Did you know this was happening?
Daniel Swensen
I am so behind the times when it comes to art damage, apparently. I also found this little bit at IMDB, and just had to take a moment to pick my jaw up off the floor.
Elton John’s Broadway musical Lestat, inspired by Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, will close on Sunday after poor reviews and attendance. The $10 million show, which opened last month, has been savaged by critics and failed to attract big enough audiences.
They made a Lestat Broadway musical? I had to do a bit of checking to make sure this wasn’t just some horrible dream. Sure enough, it’s real — well, for a few more days, anyway. While I can’t, with a straight face, say I’m sorry I missed it, I’m willing to bet that it was nothing short of hysterical.
It’s also interesting in that it’s another case of pop culture gleefully devouring its own. The once-lauded Anne Rice has gone from oft-mimicked subculture phenomenon to amusing-but-scary Internet personality in the space of nary a decade. And yet, in an age when even Rice’s most hardcore fans are probably more than a little annoyed with her, one of her works gets its own Broadway musical. But then, this is hardly reason for surprise. Even the characters from LOST are getting their own action figures.
May 25th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Okay, I know that this is not the primary topic at all, but as Dimfuture’s Action Figure Man, I must say: There is no human being, historical or modern, real or fictional, of whom I will look you in the eye and say, “They will never make an action figure of that person.” It’s a dizzyingly weird market.
May 25th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Oh, completely. I thought that maybe we’d hit the pinnacle (or nadir, depending on your perspective) with the Edgar Allen Poe / Beethoven / Arthur Conan Doyle action figures, but they just keep churning them out. I’m starting to think maybe I should come up with a wish list of obscure films and TV series and hope they come out with action figures for them.
May 28th, 2006 at 3:11 am
Man, if they wanted to have a crappy broadway failure, they could have just given me the $10 million and been done with it.