Cameron H.
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Everything posted by Cameron H.
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Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
From IMDb: Although it worked in this case, apparently that wasn't their intention. However, an empty cross (their original intention), rather than a crucifix, does represent the same thing. So your point still stands. -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
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Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
This isn't entirely accurate. We actually don't have any evidence of miracles. The movie takes pains to not show any--including the resurrection. I believe this is purposeful. It forces the audience to ask the question, "What do you believe?" The expressions on the crew's faces as they get back on the bus at the end of the movie are representative of these questions and conflicted emotions. Do I feel closer with my fellow man? Does this story make me feel happy? Sad? Do I feel nothing? If anything, the movie tells us right out the gate that there weren't any miracles. In "Heaven in Their Minds" (possibly my favorite song in the movie), Judas sings, "You've started to believe the things they say of you" and "But every word you say today, gets twisted 'round some other way, and they'll hurt you if they think you've lied." What I take from this is Jesus is a good man, but he's becoming more myth than man. People are making things up about him, but because--at first--these stories suit his purposes, he doesn't deny them. If Jesus were performing miracles, Judas, as his right hand man, is a person close enough to him who could tell us unequivocally if they were happening or not. Instead, he insists, "I remember when this whole thing began. No talk of God then, we called you a man." In other words, nothing implies previous miracle working. So when Herod sings those lines, he could just be bringing up all these crazy stories he's heard--calling back to Judas' astute prediction that they will think he's "lied." However, I do think it is the intention of JCS to make you question these things. What do you believe? Was he the Son of God? Just a good person? A crackpot? -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Okay. Time to get your passports together. We've got to get to The Vatican--tonight! I've got our disguises. -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
I thought you were crazy with this whole mandarin orange thing, but then I saw these: I'm just saying, keep pulling on that thread, Tom. I foresee an exciting globetrotting adventure in your future. Take this to its logical solution. -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Yeah, that's one of those "sticking too close to Scriptures" things that I think actually hurts the movie. At it's core, I think this the movie is really about Judas' relationship to Jesus. That's the most interesting thing going on. It's why the movie suffers whenever Judy isn't around. Everything else is kind of boring. But you could just tell that the filmmakers felt certain scenes "needed" to be there ("Oh, well we have to include Peter's denial of Christ! The kids will be waiting for it!). Here's what I would have done. I would have just told the whole movie from Judas' perspective and I would have had it end with his suicide. You could do a little bit of wrapping up if you wanted. You could still have the big "Superstar" fever dream/musical number. But basically, it ends there. Not only do I feel like this would have been a more interesting approach, but then you could have had this really neat sunset shot of Judas hanging in the foreground with Christs' cross on the hill in the background--sort of highlighting the parallels between the two. That actually leads me to another question... Should this movie even be called Jesus Christ Superstar? I guess the title is more or less to convey the similarities between how people responded to Jesus at the time and how people have responded to rock musicians or whatever, but honestly, in the film, there's nothing terribly "Superstar" about Jesus. He's kind of boring. He's short and unimpressive. He doesn't perform miracles. His voice feels kind of cliche, kind of like an old school Music Theater guy.* What would have been a better title for this? *I kept thinking of the Music Theater Guy in South Park from the episode where they did a musical version of . -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Oh, me too! He was Roman for Pete's sake! He had no personal or religious stake in the matter. I don't think he deserves the kind of vilification that history has thrust on him. I've also always felt kind of bad for the Apostle Thomas. He steps out for a smoke or whatever, gets back and everyone's like, "Oh, man! You just missed Jesus! He resurrected, came in for a round of high-fives, and took off again. Tough luck, bro." And just because he's like, "Uh-huh. Whatever, guys. My best friend just died. I'm in no mood for jokes" he gets eternally branded with the epithet "Doubting." I understand the lesson is about having blind faith, but does he really deserve to have the entirety of his being tarnished for showing a sliver of objectivity? -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Nah, I would have laughed about it...and saved six bucks. -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Glad to hear it went well! Get rested and give us your JCS magic. Also, just to make your day, I bought the Across the Universe soundtrack yesterday. Did I just BLOW YOUR MIND? -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
I kind of think you need to watch it, just know that you're probably not going to like it. It is something else, that's for sure. Just don't buy it or anything. Watch it for as cheap as you can -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
It's mostly the same crowd. This all goes into Old Testament prophecy. Basically, they are waiting for the Messiah to come and establish his kingdom. In their minds, this means overthrowing Rome. When it becomes clear that the "kingdom" Jesus is offering is some artsy-fartsy, intangible kingdom, they get pissed. When he goes into Jerusalem ("Hosanna"), this is supposed to be the triumphant return of their king. It's supposed to be the first step of their revolution. Instead, it goes down much different. -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Here's a quick explanation of who these people were and what's going on: Judea was occupied by Rome, and like they did in many places, the Roman's allowed the people to pretty much govern themselves--with some restrictions. One of those restrictions was that only a Roman official could condemn a man to death. So when Caiphas and his boys decide that Jesus needs to die, they bring him before Pilate, the Roman governor. After Pilate questions Jesus, he feels like Jesus hasn't done anything wrong and doesn't want to sentence an innocent man to be crucified. However, the people are about to riot if he doesn't do it which obviously wouldn't be too good for him or his career. Anyway, during the trial, it comes out that Jesus is actually from Nazareth, which is ruled by Herod (another Roman). Due to this technicality, and to keep the blood off of his own hands, he sends him to be judged by Herod. As in the Musical, Herod demands Jesus to prove his divinity, and just as in the movie, Jesus refuses. Basically, at this point, Herod recognizes Jesus' innocence, but doesn't really care one way or the other. As far as he's concerned, Jesus is just another fraud. So he sends him back to Pilate. Now Pilate is in a pickle, he can either kill this innocent man or risk open rebellion. In a last ditch attempt to save Jesus' life, he tries to placate the mob by having Jesus flogged. It still doesn't work. So, finally, he "washes his hands" of it and sentences Jesus to death. Pilate wasn't necessarily "bad," although, being Roman, I'm sure he wasn't exactly a friend to the Jews. He just found himself in a real life morality riddle. As for Herod's Song, my take is he's supposed to represent Roman decadence contrasted with Jewish austerity. As far as the occupied Jewish population was concerned at the time, the Romans might as well have been aliens. The song illustrates this culture clash. (Again, I hope I'm not coming off as a know-it-all, and I hope this helps. I just want to clear up some confusion. I'm sure had I not grown up with it, I'd be wondering what the fuck was going on too.) -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
It blew my mind when I realized that Herod was City Slicker's Barry Shalowitz. -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
This is all amazing! Thank you for sharing! -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
No, it's cool. I don't want to come off like a know-it-all either. My mother has worked in a church since I was eleven, so I was basically forced to participate until I was old enough to leave home. When I got into my teens, and developed into what psychologists describe as "a sarcastic little bitch," I became the scourge of Sunday School teachers. I would ask all these deliberately hard questions that I knew they had no chance of answering. Not out of any real desire to hear their answer, mind you. Just a sadistic need to watch them squirm. I will say, though, it wasn't all bad. I had one teacher, a principal in his day job, who really liked me and the challenge I presented (at least I wasn't just sitting there quiet and dead eyed for an hour), but for the most part, I was universally despised. Anyway, one day I had an epiphany. The reason they couldn't answer a lot of my questions is because they had never really read the Bible. They were just parroting back whatever they happened to pick up during weekly sermons and whatnot. I was affronted by this hypocrisy. How dare they try to teach me something that they have no real knowledge of?!? (Mind you, these were all volunteers and not, like, Biblical Scholars or anything, but, you know...that's what being a shitty teenager is all about.) However, I also recognized that in order to absolve myself of this very same hypocrisy (and realizing that it wasn't really fair for me to be mock these people and make their lives difficult if I didn't really know what I was talking about), I took it upon myself to learn what I could and interpret it for myself. Consequently, I'm pretty good (although, by no means, perfect) at both defending and attacking the thing -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Jesus has a couple of moments of pique in the Bible. You just have to consider that Jesus is not portrayed as a divine figure in the Musical. He never performs a single miracle. This is about Jesus the Human Being. That being the case, I'm sure--as any person would be--he's pretty upset about being swarmed by a group of lepers expecting him to heal them with a touch. As for the "jaded Mandarin" line, I'm not sure if it's an old saying or not, but taking it at face value, the definition of "Mandarin," besides the obvious, is a "person of influence." So in this case, I would suspect a "jaded Mandarin" is one only paying lip service to the thing he's preaching. In the mythology of the Musical, I think it's implied that 3 years ago, Jesus and Judas were bros: hot headed youths on a mission to help their people. But as they gained in notoriety, Jesus began to soften some of his stances. So basically, the whole movie is Judas saying, "What happened to you, bro?" -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
I'm leaning toward (hopefully) not racist. For one, they establish in "Heaven in Their Minds" that he was Jesus' "right hand man." I got the feeling that before the "myth overshadowed the man," the two of them were co-leaders. Judas is the tragic hero. His whole deal is, "Hey, instead of wasting money on foot rubs, maybe we should be donating that money to the poor." And I get both sides of that argument. It's also important to note that Judas descends at the end--clothed completely in white! Obviously, in this version, Judas finds his peace and redemption. Overall, I think we're supposed to take away that Judas is a good man just rebelling against the role in which he's been cast. -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Traditionally, the sign says "INRI" (Latin: Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum) which means "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." Basically, it--and the crown of thorns-- were meant to mock him, and I would suspect, strike some fear in his followers (i.e. We killed your "king.") The other two people were, I believe, a murderer and a thief. In the Bible, the thief asks for Jesus to use his God powers to save all three of them, but the murderer repents his sins and asks Jesus for forgiveness. To the murderer, Jesus says, "Hey man, tonight you'll be chilling with me in Heaven" while we're to assume the thief went to Hell. Basically, this is to say it's never too late to repent. It also says, "You might only be a thief, but if you don't have Faith, then you're pretty much screwed." Oh, and I THINK using the bus as a framing device is a way of showing how Jesus' story still resonates in the present, but I'm open to other interpretations. I doubt they use it on stage. I'm sure CakeBug knows, but of course he's currently nailing his job interview -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Speaking of small moments that are amazing, here's a potpourri of some of my favorites. Chekov's Flogger (Or What The Passion of the Christ got wrong) I loved how the movie sets up the Roman flogger in the Overture. What's brilliant about it is how your mind subconsciously goes back to that scene when Jesus is being whipped at the end of the movie. You've already seen the the torturer's effectiveness with a whip, so without getting too graphic, the movie can convey that same brutality being played out on Superstar. To add to this, I appreciated that instead of cutting to JC's mangled body, they cut to the flogger's exhausted face. Talk about effective. Showing Many With Few There's a line in I think "Simon Zealotes" where sings of the "50,000" person throng following Jesus. Now, its abundantly clear this was filmed on a shoestring budget, so there's no way they can portray that kind of multitude. So what they did, which I found profoundly more interesting than showing a horde of extras, is they considered what "50,000" would actually mean at the time (I.e. A threat to the Romans). So right when the 50,000 line is sung, in the background, they have a platoon of tank topped clad centurions march over to the apostles to check out what's going on. Very cool. Judas, or He of the Superhuman Hearing In "Poor Jerusalem," Judas is waaaaay in the background and obviously fed up with all these fawning fools. He begins to walk away as Jesus begins to decry that no one is seeing the bigger picture--he includes Judas specifically. And right as Jesus sings Judas' name, Judas stops in his tracks. I realize that it was probably a pretty easy trick to choreograph, but it was really effective to me. Revelations One of the things I remember about seeing this when I was younger was the ridiculousness of Caiphas and Annas' vocal pitch--crazy deep in the former and uncomfortably high in the latter. I remember making fun of their voices at the time, but now I realize now that this is to illustrate their extremism and how their rigid devotion to the law has caused them to be discordant. Also, very cool. Anyway, those are just some of my initial thoughts. I'm sure I have more. Also, I apologize for any weird typos. I typed all this shit on my phone. I'll try to clean it up later if I can -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Overall, I really enjoyed JCS. I think my biggest quibble is that whenever it adhered to closely to scripture it got a bit boring, and unfortunately, that would be anytime the movie focused on the titular "Superstar." I enjoyed it when they got into interpretation and philosophizing. They basically created their own Judas and Mary Magdalene and they are arguably the best parts, and in a lot of respects, it's their perspectives that drive the movie forward. When ever Jesus stops to sing, they never give him much to say, or a point of view, that isn't already in the Gospels. They just try to cram as many words into a line as they possibly can to make sure they're covering their bases. So anytime he would open his mouth to sing over either Judas and Mary, all I could think was: I just really enjoyed Judas. He was sympathetic and it was nice to see him played, not as a villain, but as someone who shares the same ideologies as Jesus, but simply has a different focus. Both of he and Jesus are concerned less for the future and more for the moment, so it's interesting to see how those similar points of view diverge. -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
I know you're joking, but I kind of like how the "meta"-ness folded into the narrative. A simple answer to the question though is that he is destined to die on that cross. There's no escaping it. It's the same reason Judas has that song before his suicide. He realizes that he's been used, not just by the Pharisees, but by God himself. He was born to betray Jesus; Jesus was born to die on that cross. He takes it with him wherever he goes. I'm not sure if anyone else caught it, but when "actor" Jesus sees them pull down the cross from the bus, he gives it such a look--like an animal sizing up its rival. The movie was full of little moments like that that absolutely nailed a moment or an emotion. -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Please tell me I'm not the only one to sing "Batman!" during the intro to "Damned for All Time." -
Musical Mondays-Week 6-Jesus Christ Superstar
Cameron H. replied to Cameron H.'s topic in How Did This Get Made?
Awww! I appreciate it. No, no. I'm good. -
Since Cam Bert's on the other side of the world, I thought I'd go ahead and create this now.
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Thanks man! I'll check it out later.