Bonus! How J. Lo became Spider Woman (and invented Google Image Search)

My friends on Facebook are excited for the new movie. I shared a link to your Youtube video but was worried "Gomez goes gay in Kiss of the Spider Woman" would put them off with the wrong idea. Luckily the FB preview instead came up as "Kiss of the Spider Woman: Pleasure & purpose in prison" which is much better. I know Youtube forces creators to try different promo styles and flirt with sensationalism, just wanted to give feedback on this one instance since I want people to see your videos!

I haven’t seen it in forever and I don’t think I even knew there was a musical. I might actually go to the theater for this one! I also always felt sorry for JLo in how she was treated. She seems like a genuinely nice person and she was so needlessly and cruelly scrutinized for years. I don’t even remember what for! Just that she didn’t seem to deserve it.

Folded Laundry too hard? I bet only you and Martha Stewart have that condition! Aww, get better soon!

I was 16 when Andy Warhol's Frankenstein came out. I skipped school, went to Greenwich Village with my boyfriend to see it. Turned out Gene Shalit was right behind us and during his TV review mentioned us and our reactions to the film. Was the first time I saw a fully front naked man and I made some kind of comment about the size of his penis. We were the only non adults in the theater, and you were supposed to be 18 plus even to get in and I'm not sure how we talked our way in.

"I folded laundry too hard". Is it okay if I point to your experience when my husband begins dropping non-too subtle hints about folding my laundry?

I'm looking forward to it. I hope it's a success because every time a musical film flops (🐱) they declare the end of movie musicals...again. And "folding laundry too hard" is a wonderful euphemism for a great many things. I’ll be using that.

Lynn Redgrave was robbed! (Gods and Monsters)

John Kander has not yet passed away, Matt. Terence McNally did during the prep period, but John is happily still with us. I'm really looking forward to this movie, which was filmed in NYC and has Production Design by Scott Chambliss, who I assisted on the film SALT... a great designer and lovely man. I also saw the first version of the stage musical of KISS, directed by Hal Prince and choreographed by Susan Stroman, that was being created & performed up in Purchase, NY, at the SUNY Purchase college, under the auspices of a program called "New Musicals" which were theoretically away from the eyes of Broadway critics. But the critics just wouldn't stay away, and eventually a pretty terrible review by Frank Rich was published in the NY Times which caused the show (and the entire "New Musicals" program) to collapse. Prince, McNally, Kander & Ebb continued working on the show (with a new choreographer) and that was picked up by Canadian entrepreneur/ex-con/producer Garth Drabinski, and eventually opened to raves on Broadway. And that 2nd, final Broadway version is what Bill Condon has adapted for this film. Can't wait...

I'm also pretty excited for Kiss of the Spider Women. I've never had the chance to see any adaptations of it before, so this will be my official inauguration into it's world. I agree that Chicago was a very bit part of bring movie musicals back into fashion, and I do thank Bill Condon for being a large part of that. I was also a huge fan of the Condon directed Dreamgirls as well as the Condon written The Greatest Showman (the latter being what is I think, the best movie musical of the last two decades - Sorry Wicked fans). While I've recently being seeing a lot of stage musicals that have been based on some of my favorite 80s and 90s films (Back to the Future, Mrs Doubtfire, Beetlejuice etc.), I haven't been thinking as much of movies that I would like to see based on stage shows I like. If I could choose, I would love to see a movie version of The Book of Mormon (how could that not be amazing?), or Next to Normal (a definite Oscar contender), but most of all, Come From Away. I love everything about that musical, so I would live to see it as a film. They have of course also been talking about adapting Hamilton as a film for a few years as well, but we'll see if that ever actually happens. Glad to see that you're tackling Frankenstein next. I had to see the latest adaptation, from Guillermo Del Toro last week at TIFF. It's an epic film, beautifully rendered in Del Toro indomitable style, and Oscar Isaac gives an operatic, oscar-worthy performance as Victor. However, the film ultimately didn't work for me due to almost everything else. For instance, there are several side characters who work well in the novel, but eat up considerable runtime while ultimately adding little to the main story. Also, Del Toro choose to take some large diverges in terms of the motivations of certain characters which make for some exceptional odd character beats, that ultimately feel unearned. So, while it was grand, it was ultimately a disappointment for me. After I watched the movie, I came to realize that with all the adaptations that have been made of Shelley's novel, there have been precious few truly great adaptation of Frankenstein since Whale's. Most of them that I've seen, from Branagh's version with De Niro in the 90s, to Daniel Radcliff and James McAvoy's strange buddy version a few years ago, to this latest from Del Toro have all been disappointing for one reason or another. The only one that I can think of that truly stands tall Mel Brook's Young Frankenstein, and maybe Poor Things, which you can argue has a lot of shared DNA. I guess I would add in Tim Burton's Frankenweenie too, because that movie is that perfect mix of adorable and macabre which Burton infuses almost all of his work with. Other than those though, I really can't think of many others.