Adaptation

Over the last four days, I've seen wildly entertaining versions of "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "The Lion King" and "Showgirls". Each one was brilliant in its own way, and each was very, very different.

As I've mentioned over and over until I'm blue in the keboard, I dig cover songs. What I like about them is that you get to experience something you think you're familiar with, but it's filtered through somebody else's twisted peceptions. So you get, basically, two songs at the same time: while you're listening to the crazy ska version, you've also got the original version in your head.

This also applies to, let's say, other adaptations. We'll start with Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. It's a nearly shot-for-shot remake, but it was done by kids who didn't really know what they were doing. Well, in 1981, when they started, they didn't. Seven years later, when they finished shooting, they'd gotten really good. They shot in the summers on Beta and VHS, working largely from memory, since they didn't have a videotape of the show. You can read more on Ain't It Cool News, but the important thing is this: they were trying as hard as they could to make a 100% accurate remake. The performances mimic even the little gestures and glances in the movie. The only way you can tell the difference between the original and the adaptation is that, well, the kids aren't very good actors. Especially the ones who were dragged in just because they were friends of the core filmmakers.

So there are several ways that Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation is a lot of fun. The obvious level is that it's really neat to watch kids try to replicate a big special effects action movie on no budget and with no experience. And they pull it off! Just as you're thinking "I wonder what they're going to do for a giant boulder," there's Chris Strompolos on screen, running from a giant boulder. How about that scene where Indy falls under a moving truck? Surely they wouldn't -- they did! So that's sort of a meta-movie right there. The audience is wondering if they're really going to have a monkey, and is then delighted when the monkey is played by a small dog. And then the dog does a pretty good job of acting, too! Probably my favorite point in the movie is where the dog does that little "Sieg heil" salute that the monkey does.

But at the same time, through all the amateurism and ill-fitting suits and terrible fake beards, it's still an exciting movie on its own merits! The bar scene with all the fire is actually be more exciting in this version. Because all that fire looks really scary when you're acutely aware that there were probably no safety personnel on set. And by "set," I mean "the basement of one of the kids who made it," too.

This movie hasn't been shown many places, and I recommend it very, very highly. I was lucky to see it on Friday, one of the only two (sold-out) shows at a tiny art-house theatre in Seattle. Then, on Saturday, I got to see The Lion King. Not the movie; the musical play. The one that Dana freaked out about on that one episode of "Sports Night". And it was incredible.

This was the exact opposite kind of excellent adaptation: it cost millions of dollars and involved the work of geniuses (if Elton John and Tim Rice count as geniuses, that is). And the direction, set design, and costumes were all not just outstanding but actually pushed the boundaries of what can be done live on a stage. And you know how a lot of times a national tour will noticeably cut back on the frills, sometimes to the point where it's barely recognizable as the same show (Cats, I'm looking at you)? This wasn't like that; there were full-on elephants walking down the aisles a few feet from me.

And it's a really good musical. The added music is mostly explicitly African, and I find it interesting that a Disney play has a nearly all-black cast. The only actors I thought might have been white were covered in makeup so it wasn't clear. Incidentally, the reason I say "black" and not "African-American" here is because a lot of the actors were, well, "African-African." Rafiki, for example, was played by a gospel singer from South Africa, and she was great. Everyone was great. The movie's okay, but the musical is so much better.

And then came the play I went to on Tuesday.

Showgirls.

It's not that hard to make Showgirls better, since almost every single decision made by anyone connected with the movie was a terrible mistake. So when there was a chance to go to a dive bar and see a performance mostly made up of drag queens, I was thrilled.

Okay, the Rebar isn't really a dive. It's pretty sleazy, but it's got that big stage, so I can't really call it completely crummy. But I was trying to get across the mood of the evening. Come to think of it, I think I'm going to have to make "drag queens" a little clearer, because the performers were decidedly not the kind of campy transvestites that want you to think they're real women. The main performers, Jackie Hell and Ursula Android, are actually significantly less feminine when they're in character. Even when they're not in Showgirls, they're really, really demented. It's more like performance art than anything else. Really confrontational performance art. It's hard to describe. In some ways, it's a lot like watching circus clowns. Crazy circus clowns.

So this was an "adaptation" that had no interest in being accurate. I guess it was more of a parody than anything else, but there was a weird conceptual edge to it, because a lot of the female characters were played by men. Except that they were playing characters, who were then playing different characters in Showgirls. Does that make sense? It wasn't "a guy playing Nomi Malone"; it was "a guy playing a deranged character playing Nomi Malone". And for such a complicated concept, it was also really entertainingly amateurish and wacky. Nomi had three basic modes (which is two more than Elizabeth Berkley had in the original movie): sometimes she was viciously, screamingly hostile; sometimes she was vacant-eyed and sounded like a robot; and sometimes she just screeched obscenities. I think that was the secret sign for "I have forgotten my lines," but it was funny.

Most of the play was sort of accurate to the movie, in a way. That is, a lot of the original dialogue was used. But they were far more interested in entertaining (or terrifying) the audience than in accuracy. Sometimes, an adaptation can be excellent in spite of the original version. Those are my favorite cover songs of all, by the way -- when you have a really lame song and apply some determined craziness to provide some originality. That's always fun.