Chaos Attraction

Weird Things About The Movie of 1776

2015-11-10, 8:59 a.m.

For those of you who have not heard of it, 1776 is a musical about declaring independence. I have been watching the movie and it's certainly odd. I saw the musical live years ago and I don't remember it being that strange by comparison.

* Congress are a a bunch of shifty bums hanging around like slobs all day at work. One of them's drunk all the time. On the other hand, everyone respects the guy dying of cancer who actually shows up for the vote.

* Everybody hates John Adams, including John Adams, except presumably his telepathic wife.

* John Adams and his wife Abigail TOTALLY HAVE TELEPATHY, I’M FREAKING SERIOUS, THEY HAS IT. THIS IS A SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE IN 1776.

Okay, so in the musical these two are writing letters to each other, but in the movie this doesn't quite seem so clear by the weird ways they film the two of them interacting and in hazy dreamscape mode. Telepathy is really the only logical way to figure out what this is. Especially with this moment--

* At one point Abigail and her friends send John a shit ton of gift-wrapped saltpeter (in exchange for sewing pins, which they are really short of), and the "letter" conceit is even more thrown out the window as John stands there yelling, "Abigail, what is this?" and from across time and space she sing-screams,
“SALTPETER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I wonder how many takes they had to do of that before they got one where nobody was laughing.

* A good what, 20 minutes of this 2.5 hour musical is devoted to getting Thomas Jefferson LAID so he'll actually get some writing done. Seriously.

John Adams would also like to get LAID, but his kids are always sick or something and the wife can’t visit. They may have visions of visiting the other one a la Sense8, but no sex.

Benjamin Franklin most likely wants to get laid, but he's single and old, so we don't get into so much detail about that.

* All the dudes wander out of the building for awhile so the janitor and errand boy can sit around and hang and randomly sing about a dying soldier.

* George Washington is very unhappy, hope you know that. “Is anybody there? DOES ANYBODY CAAAAAAAAAAAARE?”

* The ending is apparently just all about “majority rules, peer pressure,” and “I don’t want to be the only one who voted against independence!”

* All right, everyone, step right up and commit treason by signing this! “But if we get arrested now, my name is STILL the only one on the damn thing!” --John Hancock, signing big so that fat George can read it.


previous entry - next entry
archives - current entry
hosted by DiaryLand.com