WAIT, I THINK MY DEAR, WE HAVE A GUEST. SIR...THIS IS indeed an unparalleled DELIGHT. I HAD RATHER HOPED THAT YOU WOULD COME . AND NOW MY WISH COMES TRUE- YOU HAVE TRULEY MADE MY NIGHT!
Past History of when and how i last updated this site.
I can't remember when i first made this site, but you will how dedicated I was and still am to it. Thank-you for your intresst in my hard work.
(LAST UPDATED MAR.19TH AT 4:25PM)
NEW PAGE: MY WEBSITE AWARDS I HAVE WON.
LAST UPDATED: MAR.21ST/05 at 8:34 pm
(Last updated Mar.24th 2005 at 12:15am)
New Page Updated: Gaston Leroux,
the man behind the novel.
click on Gaston Leroux to go to the page.
New link please sign the Susan Kay petiton to save the book,and put it back on shelves!!click on the book...
updated:Mar.27th 2005 at 3:20pm.
New page updated: The Paris Opera House
New review under Phantom things for the novel: The Phantom of Manhattan, the continuation of the timeless classic tale. April 16th 2005 at 3:33pm. New favorite quotes from the novel:April 22nd at 4:56pm .and new prove on The Phantom was real on April 22nd at 4:56pm
The old 'Phantom' rises from the dead -- in living color -- with a new score and Phantom of the NorShor
New page added. The past history of my hard-work and dedication to this site.
see the archives....
Need info added to How the Phantom saved my life on May 1st at12:55am
New fan listings to join under phantom banners and links. added May 13th 2005 at 5:11pm
New artical under artical section: DVD Review: The Phantom of the Opera: Collector’s Edition added May14th 2005 at 3:27pm.
New review for the Phantom of the opera companion under Phantom things.
Added May 14th 2005 at 3:58pm.
New page added: Favorite Phantom quotes on May 14th 2005 at 4:44pm
New artical added A phantom loss in translation under articals May 15th 2005 at 2:33pm.
Two new reviews added in the articals sections. Most of them will disapoint you, so read them and write to the authors. We need to stand up for the man we love. May 21st 2005 at 3:17pm
A New website award given to my page. Check it out under my awards.
New artical added:Broadway shows coming to Proctor's
6/1/2005 4:37 PM
By: Capital News 9 web staff
plus new quotes by another Phantom fan added June 5th at 4:46pm.
New artical page added. Two new articals one on Glen Close being in sunset Blvd. movie and a review on Dear. Frankie added July 13th 2005 at 11:57am.
Past articals:
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA star GERARD BUTLER is a hero in his native Perthshire, Scotland, after saving a drowning boy.
The movie hunk was picnicking with his mother back on the banks of the River Tay in 1997 when he was called on to become a lifesaver - and the local honour he received for his bravery is better than an OSCAR in his mother's eyes.
He recalls, "I heard these screams and I first thought it was animal. I had seen kids way over further along the bank and I thought they were in distress. I walked over and this kid ran towards me and said, 'My friend, he's in the water.'
"I looked into the water and this kid was under the water and then he came up but he was unconscious and went under again.
"I pulled off my boots and dived in... I swam out and grabbed this kid and it was the worst exercise in lifesaving you've seen - I literally was swimming with one hand desperately trying to touch the bottom with my feet because there was a lot of undercurrent, but I got to the side.
"By this point, everybody had noticed and a whole crowd had gathered around, and fortunately there was a guy who gave him the Heimlich manoeuvre and then he slowly regained consciousness.
"Then I carried him up like the hero I thought I was to the hotel.
"Later on I got a call saying I was awarded this Certificate of Bravery award from the Royal Humane Society, so it was a beautiful thing to get. It now hangs on my mother's wall in Scotland, so she can show her friends.
"The boy wrote me a beautiful letter just thanking me." 
05/03/2005 01:42
Movie Review: 1925's 'Phantom of the Opera' set the standard
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
By Barry Paris, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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| Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin starred in "The Phantom of the Opera" in 1925.
Click photo for larger image.
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Where: With the Alloy Orchestra at Regent Square Theater, 1035 Braddock Ave., Edgewood. Lon Chaney was The Man of a Thousand Faces, the best-remembered of which was hidden under a mask worn by -- and making a nuisance of himself in -- the 1925 "Phantom of the Opera."
Director Rupert Julian's first film rendering of the 1910 Gaston Leroux novel opens with that creepy figure in shadow beneath that "sanctuary of song-lovers, the Paris Opera House -- rising nobly over medieval torture chambers long-forgotten." Upstairs in the executive suite, the old owners are winking wisely to each other as they close the deal unloading this albatross to new ones ("by the way, you may hear of a ghost ...").
Enter the leading soprano's battle-ax mother, brandishing a note from the Phantom to her daughter Carlotta: She's to be replaced (as Marguerite in "Faust") by winsome understudy Christine -- and she'd better not interfere. The Phantom is a busy Mephisto himself, mesmerizing Chris with his Faustian takeover of her career and heart.
The histrionic silent emoting of its day generates giggles now and takes a while to adjust to. But the first close-up of Mary Philbin as Christine -- more gorgeous and subtle than her peers -- should do it: the thrill and absence of fear in her smile-response to the Master's "I have come for you."
Carlotta bucks the Phantom and brings down the house in the famous chandelier drop and audience stampede. Pandemonium reigns above while the Phantom leads his love into the creepy underground lagoon and his (rather elegant) bachelor-pad lair, "hidden from man and sun" -- the model for all visual/FX in all subsequent film and stage versions from the 1943 Claude Rains, 1962 Herbert Lom and 1982 Maximilian Schell to Webber-Rice stage hit.
Chaney acts with the huge handicap of a mask that covers not just his eyes and nose but mouth, as well. More poignant than frightening, he really WANTS to be redeemed by Christine and her love. Yes, he puts her unconscious bod in his bed, but his intentions are (hideously) honorable. She wakes from her faint to check out the digs and groovy accessories to the seductive strains of his "Don Juan Triumphant" on the organ.
That was clever, because there was a Wurlitzer in every big 1925 movie house. In 2005, the three-man Alloy Orchestra replicates that accompaniment with fine, synthesized minimalism. Additional draw for tomorrow's one-night-only Pittsburgh Filmmakers screening at the Regent Square: a new print with the restored Technicolor masked ball sequence, plus full footage of the fabulous rooftop scene in which Mr. P. spies on Christine's betrayal from behind a gargoyle. And the final great chase-climax is a wonder of (highly contemporary-looking) frantic low-angle camera technique.
Said Variety's critic at the time of Universal's colossal million-dollar enterprise: "It's impossible to believe a majority of picturegoers prefer this revolting sort of tale on screen."
He was, of course -- in the grand critical tradition -- wrong.
(Post-Gazette film critic Barry Paris can be reached at parispg48@aol.com.)
By Andrew Gans
15 Apr 2005
Would you like to add the Phantom mask or Carlotta's special hand mirror to your collection of theatre and film souvenirs?
Beginning Friday, April 22 and running through Friday, April 29 a host of items from the film of "The Phantom of the Opera" will be auctioned on eBay. The auction will celebrate the release of the "Phantom" DVD, which is set to hit stores the first week of May.
Over 100 items from the movie will be available during the week-long auction, including the aforementioned mask and mirror as well as Raoul's leather riding boots and pieces of the smashed chandelier. Each item, according to the Really Useful website, will include a signed, numbered certificate of authenticity.
"The Phantom of the Opera," based on the award-winning musical of the same name, opened on Dec. 22, 2004 on 622 U.S. screens and then broadened its run to 907 screens on Jan. 14. The film, starring Gerard Butler in the title role, Emmy Rossum as Christine and Patrick Wilson as Raoul, made its world premiere in London Dec. 6.
"The Phantom of the Opera" was nominated for three Golden Globe nominations, including Best Motion Picture뾏usical or Comedy. Rossum was also nominated for her performance as aspiring opera diva Christine Daae, and "Learn to Be Lonely," the one new song penned for the film, was nominated in the Best Original Song category. The film also received three Academy Award nominations, including those for Art Direction, Cinematography and Best Song ("Learn to Be Lonely"). The film won no awards.
Based on the classic Gaston Leroux novel, The Phantom of the Opera features music by Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Charles Hart and additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe. Harold Prince directed both the London and New York premieres. The New York production ?originally starring Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman ?won seven 1988 Tony Awards including one for Best Musical. The score includes such tunes as "Think of Me," "The Music of the Night," "All I Ask of You," "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again," "The Point of No Return" and the title tune.
The Broadway staging of the smash musical continues at the Majestic Theatre, having recently played its 7,000th performance.
Visit www.ebay.co.uk for more information.
The old 'Phantom' rises from the dead -- in living color -- with a new score
Thursday, April 21, 2005
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Cambridge , Mass. -- Lon Chaney famously shocked many a viewer with his ghastly makeup in the original 1925 film version of "The Phantom of the Opera." For Ken Winokur, the shocking thing wasn't so much the Phantom's grisly features as the black- and-white classic's extensive use of ... color.
"I can only imagine what that was like in 1925," says Winokur, a founding member of the silent-film accompanists Alloy Orchestra. "People must have flipped out."
There haven't been any recent reports of fainting, as there were 80 years ago. But audiences who have gotten a sneak peak at Alloy's new "Phantom" print, painstakingly colored to the original specifications and featuring the group's exquisite live accompaniment, have been roused to standing ovations. The Alloy Orchestra will present its newly restored "Phantom" (along with Hitchcock's "Blackmail") at the San Francisco International Film Festival.
Since debuting 15 years ago with Fritz Lang's 1927 masterpiece "Metropolis," the Alloy Orchestra has written and performed original scores for many of the cornerstones of the silent era, including "Nosferatu," "The Lost World," the Shackleton documentary "South" and comedies by Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin. Most of those prints were on loan; "Phantom" is easily the troupe's largest commitment to date, both financially and in terms of time.
When Winokur and his wife, filmmaker Jane Gillooly, first heard that the prestigious Killiam collection of silent films was up for sale, they contacted owner Sandra Birnhak with a modest request. They wanted to know whether they could make a print of Rudolph Valentino's "Son of the Sheik."
"I was thinking we'd spend a couple grand," says Winokur.
Birnhak, who had worked with Alloy before, came back with a much bigger proposal. What if they bought the Valentino movie outright? Or how about all of her Valentinos?
The offer was intriguing. Alloy once owned a print of "Metropolis." "We used it until it was in shreds," says Winokur. "It was a tantalizing sample of what it'd be like to own something."
Knowing that Valentino's career was a pet project of Birnhak's, they agreed to buy everything she had: four 35mm features, three more 16mm features, rare documentary footage, even a copy of the actor's will. Birnhak, who had originally wanted to find one buyer for the entire Killiam collection, which was founded in the 1950s by the film historian Paul Killiam, was pleased that Winokur and Gillooly were not only preservation-minded: With the Alloy Orchestra's regular appearances on the festival circuit, they also promised to keep the movies in front of audiences.
"That's what I love her for," says Winokur. "She didn't want an investor to sit on (the films). She feels this is a public trust."
He and Gillooly soon found themselves eagerly thumbing through the Killiam catalog, shopping for more projects. They knew that the archive's nitrate master of "Phantom" was considered to be a real gem of the collection. They bought it. By the time they were through, they had acquired 70 films in all.
Winokur and Gillooly have rented the same sprawling live/work space in a working-class enclave of Cambridge, Mass., for years. An old sign out front --
"Live Poultry, Fresh Killed" -- advertises the building's former incarnation as a butcher shop. Before that it was a boxing arena, and even further back it was a garage for horse-drawn trolleys. Once members of an artist's collective here, they took over the lease when the other tenants dropped out. The rent is still amazingly low, they say. Sitting in a low-lit screening room off the huge main living area reviewing a tape of the work-in- progress, both husband and wife politely decline to reveal what they paid for "Phantom" or the rest of the Killiam buy.
"Ask us again in 20 years," says Winokur, a droll, soft-spoken fellow in artists' black.
"We don't imagine we could really lose," says Gillooly, who is wearing a red leather jacket to match her close-cropped auburn hair. "It guarantees projects for years. And if Alloy doesn't continue to be popular, we have the collection to sell."
Alloy made its name with its "junk" percussion, a crazy collection of salvage metal that formed a unique two-man drum kit for Winokur and co-founder Terry Donahue. The third original member, composer Caleb Sampson, was a well- known figure in the soundtrack world, scoring for "Sesame Street," HBO and the documentary filmmaker Errol Morris. He took his own life in 1998.
There was only one man the surviving members considered as Sampson's replacement. Roger Miller is best known as the leader of the recently reformed Boston post-punk band Mission of Burma, but he was also a veteran of countless other cerebral musical enterprises. As Donahue began playing more accordion and musical saw and Winokur took up the clarinet, Miller's keyboard composing gradually moved to the center of Alloy's music. As a result, their "Phantom" score is the group's most subtle to date, and most elegant.
"Roger took more of a lead in this film," says Winokur. "There was a lot of melodic stuff that really needed to happen."
Miller, still teased as "the new guy," is a creative dynamo with a kind of egghead charm about him. Arriving for a late dinner, he glances at the screen and wisecracks that Chaney "looks like the lead singer from the Cure."
"The biggest trick," he says of composing for silents, "is deciding where you go over the top. The tendency is always to over-score."
"Phantom," of course, comes with a vast built-in audience that likes the extravagance of the Andrew Lloyd Webber stage show just fine. With the film version of the Lloyd Webber musical set for release, the group wasted no time in making the silent "Phantom" their first priority. They had their world premiere in Baltimore last month, then traveled to the Midwest. In Decatur, Ill., Winokur reports, the Lloyd Webber film version has been held over repeatedly, despite the critical drubbing it suffered. "There's a growing cult of people who are seeing it 10 or 15 times," he says.
He caught about 45 minutes of it after a recent sound check, he says. He's also reading the 1910 Gaston Leroux novel. "It really fleshes out the story," says Winokur. "It answers questions like 'Where is the Phantom from? Why is he disfigured? And who is the guy with the fez?' "
In addition to the masked ball sequence -- the only surviving Technicolor scene from the original "Phantom" -- Winokur and Gillooly enlisted a network of specialists to replicate more than 200 tint changes and reproduce hand-colored frames using the archaic Handschiegl stencil technique. The process, like so much about "Phantom," is exorbitant, Winokur admits. "It's over the top," he says.
Thus far, audiences have responded accordingly. "They have shock and amazement on their face. Even for people who are sophisticated about the cinema, it's powerful beyond belief.
"We're glad it worked," he says. "We kind of bet the farm on it."
Duluth, Minn. — The NorShor Theatre has been a fixture on Superior Street for generations. But in the last few years it's fallen on hard times. It's been passed from one manager to another. Each new manager has the perfect idea for keeping it open -- until reality sets in, and the losses mount. In real life, and in the play, the theatre closes again.
In an early scene, the theatre manager announces the NorShor is about to be turned into a multiplex, with only big name movies - "no more foreign films, and no more Michael Moore!"
"The people in our core company have very deep roots here at the NorShor," says Jean Sramek, who's been involved with Colder by the Lake for all of its 22 years. "It's a place we love, it's a place the community loves, we have a lot of memories here, and it just seemed like a natural fit."
Sramek is a writer and the producer of "Phantom of the NorShor." She says the comedy group takes plenty of liberties with Andew Lloyd Weber's music.
"We've changed the lyrics, and we've changed the entire content of the songs," she says. "For example, in 'Phantom of the Opera,' Christine sings this beautiful love song to her father, and it's called 'Wishing you were somehow here again.' Well, in our version it's a sad song about how the NorShor doesn't have a liquor license any more, and it's called 'Wishing they were serving beer again.'"
All the main roles are played by professionals. Tenor Calland Metts performs opera and light opera around the country. In Phantom of the NorShor, he plays the hero, who tries to come up with ways to save the theatre, although they've all been heard before.
There are ghosts in this show. But they aren't the unhappy spirits of deceased people.
Jean Sramek realized while she was working on the script that Duluth is full of ghosts - favorite buildings and downtown institutions that have disappeared.
"In this show we have a Phantom of the old Carnegie Library," she says. "We have a Phantom of the Glass Block, which is a department store in the downtown area. And we also have a Phantom of the Patty Cake Bakery, which for years was this popular bakery in Duluth, which made some wonderful cakes and things like that, that you can't get anymore."
But even with all the local references, Sramek says the play will strike a chord with anyone.
"Every town has old buildings," she says. "Grand architecture that has been subdivided."
But co-writer and director Margi Preus has a very different attitude.
"All right, the people from Minneapolis, they just might not get it," she laughs. "And do we care about that? No! They should live here then! But we invite everyone; we don't discriminate."
The creative team behind Phantom of the NorShor is serious about wanting to preserve beloved old buildings. But they have a lot of fun in the process.
They added a sword fight scene after seeing the movie for the first time and realizing a couple of characters duke it outit includes a sword fight. It turned out to be a handy addition, because several players have to make costume changes and the sword play gives them enough time.
Performances of "Phantom of the NorShor" run this weekend and next, at the NorShor Theatre in Duluth.
Creator's shadow haunts 'Phantom' on the big screen
Tuesday, May 3, 2005
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The Phantom of the Opera
Warner Home Video
Rated Pg-13
$29.95
Visually lush and featuring the familiar tortured love triangle and haunting melodies that have lured 80 million people into theaters around the world, "Andrew Lloyd Webber's the Phantom of the Opera" appears to contain all the ingredients to explode on the big screen. But the movie misfires as often as it connects, and the problem is inherent in its unwieldy title. This version doesn't let us forget who its daddy is.
Only occasionally does "Phantom" shed its theatrical mask to reveal the irresistible face of an honest-to-goodness movie musical. With Lloyd Webber on board not just as composer but also as co-screenwriter and producer, the film seemed destined to stay true to its roots rather than attempt to transcend them. The brilliance of "Chicago" lies in its complete and utter transformation from stage to screen. Sir Andrew, however, might not have stood for anyone -- like, say, a director -- monkeying around too much with his original concept.
Nonetheless, Joel Schumacher, an old hand with caped eccentrics after directing two "Batman" sequels, gets off to a promising start in a prelude set during a 1919 auction of the remains of a fabled Paris opera house, including bits and pieces of an enormous chandelier.
The scene is shot in muted black and white, like early daguerreotypes. When the action shifts to the venue in its heyday three decades earlier, the images slowly bleed into resplendent Technicolor. The screen fills up with posturing opera singers in full plumage, led by the diva Carlotta (Minnie Driver, channeling Maria Callas), who acts as if the entire opera staff is conspiring against her.
At this point, the movie is a talkie, not an operetta as it was onstage. Carlotta has words with the stagehands instead of serenading them. But "Phantom" abruptly changes its tune with the introduction of Christine (Emmy Rossum) and her competing lovers -- opera patron Vicomte Raoul de Chagny (Patrick Wilson) and a masked misfit (Gerard Butler), who writes brilliant operas for Christine from the theater's catacombs where he's holed up hiding a maimed face. Unlike his rival with the trail of names, he goes simply by the Phantom (you would, too, if you got an entire show named for you).
Christine can't look at either suitor without feeling a song coming on. Evidently they feel the same. "Angel of Music," her sexually charged duet with the Phantom, and "All I Ask of You," her more innocent one with Raoul, are showstoppers. But it's not necessarily a good thing to stop a movie. It makes audiences think such things as "Why did these two people suddenly burst into song?"
"The Phantom" would have been better served by weaving the songs into the plot as "Chicago" did instead of asking the cast to sing a little, talk a little, then sing some more, as if performing a variety show.
Driver, who has a romp screeching and distorting her face, is the film's biggest name, and she gives the biggest performance. The principal roles have been left to relative unknowns who lack stupendous enough talent to make you forget they're not stars.
Of the love triangle, Rossum fares the best. Her angelic voice makes it crystal clear why Christine is the Phantom's soprano of choice. The actress has enormous eyes, which she uses to express Christine's emotions as two men attempt to consume her. Butler gives the Phantom everything he's got, belting out his solos with terrifying conviction. The trouble is he doesn't seem particularly terrifying in any other way, and he's awfully good-looking for the role. When Christine rips off his mask, you expect to see the English patient. Instead you get a hunk with a drooping eye. Wilson is the weakest link. His Raoul is a milquetoast -- he would never get the girl if his competition weren't a madman.
The money saved on big-name actors went into elaborate period costumes and breathtaking sets. Schumacher, who started as an art director, has an unfailing eye for color and detail. Christine's dressing room is flooded with peach-color flowers. Later a single red rose is brought to a cemetery, providing a splash of color in another black-and-white scene.
Through fancy camerawork, the opera house appears to be on as many levels as a skyscraper. Deep down is the Phantom's lair, to which he brings Christine in a gondola surrounded by so much water it could be Venice or at least the Venetian.
Meanwhile, at ceiling level, a chandelier hangs precariously. There's a certain relief watching "The Phantom" in a movie house and not having the urge to duck.
-- Advisory: This movie has brief moments of violence.
This Week's Hot Video: 'Phantom of the Opera'
It's hard to imagine a more faithful celluloid translation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage phenomenon.
The cast is good, the score is sublime, the visuals are sumptuous and it speeds along with a delirious romantic power that, if you let it, can sweep you away. Eighteen-year-old Emmy Rossum carries the film with unaffected grace, charm and an opera-trained voice as Christine, the Phantom's musical protege and victim.
The rest of the ensemble, led by Gerard Butler as the phantom, also clicks and every frame is opulent and dreamlike. Of course, it's all just a backdrop for the rock-operetta score, and your experience of the movie will depend on how you relate to a style that has become (at least critically) somewhat unfashionable since the '80s.
The DVD comes as a movie-only single disc or as a two-disc set with a deleted scene, background on the phantom story and a three-part making-of feature. 143 minutes. Rated PG-13 for brief, violent scenes. (William Arnold)
GRADE: A-
Extras enhance flawed `Phantom'
PAIR OF DOCUMENTARIES OFFERS ENTICING TIDBITS
Mercury News
Movies based on stage hits are few and far between, and for good reason. It's difficult to translate what works within the confines of a theater to something that works on film.
Every once in a while, a winner like ``Chicago'' comes along. Unfortunately the screen version of ``The Phantom of the Opera,'' one of the biggest stage musicals of all time, now available on DVD, isn't in the same league.
A noble failure at best, it suffers from middling performances and too many additions to the stage play. Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and director Joel Schumacher tried adding a back story for the Phantom, and it stops the movie cold. But despite the film's flaws, the DVD extras make this a release ``Phantom'' fans should consider.
Lloyd Webber, who also serves as producer of the film, took his story from the 1911 Gaston Leroux novel ``Le Fantôme de l'Opéra.'' In it, an elderly French aristocrat remembers the strange events surrounding his love affair with an ingenue at the opera, Christine Daaé, with most of the story told in flashbacks. Vying for the young singer's affections was the mysterious ``phantom,'' an elegant and anonymous masked man who had free run of the opera house and intimidated its cast, crew and management.
The key roles are played by young newcomers to Hollywood. Emmy Rossum gives the film's best performance as the young singer, who gets her big break when the company's pompous diva (an over-the-top Minnie Driver) walks out.
Broadway's Patrick Wilson plays the young French aristocrat Raoul, a childhood friend of Christine's who had lost track of her before becoming a patron at the opera, where their romance takes flight. Gerard Butler plays the dashing Phantom, who secretly coaches Christine on her singing and falls in love with the star he has created. Soon Raoul learns this strange man is capable of anything, including murder, to keep her for himself.
The stage show was awash in unabashed romanticism, accented by Lloyd Webber's soaring throwback of a score. But on film the very qualities that made the musical a stage success seem melodramatic and overdone, because the young cast lacks the finesse to pull it off.
Schumacher's greatest contribution may be the spectacular look of 19th-century Paris, both inside and outside the opera house. In his hands, ``Masquerade,'' one of the best production numbers on stage, becomes a cinematic triumph visually, though some of its drama is lost. The costuming is extravagant and the music soars, but because the leads can't deliver consistently enough to make us really care about the characters, the menace Raoul and Christine face from the Phantom lacks real punch.
The most annoying flaw: The actors don't always lip-sync perfectly to their vocal tracks, a cardinal sin in any movie musical.
Which brings us to the DVD extras. Though there's no commentary track for the film itself, two very good documentaries give enough tidbits to satisfy the most avid ``Phantom'' fan, tracing the genesis of both the film and the musical. For instance, Colm Wilkinson, the actor who originated the role of Jean Valjean in ``Les Misérables,'' was the very first Phantom at a 1985 workshop production in Lloyd Webber's back yard. Wilkinson would subsequently go on to play the part in a record-breaking Toronto run. Film director Ken Russell had a hand in the show's legacy as well, directing a campy promotional video for the musical's main theme, ``The Phantom of the Opera.''
The hourlong ``Behind the Mask: The Story of `The Phantom of the Opera' '' focuses on the creation of the original stage musical, which made its debut in 1986, featuring interviews with director Harold Prince, producer Cameron Mackintosh and lyricists Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe. It tracks the constant changes, from lyrics and songs to leading man. Michael Crawford, the actor most closely identified with Lloyd Webber's Phantom, was brought in to replace British rock star Steve Harley just two months before the premiere. This doc gives a revealing look at what it takes to get a show on its feet.
``The Making of `The Phantom of the Opera' '' centers on Lloyd Webber's quest to get the musical filmed. He had Schumacher in mind to direct the movie years ago, with original stars Crawford and Sarah Brightman. One can only wonder how different that film might have been.
Among the lesser extras is ``No One Would Listen,'' a deleted scene in which the Phantom sings about his lot in life. Cutting it was wise, since it's a plea for sympathy better made through the drama itself, without so blatant an attempt to manipulate audience emotions. There are also the theatrical trailer and an odd Easter egg that shows cast and crew members singing along to the movie's theme. Though amusing for a few seconds, it wears thin by the time the fifth or sixth group starts singing horribly off key.
The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
Criticism toward Joel Schumacher’s attempted enactment of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s cherished stage musical The Phantom of the Opera likely will fall on deaf ears. If you love the source material (I don’t), the chances are high you’ll thoroughly enjoy the latest film to pay tribute, even though Schumacher is functionally talentless.
Schumacher and his financial backers certainly spare no expense, though the bulk of their budget apparently went to candles. Their Phantom (the not-so-hideously-disfigured Gerard Butler) hides beneath opulent and gaudy-yet-dimly-lit theatrical set pieces that turn the normally regal Opera Populaire into the west wing of the Moulin Rogue. The Phantom’s water-logged lair resembles exactly what it is – a poorly constructed, artificial set dropped into the corner of a vast soundstage. Hire the man who put nipples on the Bat suit, and you’re going to get what you pay for. The masquerade ball, which occurs late in the story, starts to explore methods of filling the artistic canvas, but by then, it’s too little, too late.
Regardless of your opinions on Webber’s compositions, there’s one unavoidable fact that prevents me from properly embracing a filmed Phantom – we’re sitting in a seat watching performers not sing the show. Oh, Schumacher’s cast may sing their hearts out in sound booths somewhere far off stage, but there's no sense of truth to the performance. Most manage beautifully with tunes one fellow critic cleverly described as “music written for Muppets.”
When the movie rolls, we’re asked to watch handsome but lifeless drones lip synch to previously recorded tracks while they lumber around with their arms glued to their sides. Emmy Rossum plays Christine, the apple of the Phan
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Mary Erik Martin. All Rights Reserved.
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