On August 18, the Enabler and I took a crash trip to NY where I finally, finally got to see Hugh Panaro as the Phantom! It was the best night at the theatre I have ever had... and I have seen a LOT of theatre growing up in NY!
We arrived early so I could enjoy the ambiance of being at the Majestic Theatre where the "Phantom" has been stalking the stage since 1988.
Of course one has to have one's photo taken with all the iconic images. As I mentioned in the previous post I have been a Phantom fanatic forever. And seeing it on Broadway is like the holy grail of Phantom fandom!
waiting for showtime!
Under the chandelier... in the lobby!
I wanted to buy remembrances of this event so I did buy the mask and rose t-shirt and a lovely bracelet to compliment all the bracelets I made in celebration of getting my ticket and seeing the play.
And, of course, the program!
We had the absolute BEST seats... almost like being in the play!
You can't take photos during the performance, not that I'd want to and miss a minute of it... so, these came from Hugh Panaro's site to give you the experience of seeing the play:
We were right under the chandelier...
Being that close to Mr. Panaro's Phantom and hearing THAT voice was VERY swoony!
After "Phantom" ended I convinced the long suffering Enabler that we should go lurk by the stage door to see who might come out. I already knew Hugh didn't always leave via that exit but I thought it would be fun to see who did come out. We lurked along side a very fashionable mother and daughter from San Antonio who were there celebrating the daughter's birthday.
Adorable Kyle Barisich who was Raoul came out and signed our Playbills. No photo, Enabler!!! He was taking arty shots like this:
Then the equally adorable Michelle McConnell who was such a perfect Carlotta came out and signed our Playbills and posed for photos and was such a sweetheart to take the time to do that!
So it was the best time ever finally getting to see "Phantom" live and hearing
that music and being able to see everyones expressions and all the details, so
YAY! and thanks to the Enabler for being such a good sport and capturing it
so I could blog about it in fanatical detail!
There are women all over who fall for fictional leading men. You have only to say "Heathcliff" or "Mr. Rochester" or "Edward" or even..."Christian Grey" in a group of women to find out who is crazy about who. And then...there are the women whom when you say the names "Erik" or "the Phantom" smile knowingly, (OK, Dracula, too...but that's a different post).
What is it about the tall, thin man who wears a mask to hide his appearance? He is also a musical and architectural genius (and murderer) who is ready to risk all for the love of Christine, the girl he has taught to sing. Plus, as he says in the book, he is never boring! This great love story reaches out to many women particularly when accompanied by a brilliant Andrew Lloyd Weber score. Now, for the story of the Phantom... and me, or should I say I:
I wrote earlier about Famous Monsters Magazine changing my life and its introducing me to Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, through images of Lon Chaney. I was fascinated by those stills.
A couple of years later, I think I was around 11,
I somehow saw a copy of the book for sale and I had to send away for it. My father gave me a check and before long it was in my hands! The thrill of reading that edition with its paintings based on images from the film was something I still remember!!!!
I was lost in the world of the Paris Opera and Erik and his grand opera passion for Christine and her love and fear of him and the safer road to take, Raoul. Then... before I ever got to see the Lon Chaney film, not so easy to see silent classics outside the great New York revival theaters like the Thalia and the New Yorker, I saw the Claude Rains version on late night television. I'd seen photos of his Phantom in Famous Monsters, too, so I couldn't believe my luck that it was actually on something I had access to!
I was always drawn to Claude Rains and his gentlemanly manner and seductive voice...(and he's buried in NH, by the way), and though the story was a bit different than Gaston Leroux's original I was captivated by it and its great, dramatic score. Plus, he had a nice 1940's style mask. I taped it on my tinny little tape recorder so I could listen to the dialogue and the music over and over.
I was well on my way to my Phantom obsession, as you can see.
Sometime in my early teens I saw the Lon Chaney version which my parents took me to see someplace in the city that showed old films, can't remember where, exactly, and it was amazing to see those flickering ghosts of the past come alive again on screen. I loved every minute!
There have been others who played memorable Phantoms. Herbert Lom in the Hammer Films production which I saw when it opened and Charles Dance in a mini-series that I only saw for the first time this year.
Herbert Lom (L) and Charles Dance (R)
Who would have thought that one day you could own all these films?
In the 70's there was Phantom of the Paradise one of my all time favorite movies and a modern twist on the classic Phantom with a great soundtrack by Paul Williams who also played the evil record producer/ devil who buys the idealistic young composer's score AND his soul and tries various ways to dispatch him only to turn him into the Phantom of the Paradise theater.
William Finley was funny and sympathetic and he had a fabulous helmet mask and black leather outfit to stalk the theater in. (Oh, no! Looking up William Finley I see he just died recently!!! Sad!)
Flash-forward to 1978 when my ex and I moved from NY to NH to run his family's vineyard ( a looong story) and NY, my favorite city and place in all the world, was then further away than I'd ever been from it and BROADWAY my specific favorite place ( plus Off- and Off-Off Broadway) (boo hoo!) so the last production I saw was Edward Gorey's Dracula with Frank Langella, not a bad memory to take with one, while the cost of ticket prices soared. Flash forward, again and PHANTOM opens in NY!!!
How I longed to see it... but NY was harder to do without a base anymore (or a lot of money!).
I had to content myself with repeated listenings to Andrew Lloyd Weber's CD with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman's entrancing voices. So, moving forward in time once more to the movie version which I, of course, saw on opening day.
It was beautifully filmed and Gerard Butler (very sexy!) and Emmy Rossum were wonderful, but I would have preferred a more filmed stage version than all the distracting cuts to the stagehands and behind the scenes and away from the Phantom and Christine. Picky, picky, I know.
This is nice. A deleted song
*And...now, you can see the 25th Anniversary DVD which IS a filmed stage version with Ramin Karimloo and Sierra Boggess:
During all these years I reread the Leroux original many times and one day, in a used book store I came across Susan Kay's "Phantom"!!! I am usually a purist when it comes to authors using the characters created by another...but this was incredible!!! It gave Erik a completely believable back-story. I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it!!!
Later, I discovered new authors using Erik, Christine, Raoul and the Persian to great affect! I LOVE Jennifer Linforth's Madrigal series and wrote about them and other great Phantom fiction here: Militant Recommender
The internet has a wealth of fan (or Phan) fiction and facebook groups and anything on the Phantom you can think of including wonderful art.
(Interesting that after Leroux... all my favorite Phantom books and art are by women. Hmmmmm.)
And, this spring I saw a terrific and impressive production of Phantom by the Spaulding HS drama group. It was beautifully acted and produced with a great cast and unbelievably fantastic sets (but NOTHING on youtube to link to!). Of course I LOVED it! Wow! I thought, if this is THIS good...imagine what the Broadway production is like!!!!!
Recently Love Never Dies, ALW's sequel to the Phantom was released to DVD and it is GORGEOUS and the songs, while different from the original, are haunting in their own right, though, *SPOILER* What kind of ending was THAT, Mr. Sir ALW???"
I've been making Phantom jewelry, lately, because when you need the kind of jewelry you can really obsess over... sometimes you just have to make it yourself!
And why, you might ask, am I particularly obsessed??? Because I have my ticket to go see Phantom on Broadway!!!! Yes! Hopefully I will get to see the amazing Hugh Panaro in the role (Please, Please, Please!!!!) and I have a fantastic (or should I say Phantastic) seat which cost A LOT! I'll be going with the Enabler, who is usually up for doing things when I bug him to.
So, much more on this when I get back!!!
Hugh singing, below (couldn't find a decent video in costume but this is pretty cute!)
Wes Anderson's movies are often surprise packages filled with unexpected gifts. Rushmore seemed to come out of nowhere with its unusual cast mix of knowns and unknowns. Moonrise Kingdom has an equally impressive cast and it is also maybe one of the most cinematically beautiful movies in a long time where any given frame could be captured and hung on a wall to admire. The story, set in 1965, is about two troubled (Wes Anderson's version of troubled) children who meet and fall in love and run away together.
The girl, Suzy (Kara Hayward) lives with her oddball parents and siblings in a magnificent house on an island called Penzance where she surveys the surrounding land and sea through her trusty binoculars and the boy, Sam (Jared Gilman) is an orphan and a Khaki Scout at a local scouting camp called Camp Ivanhoe. It is a completely charming movie filled with casting delights like Ed Norton as the Khaki Scout Master and Bruce Willis as the local law. Pack a picnic basket and camp out at your local theater to see this one on the big screen! Here's the preview via the miracle of Youtube to entice you!
Most people can remember some pivotal moment that changed the course of their life. I remember mine vividly. I grew up in a neighborhood where we kids ran around in packs like little wild animals. I lived on a dead end street that had a dairy farm around one corner, and if you went round the block in the other direction and crossed the street there was a shopping plaza that had an A & P, a bagel store, a butcher, a deli, a drug store and... best of all... a candy store. This was where I bought my comic books. Where I discovered the joys of Superman, Archie, Betty and Veronica and assorted others like Millie the Model. Then, one day, I walked in and went over to the comic racks and there was something different about it, I looked, what was it? I reached out and picked it up and behold! This is where dramatic music plays and light fills the room.
I held in my hands the first issue I had ever seen (it was actually issue # 3, I don't think the candy store ever had # 1 and 2) of FAMOUS MONSTERS of FILMLAND!
I had to have it, even though in 1958 I was only 7 years old,
I still knew enlightenment lay in the pages I held in my hands.
I learned a LOT from that and the issues that followed. For the first time I understood what an editor was. Forest J. Ackerman became my GOD.
Here were photographs and articles that taught me about the great silent actor, Lon Chaney and set me on the path of obsession with the Phantom of the Opera.
FM introduced me to the bad guys. Dracula with the great Bela Lugosi. I'd never seen anything like him before.
I poured over those images and fell madly for the Count and it began my life long passion for Dracula because, after Bela, FM introduced me to Christopher Lee! If Bela was attractive to me, Christopher Lee's Count was absolutely mesmerizing. Thanks to FM I joined Mr. Lee's fan club and saw every movie as they came out, with heads up from Famous Monsters. Forest or Forry, as we, his disciples, knew him in print, introduced me to authors that became favorites, like Ray Bradbury, and Thea Von Harbou the author of Metropolis which became the great German Expressionist film directed by her then husband Fritz Lang!
I learned all that and German Expressionist film became a great love of mine, as well, and before I ever saw the films, I saw the photos of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Dr. Mabuse the Gambler and many others. Forry was way ahead of his time. He coined the term "sci-fi" to describe the wonderful world of the future, of robots and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Time Machine and Forbidden Planet and all the nuclear disaster horror mutants that filled the drive-in screens and the movie houses back then. When I talk to people who grew up in an age when you can see or hear anything at any time it's hard to know what a lightening bolt Famous Monsters was for the kids that read it in the 50's and 60's. It was a thrill for me when Ch. 9 showed Dracula every afternoon for a week and I watched it every time! We used to get dumped off at the movies on Saturdays for double feature matinees that always included a horror or monster movie. Parents weren't too concerned about censoring so we'd be regularly traumatized by House on Haunted Hill or 13 Ghosts. They were often black and white and we were fine with that because Famous Monsters showed us the way and all those images they showed us were in black and white though they seemed like vivid 3D technicolor to me!
Well, I am back from Vegas... or sort of Vegas. The hotel was about as far from the strip as you could get and still be in Nevada! This was the first time I've ever been a nominee so it was exciting to attend and have the extra bit on my name tag!
Alas, I did not win. Mark Parisi, who is the chapter head of the NE Chapter of the NCS and a friend, won. He was very nice in mentioning me and Wiley Miller in his acceptance. Too bad I didn't know he'd won ahead of time... I could have paid off some stewardesses to accidentally leave the exit door open!
But for me, the nomination was a huge acknowledgement of my work (and submission package) from my peers, the peers being the Canadian Chapter of the National Cartoonist Society. So a Big SHOUT OUT to Canada! The panel that was nominated was "Smile" which has been running in the Rochester Times for 16 years or so. It was syndicated in 1995 and the title became "Fair Game" but is still running as "Smile" in the Rochester Times. See below for some examples:
It is also huge in that not many women have ever been nominated or won in the Newspaper Panel division.
It was most fabulous to get to hang out with two of my favorite cartooning girlfriends, the beautiful and fun (and hilarious!) Benita Epstein who is the Friday Chick and the lovely Isabella Bannerman, the Monday Chick!
This is how we roll in Vegas. Chix getting ready to hit the town. (Actually, no town hitting was done due to expensive cab fare!) (Thanks to Benita for the technicolor pic)
Swinging cartoonists hanging out in the el Green Valley Ranch hipster lounge.(Yes, girls, it is I with cartoondoms # 1 cool guy Roy Doty). Below, John regales Roy's lady friend, Nancy, with stories about the darkside of the newspaper biz plus gardening. (Thanks to Isy for these wonderfully lurid photos!)
Night of the Reubens. Very exciting to see my work on display with all the other nominees.
That's the dapper Mr. Chris Sparks on the right!
At the cocktail party with Mark and Wiley. This is the before picture.
And... after the awards. Hmmm... Mark looks a little TOO happy!
Well... there is always NEXT year.
I had lots of people wishing me luck so thanks to everyone who did, it meant a lot. See you all in Pittsburgh!
