Stage to Screen, Screen to Stage

Tsk. Kids today. Metal music. Writing things on the ground in blood.

A lot of people have been reporting on the Screen adaptation of Yasmina Reza's Tony Award winning play God of Carnage, as a cast was finally confirmed; Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, Christoph Waltz, and Matt Dillon (who's role I'm hearing might actually be recast, we'll see), & to be directed by Roman Polanski.

Yeah, I guess I won't get political here, but I'm not excited about Roman Polanski directing it (ohhh how plebeian, amiright? - overlook it, he's an artist!) . It'll be filmed in France as he's a fugitive here, but it looks like the play will still be taking place in Brooklyn as per the American adaptation, despite the fact that the original play, Le Dieu du Carnage was French and took place in France as far as I know. But yeah, American audiences and the like.

The play is coming to The Goodman Theatre this season, so I'll see it in a few months, but I haven't yet. Thus, I don't know what Reza is talking about when she says

Did you write a separate screenplay?
No. He wanted to mainly follow the play, so we decided to change the beginning and to end in a slightly different way, and we were in the process of making some changes in the middle, but mainly the same.

but she said it, so the beginning
and end are changed and maybe the middle. Ha.

The play, I know, takes place in real time & in one room after two sets of parents meet due to a fight between their children. So we'll see how it does as a film.

In other news

Baz Luhrmann is adapting Strictly Ballroom into a musical.

Strictly Ballroom was big in my house growing up, kind of. My sister was constantly looking for a legit VHS copy of it, as we originally had it recorded off of the tv (I think) and that copy eventually was lost. Once Baz became big in the U.S. with Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge, Strictly Ballroom suddenly became very easy to find.

Smolder! Rawrrr! Make me feel like you disapprove of my life choices with only your eyes!

If you don't know, it's an ugly duckling story where the ugly duckling is the dance studio's cleaning woman who turns into a swan of a competitive ballroom dancer when the male lead loses his dance partner and is desperate for another one. *spoiler alert* - The leads fall in love.

Baz's last attempt at Broadway was his rendition of La Boheme which I wanted to see but never did. The show bombed (clearly because I never got to see it and lend my support).

Screen to Stage musical adaptations are ultra hip right now - 9 to 5, Spiderman, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Billy Elliot - but so is the reverse - Mamma Mia!, Hairspray. Anyone else betting that if/when Strictly Ballroom the Musical happens that the musical version will then be made into a summer movie like happened to Hairspray? Movie to Musical to Movie Musical?