Random Factoid #423

24 09 2010

I’m all busy applying to college now, and my future in a year has become one of the biggest things on my mind as of recent.  But there was a time when the idea of going to college was as far away as getting married or having children.  Now it’s almost here … and I can’t believe it.

As I said in Random Factoid #383, there are certain subjects that my knowledge of is based entirely on what I have learned from the movies.  And when I posted that picture of “Legally Blonde” yesterday, I remembered the indelible impact that the movie had of my perceptions of college.

I got to see the movie when I was 10 years, a pretty rare occurrence for me.  Most of the adult humor flew over my head, and my mom was abhorred when she found out what I had seen.  But nevertheless, I had seen it and I absorbed some of it.

Mainly, I got the idea that picking a college meant picking a career.  I didn’t understand that Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods was going to GRADUATE school to study law, not COLLEGE.  So when people asked me if I was headed to Harvard (because I was quite precocious as a young child and not afraid of showing it), I told them no because “I didn’t want to be a lawyer.”

While now I know the difference, there was a large period of my life where my views of college were defined by what I learned from “Legally Blonde.”  Thanks, Elle!


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Random Factoid #422

23 09 2010

I do love musicals, and I sure have invested a lot of time into them over the past four years.  My production of “Godspell” is in 10 days, and I’ll also delve into “Fiddler on the Roof” later this year.

But away from my school, there are some interesting developments on Broadway with new musicals.  They are always looking for new source material, and the flavor of the moment is finding it in movies.  It was announced today that “Newsies,” a movie I have only heard of once or twice, will be adapted into a Broadway musical.  And in other news, “Catch Me If You Can” will apparently be making a similar transformation.

I’m in the camp that believes movies should stay on the screen.  They aren’t meant to have their plots stretched to maintain interest over two and a half hours, and they aren’t meant to have spontaneous musical breaks.  What ever happened to originality in writing musicals?  We claim that movies are bad about recycling; look no further than Broadway for someone doing it worse.  Name the last new musical based on an entirely original premise.  I can’t.

Case in point – “Legally Blonde: The Musical.”  It debuted to horrible reviews, got almost no Tony nominations, and is now destined to become an audition favorite for teenage girls with no idea of the classics that made the craft what it is.

Sigh.  The corruption of the beautiful art.


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Random Factoid #92

28 10 2009

Since my house became such a movie library, people often borrowed them from us.  I didn’t mind lending them, but I didn’t want to lose them forever.  I created a large Word document of our DVD library, including how many discs were in the case, the year, and a space to write to whom it was lent.  Yet despite all of my efforts, several great DVDs have been lost.  So, this factoid is a memorial to those discs, out there somewhere either in a new home or a landfill.

  • Legally Blonde
  • Monsters, Inc.
  • The Incredibles
  • Cars

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Random Factoid #5

2 08 2009

My parents were very protective of the movies I saw, and I will always remember the first PG-13 and R movies that I ever saw.

The first PG-13 movie I saw was “Ever After: A Cinderella Story.” It was shown to me by a babysitter who now runs her own stationery line.

The first PG-13 movie I saw in theaters was “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, and Blonde.” I got to see it as a reward for my days spent fighting off a viral pneumonia in the Monterrey County Hospital (that’s right, I got pneumonia while vacationing in Pebble Beach).

The first R movie I saw was “Crimson Tide.” My dad started watching it on Encore when I was in the room, and he let me watch it with him.

The first R movie I saw in theaters was “Flags of our Fathers.” The only reason that I was allowed to see it was because I had read the book for a school assignment.


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