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If you're listening to this podcast, then

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3:46

All right, everybody.

3:52

Welcome to the musicalsplaining

3:55

podcast. I am your host

3:57

and literal personification.

3:59

of being miserable, call it a herring.

4:03

And I am just that cheerful, happy

4:05

counterpoint that knows in the back of her

4:07

head that she's gonna die one day. I'm

4:09

Angelina Mein, hi. And we are still...

4:12

Today we are joined by a very

4:14

special guest. She is a New York

4:17

Times bestselling author, but more importantly,

4:19

the

4:19

co-founder of this podcast. Please welcome back

4:22

our friend, Lindsay Ellis.

4:24

Yes, just out of jail after 19

4:26

years, stealing a loaf of

4:28

bread. And I'm very happy to

4:31

be with you on this momentous occasion.

4:36

One loaf of bread, but... I don't know, if you

4:38

ever go to the Olive Garden, I'm very happy

4:40

to take a never-ending bread bowl off their hands.

4:42

That's true, lots of bread sticks. It's a very relatable

4:44

product. This would never have been a problem. Don't steal it, don't

4:47

steal it. They'll get ya. We

4:49

are doing the mega musical, Les

4:52

Miserables. And

4:53

the musical. Long last.

4:56

The motherload. People

4:58

have been asking why we hadn't done this one yet.

5:00

And dear listeners, just so you know,

5:02

this was being held in the back pocket because these

5:05

two lovely ladies knew that inevitably it would

5:07

come to town and that I would have to suffer

5:09

IRL. None of this pro shot or like...

5:11

No Tom Hooper nonsense. Cause there

5:14

is no pro shot because Tom Hooper

5:16

is not a professional, A. And B, like

5:18

the only actual recordings

5:21

are

5:24

concert recordings, which they'll

5:26

give you the gist, but they're not

5:28

people acting, they're

5:30

people in costume walking up to a mic

5:33

and singing it. And it's

5:35

kind of awkward to watch. Although honestly

5:37

it's not that dissimilar from the experience

5:40

of it because people, it

5:42

is literally three hours of people at the front

5:44

of the stage singing to the audience. Yes,

5:47

to the back of the theater, just putting

5:49

all the emotions. I was just thinking about

5:52

like how there's this line

5:53

at, like one of the very first lines in

5:55

the show is this prisoner going,

5:57

how long, oh Lord,

5:59

let me die and like

6:02

it made me, I don't know about you

6:04

but that made me, I was like, Kave's gonna see that guy

6:07

and he's gonna be like, I, yes. That's

6:09

my favorite

6:09

character. That's my guy. That's

6:12

it me. That's my guy.

6:14

That's Jacques. Jacques up there

6:16

gets me. Some people, some people lock on to,

6:18

you know, Eponine, some people lock on to Anges

6:20

R as

6:28

well. It's like the, it's the hunchback from

6:30

Notre Dame guy. That's what he's in the

6:32

credits. Right. Just

6:35

like that. But yeah, I

6:37

got into this show right around the same time I had met you.

6:39

It was like after Phantom, it was like after the Phantom had

6:41

kind of died down, I found

6:43

like this. You needed another hit. I

6:48

always the same way though.

6:49

Because I got,

6:51

I forget how I got the hold of

6:53

the Broadway symphonic

6:55

recording or maybe it was the London cast. I

6:58

think I hate that I remember this. I'm pretty sure

7:00

you were the Broadway, you were the symphonic recording and

7:02

I was the original London cast recording. Because

7:05

the symphonic had Combe Wilkinson? Question

7:07

mark. It did, but it also had a lot

7:09

more of the music, like the original London cast

7:11

recording, which is the first, has a bunch of stuff

7:13

cut, but also has a couple of things that got cut over

7:15

time. There's a lot to Les Mis, the lore

7:18

is deep. Yeah. The symphonic

7:20

recording was the one I knew and it was

7:22

all three hours,

7:24

every single word. So it's a good thing, Kaveh,

7:26

you and I are not seeing this on the same day. Unfortunately.

7:30

Or anywhere near each other because I

7:32

know every word.

7:37

Every syllable, every utterance.

7:40

Oh, it's your lord. Especially one day

7:42

more, which, have you seen South Park, Bigger, Longer

7:44

and Uncut?

7:45

I've seen South Park, yeah. So you

7:47

know how there's this medley

7:50

towards the middle where they're singing about how like

7:52

tomorrow we're going to go do the thing that

7:54

is a direct parody of Les Mis. And

7:57

it is one of the more.

7:59

karaoke friendly

8:02

group numbers you'll ever see. You

8:06

lost all of that

8:07

together especially, sounds like my worst

8:09

nightmare. Yeah, it's great. Oh,

8:12

oh, oh, there's, I'll go

8:14

be real, there's absolutely no singing in

8:16

groups people sing, there's none of that, there's absolutely

8:18

none of that in the show, there's no

8:19

people singing together at the same time, it's all,

8:22

that doesn't happen. Am I gonna need to bring like noise

8:24

canceling headphones in case I have like a meltdown

8:26

in the middle of this? Oh man, how

8:28

many, you wanna talk about how

8:31

many characters in this show. It takes

8:33

place between 1816 and 1832? 1815, you

8:38

were so close. 1815, yeah, so it takes place

8:40

over a period of about two

8:43

decades over which people

8:45

die, people

8:48

have kids, it's very war

8:50

and peace, but unlike Great Comet, which

8:52

only centers on a very small chunk. Les

8:55

Mis just eats the whole place. Fake go for it.

8:57

The biggest, the greatest tome

8:59

in French history, the musical,

9:01

it gets it all, and it's

9:04

a stunningly faithful adaptation.

9:06

It is probably the most faithful adaptation

9:09

of, I think I've seen most of them,

9:11

because like during my Les Mis phase, I

9:14

rented every single movie, including like

9:16

the French one from 1931, and

9:19

that weird one from the 90s. Oh,

9:21

with Emma Thurman and. Yeah,

9:24

and then there was another one that was like another

9:26

French one that was

9:27

like more like inspired by. Yeah.

9:30

Do you remember that one? Was that with Gerard Depardot?

9:32

No, yeah, maybe. Maybe,

9:35

it was like, at least during World War II. Yeah,

9:37

oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was really weird. And

9:41

like the main character was like, I'm like Jean Valjean,

9:43

and it was called, it was weird as, anyway, so

9:45

yeah, notes time. Yeah, let's get to the notes. Yeah,

9:48

and then we could talk about the shit billion

9:50

adaptations.

9:51

I was gonna say, have you guys both read the book? Yes,

9:54

yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yeah. Oh, that face

9:56

head. I guess it's been a, yeah, I don't think, I

9:58

haven't read the whole thing since I was in high school. school and

10:02

but we did a it's

10:04

lit about it because PBS

10:07

had this masterpiece theater

10:11

thing that was a yet

10:13

another adaptation of Les Mis that was a mini

10:16

series starring...

10:18

Domic Cooper? No,

10:20

no it was Domini

10:21

something else it was King Charles

10:23

from the crown. The guy from the

10:25

wire. Yeah Domini whatever

10:28

and David O'Yelloowo I think was Javert.

10:31

It was pretty good it definitely it had its moments but it

10:33

was not the one of the more memorable ones but like

10:36

so they had us do a tie-in promo

10:38

for Les Mis which was so we did

10:40

an it's lit episode about it so like that that

10:43

was like the more like the

10:45

most recent refresher both of us

10:47

had I think.

10:48

I've only read like the first couple chapters

10:50

in French in French class when I was in high school. Oh wow.

10:53

Oh wow. Well that's authentic. Yeah. I

10:55

remember reading up until the part where

10:57

like the priest you know says you

10:59

stole my plates but then he's like no it's not it's

11:01

cool he didn't steal my plates and he's like there was my gift

11:04

and also here's more plates that's the extent of it.

11:05

Yeah talk about Victor Hugo's

11:08

very conflicted feelings about the Catholic

11:10

Church. Yeah. Yeah. It's complicated.

11:12

Anyway okay. Les Mis or

11:15

Abbe is a song through musical with music

11:17

by Claude Michel, Schoenberg,

11:19

lyrics by Alan Bubille and Jean-Marc

11:21

Natal and a book by Schoenberg and Bubille

11:24

that is based on the 1862 novel

11:26

of the same name by Victor Hugo.

11:30

With a plot spanning nearly 20 years and featuring

11:32

a slim cast of dozens compared

11:34

to the novels hundreds, Les Mis or

11:36

Abbe tells the story of Jean Valjean,

11:39

a man being granted parole after spending 19

11:41

years in prison. His initial crime,

11:44

stealing a loaf of bread for his starving sister

11:46

and her child. But what kind of bread was

11:48

it? Oh it was a nice chiavada.

11:52

It was a bread stick from Olive Garden.

11:57

Despite his newfound freedom however, Valjean's

12:00

The past immediately comes to dog him, with

12:02

no one wanting to hire or give shelter to a criminal,

12:04

save for a kindly bishop who offers his home as a

12:06

place of rest.

12:08

When the embittered Valjean steals the bishop's silver

12:10

and runs off into the night, he is caught by the police

12:12

and dragged back to the holy man and

12:14

now on the precipice of facing another long,

12:16

brutal prison sentence. Instead,

12:19

the

12:19

bishop lies to the authorities and maintains

12:22

he gave Jean Valjean the silver as a gift,

12:24

while also giving him a gift of two silver

12:27

candlesticks. The bishops love silver.

12:30

In private, the bishop then tells

12:32

Valjean, You just needed a tax

12:34

deduction, it wasn't that altruistic.

12:37

It's like when you're checking out from Walla on the end of the year,

12:39

you're like, oh shit, like

12:42

unload another five, geez, so I can get this

12:44

cap tax back. You

12:45

can do a different tax packet. The bishop

12:47

then tells Valjean he has purchased his soul for

12:49

God, oh geez, I didn't know they

12:51

could do that.

12:52

It

12:54

was a different time. Mr. Hugo

12:56

had a very, like over the course of

12:58

his life, a very strange

13:01

relationship to organized religion.

13:03

In private, the bishop then tells Valjean

13:05

he has purchased his soul for God and must use

13:07

the money to make something good of himself. And

13:10

thus shaken beyond belief and staring down

13:12

a spiritual crisis, our hero decides

13:14

to quote, escape the world

13:16

of Jean Valjean and become a new

13:18

man entirely. He knows that he

13:21

can't get a job if he's a felon, right? He

13:25

can't vote. He can't like,

13:27

no one's going to hire him. So that's

13:29

what he did. This

13:32

book is not timely at all.

13:33

No, no, no, no. No back

13:36

groceries. That's it. No. Yeah.

13:39

The ruthless inspector Javert never forgets a face, nor will he have

13:41

the laws broken and thus begins

13:44

an epic chase between the two set against the backdrop

13:46

of the first 30 years of 19th century France.

13:49

Why is everyone so damned miserable?

13:52

Is whispering the opening words to one day

13:54

more in a room full of theater kids the most painful

13:56

way a person can die? And

13:58

was that synopsis really only the

13:59

first 15 minutes of the plot. All

14:03

this and more in Les Miserables.

14:06

Cause

14:09

that's the thing. I feel like you're going to be like, okay,

14:12

it's Selva Stover. And then it's end of act

14:14

one. And then like, it's like, okay, it's almost over.

14:17

Like, okay, it's almost over. Then

14:20

yeah, it's amazing how much it just

14:22

goes. Like I said, it is

14:24

a very faithful out up to you. Do you remember, um,

14:27

there's, there was a long running off Broadway show called,

14:29

um, a forbidden Broadway that parodied Broadway

14:31

shows. And they have this whole long joke song that

14:34

was summarizing the plot of Les Miserables. And like,

14:36

that was the joke, which just kept going and

14:38

it kept going. It was this one person just trying to do it in like

14:40

one breathless sentence. And it's yeah. So,

14:43

so I was trying to like figure

14:45

out a way to do this synopsis. And I was like, you know, I'm just going to put

14:47

the first 10 minutes in here and then be like, Godspeed. Yeah.

14:50

Cause

14:50

I guess ultimately it's like, if, if, if he

14:52

can send to be, have a central plot, it is

14:54

the, uh, the cat and mouse between

14:57

inspector Javere and Jean Valjean,

15:00

who, you know, is a parole breaker.

15:03

And that's, that's his new great crime.

15:06

Les Miserables first began as a 1980 concept

15:08

album by Bubille and Schoenberg with a stage production

15:10

in Paris that same year in 1983, shortly after

15:12

the Broadway opening of

15:14

cats, Cameron McIntosh was given a copy

15:17

of the French concept album by stage director, Peter

15:19

Farago, who approached McIntosh with the idea of bringing

15:21

it to English language audiences, working

15:23

in conjunction with the Royal Shakespeare company and writer

15:26

Herbert Kresmer, who wrote the English lyrics.

15:28

Les Miserables opened in London on October 8th, 1985, where despite

15:30

a flurry of bad reviews,

15:34

several theater changes across the years and COVID-19,

15:36

it is still running, holding

15:38

the position of the longest running musical on

15:40

the West End and second longest running musical

15:43

in the world. The original Broadway

15:46

production, which ran from March, 1987 to May, 2003 is the sixth

15:49

longest running Broadway show in history.

15:52

Since its opening, it has received countless

15:54

tours, revivals, concert stagings,

15:56

international translations, a film

15:58

studio where Tom Hooper lets Russell. give

16:00

the performance of his lifetime. Name

16:02

it. Yeah, I

16:04

know it would be cruel to ask you to

16:07

watch the movie. However,

16:10

it is going to be very challenging

16:12

to not spend half

16:15

of the second half of this

16:17

episode

16:18

talking about. Being that

16:20

atomic over here. I mean, there are so many

16:22

baffling choices, many of them

16:24

casting related. Russell

16:26

Crowe, bless his heart. He

16:29

can't sing. At least not like

16:31

that. Not that idiom. Yeah, not

16:33

the idiom required for Les Mis. Because

16:36

the movie was so

16:38

hung up on this false

16:41

nonsense notion of authenticity.

16:43

Oh, right. Because the song

16:45

through musical is very realistic. They

16:48

recorded all the sound live. So

16:50

instead

16:50

of doing playback the way normal

16:53

people do, all of the

16:55

singing in the movie was recorded

16:58

on set. Which is

17:00

very much to the movie's detriment. Even

17:02

more than it might have been otherwise. Because

17:05

I cannot express this enough. Russell Crowe

17:07

can't sing

17:09

good. He gives us some

17:11

of the best gifts to have ever come out. But.

17:14

Like, it's not that I regret it. Yeah,

17:16

that's true. He's very meaningful. I.

17:20

Maybe that was his intention all along was

17:22

to just make a bunch of memes. Very grateful to Russell

17:24

Crowe Javere because he's like probably

17:26

the best thing in the movie. You know, for all the

17:29

worst reasons, but like. Have I told you my

17:31

experience of seeing this movie on opening night? I

17:33

can never not look at this movie and not think of

17:35

it. But my sister and I, because my sister is

17:37

a huge Les Mis fan as well. It was like she

17:39

hated Phantom so much that she was happy to have something new

17:42

to bond onto. And she got really into Les Mis.

17:44

And so we went and saw it opening night. It was like Christmas

17:47

day and it was a packed theater. And

17:49

it was during the end towards one

17:51

of the many sad songs in the show, Suck

17:53

by Eddie Redmayne. And it's very quiet

17:55

and they're going for the all natural

17:57

moment. And this old man.

17:59

sitting right in front of us rips the loudest

18:02

fart I have ever heard in my life. Like,

18:04

as happening. That guy sounds awesome. And

18:09

the thing is, it's one of those, because

18:12

again, it's very gritty and realistic. Not

18:15

only is it, the sound is set

18:17

sound, it was one long take. That

18:20

was how Hooper did every single

18:22

note. Oh, it's amazing. The show

18:24

was like, yeah, extreme. It sounds painful.

18:26

You've probably seen Anne Hathaway when she won her

18:29

Oscars. Like, she

18:31

sings the entire song in extreme,

18:34

extreme

18:34

closeup. Doing multiple takes

18:36

of that in a row seems brutal. Yeah,

18:38

and you can really hear the vocal frying Anne Hathaway's

18:41

performance. Oh, you can. Because

18:43

it's like, oh, it's like, obviously, like

18:45

they had done it a bunch of times. Yeah. So

18:47

I think the tears are honest, like

18:50

pain tears. You can really

18:52

hear it with Hugh Jackman too. Yeah,

18:54

yeah, yeah. I just feel like he does not, oh

18:56

my God, yeah. Because they don't, they're

18:58

too proud to auto tune it too. Yeah.

19:02

It really is a testament to how Tom Hooper does

19:04

not understand the medium that he's

19:06

working with or

19:08

the material because these songs

19:10

were designed for the cheap

19:12

seats on a stage, you know? Yeah.

19:15

Like these really emotional ballad ballads

19:17

about how I'm dying and my life is

19:19

over and there's like 50 of them. Yeah. Now

19:22

imagine that like thing that, so this

19:25

is designed to be like belted

19:28

and just like the extremist extremist

19:30

of closeups. So when you're seeing that

19:33

on the stage, remember, what could

19:35

be worse? It could be so

19:37

much,

19:38

it could be an extreme extreme

19:40

closeup of Anne Hathaway's runny nose.

19:43

Like a duplex.

19:44

It's like a running theme in his work. He loves that

19:46

in Cats as well with Jennifer Hudson kept having

19:49

a weird runny nose. Yeah. Cats

19:51

was the better movie though. It's gritty and

19:53

realistic. Okay, the runny or the nose,

19:55

the more honest.

19:56

The more dramatic. The emotion. Like

19:58

I would watch more drama. I would watch Cats. 10,000 times

20:00

over before I willingly sat through Les Mis

20:03

again. And I love Les Mis. Dear Lord, that's saying something.

20:05

I love Les Mis. Wow. No,

20:08

it's really bad. Tom

20:13

Hooper is bad at musicals. I don't know what

20:15

you're talking about. Skippleshanks the Railway Cat was

20:17

a masterpiece of dance

20:20

on film. I mean, I

20:22

still defend Jason Derulo's room, Tom Hooper.

20:24

I like his room, Tom Tucker, too. Okay.

20:27

There's art in that.

20:29

He understood the part. He

20:32

understood the assignment, and he delivered. He

20:34

delivered. It was great. I guess

20:36

that's the thing.

20:37

Cats has redeeming. Right. Right. Les

20:41

Mis only. That's it. I don't

20:43

know. Tom Tucker

20:45

is a terrible boy. Skippleshanks the

20:47

Railway Cat. Again, he's wearing pants, and he's got

20:49

a mustache. Come on, come on. But

20:52

yeah, the tap dances. The

20:55

Tom Hooper Les Mis is just kind

20:57

of... It feels like what

21:00

people joke about Les Mis feeling like. We're getting this out

21:02

of our system now, so we don't talk

21:04

about it constantly during the second half, because

21:07

it's really hard not

21:09

to go back to all of the baffling

21:11

creative decisions made by Tom Hooper.

21:14

When we talk about like Megan musicals, Phantom and

21:16

Les Mis are what comes up. But for me, I think it has

21:18

to go to Les Mis. This is just, I think, the biggest...

21:21

In terms of scale, in terms of sound, in terms

21:23

of the emotional highs, just like,

21:25

this is to me the 80s. More than Phantom,

21:27

more than Cats, more than Starlight

21:29

Express. This is that. The

21:32

effect that it had on millennial theater kids,

21:34

I think, is still being measured by sociologists

21:36

today. Yeah. I

21:39

remember it was the first Broadway show I ever saw that wasn't

21:42

with the field trip.

21:43

It was the first Broadway show I saw,

21:45

period. That was the first time I ever saw

21:47

a show from the fifth row. It

21:50

was imprinted on my brain. My mom took me for my 15th

21:53

birthday. And

21:55

yeah, I have a hard time being irrational, or rather

21:57

irrational, I guess, detached from

21:59

about laymen is because it's just such a big part

22:02

of me. But the thing about it that separates it from

22:04

Phantom is where I will defend Phantom

22:06

when you criticize it. People will criticize the admit it's

22:09

to say it's long, it's boring, it's too much. I'm like,

22:11

yes, and I love it. Now leave me

22:13

alone. Yeah, exactly. Like, yeah. I

22:16

don't know how I would engage with it as an

22:18

adult if it was the first time I saw it. Because

22:20

I'm like, I knew it

22:22

from the soundtrack for so long before I actually

22:25

saw it. And I've only seen it once. I

22:27

saw it one time on Broadway 20 years

22:30

ago. Yeah, it was 20 years ago

22:32

for me.

22:32

One year ago. Yeah, because it was,

22:34

oh wow. Because it was the first time I met Nella.

22:37

Oh right, yeah. Yeah. Oh

22:40

my god. The day I met Nella, we saw laymen's 2002, like

22:44

March of 2002, back when we

22:46

were still using disposable cameras.

22:48

That's how long ago it was. We weren't

22:50

even up to digital cameras yet. I

22:53

still had my little disposable Kodak.

22:56

Yeah. What's

22:57

a Kodak? I'm just trying

23:00

to be the resident young person on the podcast.

23:05

I literally just heard that on, you know, it was a Sirius

23:08

XM, you know, the 10

23:10

spot, which is 2010's radio. And

23:12

like you hear Pitbull being like, go to Times Square,

23:15

take a picture of me with a Kodak. And that

23:17

was like literally, I believe Kodak's last product

23:19

placement

23:20

before they got sold. Before they collapsed,

23:22

yeah. So the production

23:24

we were talking about was the original Trevor

23:26

Nunn one that had like this turntable, whatever, blah, blah,

23:28

blah, blah, blah. This is a complete rehaul

23:31

for the most part. I actually really like it,

23:33

considering it's directed by Lawrence O'Connor, who

23:35

has one, directed Bats and Dorella to the

23:37

restaged Phantom Tour, which is ass. Like, I

23:40

actually like this. He's the co-director on this.

23:42

It's different from that original iconic production,

23:45

but I'm very interested to see Lindsay, like

23:47

what you make of it, having seen the original. But

23:50

yeah, that's all I wanted to say. Although again, it was

23:52

more than 20 years ago. And

23:55

like, I do remember the turntable,

23:57

the turntable. Like, I'm just like, how are they gonna do the barricade?

23:59

without that turntable. And

24:03

again, sorry, I got to take it back to Tom Hooper. I

24:05

think of how the movie tried

24:07

to make it

24:08

look like the barricades looked in real life

24:11

to its extreme detriment, because the

24:13

only reason those stupid barricades worked

24:16

was because Paris was a teeny,

24:18

little, you know, like three and a half

24:21

foot wide streets back then. And

24:25

without getting into it too deeply, Victor Hugo was

24:27

very into urban planning and this concept

24:29

and how this revolution changed

24:33

the footprint of Paris, because after

24:35

it happened, they're like, well, we can't have those

24:37

barricades

24:38

anymore. We should probably just start out and

24:40

bulldoze the whole thing. That's why you have those wide boulevards. And so

24:42

they did. That's why we have the

24:44

Champs-D'Elisee. Thanks,

24:47

big old boulevards. Revolution failures.

24:49

Yeah. Have fun.

24:52

I'm very excited for you.

24:54

Thank you, I'm very excited. I'm gonna go see it at the

24:56

Pantages. I'm gonna go see it tomorrow

24:58

night. I will report

25:00

back. So let's go ahead and go to our break. Watch.

25:03

I was just about to say bad Les Mis or obv,

25:05

but that's redundant. I'm

25:07

gonna come back and discuss it. I

25:10

mean, Les Mis is in the public domain. I

25:12

don't see why Andrew Lloyd Webber couldn't,

25:15

you know, just go all in on

25:17

bad, you know, ex-property.

25:20

Jean-Bélgélle Jean-Bélgélle, she's got fingerless gloves.

25:22

Bad hunchback. Yeah,

25:24

bad, the man who smiled. We're

25:27

going through the works of Victor Hugo for some reason. Just

25:29

do it.

25:34

All right, everybody, we are

25:37

back. Oh my goodness, so

25:39

many fucking things happened that

25:42

got in the way of us being able

25:44

to watch, specifically Lindsay being able to watch. Well, one

25:46

thing happened. Two

25:48

things. A fire happened.

25:51

Fire happened. So, okay, so back

25:54

up. So after we recorded part one, I went,

25:56

unfortunately, and saw the show that same night. I mean, unfortunately,

25:58

because I didn't like seeing it, but.

25:59

After that, the plan was that Sunday

26:02

that Lindsay was going to go. No, no, it's Thursday.

26:05

I was supposed to see it on Thursday

26:07

a week ago today. So

26:10

Gmail does this thing where

26:12

it sifts things

26:14

into social promotion if

26:17

you're in the app. So my

26:19

assistant did actually get an email

26:21

saying that the show had been canceled because

26:25

she wasn't using the Gmail app. She was

26:27

using the mail app through

26:29

iPhone. But I was using the Gmail

26:31

app like an idiot. Apparently,

26:34

I drove my ass all the way from Long Beach to

26:36

the Pantages during rush hour. And if you

26:38

have ever spent

26:39

any time in LA, you

26:41

know that that is not

26:43

a fun drive to drive all the way up there only

26:46

to find that the box office is closed. And

26:48

it wasn't until the next day that I found out that, like, OK,

26:50

I guess I had gotten an email. I

26:53

lifted into, like, not spam, but

26:55

emotions. And

26:58

the reason for this was there was a fire

27:00

at the Pantages. Fire. An

27:02

electrical fire. Yeah, it caused all of

27:04

the power to go out. And the theater, as

27:07

I understand it, was dark until the

27:09

following Monday. So I saw

27:11

it on Tuesday. Was

27:14

it sabotage? Was it random? Do

27:17

we know? Was there a conspiracy behind this

27:19

of such sort? I guess you can you can believe

27:21

that there was some anti, you

27:24

know, lame is. Yeah. So

27:26

some lives matter guy like

27:28

some really pro police like this is propaganda.

27:31

Somebody in Napoleon cosplay

27:33

showed up and basically was trying to take down the books.

27:36

They didn't appreciate it. Something blue line guy.

27:40

Or it's not like we have somebody who really doesn't like this

27:42

show, who has an agenda against it and having

27:44

been made to watch about like, yeah,

27:46

I can't be

27:47

bothered to even show back up to burn

27:49

it down. Maybe you're like on Ambien

27:51

or something. You don't remember

27:53

doing it. You know, it happens. That's

27:55

possible. Yeah. I sleep

27:58

burned it. Yeah. They're

28:00

twice. But

28:02

yeah. I was trying to stop you. So

28:05

we're all up to speed.

28:06

Yes, we've gone to see it now, unfortunately.

28:09

And I hear, from my understanding, you

28:11

guys went to Hoopertown too, because you hadn't

28:14

suffered enough. Yeah.

28:17

Yes.

28:17

Yes, this was part of the agreement,

28:19

unfortunately. So I did have to suffer through it. I didn't make

28:21

that agreement. I guess

28:24

I did watch some YouTube videos,

28:27

because I felt like I'd hooper it enough. We

28:29

actually did a video on Tom Hooper's Les

28:31

Mis. You can watch it on Nebula and

28:34

only on Nebula. So I felt like I

28:36

had done my time. I didn't need to revisit it, although

28:39

I am extremely

28:39

grateful for

28:41

the laughs, the

28:45

mirth that Russell Crowe alone has given

28:48

us. Because

28:52

you could have actually seen Les Mis in the time it took you to

28:55

drive down there, and then you're back. Yeah, exactly.

28:58

We should get to recounting what happens

29:00

in Les Mis, because I feel like it's going to be a little

29:03

bit of a shit show.

29:03

Let's go for it. Yeah, so. Yeah,

29:08

I was thinking about how to do this concisely.

29:11

I feel like Les Mis is functionally

29:13

the story of a failed

29:15

revolution that happened in 1832, but

29:18

it also has a prologue that's about an hour long.

29:21

And it takes place over

29:23

the space of about 20 years, in

29:25

which we meet our lead character, Jean Valjean,

29:29

learn how he came to be

29:31

the adoptive parent of one young

29:34

abused little orphan

29:35

girl. And then

29:40

he moves to Paris. And then we get to the actual

29:42

plot, which is about this failed revolution.

29:45

The June rebellion. Yeah. June,

29:47

yeah. One of many revolutions. Not

29:49

the French Revolution, which is what I thought it was. Apparently,

29:53

that's a very common misconception, is

29:55

what I've seen too. I was watching a

29:58

DVD extra about the movie. And

30:00

even the freaking head of the

30:02

art department got it wrong. She called it the

30:05

revolution of 1848 and I was like, well,

30:09

I might explain why those costumes look

30:11

the way they do. Yeah, it's

30:13

confusing because it's also pre-steeded by the 1830 July, or

30:18

June rebellion rather. So it's like, or

30:20

wait, rather, sorry, getting right. July revolution

30:22

is an 1830 June rebellion is the latest one. And

30:27

then there's the 1848 one, but then there's also the

30:29

famous one. So

30:31

if memory serves the June

30:34

rebellion was the thing that got Hunchback of

30:36

Notre Dame's original publication pushed, right? Oh,

30:39

yeah. Like

30:41

it is, it

30:43

is directly relevant to Hugo's

30:45

personal life because he was, you know, there

30:48

for all of this. Cause he wrote Les Mis. It

30:50

was kind of like his Lord of the rings. He wrote

30:52

it over a period of about like 15 or 20

30:54

years. I

30:59

guess not the musical. The book, not the musical. Yes. Yeah.

31:01

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The book was like his Lord of the

31:03

Rings. The book was good. Yeah. I don't want to,

31:05

I don't want to speak ill of the story. I'm

31:07

just speaking of the musical itself. Oh,

31:10

I mean, you're about to get well, actually really hard. I

31:12

just, it does.

31:14

This is not going to be a fun episode for you. Misplaining.

31:16

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's just like,

31:19

you know, it's okay. Like, you know, your

31:21

opinions are extremely valid and also

31:23

wrong. And we're going to spend the next

31:25

hour talking about why I'm wrong.

31:27

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You want to talk

31:29

about the production history of this current

31:32

one or do you want to talk about the

31:34

old one as well?

31:35

I was talking to some of the old gays

31:38

at the Pantages and they, you

31:40

know, we're talking about how

31:42

like they always saw it when it came through. And I kind of

31:44

realized that it was, it was honestly

31:46

really odd that I hadn't

31:48

seen it in 21 years. And

31:51

I don't know why, you know, because

31:54

I didn't see it when it was on Broadway. I didn't

31:56

see it when Norm, Norm Lewis was Javert.

31:59

didn't see the Jonas brother. I

32:03

was very confusing because we were even trying to record

32:05

because you weren't able to see it. And I was like, haven't you seen this

32:07

like 10,000 times? And you're like, I have not seen it

32:09

since 2002 or whatever. I was like,

32:11

how is this

32:12

possible? And I don't know. I

32:14

actually had one friend refuse to see it with me because

32:17

she said she had seen so many terrible touring

32:19

productions. I don't really

32:21

remember how this one is

32:23

super, super different other than it uses an LED

32:26

backdrop and it doesn't use a turntable, which

32:29

the Broadway production

32:30

was very different. And it was also a lot of little

32:32

details. I

32:35

feel like it implemented a lot more humor in

32:37

subtle ways. They

32:39

kind of turn Cozzette and Marius meeting into

32:43

this

32:43

kind of Romeo and Juliet thing where

32:47

they're both awkward teenagers and it's very cute. And

32:49

I thought that was very clever because normally these

32:53

two are boring AF. And I'm sure

32:55

to some of us they were still boring AF. But

32:57

I found it quite charming.

32:59

It's definitely a

33:01

funnier production. They definitely lean more into the

33:03

fact that people like the Tenardiers. I feel

33:06

like they have a much bigger presence than they

33:08

kind of do in my memory. Well, they

33:10

cut some of it. They cut the Waterloo

33:13

stuff. Believe it or

33:15

not, Cave, this is

33:17

probably 15 or 20 minutes shorter

33:20

than the Broadway version. So

33:23

that's a positive. Although

33:25

I kind of disagree because I don't like it. They

33:28

cut lines. They didn't cut songs,

33:32

which I didn't love. Because I

33:35

liked the little Waterloo digression. And

33:37

they cut half of turning, which

33:40

is a song that the girls sing or

33:42

some random ladies sing after the revolution

33:45

fails. And so I'm kind of

33:47

like, man, if you're just going to cut half of it, just cut the whole

33:50

thing. You know? You cut the whole show. Why bother?

33:52

Yeah, why bother?

33:54

Because they only cut like 30 seconds.

33:56

But I'm just sort of like, it was a good 30 seconds where they

33:58

sing about. There's

34:01

a sort of dichotomy between,

34:04

they're talking about these boys who died and

34:06

they used to be babies and then

34:08

in the next line, they're like, oh,

34:11

another baby. It's sort of like, that sort

34:13

of like, shows the sort

34:15

of push and pull in the whole show between the

34:17

value of human life and the devaluation

34:20

of human life. Yeah, that's one of my

34:22

favorite songs in the

34:24

whole show and that. I remember seeing this production and

34:26

them cutting in, being super bummed out. Wait,

34:31

this is like 30 seconds. Yeah, just keep

34:33

it, come on.

34:33

But overall, did you feel like this was more

34:36

or less like a decent adaptation or decent

34:38

show of it? Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh, for sure. Like

34:40

I wasn't ugly crying because I was sad.

34:45

I was, I was surprised at how much it brought

34:47

me to tears. I was like, even

34:49

stuff that normally does nothing for me. Like

34:53

empty chairs and empty tables normally

34:55

does nothing for me. That's a song that Mariah

34:58

sings after everybody's dead. There's several

35:00

everybody's dead songs. And

35:02

this is the one that Mariah sings. Usually

35:05

they'll have like literal empty chairs

35:07

and empty tables and he'll be back in the Abeche

35:11

Cafe. And

35:14

here he's, it's like a completely

35:16

bare stage except for candles that

35:19

have been blown out. And his is the only

35:21

one that's still lit. And I was like, this

35:23

is doing it for me. I normally,

35:26

that's my, can we please like move on with this song? I'm

35:28

like, we just keep it on. But

35:31

I also cried during that when I saw this production. So

35:34

I saw Les Mis again, the end of the original Broadway

35:36

production with my mom who had no idea what

35:38

to expect. And of course she's a mom, so she ugly

35:40

cried.

35:42

And I remember just being, she's

35:44

just saying that going. Cause

35:46

it's like, it's like a Phantom. Whenever you go and

35:48

see it, there's always like a resounding chorus

35:51

of people in the audience going like

35:53

very, very loud sniffling. I was like,

35:55

cause like, I was definitely one of those people if for no other

35:57

reason than like, I still had a cold.

35:59

if you ever been crying while having a cold,

36:02

you know how loud it gets. Right, right.

36:04

When you're crying at Les Mis with the cold and it's on the

36:07

next level. Just constant, constant,

36:09

like, oh my God, I'm that guy. I'm that guy.

36:12

It's literally me. I cried during Stars,

36:14

a song I never cry at when I saw it this

36:17

time around too. I was just like, damn, I don't

36:19

know, man. So Stars is the song that Javert

36:21

sings whenever he vows to go get, she's

36:23

gonna get Valjean if it kills him. And

36:26

that one was really funny, because you know how men

36:28

love Stars. Even men who hate him.

36:29

It's true. And there

36:32

was a- Last night I was looking at the super

36:34

blue moon and I got really emotional being like,

36:36

space. I

36:38

got very calm. I was just sort of like, man,

36:41

the universe is so big. It's funny that you say

36:43

that literally last night. Yeah, there's

36:44

this, well, there's this, whenever

36:46

that song started, I swear I could hear

36:49

like every man within like a 10 foot

36:51

radius be like, ooh, it's coming. Like,

36:53

here come

36:55

the Stars. And

36:58

I think it's funny, it's a fairly easy

37:00

song to sing in

37:02

the way that like, I mean, it's hard to sound good

37:04

because it's simple, but it's an easy song to sing and

37:06

then it's a very like limited range. It's got like three

37:09

notes in it. Poor Russell

37:11

Crowe. I guess we'll get to Russell Crowe later. But

37:14

like, yeah, it definitely got

37:16

a big reaction from the audience when I saw it. Yeah,

37:19

I mean, Les Mis is also, I wish I like,

37:21

I never gotten to see it with my dad. And I'm like, this also

37:23

I feel like is a dad weeper. I've

37:27

brought a house and now I'm like. It's a pretty good

37:39

thing.

37:50

I love it. Every straight theater man

37:53

loves Javert. Luckily

37:55

I'm not a theater man. So that's why I didn't like that

37:57

character. Even Javert does not like it.

38:00

nothing for you. No, I was like, this guy's terrible

38:02

at his job and like, who gives a shit? Fuck

38:05

you, bro. Like, fuck off.

38:07

It's very funny, like that's the whole sequence in the second

38:09

act where he's trying to like sneak in to

38:11

like, you know, the rebellion and get behind

38:14

the barricades and then he gets exposed by a child.

38:17

Like, for me that played

38:19

funnier than it did in my memory of seeing

38:22

it in high school or seeing it previously. It was just like

38:24

very funny, like, oh, you got poked. Everyone's laughing

38:26

at you. I feel like this dark, this Narcan

38:28

cut was very fun. It's like,

38:30

how did you make it this far? You

38:33

fail upward. That's how it works. Basically.

38:36

You had one job. Good evening to you. Respect

38:38

your hot big evening, my dear. Right.

38:41

When you get caught by a street child, that's when you know. That

38:44

is one weird thing about this production

38:47

is that they completely dropped the Cockney accents.

38:50

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So the Cenardiers

38:53

having just regular American accents

38:56

struck me as,

38:58

well, why don't you just replace it? Like, OK,

39:00

fine. We all have American accents. Why don't

39:02

you make them Texan? Why don't you make

39:04

them Midwestern?

39:05

They're Midwestern.

39:08

They're Bostonic.

39:11

Give them some accent or something.

39:14

Oh, Cossette. Be from Minnesota.

39:17

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Cossette,

39:20

can you go ahead and clean up a little bit better for

39:22

me? Cossette's not baggy for darling.

39:24

Colette. Cossette. Cossette.

39:27

Is that a make up from Long Island? Yeah.

39:30

Yeah. Long Island. So they're

39:32

like kind of, I don't quite understand why they did that.

39:35

Maybe it's just because they're just like, why

39:36

bother? Yeah. People

39:38

aren't going to be. I think I don't know if it's like

39:40

a commentary on theater trends in general

39:42

where there used to be that case of like, oh, if

39:45

they're poor, they automatically get a Cockney accent.

39:48

And that's just kind of like gone out of style

39:51

in general. I feel like if you look at something

39:53

like Chernobyl, which used,

39:56

you know,

39:56

British accents across the aisle in ways

39:59

that I thought was really clever. like the Ukrainians

40:01

being Scottish. And

40:03

I feel like it was a little,

40:06

kind of a lost opportunity that they could have done that

40:09

with American accents. That

40:11

kind of just made it feel a little more generic. Yeah.

40:14

And just like also, I think it's

40:16

kind of like burned into your brain that they're like, excuse

40:18

me here professor. Sorry to all the people of South London.

40:21

Yeah, I feel like Gavroche

40:23

did cockney it up a little. It was really inconsistent. So

40:26

did the Tenardiers. But anyway, I guess before

40:28

we go further, maybe we should ask the

40:30

resident hater. Oh, yeah. What

40:32

he thought on the whole. Right.

40:34

So here's the thing. I've been sort

40:36

of racking my brain how you talk about this because it's

40:39

probably the only one I remember seeing that's

40:41

like based on such a famous piece of literature.

40:44

So it's like, it's really hard to talk about because the story is obviously

40:47

interesting and the characters are interesting and

40:49

the setting is interesting. But I

40:51

also disassociated for most of the musical because

40:53

I was so miserable from all of the like recessive

40:56

and like the excess

40:58

of just learning. This took four years.

41:00

I finally

41:02

did. Right. Yeah. So

41:05

there's also this part of me that's like, okay, I hated it. And

41:07

in a way that's very obviously that I would obviously

41:10

I wouldn't like it. And I would be upset and miserable

41:12

throughout the experience of it. But

41:14

in and of itself, like that doesn't necessarily mean

41:16

that it's bad. It just means that I don't

41:18

like it. And it's I'm also not the person who ever would have

41:20

fucking liked this just based

41:23

on what it is to begin with. I

41:24

mean, you can see what I mean when I say

41:26

this is among the most faithful

41:29

adaptations. Because again, you haven't

41:31

seen

41:32

eight thousand of them. Like we

41:34

have. But like there

41:36

was the there were a few in the

41:39

nineties that were French. There

41:41

was the Liam Neeson one starring

41:45

Jeffrey Rush and Uma Thurman. I think

41:47

I saw part of that one at some point in the nineties. Like

41:49

we might have watched it in class. There was a French

41:51

one and from the nineteen thirties. And

41:54

it always struck me when I watched them like how

41:57

how they just weren't as

41:59

faithful.

41:59

as the musical was, I think

42:02

the best one so far has been the PBS

42:05

one that came out a few years ago. I

42:07

enjoyed that one a lot. I did want to circle back to the one with

42:09

Uma Thurman because that one has a very interesting ending

42:12

where it ends with Javert dying and Jean Valjean

42:14

having his hot girl happy moment walking off

42:17

into the distance. Oh yeah,

42:18

he wins. He wins.

42:20

Is

42:22

the PBS one the actual musical as well or

42:26

it's just a straight adaptation of it? No, it's a

42:28

pretty straight adaptation. I think it's like four parts

42:30

because that's another thing. A nice

42:32

thing about a musical

42:34

is you can condense really

42:37

intense things into a relatively

42:39

short amount of time and

42:42

get your point across a lot more effectively

42:44

than you could in a straight adaptation where

42:46

scenes need to be set up, tone

42:48

needs to be set up. And that's part of why

42:51

these adaptations tend to cut

42:54

out a lot. It's not so much that the plot is just

42:56

so convoluted that you have to do that. It's that you have

42:58

to do that in order for any of the scenes to have

43:00

breathing room, especially since there's going

43:02

to be 10 years. It starts

43:04

in 1815 and then part two with Fontaine takes

43:09

place about 10 years later and then the rest

43:11

of it takes place about seven years after that. And

43:14

you have to establish all that. And in

43:17

a musical you just kind of skip it and

43:19

just use a song to kind of set up the peep and

43:21

the pour. And you get it and

43:23

you're just like, oh, the people are poor and they're sad.

43:26

And this particular production enjoyed the very big

43:28

title cards that happened in particular. Oh,

43:30

yeah. No, I only got one. Where

43:33

were, did you get several? Yeah, like

43:35

they had the, yeah, I was expecting more to tell

43:37

us like what year it is, but no,

43:39

they only gave us like the one title drop. And then

43:42

like, that was it, which surprised

43:44

me. Seemed like a

43:45

lost opportunity. It's a

43:47

good device to be like, okay, look, just accept

43:50

it, we're here 10 years in the future. We don't need to really fill it down

43:52

here. Yeah, okay, so that was supposed to be there.

43:54

Good to know, because it was not there in our production.

43:56

I might be, because like I saw this tour when it first

43:59

ran, I think in 2018.

43:59

and it might be from

44:02

that and I'm remembering just that. And I'm like, when I saw

44:04

it last year ago, was that there? The title card was

44:06

definitely there. I felt like, so

44:09

like, yeah, that might've been cut. And I am kind of like,

44:11

wait, when did I actually see that? Cause, and the other thing

44:13

that was weird about it was when I saw it in 2018, ostensibly

44:16

the same production, it looked like it was still

44:18

figuring out that it was gonna be a funnier

44:21

kind of, I don't know. It hadn't worked the kinks

44:23

out. Yeah, it had to work the kinks out of it. It had figured

44:25

out its tone. Cause I think that was definitely

44:27

the thing that impressed me about this production was how well

44:30

it balanced its tone

44:31

and kept

44:33

the audience engaged with intent,

44:37

except for some people. You

44:41

know, again too, the thing that I kept thinking about

44:43

was the context of when this was originally came out,

44:46

right, of this being like this- Yeah,

44:48

this being this thing in the 80s in New York specifically,

44:51

and because my brain works the way that it does-

44:53

No,

44:53

no, no, it's a French musical. I

44:55

just mean like in terms of like the state side in terms of

44:57

like it becoming this fucking pop

45:00

culture phenomenon here. Cause I even remember hearing

45:02

about Les Mis when I was a kid, like

45:05

especially cause I was on the East Coast, like I remember it being

45:07

like just fucking omnipresent everywhere.

45:09

And I kept thinking about, this

45:12

is just the weird place that my brain went, I kept thinking about

45:14

American Psycho. I kept thinking about Patrick

45:16

Bateman. Yeah, she did. And I kept thinking

45:18

about like,

45:19

who are these like,

45:21

cause New York at that time it was such

45:23

a city of transition and like all this crazy

45:25

shit happening and our boy of Four

45:28

Seasons Giuliani coming in to try and clean up the

45:30

city. So I thought

45:32

it was interesting that like, yeah, right. I

45:35

just thought it was interesting that like so many people who

45:37

were probably like yuppies, who

45:40

were

45:40

meant to be the sort

45:42

of, the subject of criticism

45:45

of something like this, who really have

45:47

like loved it and like related to it. And I kept

45:49

thinking about like, I wonder if that's like a Reagan

45:51

thing where they were just like, no, we hate

45:53

the government and like the government's No,

45:55

no, no, no. Like what is their deal

45:58

with this? I couldn't quite like unpack that.

45:59

been the history of this book.

46:02

Do you know who the first group

46:05

of people that this book was

46:07

super mega popular with in the United

46:09

States were? No. Hint,

46:13

the year was 1863. The abolitionists? So

46:19

reverse it. Right. So

46:23

it was super popular among soldiers

46:25

because lemme just came out in the US during the Civil

46:27

War. However,

46:29

the most popular

46:32

version, and I literally just learned

46:34

this, that's why it's at the top

46:36

of my head, it was

46:38

the Confederate version,

46:40

which they called Lee's

46:42

Miserables because

46:45

at first it was like a joke, but then that's literally

46:47

what was printed on it. And so

46:50

obviously Hugo, surprise,

46:52

surprise,

46:53

big abolitionist, hugely

46:56

sympathetic to John Brown's failed

46:58

rebellion. He's got a big soft spot

47:00

for failed rebellions, except for, and

47:03

I didn't think that's funny because since

47:06

it is about a failed rebellion, it became really

47:08

popular with Confederates towards the end of the war

47:11

because they knew it wasn't gonna work out, and

47:14

they didn't see themselves as fighting for slavery

47:16

per se, you know, as

47:18

it still is. And so it was hugely

47:21

popular with the Confederates to the

47:23

point that they had their own propaganda version,

47:25

which like, it didn't change too

47:27

much, but it did cut a lot out, obviously.

47:30

I

47:30

did not know that. That's insane.

47:33

Yeah, literally just learned that. Yeah,

47:35

so there's definitely a long

47:37

history of this book being popular with the

47:39

very people that it is criticizing. Yeah,

47:41

like I always associate it in high school

47:44

because I went to, you know, a fairly conservative Catholic

47:46

high school that, like, all of my,

47:48

the worst, like, shitty mean

47:51

girls loved this show. Like, shitty, super

47:53

religious mean girls love the show without any ounce of, like, self-reflection

47:55

about it. It's just kind of like this, that's, I

47:58

guess, like, the big criticism of it. It's like,

47:59

that it is kind of navel-gazy about poverty

48:02

in a way that it's easy to see. I watch the sad

48:04

people be sad, and now I can move on with

48:07

my life. It's kind of this weird thing where

48:09

it's like this. That's not what you resonate with. You are

48:11

Eponine, you have a crush, and he doesn't

48:13

like you back. Right, right. You are

48:16

Fantine, you have a crush, and he doesn't like

48:18

you. The songs are about

48:20

these really personal things. They're not really

48:22

about the poor, I

48:25

mean some of them are, but they're not the ones that

48:27

the mean girls are gonna get really into. They're not gonna

48:29

be singing

48:32

at the end of the day for

48:34

their audition piece for the Spring Gala. But

48:38

yeah, I mean I guess that's kind of the thing, it's

48:40

easy to be like, oh I'm about Eponine, but I don't really

48:42

have to think about the broader implications of what Hugo

48:44

is trying to say here with this story.

48:47

Yeah, it has nothing to do with her poverty and

48:49

everything you do with her crush. Exactly,

48:51

exactly, exactly. She's just

48:53

so sad, like me, how come

48:56

Jesse on the swim team doesn't wanna

48:58

answer my AIM messages

48:59

in 2003? Exactly

49:02

what Victor Hugo intended. Yeah, exactly. He

49:05

was definitely thinking about AIM messages back then. Yeah,

49:07

he's just thinking about loaded

49:09

away messages. Is he talking

49:11

about me? Yeah, in the

49:13

same way that men go and see stars and

49:16

see this thing about, and hear that song and be

49:18

like, yes it's about wanting

49:19

to believe in a bigger truth, something that is bigger

49:21

than, and not going about the fact that Javert

49:25

is a cop who is harassing a man who by all

49:27

intents and purposes should be able to live his way.

49:29

I guess to be fair, you can't

49:31

expect teenagers, especially young teenagers,

49:34

to engage with

49:37

art that is about

49:40

greater societal complex

49:43

issues because that's just

49:45

not where their head's at. The teenagers are kind

49:47

of a microcosm of, like I guess the general

49:49

audience, I think so too. Yeah, I think so too, because

49:51

most people are kinda gonna, they're

49:54

going to relate to individual characters.

49:57

Cause I had a friend who,

49:59

like mentioned to me

50:02

that he was disappointed

50:04

that his kids weren't, his

50:06

kids were like eight or so, like weren't really

50:08

into the same

50:10

music that he grew up with. They

50:13

categorized it as angry, and it

50:15

uses stuff like public enemy. And I'm

50:18

thinking, yeah, yeah, it's like,

50:21

of course they're not gonna relate to that.

50:23

They don't understand the idea

50:25

of anger outside of a context

50:28

of one person being angry at another person.

50:31

Cause that's another really interesting thing

50:34

about Les Mis, especially the musical, is

50:37

the way it does have such a cross-generational

50:40

appeal and a cross-political appeal.

50:42

Cross-political appeal is the part that's really crazy

50:44

to me when you're watching it. Cause I'm like, you could

50:46

see either side. Cause I'm sitting here thinking like, it is so

50:49

obviously like radical and leftist

50:51

and people can just ignore that if

50:53

they wanna think about like the crush stuff. Or like same

50:56

with teenagers being like, they'll

50:59

latch really hard onto characters

51:02

like Eponine. And it's just

51:04

for me, it wasn't until I got much older that

51:06

I became really interested in the politics

51:09

of it. And to me, I feel like you can't really get interested

51:11

in that without learning about Victor Hugo's

51:13

life and

51:15

the way he changed over the course of his

51:17

life and what made him believe what he believed.

51:20

I think what I think adults kind of tend to latch off

51:22

to, especially like more, I guess, conservative

51:24

leading adults is this idea of

51:26

God has ordained these things to happen and in the

51:28

end putting your trust in him as

51:31

Valjean kind of ultimately does, despite

51:33

all of like the hard things that happened

51:36

to him and that he just dies basically alone

51:38

until like the last few seconds of

51:40

his life. Is that no, like God

51:42

will foresee you through all of this horrible stuff

51:44

at the end.

51:45

Cause that's like one of the things that gets quoted all the

51:47

time is to love another person is to see the face of God, which

51:49

I don't even think is in the book. No. That's

51:52

a musical invention. You

51:56

would hear that line spat back at you so much and

51:58

it's just like, oh, this is a confirming.

51:59

that like it is very Catholic.

52:02

I think that's the appeal of it is just like no you

52:04

put your faith

52:07

in God despite all the hardship and

52:10

he will have your back and that. Yeah and it's

52:12

easy to like if you strip it of its context

52:14

and of like if Hugo's actual beliefs it

52:17

is really easy for any political group

52:19

to see themselves in you

52:21

know the the revolutionaries

52:24

you know like the Confederates you

52:26

can totally see how they would see themselves

52:28

in these guys who are like

52:29

fighting against an unjust system.

52:32

Yeah it's a lost cause but we're gonna

52:34

do it anyway. It's fucking the Alamo.

52:36

Yeah it's Ruby Ridge. It's

52:38

like all this shit. Right right so you just

52:41

it's really easy to ignore like to dissociate

52:43

with like the fact that the it is super critical

52:46

of a police state and you

52:48

know I kept thinking over like the whole time

52:50

about like I just you know

52:53

even the musical but you know the work in general

52:55

is like it we just don't give it enough

52:57

credit

52:58

for how timely it remains and

53:00

how little has actually changed especially

53:03

with regard to like the way prisoners are treated

53:05

in the US like it's better

53:08

in France like

53:10

better not great but

53:13

better like especially if you compare it to other countries

53:15

like you know Norway and Finland but like

53:18

we have what 30% of the world's prison

53:20

population and like I remember

53:22

thinking when I was young how ridiculous you know

53:24

obviously because they frame it as ridiculous that he goes

53:27

to jail for stealing the loaf of bread for five

53:29

years and then it gets another 15 for like

53:31

you know compounding interest of of crime

53:33

um when shit like that happens all

53:36

the time like um I was thinking there's

53:38

this podcast I used to listen to called Ear Hustle

53:41

and it was made uh by

53:43

like an NPR person or NPR adjacent

53:45

person and a prisoner at

53:47

I think Chino

53:48

or something it wasn't until pretty

53:50

late in the game that you find out what he was actually

53:52

in for and like I'm not

53:55

gonna he was in for second

53:57

degree Rob

53:59

attempted robbery, meaning,

54:02

and he got 25 years for

54:04

driving the getaway vehicle of a failed

54:07

robbery because of California's

54:09

three strikes law. And so it's like,

54:12

is that not ridiculous on the level

54:14

of Jean Valjean getting 20 years for

54:16

a loaf of bread? And like this guy did eventually

54:19

get pearled because basically because he became

54:21

podcast famous, which most prisoners are not going

54:23

to get. But even in California,

54:26

you know, where we have this truly heinous three

54:29

strikes law, like there's so much

54:31

data showing that it doesn't work, that

54:34

it only, it's

54:34

just

54:36

like, it's so bad. And like the

54:39

musical is not shy about his

54:41

politics, you know, any more than the book is. Right.

54:45

And, and it's interesting to see how people can just

54:47

kind of whoosh, you know, like

54:49

completely not make that connection

54:51

if their politics aren't already there. Yeah.

54:54

That's, that's exactly what I was thinking too. I just

54:56

kept being like, why did this become popular in

54:58

the era that it did? It's so strange. The

55:01

absolute irony of it.

55:02

Like it rose to popularity as

55:04

like terms like super predator. We're coming

55:06

into the right. Yeah.

55:09

Shining, shining city on a hill, all that shit. It's like

55:11

New York and Reagan at the same time. I'm like, this is

55:13

literally the worst era of that specific.

55:15

Or even in the nineties with the Clintons

55:17

and the Democrats being like, well, we'll be even

55:20

tougher on crime. The

55:22

dissonance is really shocking to me as

55:24

I think that's probably what they're thinking though. It's

55:27

they're probably thinking that it's about

55:29

like the idea of taking down like

55:31

whatever the government is thinking that

55:33

like it's that's that's

55:35

a before time. Because I remember kind of thinking

55:37

of it like that. And I think it's really

55:39

easy to think of like this era

55:42

of France is particularly barbarous

55:44

and it's like right after all those guillotines

55:46

and stuff. Like it's

55:49

really easy to think of that as a as

55:51

a time that is gone, even

55:53

though like the way the show ends

55:56

with everybody, you know, coming back and

55:58

being like, you know, know the world.

55:59

is not just. This is basically a show

56:02

of trying to keep and maintain one's sense

56:04

of goodness and faith in an inherently unjust

56:06

world that is almost entirely

56:09

constructed by humans and maintained by

56:11

humans. But we're still

56:13

working on it. Yeah,

56:16

it's just like that. The fact that it ends on that we're

56:18

still working on it. No, makes, you

56:20

know, it communicates to me that

56:23

they're trying to make a point about the fact that

56:25

we are still functionally living in a society

56:27

that is very similar to the one that is portrayed

56:29

in

56:29

the show. And I just

56:33

wish, you know, just

56:35

wish. Sad man, sad about stars.

56:39

Girl, don't get the boy she want.

56:41

Even just like the idea of like, because

56:44

like I started obviously losing my

56:46

mind during Eponine or Fontaine's

56:48

death rather than for me, that was super hard just because

56:51

one.

56:52

Maybe the

56:54

first time you saw it as a parent. As a parent,

56:57

yeah, that part fucked me up. Oh, I see.

56:59

Yeah, I was like that aspect certainly

57:01

hit different than it did when I was like 14.

57:05

Just this idea of what you would do for your child

57:08

in a way like that, that like is still that

57:10

still is present

57:12

here. Like how moms, especially

57:14

single moms are super underserved by like

57:16

their communities and their governments is like

57:18

has not changed in any capacity. And the

57:20

fact that like Fontaine is out here selling

57:22

her teeth and her hair. And I'm like, well,

57:24

you know, I know so many people who literally just sell feet pics

57:26

just so they can fucking put, you know, on

57:29

the table and we joke about them at

57:31

best and you know. Right. Because this is

57:33

something that Hugo is like very

57:35

explicit about in the text is

57:38

like the, you know, maltreatment

57:40

of women, the extreme links they

57:42

have to go to if they in any way kind

57:44

of step outside of what society

57:46

deems acceptable. You know, again,

57:49

it's way more relevant here in the US

57:51

now than it is in France

57:52

because of just, you know,

57:54

I read this article

57:56

that again, more relevant now than it was a year ago

57:59

today. He

57:59

talking about nettles, the

58:03

plant that was widely considered

58:05

a weed. And the quotes,

58:08

when the nettle is young, the leaves make excellent

58:10

greens. When it grows old, it has filaments

58:12

and fibers like hemp and flax. And

58:14

then he goes on for like a paragraph talking about all

58:16

the ways that nettles can

58:19

and are useful if they're cultivated correctly.

58:22

And you know, what does it need? Very little soil, no

58:24

care, no culture, except that

58:26

if we would take a little pains, the nettle would be useful,

58:29

but we neglect it and it becomes harmful

58:31

and then we kill it.

58:32

How much men are like the nettle? My friends

58:35

remember this. There are no weeds and no worthless

58:37

men. There are only bad farmers. And

58:40

I kept thinking like when I was reading this Roe

58:42

v. Wade, you know, like

58:45

you force it into existence

58:48

and then you deem it bad because it is raised

58:50

in a not perfect environment.

58:53

And then we kill it. You know, we throw into prison. And

58:55

I just, you know, I was just like, you know, our

58:57

Woke King based Hugo,

59:01

you know, it is to get like it becomes more

59:03

and more relevant every year as we kind of fall into this

59:05

more and more totalitarian state, which again is what

59:07

they were rebelling against in

59:09

the 1830s. And I guess it

59:12

does kind of haunt me, you know, I guess maybe

59:14

knowing Hugo's intent and

59:17

like even knowing about how he wrote about

59:19

like

59:20

how future people fighting future battles

59:22

would read this and see themselves in it. Just

59:24

like, yeah,

59:27

he was not so naive as to think that

59:29

like it would be necessarily better,

59:32

you know. Yeah.

59:34

I mean, I guess it's still strange to me, though, because

59:36

we're still really just talking about Hugo and what he

59:38

wrote more so than the actual show

59:40

itself. Like I was saying at the beginning, like, I

59:42

don't dislike laymets of the story. It's just

59:44

more like the experience of having that.

59:47

That's what makes it such a weird thing to talk

59:49

about because it's it's it's such an important

59:51

piece of literature and such an epic piece

59:53

of storytelling.

59:55

I think the musical makes it

59:57

easier to gloss over his intent,

59:59

even. though I think the intent is still very

1:00:02

clear, but you have to

1:00:04

know what the intent is in order

1:00:07

to see its clarity, right? And I think

1:00:09

if you're not familiar with Hugo's work,

1:00:11

you can watch the musical and kind of read your own

1:00:13

thing like, you know, the Confederates did.

1:00:16

And so I guess that's my read to

1:00:19

kind of, I guess, wind down this discussion of like

1:00:21

why

1:00:22

people who so

1:00:24

vehemently disagree

1:00:26

with Hugo's politics can see

1:00:28

the show and go, wow, it me like, well, there's

1:00:30

there's lots of reasons because,

1:00:32

you know, I think most people are introduced to it in pieces

1:00:35

too. Like I remember my

1:00:37

first introduction was like Master of the House

1:00:39

and just being and lovely ladies. Those were

1:00:41

the two things like I was like 12 or 13 or something

1:00:44

and like learning that, oh my god, they

1:00:47

say they say shit. Yeah,

1:00:50

there's prostitutes in this. Singing about

1:00:52

being prostitute. Yeah, it

1:00:54

was just like, wow, this is so scandal

1:00:57

and edgy. Yeah. But do you

1:00:59

guys think it's good or bad because of that specifically

1:01:01

that it helps people derive so much

1:01:03

from the intent originally?

1:01:05

Like that's actually a really good question because I was having a kind

1:01:07

of related conversation about a different book and,

1:01:10

you know, adaptation and people coming into

1:01:12

something from you can't ever guarantee

1:01:14

you know where someone's coming to from when they engage

1:01:16

with a piece of art. Yeah. And is something

1:01:19

like an adaptation like Les Mis, which you could say

1:01:21

obfuscates Victor Hugo's intent. A bad

1:01:23

thing inherently if people are walking away from

1:01:25

it, not getting it.

1:01:26

You know, you can't account for those people. I think

1:01:29

the ultimate thing is that it has brought a lot of people

1:01:31

to Les Mis and who do go and read the book.

1:01:33

So there's a massive fandom that has since gone on

1:01:35

to get into Les Mis and like the idea that people

1:01:38

are still talking about Les Mis are even

1:01:40

if it's under the pretext of this big ass musical

1:01:42

that is very much a musical. And like that's kind of, I could see like

1:01:45

where the silly rub of it is where you're just having like, you

1:01:47

know, Jean Valjean having his 11 o'clock number.

1:01:49

Yeah, they are inevitably linked, you

1:01:52

know, and most of the stuff that

1:01:54

is memorable in the book is there in the musical

1:01:56

in some way, shape or form. And like

1:01:59

they in the stuff.

1:01:59

that's cut out is like, you know,

1:02:02

Valjean having a, he has a bunch of mini

1:02:05

bosses that, you know, or

1:02:08

like side quests that, you know, we don't

1:02:10

need that, like where he does one more crime

1:02:12

after the silver, you know, incident,

1:02:15

or like he does

1:02:17

get arrested after Fontaine dies and

1:02:19

then he escapes and then he gets kazette and then there's

1:02:22

another chase scene and then like, you

1:02:24

know, there's like a lot of like, little

1:02:26

action things that we can cut, but like the bulk

1:02:29

of it is still there.

1:02:29

And I think it's just like, to

1:02:33

me, I see them as like complimentary as

1:02:35

I kind of do all adaptations

1:02:37

of Les Mis. And I feel

1:02:40

like it's kind of unique in that way because I'll, you

1:02:42

know, when I think of something like Phantom,

1:02:44

I don't think very much care

1:02:46

was taken in most of the adaptations.

1:02:50

Like they, there would be like these dumb schlocky horror

1:02:52

movies. And so I

1:02:54

don't really see it as a continuous work,

1:02:57

you know? There's not really a response

1:02:59

in most of those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As opposed to

1:03:01

Les Mis where most of the adaptations,

1:03:03

like even the kind of hacky ones

1:03:05

like the Liam Neeson version, is

1:03:08

it like, you know, they're trying, they're

1:03:10

trying to interpret it for the modern day. Like

1:03:13

that French one in the 90s, it

1:03:16

was really interesting because it was

1:03:18

not a straight adaptation at all. It

1:03:20

took place in like World War II. Oh, is that the

1:03:22

one that's set in the 40s or the 50s that one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Took place

1:03:24

during World War II and like, because

1:03:27

that, you know, basically like it's this

1:03:29

guy who sees himself as Jean Valjean

1:03:32

and like kind of recreates

1:03:34

the story in his head during

1:03:37

World War II. And like, so

1:03:39

it's an interesting response to the original text

1:03:42

as like, you know, a movie made in the 90s

1:03:44

that takes place in the 40s about a book that was written

1:03:47

in the 1850s and released in the 1860s.

1:03:48

Like it's

1:03:51

a very continuous thing, which is when I

1:03:53

talk about Les Mis, it's very hard for me to stick to just

1:03:56

one version, you know? Yeah. As

1:03:59

I think was intense.

1:03:59

because we've done a lot of work on other

1:04:02

works of Victor Hugo before and Hugo was

1:04:04

very engaged as a as an artist

1:04:06

with his Adaptations

1:04:09

and yes. Yeah, really liked this

1:04:11

idea of like how can it be different for

1:04:14

different mediums? How can I expand

1:04:16

on this story? Yeah.

1:04:17

Yeah, the original George Lucas Star

1:04:20

Wars universe was Victor Yeah,

1:04:24

yeah, I mean again get us

1:04:26

started on hunchback Oh god, yeah,

1:04:28

no, I mean the only other thing I could

1:04:30

think of was like the the most famous non-English

1:04:32

language musical Is Notre Dame de Paris? It's a Quebecois

1:04:34

musical and it is it reminds me a lot an adaptation

1:04:37

of this where it is pretty much all of the All

1:04:40

of the all the plot elements are there

1:04:42

But it leans into like, you know The cats Oh

1:04:45

sad as morelda song and then like this quasi-moto

1:04:47

song and the horny song And

1:04:50

if there's eight million songs and but like they

1:04:52

also really lean hard into this idea of

1:04:54

social justice this idea of you Know asylum

1:04:57

for immigrants being like at the front

1:04:59

of what the story is about and like a lot

1:05:01

of people again One of the most popular musicals in the

1:05:03

world by all metrics It's just not super

1:05:06

popular in the United States and it tends to

1:05:08

fly over people's heads. Nevertheless

1:05:09

the soccer musicals basically basically,

1:05:13

but yeah, that's a whole other episode right

1:05:15

there and Speaking

1:05:19

of different adaptations Is there anything that

1:05:21

there is to be said about

1:05:23

the Russell Crowe version that has not already

1:05:25

been said another various? Did

1:05:30

you think did you did you Were

1:05:33

you like wow, this is worse or wow,

1:05:35

this is the same. I was really edify

1:05:37

any feelings

1:05:38

Yeah, no, I was really confused by the

1:05:41

directorial choices again. I Realized

1:05:43

like nothing that I'm saying Yeah

1:05:47

Specifically, you know I like King's

1:05:50

speech. I liked Tom Hooper Zeus of lenses I

1:05:53

thought like he used them in an interesting way in that

1:05:55

movie for dramatic purposes And then when it came to this it

1:05:57

was it seemed really random and it was really confusing

1:05:59

to me and I know that he's like, and

1:06:02

I read a bunch of this online too. I realized that everybody's already

1:06:04

sort of had this, uh, had

1:06:06

this dissection of it. So I'm sort of, and

1:06:08

I'm very late to the game, but it was like, it

1:06:10

was really strange and the handheld thing like really

1:06:12

threw me off in terms of trying

1:06:14

to create like this realistic

1:06:18

gritty version of a musical,

1:06:20

but like fucking

1:06:23

weird. It was like, and he shoots everything like on

1:06:25

an 18, I think, if I'm not mistaken. Cause I think that's

1:06:27

like the Kubrick lens that he's obsessed with. It

1:06:29

was just really odd. It was like

1:06:32

very, very odd. It's already odd enough to watch

1:06:34

a musical movie and like seeing

1:06:36

closeups of people's faces, like kind of what we talked

1:06:38

about before, but like to the extent that

1:06:40

he stylized it made it feel, but it didn't

1:06:42

feel stylized in the correct way. It just felt stylized

1:06:45

in a way that made me feel sort of similar to cats

1:06:47

in the next movie afterwards where I'm like, I feel like I'm in some

1:06:49

weird nightmare fever dream.

1:06:51

It reminded me of the pianist and

1:06:54

like, you know, World War II movies in terms

1:06:56

of like, it's aesthetic and it's just like, you

1:06:59

know, I, and again, this is a point we've made a dozen

1:07:01

times, but it's just like when the framing is

1:07:04

and the cinematography is telling you one thing and

1:07:06

the fact that it is a fucking musical is

1:07:08

telling you another, it's just, it's

1:07:11

impossible not to be constantly

1:07:13

taken out of it and

1:07:15

aware of what you're watching on top of the fact that

1:07:17

everyone sounds terrible,

1:07:20

like terrible, terrible. Like they get, because

1:07:22

I was, um,

1:07:24

Russell Crowe can sing

1:07:27

like he has been

1:07:29

in a band. Yeah, he was in a band. I saw clips

1:07:31

of it, which is crazy. Yeah, but I think the

1:07:33

thing is like he's, he's a bass whenever

1:07:35

you hear him talk, like his natural register

1:07:38

is really, really low.

1:07:39

Javert is a baritone. Hey,

1:07:42

it was out of his range. He,

1:07:46

I don't think he had the correct vocal

1:07:49

coaching and the main problem

1:07:52

with this whole movie is that they,

1:07:54

because they insisted on getting onset sound,

1:07:56

they,

1:07:57

everybody is singing for like 10

1:07:59

minutes.

1:07:59

10 hours a day, their voices

1:08:02

get shot really quickly and they sound

1:08:04

terrible. And it was just, it was a, it was a

1:08:06

bad idea. I don't understand

1:08:09

why they committed to it so hard. And then they did

1:08:11

it again with cats.

1:08:13

Um,

1:08:14

well, she won the Oscar. So that's

1:08:16

all you need. It's cause it's realistic. Oh my

1:08:18

God. And she sounds so bad.

1:08:20

Blame the Academy for that one. Um,

1:08:22

yeah, no, I think, and then they did it on purpose where

1:08:24

they, like, she was going through all

1:08:27

of this, like really unhealthy, like

1:08:29

weight loss and like could

1:08:31

have seriously injured her voice. And,

1:08:34

and it worked, you know, she did the thing where she tortures

1:08:36

herself and then they give you an award. You

1:08:38

love it. You love to see it.

1:08:40

Um, but it did give me my favorite moment in any movie ever

1:08:42

where he falls off of the, the, the pot.

1:08:45

No, it makes this

1:08:47

loud cracking noise after

1:08:49

this big dramatic song, this big dramatic

1:08:52

reprieze where he has this moment where he's like, I

1:08:54

must die now. And then you get to hear him crack an open,

1:08:56

like a hot wet melon. It's great. Yeah.

1:08:58

The sewer scene was very unsettling. I was

1:09:00

like, I didn't need to see them that much covered in shit.

1:09:02

Yeah. It's like, did you, were you trying to

1:09:04

do camouflage? I was like, what,

1:09:07

what is happening? Why are you

1:09:09

looking like that? It's like that part of

1:09:11

Money Python, the holy grail where they're just like purposely

1:09:13

moving mud around. Like that's the idea of like a peasant's.

1:09:17

Shuffling mud around. Cause that's what people do.

1:09:20

I guess as Tom Hooper,

1:09:21

we are, uh, we're coming close to the end. Is there something?

1:09:24

Is there anything else you guys wanted to cover before we wrap

1:09:26

up? Ooh, so much. So

1:09:28

much. Yeah. I feel like we

1:09:30

can keep going. Scratching the surface. And

1:09:33

some multi-part thing of Les Mis. Yeah.

1:09:35

Cause like, again, we spent most of this talking about Hugo

1:09:38

in the stuff cause you can't not talk about it. Yeah. Yeah.

1:09:41

I guess, I guess like for the production we saw,

1:09:43

um,

1:09:44

I thought the cast was really good. I did think Ebonine

1:09:47

went a little too hard. Like hard and like,

1:09:50

uh, like doing runs and stuff. No, she was

1:09:52

just really like her emotions are at

1:09:54

a 13. Um, the

1:09:56

Valjean really made me nervous

1:09:59

during the.

1:09:59

prologue because he was giving

1:10:02

Phantom Understudy. He was very

1:10:05

puckish. He

1:10:06

like, during, like, during, like,

1:10:08

during, like, took my flight!

1:10:13

And I was just like, oh no. But

1:10:17

like, it's funny because once he put on a different wig, he

1:10:19

calmed down. He

1:10:21

just needed like the good Valjean wig

1:10:24

because like, I was not feeling

1:10:26

the prologue, but like, for the rest of the

1:10:28

show, I thought he was good. I really enjoyed him

1:10:30

and the Javert and their like, little bro-hate.

1:10:33

I really liked the Javert and this production a lot. Yeah,

1:10:35

the Javert was very classic. He reminded

1:10:37

me of the original

1:10:39

Broadway Javert. I can't remember his name. I

1:10:41

was going to say one thing that I noticed, which

1:10:43

may have been different when you saw it, Lindsay, after

1:10:46

they fixed the electrical system. But I thought

1:10:48

that,

1:10:49

and I don't know if this was the case in the original as well

1:10:51

or not, but it seemed like they were trying

1:10:53

to light it and make the stage look like a Delacroix

1:10:56

painting or something. Oh yeah, absolutely.

1:10:59

And then Hugo's... Oh, was that Hugo's? I didn't

1:11:01

realize it was a painter. Yeah, he was a painter.

1:11:03

He's a Renaissance man. Oh my goodness.

1:11:06

Yeah, he wrote operas, he wrote plays. He

1:11:08

was very politically active. I

1:11:11

think he did...

1:11:12

He either ran for mayor or was

1:11:15

mayor of a town at some point. I

1:11:17

did see something about that. But the painting

1:11:19

style of like the stage, it

1:11:22

felt a little dark for me.

1:11:24

And I think that's part, I think it just, it didn't feel like...

1:11:27

I liked the idea of what they were trying to do with trying

1:11:29

to sculpt light in that way. But

1:11:32

I don't know if that was just the night that we saw it, but it felt like

1:11:34

it was a little bit like,

1:11:36

when your phone doesn't have the brightness all the way

1:11:38

up enough so you can't actually see the image. And it sort

1:11:40

of felt like that a little bit. Yeah, no, I see what you're saying.

1:11:42

It felt a little sleepy. It worked for me. I liked it,

1:11:45

because it's... Like I said, I liked the intent. I just

1:11:47

feel like all of the values needed to go up a little bit,

1:11:49

not in relation to each other, not like overall

1:11:52

brighter, not like,

1:11:53

I didn't like what they were trying to do specifically. Because

1:11:55

I thought it was interesting. It was cool to see it. There's a little

1:11:58

bit of art history apocrypha about Delacroix. because

1:12:00

his most famous painting is Liberty, Leading the World, which

1:12:02

looks like Les Mis, and it came out before

1:12:04

Les Mis, and it is about the 1830 revolution, and

1:12:07

a lot of people assume it is an illustration of Les Mis,

1:12:09

but it actually preceded it. And there's some apocrypho

1:12:11

that

1:12:12

Hugo was inspired by it. So, I

1:12:14

mean, they're all works of romanticism,

1:12:16

too. I know, it's like one another, both are. So

1:12:18

it's all interconnected. But yeah, it is Victor Hugo's

1:12:20

art, specifically. He's fantastic, I have a great book

1:12:23

of his art. And I'm just mad that someone can do

1:12:25

something so much.

1:12:26

I gotta go look it up, I didn't realize he was that good of a painter,

1:12:28

shit. Yeah, yeah, like at

1:12:31

the Victor Hugo house in Paris, I think most

1:12:33

of the paintings are like portraits

1:12:35

of him, but like some of his work is there, and that's pretty

1:12:37

cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is really cool. Yeah, if you can ever go

1:12:40

to the Victor Hugo house. And it's free, yeah.

1:12:43

Unlike our museums, thanks France.

1:12:45

Not like frickin' everything else. Yeah.

1:12:48

Healthcare. I mean, I guess technically you

1:12:50

can go into Notre Dame for free, but you can't go into

1:12:52

the bell tower, you gotta pay for that. Yeah, you gotta pay.

1:12:55

There's coin for the bell tower. Yeah,

1:12:57

I was, I really, on the whole, I thought this

1:12:59

was a really good production. I might see it again when

1:13:01

it rolls through Costa Mesa, which is where

1:13:03

they're going next. It'll be

1:13:05

even cheaper. A little

1:13:06

bit closer to home. Yeah, all right

1:13:08

guys, well thank you for listening. If you

1:13:10

have thoughts on Les Mis, which I'm sure

1:13:12

you guys have many, many, many thoughts, please

1:13:15

let us know. We are at musicalsplaining

1:13:17

with Noah G on Twitter, at musicalsplaining

1:13:20

with a G on Instagram. I

1:13:23

am at perma friends on Instagram

1:13:25

and at Covitarian on Twitter. Also,

1:13:27

for those of you in New York, I'm gonna be at New York

1:13:29

City Comic Con,

1:13:31

the weekend of October

1:13:33

12th through the 16th-ish, something

1:13:37

around there, whenever those dates are.

1:13:39

So come see me if you're in town. If you're gonna be

1:13:41

at the convention, come pop by. I'll be an artist alley.

1:13:44

Lindsey, thank you for joining us. Why don't

1:13:46

you tell everybody what you're up to and where they can see

1:13:48

what you're up to, et cetera, so on and so forth. Well,

1:13:51

honestly, the answer right now is we're

1:13:53

working on Nebula. So I guess by

1:13:55

the time this comes out, we just

1:13:58

released a video about...

1:13:59

Jurassic Park

1:14:02

because it's his 30th anniversary and

1:14:04

we are currently working

1:14:07

on one about the history of Las

1:14:09

Vegas being a family-friendly destination

1:14:12

and that should come out sometime in

1:14:15

September.

1:14:16

Well I've got books but they don't come out until

1:14:18

next year so maybe we'll

1:14:20

have some time to promote that. I saw that the cover

1:14:23

of your new book looks great. Yeah, well thank you. I was

1:14:25

like I kind of want to play a game of guess what prompts.

1:14:28

I gave

1:14:30

the artist but maybe we'll

1:14:32

play that game later. I will

1:14:34

say like it was a lot more painless

1:14:37

this time. That's good. Despite

1:14:40

the fact that I gave him much weirder prompts.

1:14:42

Maybe I should have been doing that the whole time. The whole time. Yeah,

1:14:44

let's go more esoteric. Yeah,

1:14:47

yeah.

1:14:48

I am always YAngelinaY on

1:14:50

Twitter and Angelina underscore SEE

1:14:52

and again we don't mention this but Les Mis

1:14:54

is also very popular like high school show now because

1:14:56

the rights are there. I have a very bitter story about that

1:14:58

but if you have been in a production share photos

1:15:01

with us because we love that story. Yeah,

1:15:04

low budget beasts but for Les Mis. Yeah,

1:15:07

low budget barricades. But

1:15:11

thanks again y'all and thanks again Lindsay for joining

1:15:13

us.

1:15:13

Thank you Lindsay. Don't forget to sign

1:15:15

up for our patreon. Don't forget

1:15:17

to follow the sponsor links. Don't forget to leave us

1:15:19

good reviews and to tell all your friends and family and

1:15:23

you know everybody in France about us. Especially

1:15:25

when you get out of prison. Yeah, when

1:15:27

you meet God be like hey I listened

1:15:29

to musicals play in your room. He'll be absolved of

1:15:31

all your sins. Absolutely, 100%. Yeah. Thanks guys. We'll see you

1:15:33

at the next one.