Chapter Six
With all the negative press, critical onslaughts, neglect from the participants and many other people trying to erase their memory from the clutches of it, Xanadu, for it’s many faults and flaws, still lives in the hearts, minds and fantasies of those who are still attracted to the film’s basic utopian outlook. The possibilities, the fun, the mere notion of a beautiful muse to appear out of the blue and another notion of not taking life too seriously-these qualities did not attract many to it’s heart, some even seriously detest it.
In the gay community, the film’s utopian theme and, especially, the theme song is taken to heart and has been a theme of some
parades. In Australia, a dance version of Xanadu was an
underground dance hit. It was performed by ‘Paula Featuring Olivia’ (though there’s NO Olivia anywhere); since then ‘Paula’ has made a small career of singing Olivia tunes in gay bars in London. Another version of Xanadu was done as part of a DJ dance compilation CD called Direct Hits #15. Unlike Paula’s rather weak performance and production, this new version not only used the actual original recording but also snippets of dialogue and the final production and chunks of Drum Dreams. All set to a rave drum machine.
Outside of the gay’s circles, Xanadu has maintained the same level of appeal over the years. In LA, there was a dance club than had a ‘Xanadu Night’ that featured music from the early eighties (the current marketable nostalgia trend). They even go as far to use the movie’s logo for their ads and interior.
For film buffs, especially those who are interested in bad and/or
campy titles, Xanadu has been compared to The Apple, Sgt.
Pepper and Can’t Stop The Music. It is also commonly noted that Xanadu is “better” then these films-not excruciatingly bad like the others...just boringly bad.
For whatever arguments over Xanadu are, whether more serious
questions of it’s existence on the surface of the Earth or joking jabs at what was more wooden-a 2 x 4 or Michael Beck’s acting, the film did managed to reach out with it’s basic premise of utopia and hope despite it’s problems and attackers. The few who where taken by it’s ‘magic’ when it was first released somehow understood what the film was trying to achieve and had managed to take it’s weakness with a grain of salt. These are the people who managed to find the magic buried in the muck. Over the years, the number of “Xanaduians” has steadily grown. The passage of time has allowed for some to re-examine Xanadu more objectively; some are reminded of their after taste and dispose if it, while others end up liking it and are willing to cut it some slack. The bottom line? For those who still have a hopeful heart (and stomach) for Xanadu and it’s fantasy, music, style and it’s hoorky cornball happy ending, the film still delivers it’s message of hope optimism and, for good or ill, camp.
Sure, Xanadu’s successful cousin, Grease, is getting it’s rightful recognition on it’s 25th anniversary by the mainstream press, but, to the individuals who aren’t seriously infected by the retrospective praise and hype, Xanadu dose have it’s own charms and stands very well against it’s cousin’s large shadow.The film’s reevaluation and resurgence can be traced as far back as 1985 and to a underground film starring Crispin Glover called The Orkey Kid. In it, Glover’s character participates in a local talent contest by weirdly impersonating Olivia and sings Magic. The history behind that film included an earlier version staring a unknown Sean Penn which was called Beaver II. Many years later, Penn told an interviewer that if people wanted to get an idea of who he really was should see Beaver II, saying “if people watched that thing they’d leave me alone in restaurants.” (#9)
This revaluation continued through another branch of the underground media; small press, or zines, where more writers and
artists have honestly expressed their interest in Xanadu in publications like Mommy & I Are One and Ben Is Dead. The next
stage of this evolution was the internet and that’s when the flood gates opened. In fact, this web site as a whole can be easily
viewed as an example unto itself-for better or worse.
Eventually, mainstream publications finally caught up and warmed up to Xanadu. An early example was a guilty pleasures
article in the March 10th, 2000 edition of Entertainment Weekly: “(U)nlike other early-80’s attempts to reinvigorate musical (like
Popeye), Xanadu actually has humible tunes (the title make for a killer karaoke) and a refreshing naive sincerity that can’t be
duplicated in this post-ironic age.”
The film even reached the level of nostalgic deconstruction in a segment on VH1’s ‘I Love The 80’s, the cable network’s on-
going nostalgic mini-series where celebrities and pop cultural wise guys and gals talk about and examine various artifacts of
the said era. Mini-series regular Mo Rocca remarked that the glowing muses were chemically radioactive and Gene Kelly was
“a roller skating pipe piper; like a cult leader, leading all these freaks in a giant adult skate.” While others, including Lea
Thompson, made rather strange remarks that you needed drugs to understand the movie, it was another mini-series regular
Michael Ian Black who summed it all up by calmly proclaiming: “Gimmie short shorts. Gimmie roller skates. Gimmie Xanadu. I’
m a happy man!”
During the 2000 Williamstown Theater Festival, stage director and Yale School of Drama graduate Annie Dorsen debuted her
stage adaptation of this film, billed as Xanadu Live! Even though Dorsen has a distinguished background of the theatre and
has been decorated with many fellowships and awards, this was the second time she took a “forgotten” piece of pop culture on to the stage. She had done a similar job with ‘Grease 2’ just for fun. This time, ‘XL!’ was done as a dare from a friend.
Dorsen’s adaptation and direction for Xanadu meant a certain amount of adjustments had to be made like editing out pieces
(like the animated ‘Don’t Walk Away’ scene), the decision to have the cast to lip-sync rather than sing and a fabric design of a
fabric mural so the stage Sonny can skate right into without hurting himself. Giving the production a slight surreal quality, the
actors weren’t playing the characters, they were playing the original Xanadu actors playing the characters. Billings such as
“Cheryl Lynn Bowers as Olivia Newton-John as Kira” were the norm here. Even the muses had a more active role in this version
as stage hands changing props between scenes.
LEFT: Cheryl Lynn Bowers, CENTER: Cheryl Lynn Bowers as Olivia Newton-John as Kira, RIGHT: Xanadu Live! co-producer Amy Pietz
When asked about the motivation behind the original production, Annie Dorsen told the Advocate that the movie represented a very brief but interesting transitional time between the fall of disco (70’s) and the arrival of Reagan and AIDS (80’s).
‘Xanadu Live!’ was planned to be a one-time performance, and it would have stayed that way if it weren’t for a couple of audience members, actress Amy Pietz (who’s résumé included ‘Caroline In The City’ and ‘Rodney’) and her husband and fellow actor Kenneth Alan Williams.
The performance on that night went down very well. “I really had one of the best audience experiences in theatre that I ever had,” Amy said of that night’s performance to Broadway to Vegas.com, “It was so joyful. It was the antithesis of New York and Los Angeles theatre in that it took itself seriously – not.”
Being a small fans of both Olivia and Xanadu as well a desire to be producers, they brought the script, its director and the original ‘ONJ/Kira’ actress (Cheryl Lynn Bowers) to the 99-seat Glascon Theater in Culver City, CA for a scheduled one month run.
After setting up a small office in Burbank and a web site, the group, now known as XL! Productions, announced a casting call for dancers for the XL! west coast bow in Casting West magazine. This small ad got a huge response, and not just from perspective dancers. Some fans got wind of the production and began to wildly circulate the ad through various Xanadu-related web sites (The Xanadu Preservation Society and Only Olivia being the major ones). One fan even made plans for an unofficial XL! fan-site.
LEFT:
Xanadu Live! poster
RIGHT:
"Sonny", "Kira" and "Danny" from Xanadu Live!
.jpg)
“We received e-mails from fans all over the world,” added Amy. ‘There are people in San Francisco, D. C., and Vegas who want to produce this show. It dose have a huge following, although the following is underground. And, those underground fans are waving to surface. They are very happy that we are giving them the opportunity to surface.”
Also planned was that this production would also serve as a fundraiser for The American Cancer Society (Olivia is a breast cancer survivor) and Broadway Cares. There was also a matter of who had rights over the script for public performance.
Thanks to the records from the Writers Guild Of America, they managed track down and contact Marc Ruble. He gave the XL! folks his permission provided that his name wouldn’t be used for the stage production credits though his name can be
found in the show’s program.
The location and the one month schedule of Oct. 11 to Nov. 11 2001 was then announced through a small ad in the LA Weekly and to the surprise to many, the tickets were going out fast as the word of mouth.
Soon after opening night, the reviews came in. In their review, Variety singled out the actors for praise; Bowers performance “gets the angelic look, Australian accent and happy emptiness just right”, Dustin James’ turn as Beck/Sonny is credited as a “excellent comic turn, dippy and corny and laced with ideal timing” and Kenneth Alan Williams’ Kelly/Maguire “keeps his chin forever angled upward, his teeth forever gleaming and his toes forever aching to twinkle.”
Speaking of aching, the only negative comment the review mentioned (outside of spending the first paragraph disassembling the original movie), was the size of the theatre and its stage, “There are moments when the show really wants to takes off into it’s own world – but it doesn’t have the room.” But that didn’t get in everybody else’s way from enjoying the whole production.
Backstage.com’s favorable review began with, “ …audience looking for a reason, any reason, to listen to the entire Xanadu soundtrack with like minded loonies, who also have an appreciation for a ironic loopy comedy, might just have found, in Xanadu Live!, the show they’ve been waiting for all their tortured dysfunctional lives.” L. A. Weekly called the show “delightfully joyous and innocuous camp” and the production staff “brings a crisp professionalism to the proceedings.”
Fans, of course, where overjoyed. Posting reviews on related internet sites, mainly gathered in the XL! fan site by Simonie Hodges, began in earnest. Obviously without the objectivity that critics are known and paid for, the reviews were all great and the whole engagement more or less turned into a month long party and not just for the fans either.
Reportedly, celebrities like Lea Thompson and RuPaul showed up for a performance. However, what really turned some heads was many members of the original movie production crew and dancers actually showed up and enjoyed the show, most notably, Ruble. However, the major names, mainly Olivia Newton-John, were absent. As for the fans, most showed up far more than once, some came weekly and a smaller select brave few showed up everyday! One of them was rewarded by tending the theatre’s small Xanadu-styled retro bar/lobby and watched the remaining shows for free.
Even though the whole production was a large financial loss for the couple/producers, Pietz looks back with little to no regrets. “It was worth it in many regards especially since it opened after 9/11,” she had said recently, “and EVERYONE who came to the theater including ourselves needed the joyous distraction.”
It was months later when it was announced in an ONJ interview in the 4/27/02 edition of the Australian magazine New Idea, that John Farrar was writing a Xanadu stage play of his own for Broadway. When a fan quizzed one of the magazines editors over this item, he replied that Farrar indeed had the script ready to go,
but casting, rehearsals and a actual date wasn’t been confirmed.
There were subtle changes to the production during the month
long duration, more notable were more sight gags and the music
before and after the show were now ONJ and ELO hits from 1979.
Due to the resounding success, there was talk about extending
the show just beyond the November 11th date, but underneath,
the negotiations weren’t going very well. It got to the point when
someone from the ELO camp requested that Ms. Hodges’
unofficial XL! fan-site be taken down because they felt it was
“antagonizing” that the site existed.
So the show was closed as originally planned and raised just
under five thousand dollars for its charities. However, it really
wasn’t over just yet. About a month later, the productions props
and script were sent to St. Louis for a weeklong engagement and,
in June 2002, a “under the radar” benefit performance in
Collinsville, Illinois.
ABOVE LEFT: The entire XL! cast on closing night ABOVE RIGHT: Heather Hoban and the XL! muses. BELOW RIGHT: Ken Anderson at his Xanadu Fitness for the L. A. Times article.
Xanadu’s 25th Anniversary was creeping up on everybody and, despite the film’s resurging popularity and its increasing midnight screenings across the country, Universal Studios was willing to let this milestone pass without a sound. However, some hard-core fans wasn’t going to let this pass without a some noise.
One of the critics from Film Threat (a former magazine/now web site geared towards independent film and media), Phil Hall, was first to mark this occasion by giving Xanadu 5 stars, or clip boards. In the first paragraph, he belts it out: “It needs to be said! Xanadu is the greatest movie musical every made!”
While he honestly checks off the films weakness against musical titans like Singing In The Rain and the works of Bob Fosse and Vincente Minnelli, he offers an explanation behind his bold statement: “… it offers nothing but pure wall-to-wall fun and nonsense to keep a smile on one’s face from the opening credits…through the end of the picture.”
He then goes into detail about the film’s “wacky” aesthetic and its unpretentiousness: “…it is escapist-silly without being emotionally stupid.” Then there’s the other pluses, like Olivia: “…she dances, she sings and she acts….okay, she can’t act, but she looks so
fantastic that it easy to overlook this. In fact, Newton-John is such a strong presents that her sex appeal and star power compensate for Michael Beck’s lack of both as her leading man.” and Kelly: “Seeing someone of Kelly’s age doing something as vigorous as this is quite a sight, and the veteran showman keeps his grin wide as he skates about with supersonic abandon.”
James Berardinelli from Reelreviews.com made an interesting summation that the film “may not achieved its director’s original lofty ambitions but, by failing so spectacularly, it has become much more. Had the film been a modest financial and creative success, it would likely to be forgotten today.”
One fan, Heather Hoban, decided to take a step further and put on a small unofficial anniversary party by renting a copy of the film and the glorious art deco Alex Theatre in Burbank, California and announced a special screening benefit for the American Red Cross (in honor of the hurricane Katrina aftermath) on September 30, 2005 with a few surprises.
Even before the screening started, there was a prevailing party atmosphere where fans were tailgating all over the theatre’s elaborately designed lobby with several show and tell moments like fans showing off their homemade Xanadu t-shirts and
their collectibles like press kits and 8-tracks, some of which where on display behind the theatre’s concession stand counter.
Despite the anti-climatic ending, the shows engagement marked
a small Xanadu resurgence, mainly with theatre screenings around the country. More prominate example was a Xanadu ‘sing-a-long’ screening as part of the 2002 OutFest, the Los Angeles Gay/Lesbian Film Festival, where the sold out engagement was populated with many dressing up as muses, Xanadu dancers and a small handful of Jeff Lynnes.
The event was even covered by the LA Times for a large Xanadu
article that was published a week later. The show started off with a
brief opening set by the Gay Men’s Choir Of LA. Once the movie
started, so did the party; cheers for Olivia’ and Kelly’s credits and a
few boos when Beck’s name first came up, shouts of ‘Sugar Daddy’
during scenes with Kelly and Beck and other playful cat calls that
suggested a MST3K audition (Warning: this will not be the last time I’
ll use this reference!-ed.) and the usual shouting of the lyrics,
karaoke style!
The movie is ludicrous, touching, excruciatingly bad acting in parts
and, well...strangely and utterly charming. “ noted the Times reporter,
Reed Johnson. “By the time ON-J launched into the theme-song
finale, everyone was on their feet, swaying and dancing in the aisles.”
And then the party was over…the muse has left the building.
One fan who had to miss the event was a major focus of the Times
piece, Ken Anderson. He was too busy getting ready for his Xanadu
Extravaganza Weekend at his aerobics studio in Santa Monica, CA.
“It wasn’t a good movie, by a long shot, even I knew that”, Anderson
remarked about the movie. “In retrospect I can’t figure out what it was, but it had this huge, transcendent effect on me.” A friend of Anderson who was serving as a master of ceremonies for Anderson remarked, “It’s such a amazing thing, because what [Xanadu] is saying is anything can change somebody’s life, anything can be your muse.
And in Ken’s case, it’s true.”
The article also mentioned that fans were now referring to themselves as ‘Xanadudes’ and ‘Xanadudettes’ and, as a group, ‘Museheads’. The piece had a rare statement by the director Robert Greenwald on his bewilderment at the film’s longevity: “I knew that there was a huge following among young teenage girls because I’ve gotten letters over the years. To be a little bit elliptical, it was a time in my own life when retreating into a fantasy world was a highly desirable and a necessary thing for me.”
The evening was hosted by Marc Edward Heuck, who was the “movie geek” in Comedy Central’s 2000/01 series, ‘Beat The Geeks’. At the beginning of the show, he made a short and poignant speech about the movie’s ”sincere innocents” in the face of its flaws, the critics and cat callers. After the speech and a costume contest, Heuck brought up a member of the original Xanadu dancers, Tony Selznick. Tony said he enjoyed the experience very much and offered some brief behind the scene stories. It was then announced that they were many Xanadu dancers and crew members in the audience and they were met with wild applause.
During the screening, Hoban surprised everyone with the sudden appearance of live dancers as they rushed the stage during the Dancin’ number and danced along with the movie screen. This became the highlight of this party. (refer to the ANNIVERSARY article else where in the site for more annoying details –ed.)