Monday, January 16, 2006

We Need An Interpretive Modern Jazz Number Celebrating Brokeback Mountain! Get Me Debbie Allen On the Phone Now!

On this very day, January 16th, some 56 years ago the one and only Debbie Allen was born. This is a day worth celebrating. Without Debbie Allen the reciteable opening of that famous High School for the Performing Arts television series, "Fame", wouldn't have sounded so very earnestly dramatic "Fame costs. And right here is where you start payin'..."... Tell it, Debbie, tell it.

Most importantly without Debbie Allen there would have been no interpretative tapdance celebrating Saving Private Ryan at the March 1999 Oscars. Without Debbie Allen Oscar's musical interludes are meaningless.


Let's face it. The musical numbers at the Oscar ceremony still suck. But now, sigh, they just don't suck enough. If you're going to do something. Do it all the way. Showgirls, one of my favorite movies, understands this concept. Ed Wood gets it too. I mean, we can make fun of the Academy for thinking that Beyonce is the right voice to bring us French choral ballads, animated power ballads, AND Andrew Lloyd Webber faux-opera, all in the same night but it's more boring-bad than the preferrable you-can-talk-about-it-for-years-afterwards brand of stinky. The Oscar ceremony doesn't need costume designers standing on stage like beauty pageant contenders, waiting to see whose name will be called. The Oscar ceremony doesn't need that clip reel celebrating some random topic like 'people swimming in movies'. We could be here all day talking about what the interminable Oscar ceremony doesn't need.

But the Oscar ceremony most certainly does need the return of Debbie Allen's uniquely memorable dance-a-thons! This generation is crying for its very own 'Rob Lowe dirty dancing with Snow White' moment. OK, so maybe she didn't choreograph that particular disaster but work with me here. You know I'm right. Bring back Debbie Allen!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amen! I'd love to see Debbie come back and maybe use some of her choreography from CARRIE reworked for this years films: how about that "Pig Killing Ballet" retooled for a HISTORY OF VIOLENCE interpretive dance? Jake and Heath could stalk each other around the sheep pit like Betty Buckley and Linzi Hatley's songs. And I'm sure we could make that opening aerobics number work extra special for MUNICH.

adam k. said...

Can we have a film experience globe winner prediction contest? Is it too late?

Anonymous said...

Ha ha! I'm signing THAT petition. Yes, the Brokeback Ballet, the Family Stone Foxtrot and the Crash Cha Cha Cha. I can see it now.

(Those wondering why I'm mentioning the Family Stone should figure out what F movie had a better score. Damned if I know.)

Rob

Glenn Dunks said...

I'm so sad I've never been able to see footage of the Lowe/White dance number.

I'd love to see a 'People Swimming in Movies' montage. ...or not.

Anonymous said...

Yes i remember that number with Rob Lowe in the 1988 Ceremony, and the Coreography for the Scores done for Debbie Allen. I thought that they werent good enough but TODAY i miss Allen´s work, Can you imagine the coreography for a geisha in the hands of a first class lady, who once sung the title song from Footlose in the ceremony of the oscars and she danced and sung like in the Fame good moments

Jose Luis, From Zaragoza, a city of Spain, and the boy who never sleeps in the oscar nights. Not so young now

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