there is one tiny moment where in "Hellfire" he sings "God have mercy on her/God have mercy on me". So he kind of knows he's evil. (Also, there's a whole sequence in the song where he imagines he's being judged in some sort of faux church trial. Look up Hellfire if you look up any song, it's really well done.) Basically, to quote someone: he goes batshit insane at the end, like all Disney villians do in the last act. (Have you seen this website? Basically a huge source about Notre Dame de Paris, and also hilarious adaptation synopsizes.)

And also in the prologue the bishop of the church guilts him into taking care of Quasimodo. He has a moment of conscience after he kills Quasimodo's mother and all the statues turn to look at him. Creepy, and would have scared the crap out of me when I was 12.

But he's one of Disney's few real bad guys! He is all that you mentioned, and that's why he's so brilliant. Disney actually included such a character in one of their movies, one that definitely could be described as inappropriate for children. Obvious sexual desire and Disney don't usually go together:) The reason I started loving him when I was little was exactly that; he was different from the other, boring villains.

If one looks at him with book canon in mind, sure, it's a terrible portrayal, but Disney butchered the book anyway, so my opinion is that you have to think of the two Frollos as two entirely different characters.

Being more openly villainous doesn't make him a better character though, it just makes him completely one-dimensional. I mean, what's his motivation besides being an evil bastard?

...of course, one could ask the same about Cameron Mackintosh, but at least he has the profit motive...

Not a better character, that's right, but more interesting to watch:) I think he really believes in what he does, that's motivation enough for me.

..haha;)

...of course, one could ask the same about Cameron Mackintosh, but at least he has the profit motive...

:-)))

Well, if you come accross any french sentence from the Quebec boot that you can't catch just send me a mail, and I'll try to help ;-)

Oh, and I watched the Disney movie waaaay before I read the book. I was absolutely in love with Disney's Phoebus. What I liked more about him was that, well, he wasn't exactly "brilliant". Brave, and handsome, and honorable and whatever, yes, but definitely not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
Then I read Hugo's version, last autumn (yes, I've taken my time but you know how ambivalent my feelings towards old Victor's writing are)and, bloody hell! he was EVEN better. I mean he was hansomer AND dumber. One of my favourites characters EVER.

Haha, I love that being dumb as a brick is what makes him your favorite character.

well, I've always had a thing for handsome and slow men...

Isn't it sad when Disney manages to smart up a character?

...to remove any ambiguity about whether or not the audience is supposed to like him. ;)

But yes, point taken.

Phoebus is a snarky hero instead of a womanizing jackass

Well, I'd still say Pheobus is a snarky hero in Glockner, although they added more of the womanizing jackass.

I haven't actually watched all of the movie either, always skipping over the Gargoyle stuff. (I don't think I've even listened to their song in Glockner. It's too cringe inducing.) You know what you should do, just look up the names of the songs on youtube, that way you can skip the cheesy parts and just watch the animations and songs, which is for the win.

It drives me nuts whenever there's a rumor on broadwayworld.com that Glockner might be brought to broadway, because I would kill for that. For any production in the country, really, and a recording in English.

Re: French transcript, just do what you feel safest, because I really haven't known a internet-fun-killing bastard like Cameron Macintosh. Can't be too careful with him.

He's a womanizing jackass who reluctantly becomes a snarky hero, which is character development! Character development is good!

I don't think I've listened to that song all the way through either. It's just too... ugh. And it burns me that if they do bring it to Broadway, they'll probably change it to put in more stuff like that and take out as much of the morbid goodness as they can. I have a secret theory that the reason it's never made it out of Berlin is not because of cost (although I've heard it was a stupendously expensive production) but because James Lapine is in a perennial bitchfight with Disney over whether Esmeralda dies at the end.

"BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN!"
"BUT THINK OF THE ARTISTIC INTEGRITY!"
"BUT--THE CHILDREN--"

And it burns me that if they do bring it to Broadway, they'll probably change it to put in more stuff like that and take out as much of the morbid goodness as they can.

Ack, you know, I didn't even think of that. I mean, I do agree with you that one of the reasons they're reluctant to put it on Broadway is Esmeralda dying (and also that the movie itself wasn't a hit back in '96), but it's never occured to me that if they DO bring it back, they can change the ending again. Nooooo.

sigh. Maybe we should just hope for an English cast recording someday, at the very least.

Actually I read/heard somewhere (I can't remember) something really interesting about that. Apparently from the Disney movies of that period, and even if all of them were box-office success, Hunchback was kind of a failure in the US when compared with other movies like Little Mermaid or Lion King, precisely because the audiences didn't like its darkness. Since then, they don't do "dark" anymore.

The interesting thing is that in Europe Hunchback became the most succesful Disney movie ever. Because apparently european audiences loved the darkness.

You know, I don't like generalizations about europeans/americans because so often they are not true at all, but this kind of makes sense because it would explain why the musical never crossed the Atlantic.

I heard something similar. Not that it failed at the box office (I have no idea what its box office statistics were), but that it garnered a lot of angry letters from parents who weren't expecting the darkness. Or, more specifically, the skeevy sexual undertones of Frollo's obsession with Esmeralda, which apparently was rather whitewashed but still present in the movie.

...because the violence was okay, but god forbid Frollo see a gypsy stripper in the fire when there are seven-year-olds watching. Or something.

I dunno, it's silly to think in generalizations when dealing with individual people, but usually the generalizations do describe broader cultural forces. And there is definitely a Puritanical undercurrent in American society that says tossing villains off cliffs/cathedrals/castles is A-OK and unlikely to disturb little kids, while the merest hint of sex will corrupt their little brains forever. I don't know many Americans who honestly believe it, but we're used to seeing that view presented as normal.

The only thing I heard about Hunchback's European performance was that it was a complete failure in France. Which is understandable in that it's a complete butchery of the book, but it's not like the French Notre-Dame de Paris musical was oh-so-faithful and respectful either...

Edited 2009-03-03 22:29 (UTC)

probably because french people are very particular about musical theater. Most wolrd renowed musicals fail or get lukewarm successes in Paris, while the most boring french shows based on french history/literature are generally acclaimed, even if the music is awful and they all sound and look the same.

Oh, you can just stick with "fun-killing" - the fact that some of it is online is incidental to the glee he gets from crushing people's dreams.

I would not be surprised. Man, as a person, he sucks.

"Psst, I heard Cammack's in the audience tonight!"
"Oh shit, time to polish up my resume..."

LOL! Aww. It's true...

Hunchback was kind of a failure in the US when compared with other movies like Little Mermaid or Lion King, precisely because the audiences didn't like its darkness.

I think where Disney went wrong was they tried to have it both ways. They wanted to make a more serious, adult animated film but they just had this huge string of successes (Pocahontas not included) and people had expectations of kid friendliness from them. So they go and add the wack gargoyles, which mixed horribly with the rest of the movie, and they had this weird mess that doesn't work much for adults OR kids.

You still have the space at my domain, and you could certainly host the questionably-legal things there. Including scans and libretti and whatever.

Hmmm, I might take you up on that if I decide it's not worth the risk to put it on my site. Except that would expose you to whatever C&D nastiness the Powers That Be might have up their sleeves, and I wouldn't want to do that, especially since your name's right there in the whois database while my domain registration is at least semi-anonymous. And they have been known to serve takedown notices to sites with the lyrics posted.

So, your call.

Eh, it doesn't particularly matter to me either way. I've had up questionably-legal material on my site before -- and not just on passworded areas -- so I figure it's fine. I've been toying for years with the thought of making my whois registration information private but a) it's not worth the price for the small risk that it is, and b) my site really doesn't get very many hits outside of the people who already know about it.

It's not terribly difficult to mask the site from webcrawling, though, a few precautionary measures should prevent Google from crawling that part of the page and hopefully helping to keep the Nasty Powarz at bay. Just.. I unno. do what you want with the space and let me know if you need anything done administratively that you somehow don't have access to.

There's always password-protection in case that happens.

Edited 2009-03-03 22:58 (UTC)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Glöckner, and French Les Mis.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject