Analysis of "Legally Blonde" from Legally Blonde
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ม.ค. 2024
- Hi! My name is Mateo, I'm a professional musical theatre composer, splitting my time between Toronto & NYC right now.
Every Wednesday on this channel, I post a video analyzing the music theory behind some of the great Broadway musicals of all time! In the past, I've analyzed works by Sondheim, Jason Robert Brown, Pasek & Paul, Jeanine Tesori, and Stephen Schwartz, just to name a few.
And every Sunday on this channel, I post a video update of the progress I'm making on my writing projects, so you can follow along with the process as I create new musicals from scratch.
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www.mateochavezlewis.com
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Today we're comparing "Legally Blonde" and "Legally Blonde Remix" from the musical Legally Blonde, written by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin with a book by Heather Hach. The original production starred Laura Bell Bundy as Elle Woods, Christian Borle as Emmett Forrest, Michael Rupert as Callahan, Orfeh as Paulette, Richard H. Blake as Warner and Andy Karl as Kyle & others. - เพลง
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so glad you’re doing this !!! i completely agree with your opinions on legally blonde as an adaptation ! i feel like a lot of adaptations are to scared to actually “adapt” for the new media they are going into because of fans of the original that they actually end up hurting the project. but when the creators actually work for the new media you get fantastic adaptations that grow to become something of their own like legally blonde or little shop of horrors
Such a good point, you summarized what I was trying to say so succinctly. Thank you!!
Wow, such a cool analysis!
So happy I stumbled upon this whilst researching my new vid on Legally Blonde! 😍
100% agree that a lot of musicals that are based on films completely miss the point! Such wasted opportunities. I guess that's what happens when producers their main/only goal is to make money. Very interesting vid! I subscribed :) x
Love this!! I always spend time thinking about how few GOOD movie adaptations of stage musicals there are that I never thought about this...subgenre. I'll definitely give another listen to Legally Blonde now
(Using this opportunity to throw every single curse there is on the abomination that is Into the Woods the movie)
Hi Mateo, I'm so pleased you are analising again. I 100 per cent agree with you regarding movie to stage show adaptations. sometimes they work legally blonde, hairspray, ghost. sometimes they don't BttF and Pretty Woman. I think the latter two could have been plays without adding songs and told the same story with the same amount of emotion. or a shorter version would be at home in a theme park.
I'm not as adept at musical theory and analyses, but I'm so glad you validated my opinion on movie-to-musical adaptations. Haha! No wonder I really liked the score of Legally Blonde more than Mean Girls, which didn't really stick with me. I didn't even bother giving BttF a chance. Lol. I'm curious about your opinion of Heathers because that's another movie-to-musical adaptation that also stuck with me. The Notebook is also opening on Broadway this season. While I'm not really excited about it, I'm hoping it lives up to the opportunity for excellent storytelling as you said.
Heathers is another movie-to-musical adaptation I think is really really clever and tells its story very well. Maybe I will have to analyze a Heathers song in the future!
I love Legally Blonde! Thanks for the analysis, super interesting and would love to watch more of these videos from you.
I hope to fall in love with a musical like this again one day, but all the new shows based on existing properties have me wondering if something's going on with funding and development that is leading to this outcome.
My hypothesis is that in the current economic situation, producers are afraid to “take risks,” and because of their paranoia they are less willing to 1) invest time & money into the development process and 2) more importantly, trust their writers to know how to write. A lot of what I’ve seen this season on Broadway, for example, had these tired tropes shoehorned in, so that it felt like a producer had seen the show and said “there needs to be someone who dies of cancer in act two, so that audiences cry!” instead of understanding what actually makes audiences cry, which has always been and will always be a beautiful story told clearly, and trusting their writers to create that.
The fact that this thing isn't in 6/8 makes counting it a nightmare in the Orchestra pit. Because it's in 6/8 but each thing that feels like a beat of 3 quavers, a whole bar. Those 2 opening chords should be 1 bar each. The whole groove in the drum kit is totally "low - 2-3 High - 2-3" Every second bar is the second half of the groove. Kick-tense-tense|Release relax-relax. Same problem in "Ireland" too. But that's worse because it sometimes slips into a 4/4 where the quarter-note is 1/3 the speed of the quarter-note in the "3/4" that should be 6/8. as in... the 8th note in 4/4 is the same speed as the quarter note in 3/4. The 8th should stay the same... indicating this is in 6/8 but written dumb (yes I recognize a few "Short" bars (like when 4/4 turns into 2/4 for a bar)... but that's what the time 3/8 is for.) Anyway, I'd love to have a chat with whoever decided 3/4 is the new 6/8 down under the Orchestra pit some day.
I somehow still haven't seen the film, but I've seen 5 different production of the musical, because I just loved it so much! So I definitely agree that the show can stand on its own, and stands on its own so well!
I remembered thinking about this film/musical difference when I saw Pretty Woman, the musical. While the movie has more will they / won't they / what's the character motivation kind of thing, the musical has "I want" songs early on, so it kind of already told you where the characters are coming from. So at least, in that aspect, you know it's a different genre and the storytelling would be at least a little different. (Not saying Pretty Woman is a great adaptation or anything.)
Loved the format of this, and looking forward to seeing more!
Could you do a Frozen Analysis ❤!I think it’s also a really great movie to musical adaptation
I did an analysis of “Let It Go” on the channel a few years back!
I will say, I think comparing Frozen to Legally Blonde or Heathers or Mean Girls is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. The Frozen musical definitely had an advantage, 1) being adapted from a movie that already had a lot of songs in it, and 2) having the writers from the original movie working on the Broadway musical.
I’ve listened to Mean Girls several times trying to understand the appeal but literally nothing stuck with me. On the other hand I’ve showed some of my friends, who are not ever musical lovers, Legally Blonde and they still quote it to this day after one watch.
Guess no matter if people are aware or not, great writing proves itself :)
Totally agree. What people want to see more than anything is a good story with truthful characters.
Spectacle is nice, brand name recognition is nice, but in the long-run, a good story will outweigh all of that.