There are thousands of movies that are based on plays – earning its own Wikipedia page.
Shakespeare is the line leader here….
Shakespeare plays
The Guinness Book of Records lists 410 feature-length film and TV versions of William Shakespeare’s plays as having been produced, which makes him the most filmed author ever in any language.
The Internet Movie Database lists Shakespeare as having writing credit on 1,171 films, with 21 films in active production, but not yet released, as of June 2016. The earliest known production is King John from 1899.
Wikipedia
Many of these play-to-movie productions fit into the category of Tragicomedy.
Tragicomedy, as its name implies, invokes the intended response of both the tragedy and the comedy in the audience, the former being a genre based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis and the latter being a genre intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter.
Wikipedia
WLBOTT Wonders: Isn’t life essentially a tragicomedy?
What may be a moment of tragedy for one individual could be a source of comedy or resilience for another.
[chatGPT]
i.e.
- One man’s Trash is another man’s Treasure.
- One man’s Ceiling is another man’s Floor.
- One man’s Reward is another man’s Ruination.
- One man’s Aquarium is another man’s Sushi.
[UC#2 choice award]
- One man’s Vitriol is another man’s Veneration
- One man’s Plaster is another man’s Porridge.
- One man’s Venn Diagram is another man’s Velociraptor. [ed. note: needs work]
- One man’s Spackle is another man’s Supper.
- One man’s Saliva is another man’s Spit. [ed. note: needs work]
- One man’s Vichyssoise is another man’s Vomitorium [editor’s choice award]
There’s a “real time” feel to plays – the best example being My Dinner with Andre, where the play is essentially a long conversation between two friends. But bringing a play to the silver screen gives the director many tools that aren’t available in live theater, like close-ups, subtle expressions and interchanges between the cast, expansive sets, extensive editing, even CGI Dinosaurs (noticeably absent from the stage production of Amadeus).
Amadeus
Amadeus is quite possibly the perfect movie (with the above noted exception – the absence of dinosaurs). But possibly too many notes also.
Mozart: before and after exposure to WLBOTT:
Historicity
From the beginning, writer Peter Shaffer and director Miloš Forman both were open about their desire to create entertaining drama only loosely based on reality[1], calling the work a “fantasia on the theme of Mozart and Salieri”.
Wikipedia
[1] “only loosely based on reality” also applies to WLBOTT and its founders.
Too many notes…..
Tom Hulce
Tom Hulce, the actor who played Mozart, is 69 years old.
In the early 1980s, Hulce was chosen over intense competition (including David Bowie, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Mark Hamill, and Kenneth Branagh) to play the role of Mozart in director Miloš Forman’s film version of Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus. In 1985, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, losing to his co-star, F. Murray Abraham. In his acceptance speech, Abraham paid tribute to his co-star, saying, “There’s only one thing missing for me tonight, and that is to have Tom Hulce standing by my side.”
Wikipedia
Other WBLOTT Favorites with Tom Hulce
Larry “Pinto” Kroger (Animal House)
Steven Brillstein, an ambulance chasing lawyer (Fearless)
Lawrence “Larry” Buckman, the prodigal son (Parenthood)
F. Murray Abraham
F. Murray Abraham (Antonio Salieri) is 84, and he’s a Longhorn.
Abraham was born in Pittsburgh but raised along the Mexican border in El Paso, Texas. His father was an auto mechanic, his mother was a homemaker, and Abraham was “a little hoodlum,” he says. His parents’ immigrant experience led to an “overprotective, fearful” environment at home. “It’s an Old World mentality,” he says. “Keep your trunks packed — anything can happen…. But also the regard for life is extremely powerful…. That’s how I grew up. It had nothing to do with what I became. Other than the tenacity.”
In the mid-1950s, by the time he was 16, Abraham was running with one of the local gangs, which have a long tradition in El Paso. “That’s where they began,” he says, “among the border states. The Crips and Bloods are an offshoot of that.” He was in and out of school, stealing cars, and getting into fights with rival gangs. “Guns were not a big part of our lives,” he says. “Knives and chains and stuff like that. You’d walk away from a fight in those days. These days they’re killing each other.”Soon after arriving in New York, Abraham began studying with Uta Hagen and, according to the actor, became one of her favorite pupils — at first. “I was with her for little over a year,” he says. “The more I was with her, the worse I got.” Abraham says the problem is not uncommon between actors and their teachers, particularly the charismatic ones such as Hagen…. Eventually, Hagen became so exasperated that she threw him out. “She said to the class, ‘He has this great talent and he pisses all over it. Get out,’ ” he recalls. “I wept, heartbroken.”
Backstage.com
Uta Hagen
Uta Hagen, Abraham’s teacher in NYC, was a fascinating person.
Uta Thyra Hagen (12 June 1919 – 14 January 2004) was a German-American actress and theatre practitioner. She originated the role of Martha in the 1962 Broadway premiere of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, who called her “a profoundly truthful actress.” Because Hagen was on the Hollywood blacklist, in part because of her association with Paul Robeson, her film opportunities dwindled and she focused her career on New York theatre.
Hagen was an influential acting teacher who taught, among others, Matthew Broderick, Christine Lahti, Amanda Peet, Hope Davis, Jason Robards, Sigourney Weaver, Katie Finneran, Liza Minnelli, Whoopi Goldberg, Jack Lemmon, Charles Nelson Reilly, Manu Tupou, Debbie Allen, Herschel Savage, George Segal, Jon Stewart, and Al Pacino. She was a voice coach to Judy Garland, teaching her a German accent for the picture Judgment at Nuremberg.
Wikipedia
