Bonus video! The cutthroat party games of Stephen Sondheim & Anthony Perkins
Hello there!
In this week's bonus video, we're exploring the wild, creative, often-cutthroat party games invented by puzzle-masters Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins. Stephen of course you know from West Side Story, Into the Woods, Company, Sweeney Todd ... and Anthony you know from Psycho and its sequels, or perhaps Tea and Sympathy if you're Broadway-oriented. But when they weren't conjuring up great works for stage and screen, they kept busy one-upping each other with murder mysteries, word games, dirty limericks, and a sprawling Halloween scavenger hunt across all of New York. They even -- way back in the 1960s -- invented a party game that was basically a real-life version of the videogame Among Us.
Backup version of this week's video in case it doesn't play: https://youtu.be/ytAQltUcB8Y
Here (I think) are the rules of Cutthroat Anagrams: https://alephblog.com/2007/10/05/cut-throat-anagrams/
Come join me for a (free!) talk with lots of gay sitcom clips at the University Book Store on Tuesday October 18 at 6pm: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/university-book-store-presents-matt-baume-tickets-703835720587
Comments (7)
Hi, Matt! This isn't related to this specific post, but I just saw this news about Turn-On "airing" on YouTube soon and immediately thought of you: https://deadline.com/2023/10/infamous-turn-on-to-air-youtube-fastest-cancellation-in-tv-history-1235566393/amp/
there was a movie that came out starring a young Michael J. Fox, I want to say it was a 1980 film that I caught on TV once. It was called midnight madness, and it had these teams of kids going around from place to place trying to solve clues at night
Sondheim also wrote a non-musical murder mystery play called "Getting Away with Murder." It's an interesting script that features a therapy group discovering the murder of.their psychiatrist and trying to solve the crime.
I'm delighted to know that my Discord server full of drag performers who played Among Us in its heyday was following a tradition set by gay icons. Since you asked for recommendations, I recently stumbled across a Facebook (and Instagram) page called the Queer Cinema Archive, which posts clips from queer and queer-coded movies from around the world. It's been a fascinating addition to my FB feed, and I figured others might like it as well.
Oh this is wonderful, thank you!
I like watching on Sundays - I wouldn't always have time on Mondays
That's good to know, thank you! No plans to change anything for now, just checking how folks feel about the current schedule.