The Greatest Stories Ever Re-Told: Adaptation and the Public Domain

It doesn't take long in someone's acquaintance of me for them to realize that among my foundational loves are fairy tales and musicals. This means, naturally, that I am a huge Disney nerd, because how can you not be when you love both fairy tales and musicals? Disney practically is the reason I fell so hard for both those things as a child.

I think a lot about Disney movies - if that wasn't abundantly obvious from previous blog posts, like where I ranked Every Best Animated Feature Winning Film - but more than that, I think a lot about the source material these movies were based on. Overwhelmingly, Disney films adapt well-known stories, such as fairy tales, often stamping them with such a general sense of Disney-ness, that they become the de facto versions of those stories in our heads.

For example, what animals do you first picture when you think of Cinderella getting help? 

Is it mice? 

Because in the Brother's Grimm version, it's doves who serve as her friends and guardians. Cinderella, in fairness, is a very popular story structure, with countless versions around the world and an array of animals that help her. But that's the thing - it could have been fish or lizards as easily as mice, yet Jacques and Gus-Gus are the ones that jump to mind for anyone raised on Disney films. 

I like to imagine this is a Marvel movie and
in a post-credits scene, Cinderella asks the bluebirds
to please peck out her step-sister's eyes.
For the Grimm Brother's purists! Real fans KNOW!

But it's not just the fairy tales Disney has used to build its collection of classic movies. Everything from Bambi, to The Aristocats, to Pocahontas has some children's book, short story collection, or grievous misunderstanding of American history to pull inspiration from. The first full-length Disney film that could be considered an "original" story is probably The Lion King. I'm inclined to say the development of that movie was too chaotic for it to be thought of as actually "based" on Hamlet (frankly, they could have saved themselves years of trouble if it was), but the studio did gradually note the similarities as the film came together. For those keeping score, that's thirty-one Disney movies before anyone bothered trying to write an original screenplay. And it was several MORE years before anyone wrote anything original, good and not resembling Shakespeare - Lilo and Stitch, Disney's 42nd feature-length animated film. That movie's a trailblazer, man.

Granted, not all Disney movies are based on fairy tales. In fact, there's a very enjoyable film called Saving Mr. Banks about the rather arduous journey Walt Disney had to go down in order to convince author P. L. Travers to sell the film rights to her beloved children's books, the Mary Poppins series, to his studio. Disney used to purchase the rights to contemporary novels frequently, including 101 Dalmatians and The Rescuers among their adapted works. I wouldn't mind seeing them try their hands at animating recent books again. If nothing else, I would love to see them do the Prydain Chronicles justice. The books are super charming, but Disney's The Black Cauldron is (unfortunately) a mess.

Still love the design of this poster.

For the majority of their output, however, their animation has focused on older stories. Once copyright expires on a creative work, it enters what is known as the public domain, where no one entity can make legal or monetary claim on the use of a particular work. Copyright laws vary widely around the globe, but they generally protect a work from unlicensed use for some length of time from either the publication date or the author's death. This way, the author of a work enjoys the right to fiscally benefit from that project during their lifetime and has some creative control over how the work is presented to the public. Overall, copyright is a good thing that protects the livelihoods of working artists, but there is something special about the stories in the public domain. Because when a story is old enough to go into the public domain it belongs to everyone.

There have been so many versions of Robin Hood over the years, and it's not just because it's a beloved folk tale. It's because legally, there can be. Ever wondered why Jane Austen remains so popular with people today? Well... there aren't a lot of other famous romantic comedies that absolutely any artist can riff on and then sell their version without paying royalties to someone's estate. Disney gradually became incredibly good at taking these well-known stories and reshaping them for animated film. So good, the techniques they used could be their own blog post. (Foreshadowing?) I think particularly of the Disney Renaissance, when Disney really pivoted away from using copyrighted characters, like they had in earlier decades, and focused instead on their classic fairy tale roots.

Disney is not in the habit of having original ideas. Well, they do so MORE often now, but... is that actually for the better? A good number of their "original" stories are among the most underwhelming Disney movies. Brother Bear and Raya and the Last Dragon are not awful, but I can't shake the feeling they would both be better if they were based on actual indigenous stories rather than a rough smooshing together of various cultural traditions. The best films to come out of the "original story era" like Moana and Encanto might not be pulling from specific stories, but they do at least have much more specific points of inspiration. For instance, Moana teams up with Maui! An actual legendary figure! Arguably, it is still an adaptation, in the same vein of Hercules a generation earlier. (Encanto is a unicorn of a film, but as mentioned, it is specific. It's set in Colombia and doesn't shy away from referencing the country's history with civil war.)

But the bedrock of the Disney brand - one of their most underrated skills - is adaptation. And I cannot overstate how much I freakin' love a good adaptation. Adapting a story across genre of media and generations is an artform, that might make you look like an idiot when it's botched (what moron thought James Franco should play the Wizard of Oz???) but when it's done right, it's just so satisfying. (Oh my heart! Glinda and Elphaba used to be friends!)

They're only angry because they love each other!
(insert crying emoji)

One advantage of adaptation is that it invites the audience to compare various versions of the same story and let them speak in conversation with each other. Wicked, for instance, uses The Wizard of Oz as a jumping off point for the superficiality of how evil is often perceived. In a story where "evil" was seemingly baked into Elphaba's skin color and very name (The Wicked Witch of the West), what hope did she ever have of people treating her otherwise? That kind of barebones morality is a reoccurring feature (problem?) in children's literature, with The Wizard of Oz being just being one of the more blatant examples.

But as in Wicked, in real life, the villain might just be the Wizard himself. Sometimes the person ruining everything for everyone is the seemingly friendly, great and powerful entity that provided you with your first entry point into the story. Sometimes, an over-long Wizard of Oz metaphor turns out to be a segway into me complaining about how public domain law changed in the 70s and went from protecting artists, to just making life difficult for everyone.

The Wizard is Disney. Disney is the bad guy. Wow, what a twist.

Copyright Run Amok

I keep mentioning The Wizard of Oz, because it's one of the oldest classic books currently in the public domain. The series of books, published from 1900 - 1920, began dribbling into public domain over the 20th century, as US congress passed numerous Copyright Act amendments that slowed the release of the full series (and all other intellectual property) into the public domain. You can actually track the progress of The Wizard of Oz series into the public domain based on the release dates of various derivative works. Like, did your childhood have a day that was traumatized by the 1985 film, Return to Oz, "sequel" to the MGM musical classic? Well, you can thank the fact that Disney was trying to cash in on the rights before the copyright (which they had purchased) expired. And then there's Wicked - not the musical, but the novel it was based on. It came out in the 90s, after most of the Oz material was finally free to use. I like to picture Gregory Maguire writing Tik-Tok into the background of one scene, then raising a fist skyward and shouting "NO ONE CAN STOP ME!!!!"

Tik-Tok. Real fans KNOW!

As mentioned earlier, copyright laws vary worldwide, with the United States having some of the most stringent laws. Being the capitalist giant it is, this effectively means that if anyone wants to adapt anything for free and distribute it in English, it's gotta be in the US public domain. Unfortunately, the US public domain was effectively frozen for decades thanks to none other than Disney. Yes, those great abusers of the public domain themselves - master adapters of Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin, and Mulan - joined a few other media megacorps and Sonny Bono (unexpected villain twist!) in lobbying the US government to extend copyright protection for an obscene amount of time, and that's why The Wizard of Oz and it's sequels spent years as the newest, shiniest story anyone could take a shot at adapting. 

 At this point, US copyright for works published before 1978 is 95 years. The thing is, while I'm all for copyright protecting a creator's right to profit from their work, 95 years is a freakin' long time. At the turn of the century twentieth, copyright laws averaged around 25-50 years. 50 years seems like a perfectly reasonable extension to me, since it's effectively the length of one's "working life" in North America. During that time, creators should have the ability to profit off their works, control their distribution, and create whatever other derivative works they want. But beyond that, I kinda don't see the point. 

50 years later, it won't be the original creators making work based on these classic stories, but someone else. In other words, extensions like these really only benefit corporations, not people. They gatekeep works so that only certain people get to adapt stories - the ones with pockets deep enough to pay for rights. This is why any time Sony and Disney fight with each other over how to divvy up profits from Spiderman movies, I can NEVER root for Disney. Spidey would be in the public domain by now, if Disney hadn't lobbied so hard to avoid ever letting anyone but them legally use Mickey Mouse. Sure, Sony is also a soulless megacorp and probably supported the Sonny Bono (booooo!) laws too, but hey. They're not the villain-protagonist of this story.

Just think. With better laws, we could ALL make our own Spiderman.
Though some fear that would be... too many spidermen. 

Return of the Public Domain

Thankfully, mercifully, those protections are finally beginning to expire and stories are getting added again, as the prescribed time elapses. Yes, it is finally more than 95 years since the 1920s. We now have culturally relevant, modern icons like flappers, suffragists and pre-depression era venture capitalists to relate to. So current!

In all seriousness though, I am grateful. Wonderful, classic stories get added each year and one of my favourite traditions is checking the list of what's entered the public domain in January. And sure enough, as famous stories begin to drop into public domain, new adaptations are taking off as well. The big news of late has been Blood and Honey, a slasher film centered on............ Winnie the Pooh. Huh.

Look, I don't plan on seeing that film, but I am honestly THRILLED that something like this can exist now. I want it all. The weird stuff, the goofy stuff, the scary stuff, the pretentions high-brow stuff. I want us to be able to engage with and easily adapt the stories of the past. Because you never know, right? You never know what creative people are going to do when they finally get their hands on stories we love. For instance, right now Florence Welch is spearheading a Broadway musical version of The Great Gatsby and there's some serious Wicked or - dare I hope - Hadestown upside with a project like that. And now that the butt-munchers holding the copyright to the last Sherlock Holmes short story collection can no longer litigate people within an inch of their life, we might get more indie creators trying their hands at adapting the world's most famous detective.

But the real cherry on top is that after all these years, time has finally come for Disney. Next year, on January 1st 2024, Mickey Mouse, as he appears in Steamboat Willie, enters the public domain. Get ready to slap this fella on some T-shirts, people! Oh, but don't give him gloves. Or pupils. Those weren't invented yet. 

Mickey, gleefully sailing into the Public Domain.

Public pressure caught up with the Disney company in the internet age. As the story of how they and the likes of Sonny Bono (Team Cher and Cher only for life!) destroyed our legal right to use old stories started to circulate online, Disney amended their stance so that they no longer are putting forward bills to stop the slow roll-out of works entering the public domain at the end of each calendar year. Instead, they're simply arguing that they hold copyright to later versions of the character, until cartoons that feature aspects like his gloves do enter the public domain. But whatever. Screw it. We're still getting the Mouse and whole boat. 

I'm perfectly happy to watch someone make a movie about Mickey and Minnie's adventures as pirates on the Mississippi River. Or that Winnie the Pooh horror movie team can make one about him strapping victims to a torture rack made from the steamboat wheel. Or maybe we'll get a crime drama about how Mickey's father died during a fire in Pete's glove factory and now he's now on a quest to destroy all gloves. Distributed widely. All without Disney's approval. I can hardly wait. 

We spent years stuck in the past but, finally, we're not in Kansas anymore.

Writing, Art and Creator Burn-Out: A Tale of 2019

For anyone working in the creative arts, figuring out where to get inspiration and refill that so-called "artistic well" is among the most important of challenges they face. For myself, I have a number of strategies. Going for walks, talking about movies and books with my friends and, of course, watching musicals.

One musical I think about often when I'm in creative downturns, looking for renewed vigour, is Sondheim and Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George, which tells the fictionalized story of French post-impressionist George Seurat and how he came to paint his most famous work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

In the musical, everyone pictured is singing!

Throughout the play, various characters comment on George's obsession with the painting, what it means to be an artist and what art even is. There are lots of characters offering hot takes, but one has always stood out to me. 

Work is what you do for other people. Art is what you do for yourself.

I don't particularly agree. Art, I tend to think, has more to do with the content of the piece rather than the origin or expression of the creation, and yet I've often thought this quote gets at something very real. This crosses out of the realm of visual art and also applies to the art of writing.

Writing for Yourself and Other People

When starting out, most books grow from an idea the author is passionate about. In the sense of the quote from Sunday in the Park with George, this is where art is not work. It's a thing writers do for themselves; scribbling new stories with fresh, new ideas. If this was the whole writing process, then writing never would be work, but it is, and all too often, it becomes work the moment other people enter the picture.

Almost everything that you can buy published in a bookstore found its way there by way of a major publishing company and was touched not just by the author, but also an editor and probably an agent and maybe a marketing department and definitely a cover designer. And along the way, they asked the author to make (le gasp!) changes.

I got a first hand taste of this over the past year, when an agent I queried asked me to complete a revise and resubmit. Most of the changes she asked for I agreed would make the book better, so I got to work. And work it certainly was, because that level of unpacking a book is not something I would have done "for myself."

I've gone through forms of this process before, and don't get me wrong. I enjoy my work. But maybe because I spent so much of this year revising, writing felt like less fun than it usually does. All writers have their favourite parts of the writing process and mine are early on - usually idea generation, drafting and reworking the "first draft" into it's second, slightly less messy iteration. Those are such fun stages. I do them for myself.

I'm proud of the revision I did this year. I'm grateful for the eyes of other people and for the pressure I feel to make my writing something that communicates ideas more clearly and meets the needs of my audience, not just my own. But in a tough year, where the writing felt like work, I needed something to refill my creative well more than usual.

So writing was what I did for other people. Art was what I did for myself.

Children and Art

I can say with utmost confidence, I did not come into this world with extraordinary talent for visual art. I made blobs and squiggles and stick-men of the same caliber as my peers. But did I ever love doing it. Creating something and then being able to hold it up and say "look!" was reason enough to keep at it. I think most children are like this. They love putting something into the world that didn't exist before and they rarely question if their work is "quality." It's just pure art. Something they do for themselves, not other people.

The hard part is keeping kids drawing once they're old enough to compare their work to their peers and start realizing some kids are progressing faster than others. Here, my greatest talent was not in producing great art, but in being oblivious. For years, I pressed on filling massive binders full of "masterpieces" that were nothing more than weirdly proportioned renderings of my stuffed animals. Yes, I kept these and yes, I still love them.

I only chanced upon the concept of artistic "skill" in Grade 4 when I became close friends with the girl who everyone agreed was the best artist in our class. For a split second, I felt discouraged, but she loved drawing and she was my friend, so we drew together and that was that. I got comfortable being worse at something than someone else, and that kept my artistic spirit alive. I kept drawing my stuffed animals, but increasingly, I also designed original characters based on the stories I made up. I shamelessly copied the work of my older sister and her friends, who also liked drawing, learning early Picasso's lesson of "stealing like an artist." Sorry to plagiarize you, Kate.

Sometime around my late teens, it became apparent that I actually did draw better than most of my friends (though not all. I've consistently spent my life with at least one best friend who is better at art than I am. Shout out to today's model, Lean Conrad!). But getting where I am today in art was a slow process born of years upon years of both doodling and intentional practice.

Move On

Fast-forward to January of 2019, when I was starting the year in a strange place. I was job hunting, slogging through a revision of my book that wouldn't come together and living in a new city. From the outset, 2019 had a lot of difficult things working against it, and I could feel myself struggling to keep my head afloat.

I needed a survival strategy. After reading some literature online about the use of art in therapy, I decided I need to reinvest in one of my old hobbies. Art is known for having profound mental health benefits and best of all, skill has nothing to do with effectiveness! The mere act of creating and expressing oneself artistically is helpful. With that in mind, I gave it a try.

Going into this year, I felt rusty. My artistic progress has not always been linear, and I was out of practice. Some seasons of my life, I've devoted more time to art than others and I can still look at old pieces that stack up decently next to what I create now. For example, here is a baseball card sized painting of raccoons in our family cherry tree I did 10 years ago that is STILL the best raccoon related piece I've ever done.

Progress is a lie!

Or so it felt. But I needed art this year. I needed something that I could do for myself, that would bring me joy and refill my creative well when my writing was hard and burning me out.

To start, I watched a few art YouTube videos for inspiration, including a few that talked about their *~*art journey*~* and overwhelmingly, a lot of these artists mentioned how posting their work online helped them, even when their work wasn't what many people would describe as "good" yet. Just posting it helped them be accountable, made them take stock of their own progress and prompted positive feedback from family and friends who were just pleased to see them creating.

Ever since Grade 4 introduced me to friends who drew better than I did, I've been painfully aware of how flawed my own artwork is. It took a lot of nerve to start posting my work, but I figured I could use the kick-in-the-butt accountability gave me, plus whatever positive reinforcement my circle might give. So I took the dive.

First, and more important than I might have expected, I organized my supplies. I went through a Marie Kondo phase at the end of 2018 and got rid of a LOT of stuff that was otherwise overcrowding the new space I lived in. One of the discoveries I made during this was that every single one of my art supplies sparked joy and I had no interest in getting rid of a single tube of paint, but they also weren't likely to do me much good buried in a closet. Realizing this, I moved my art supplies to their own unit in my bedroom. Everyday, I wake up and they stare at me from beneath a poster of Porgs, reminding me I should be making art.

So I got out my watercolours, the most joyful of my supplies, and I made myself paint.

I started with my comfort zone. I don't draw my stuffed animals as much any more, but fan art is kind of comparable, so I painted some faces from the Umbrella Academy.

Painted early March 2019, when I really got going

I really enjoyed working on these, but I also found painting took a LOT of time and specialized supplies. You have to really set up water and your work area, and I didn't always have the space and time to do so. During my Kon-Marie purge, I whittled down my sketchbooks to the drawings I wanted to keep, plus a sketchbook I had halfheartedly started with a drawing or two the previous year. It was portable and it was there, so good enough.

The paper in that sketchbook wasn't the best, so at first I tried to stay black and white. The one time I added paints, the pages buckled like crazy. But black and white art tends to bore me a bit, in part because I'm stronger at colour theory than I am line art. I realized I was more likely to draw if I gave myself permission to colour pieces afterwards, so even though the paper could barely handle the ink, I pulled out my old prismacolour markers. Eventually, I got some pieces I was happy with.

It was a lot of fun rediscovering my markers. They don't always feel as "classy" as my watercolours do, but I love their vibrancy and I had to admit, I was probably better at using them than I was paint. I tried harder to bounce back and forth between the two, as I learned to get different effects with the different media.

Since I was job hunting, I didn't have a lot of extra cash lying around for new supplies or classes, so I focused on using what I had and studying free, online lessons. (I have so many opinions on "Art YouTube" now and what videos/content creators might be useful for a beginner like me. Let me know if you need recommendations!) Watching them prompted me to do some basic "good practice" exercises I'd neglected over the years, like swatching all my paints and markers, filling the whole page in a sketchbook and practicing body parts from different angles. As someone who uses alcohol based markers, I also quickly ran into the cult of Copic users and learned there were markers with velvety brush nibs, that let you blend and color in a way that resembles painting. I was intrigued, but too poor to consider such treasures.

My other great resource was the aforementioned best friend and better artist, Leah Conrad. A young, busy mum, Leah was excited to see me get back into art and wanted to draw together immediately. Whether she was working on commissions or something just for fun and practice, her company was always a huge blessing. She knew things. I could hold something up to her and say, "something is wrong but what?????" and she could spout off quick, helpful advice like, "the foreground and background are too similar" or "that arm should be longer" and then I could get back to work. Check her out on Instagram and enjoy a peek of some of her awesome work below!

Shooting Stars Over Mill Hill, by Leah Conrad

Leah also introduced me to the very addiction I thought I couldn't afford. As I rambled to her about the art videos I had been watching and how badly I wanted to try brush nibbed alcohol markers she casually uttered the words, "I have Copics."

Copics. The industry standard, Rolls-Royce of alcohol markers. She had a small, carefully curated set that she rarely used, and was willing to lend them to me.

Prismacolour markers are very good markers and besides which, there are far more important things than art supply quality when it comes to creating art. Still, supplies do help. Once I got used to the feel of them, I couldn't deny that they worked better than what I was used to. They blended smoother and layered gorgeously. My art took a jump up in overall quality and going back to my old markers was slightly depressing.

First Copic illustrations, from July 2019

I decided to use some coupons to buy just a small set of Copic markers of my own. I expected to spend a very long time building my Copic collection up to the same numbers as my Prismacolour markers, until salvation arrived in the form of Facebook Marketplace. Someone was selling their collection of lightly used Copics for roughly 80% off the regular retail price.

After that? I kept drawing. I took books out of the library. I practiced the exercises they suggested. I joined an art group that trades art around the world and sent in baseball card sized illustrations to new friends. As I continued to post my work online, I made more friends and saw more art that inspired me, and they were kind enough to encourage me in my art journey.

By the beginning of September, two magical things happened. First, I filled a 75 page sketch book that I'd started only six months earlier, which was far more than I'd drawn in years. Second, I had a job! The summer had been very stressful, due to the ongoing job hunt, so getting some stability was a tremendous blessing. I honestly don't know if I could have made it through the summer without art. It kept me sane and feeling like I was accomplishing something when there weren't obvious milestones to point to in my work and writing.

With that in mind, I decided I wanted to do something big and challenging in my *~*art journey*~* as a way of saying thank you to the thing that kept me going through the year. With that in mind, I geared up for my first ever Inktober.

Inktober 2019

Every year, artists around the world challenge themselves during the month of October with the task of producing more art and learning new skills. The basic form of the challenge is this:

1) To produce a new work of art each day of the month
2) Drawn in ink
3) Based on an official prompt list released each year.

There are people who fudge the rules, which is fine. Maybe they don't have time to draw every day or work digitally. Plus, there are roughly 50 billion prompt lists that pop up each year for those who don't want to use the official one. But for my first year, I played it pretty traditional. Conveniently, I wanted to practice dip pen inking, plus I'd never forced myself to generate that many drawings in a single month before. The prompt list seemed like a good source of ideas when burn-out inevitably set in, so I also committed to that.

Challenges were no stranger to me. Writers use the following month, November, as NaNoWriMo - or National Novel Writing Month. I had never successfully done NaNo, however, so I was a bit nervous going into Inktober. Still, I felt as ready as I ever could be.

I'm still processing everything I learned during the month. In an effort to try to organize some of my thoughts, here's a list.

1) It's absolutely possible! Despite some occasionally rocky days and nights that went until 3 am, I finished the challenge. My new sketchbook has one drawing for every day of October and for that alone, I am immensely proud and grateful.

2) It's absolutely possible to burn yourself out doing it! To minimize the pressure, I chose all my materials ahead of time and used the same supplies and process EVERY SINGLE DAY. I wanted to get rid of as many on-the-fly decisions as possible, so I could focus on the challenge and moving on with my life. Still, I was losing my mind a little towards the end. Consider, for instance, this image from Day 30, prompt word "Catch." It was drawn upside down and on the wrong side of the page in my sketchbook, but I did not realize it until after it was done. I also had giant, scribbly blobs by it that I hastily covered up with a digital speech bubble for my Instagram post.

What a catch.

3) It's unlikely you will get thirty-one brilliant works of art from the challenge. But you'll get something. Some days, I didn't have time or energy to throw myself at a piece for a long time. Almost everything I drew that month felt a little rushed. I couldn't return to something the next day and refine it, because it was too important that I move on to the next picture. Allowing myself to be happy with something quick and easy was an important survival strategy.

4) I generally conceptualized a piece, drew, inked and coloured all in one day. This lack of forethought meant I learned a few things about my default style. Going in, I knew I drew a lot of people and faces, but what surprised me was how often I turned to animals. These were frequently my favourite pieces and the ones I was most likely to use reference photos for.

Days 24 and 23

5) Even though I wanted to improve my inking and line art, I found my colouring with Copics probably saw the most progress. Ah well.

6) While most of the challenge passed in a flurry, there were still days when life came together and I actually made something better and stronger than my usual work. You throw enough darts, eventually one will hit the bull's eye. This stretch of drawings really sang for me.

Days 11 through 13

7) By the end, when I was finishing the challenge just so I could say that I did it, it felt like... work. And that's okay. If I was left to FOLLOW MY BLISS everywhere in life, I would never finish anything. And with that in mind, by the time I was done Inktober, I was ready to be done something else too.

Putting it Together

By the end of October, I had a very full sketchbook and no desire to draw anything for a couple of weeks while I recuperated. So what did I do instead? I finished revising my book.

I had been chipping away at that revision all year long, but going into November, I felt an extra degree of oomph pushing me. My creative well was full of fan art, Copic markers, drawing sessions with Leah, reference photos, dip pens and watercolours. Within a few weeks I was done, had notes back from Beta readers and could query my book for the first time in over a year... right on time for the holiday slowdown.

But that's okay. I might not have word back about my book, but it exists in a more refined version now, as do pages of art that helped me through it. In my own life, I do believe art can be work, and that we do it both for ourselves and for other people. Going into the new year, I don't know what project will be my main focus. I've been working on revising one book for a long time and now, it's time to find it a home with an agent or publisher. Failing that, it's probably time to write something new. I'm not certain what that will be yet. I might need to do some sketching to figure it out.

What I really learned this year was the importance of a hobby. Art might not be the thing that intervenes on your behalf, but it certainly helped me. At the Storymakers Conference this year, I heard a wonderful quote in a talk given by Josi Kilpack.

That which takes me away from writing gives me something to write about.

At the time, I thought of the things that take me away from writing against my will, like day jobs and family commitments, but now I want to advocate for the things we willingly let take us away from our artistic passions. You cannot draw water from an empty well, so find a way to fill it. Let yourself have something you "do for yourself" that doesn't feel at all like work.

As I reach a crossroads in my writing, I'm at a similar one in my art. I don't know what my next big goal will be now that Inktober is over. For Christmas, I asked for some new art supplies and am lucky enough that many of them showed up in my stocking and under the tree come Christmas morning. There's definitely some playing around and inspiration to be found there.

Still, I think the most profound gift I received was one that came from another young artist. My eight-year-old nephew spent weeks leading up to Christmas telling me how excited he was to give me the gift he picked out for me. When I opened it, I found a black, hardbound sketchbook, just like the one I used for Inktober, with one critical difference. The first page had an inscription from him.

Don't Let the muggles get you down - Ron Weasley

Isn't that what art is really all about? You can't let the muggles get you down. You fight back with colour and line and composition and the love it takes to create something. 

Looking back, I won't pretend 2019 wasn't a hard year. I knew it would be, and it was. But something good came out of it. I haven't figured out what all my illustrious goals will be for 2020, but with the right friends, attitude and hobbies, I think I'll get through it.

Happy New Year, friends! May yours be filled with beautiful art.

Making Sense of the CATS trailer: A Noble Attempt

A week ago, two things brought me great joy.

First, the trailer for the upcoming film adaptation of the immensely popular Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, CATS, dropped on the internet.

Second, I got to listen to a grown man scream his head off as he watched this trailer.

If you, like countless others, have felt a similar sense of dread at the thought of computer enhanced cat/human hybrids taking over the world, then I am here to help. I consider myself uniquely qualified to speak on the topic. CATS was the first full-scale musical I saw on stage, back when I was nine years old. Seeing the show required a full-day trip to Vancouver for our family. In addition, the critical portion of my Master's Thesis project included discussion and analysis of CATS, as well as the children's poems it was based on, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Elliot.

So lay your head on my shoulder, child. Let me tell you the story of CATS.

Adapting an Adaptation

Film adaptations are always a little tricky, but let's start with one basic premise most people can agree on. Any time you are changing mediums, expressing the same concept through a different artform leads to change. Some are inherent to the artform itself (ex: film is more visual than the novel) but some conventions are really only that: conventions of storytelling that we've grown used to and expect now. When those conventions are broken, the art itself can feel broken, even if nothing but tradition is what tells us this ought to be so.

I won't go into the whole long list of conventions film follows, but for the purposes of this discussion, I want to focus on one very important factor: Movies cost way more to produce than books, which means they need to be consumed by/appeal to far more people if they want to make a profit. This has given rise to a particular plotting style commonly referred to as Three Act Structure. I won't go into the full scale description of it here, but loosely, it goes like this:

Act 1: Establish the protagonist, where they are from, what their problem is and what tragic flaw keeps them from solving their problem
Act 2: The protagonist attempts to solve their problem (unsuccessfully), gradually learns the problem is bigger or different than they first thought, and then experiences great failure, leading to their lowest moment.
Act 3: From that low moment, the protagonist finds the fortitude to overcome their flaw, attempts to solve the problem once more and in the climax, either solves it (victory!) or fails (tragedy!). Closing image, fade to black.

Three Act Structure is so ubiquitous, it's tempting to see it in everything and assume it's the only way to tell stories. Today, most commercially viable books also follow this structure. Heck, The Hunger Games worked so well as a movie because it already read like one in book form. But go back pre-Hollywood, and the dominating power of Three Act Structure begins to collapse. It's not the defining structure of Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales. It's not what drives Alice in Wonderland.

And if we move outside of the landscape of novels, it disappears altogether. Short stories don't always have the time to bother with all that structure foofaraw. Or look at picture books. "Everybody do the Barnyard Dance!" might be your plot. Or maybe you've picked up The Book with No Pictures, which is much more about making adults say weird stuff than it is about following character growth. But both those books are stories. They're recounting of events for the purpose of social bonding. Can't get more "story" than that.

And so returning to CATS (finally, we are returning to CATS), I think it's worth asking the question: what type of story is the film adapting? If it had only ever existed as a film, had always been a film, then it would be much, much harder to explain the weirdness going on in that trailer. But CATS not only is an adaptation, it was also never a novel, the most common source of film adaptation.

The problems become clear the moment you realize there are multiple steps in this process, and that those steps never bowed down to Three Act Structure.

Before CATS was a film, it was a play, and before that, it was a book of children's poems.

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

T.S. Eliot is considered one of the greats in poetry of the Twentieth Century, and rightly so. His work was beautiful, lyrical, thought provoking, and still gets quoted like crazy in Young Adult novels all these years later. That his work shows up in YA points to the fact that he understood something about young people, whether he was explicitly writing for them or not.

Also recommending him as a human: he liked cats. He wrote a bunch of poems about them for his godchildren. Eventually, he had enough, he was like, "hey, I think this might make a good book of poems" and so he published them, and therefor, little Andrew Lloyd Webber grew up reading them.

And despite what others might tell you, it doesn't just have a story, it has many! There's the story of Rum Tum Tugger, the cat who just wants to annoy you constantly. Or there's Mongojerrie and Rumpleteazer, the kittens who play with everything until it gets lost. One of my favorites is Skimbleshanks, who harkens to the tradition railways had of keeping cats aboard in Britain. See? So many stories! All more adorable than the last!

Importantly, those stories are also intensely relatable. As someone who owns pet cats, I can see my animals mirrored in the poems of cats more than I can in dozens of other stories that feature cats. I've lived with a Rum Tum Tugger and a Jennyanydots. Much of the success of those poems come from how well Eliot captures the lives of real domestic cats.

However, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats does not have an underlying through line other than "aren't cats great?" As a poetry book, this is just fine. Poetry is much more about evoking emotions or ideas in the reader than telling a character growth journey. Story itself is optional in poetry, so in that respect, the poems here are much more conventional "stories" than other poetry books might be. Still, if it were directly adapted into a visual medium today, the most logical would probably be YouTube meme compilation videos. I'd like to think in some alternate universe, there's a poem by an internet era Eliot that goes a little like...

Miss Melarosey rides round on a Roomba
Cleaning the house while the other cats slumber

You get the idea.

When Webber began adapting the poems, he wasn't initially trying to make a whole musical out of them. Instead, he used them as a personal challenge, to compose something where the lyrics were set and couldn't be bent to fit the needs of the music. The project eventually piqued the interest of Eliot's widow, and she passed on to him some poems that Eliot cut from the collection, including Grizabella the Glamour Cat, which Eliot had worried would be too sad for children. But that sad poem was the final spark Webber needed. To him, the bleakness of that poem helped contrast with the jovial, goofiness of the other cat characters, and he felt he now had the makings of a full musical on his hands.

But a musical about what???

Guys, I can't believe you're still asking. It's about cats.

CATS as Broadway Royalty

In CATS earliest days, there were a lot of people working on the show who were deeply confused by Webber's vision for the production. They tried to turn it into something more recognizable. Something that would work with conventional story telling structures.

"Maybe it's a satire of British politicians?"

No hun, it's about cats.

"What if we make this a chamber piece, with minimal effects and a small ensemble?"

Cats deserve better than that, Karen! We will have strobe lights and a cast of dozens because cats are worth it!

"Okay, so who is our hero? What cat are we following? What are they trying to accomplish?"

HAVE YOU EVEN MET A CAT??? NO CAT IS TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING!!!

Eventually, Webber got his wish, though not without sacrifice. The production scared so many investors away, he literally bet his house and all his money on it, just to finance it. I'm sure his family and loved ones shook in fear for him. But Webber was the one left laughing because the public ate CATS up. It became the longest running and most profitable show of all-time, only to be surpassed in that title by Andrew Lloyd Webber's later work, Phantom of the Opera.

And in my opinion, Webber was right to put his foot down every time someone tried to make CATS about something other than cats. The whole reason the show works is because it's driven by poetry, music and movement. Those things leant themselves more to the subject matter than a plot did, because real cats almost never experience character development. They are what they are, and they either annoy or entertain us. Since Eliot's poems were originally about recognizable, normal cat behaviors, this was the truest way of bringing these poems onto the stage.

In addition to Eliot's poems and some of Webber's best music, CATS also has some of the best dancing on Broadway. A lot of time was spent developing how the performers would move and emote in the show, and how the more cat-like motions they performed would be mixed with ballet and modern dance choreography.

It's actually because the show has so little plot that it can revel in the things that make it strong. It's about nothing more than a gathering of cats, who have come to strut and show-off to each other. They can spontaneously break out into dance sequences without it feeling jarring. They can switch tone and focus character song to song, because, like real cats, they don't have the attention span to have a protagonist.

What little through-line there is for the play was eventually developed based on theme, rather than a plot. Trevor Nunn, the poor soul who got tasked with directing and helping develop CATS into a full show with Webber, tried his best to piece together themes of death, rebirth and the folk tale that all cats have nine lives. It wasn't a plot, but he hoped that viewers sensed a kind of progression through ideas, that would keep them engaged.

And there is another reason it worked, and that is because CATS was intended for the theatre, not film.

Writing for Film and Theatre

At first glance, theatre and film seem like very similar mediums. Some people never go to the theatre, because it's expensive, and they don't understand what it could offer them that a film can't. Aside from the thrill of a live performance, is there any real reason to see Hamlet on stage as opposed to in a film adaptation?

As something written before the advent of film, Hamlet might seem like an odd candidate for suiting film, but in many ways, it's early inception is one of the reasons it is so adaptable. In Shakespeare's time, theatre was the primary way of sharing stories with the mass market. Not everyone could read, but everyone could see plays, which were cheap. As a result, Shakespeare's plays often fall into that comforting, digestible Three Act format mentioned earlier, Hamlet included.

For hundreds of years, theatre was the primary venue for social gathering and experiencing stories. But when film came along, the balance of power shifted. Films were potentially more expensive to make but they were so much cheaper to distribute worldwide. You no longer had to go see Hamlet put on by the yokels at the local theatre. You could see Laurence Olivier in the role, without ever leaving your hometown.

In order for theatre to survive commercially, it had to identify who its real audience was and what they wanted. Two particular groups of people are still interested in theatre.

1) People who value the visceral, live aspect. The joy of seeing something staged and knowing that all the pieces have to exist and move together in real, human space is exhilarating. Dance, as a result, thrives in theatre, because it can be very hard to capture the full three-dimensional nature of movement in film, especially for large crowd numbers. Film flattens the image and even 3D technology struggles to recapture the depth of movement theatre can provide. Dance looks better on stage. I've never seen any film that successfully convinced me otherwise. By a similar token, music does often sound better, or at least more emotive, live. Again, there's that visceral component of the experience that you can't get from film. Little surprise, in the wake of the rise of film, musical theatre thrived and took over Broadway.
2) People who like experimental, weird stuff that doesn't suit commercial Hollywood film making. I'm by no means suggesting that film can't be experimental or that theatre wasn't before film put pressure on it. But that pressure still matters. Most cinemas make their money off of digestible blockbusters. Theatre isn't going to grab that crowd anymore though, so it might as well cater to people who want to see a naked boy on stage with a horse. There's a reason it's the theatre club that has the reputation for housing weirdos, not the film club.

And CATS ticks the box for both groups. For a big, flashy spectacle musical, it's surprisingly experimental with it's unconventional story structure, reliance on theme to drive forward progression and lack of protagonist. It's more committed to exploring what it's like to be a cat than it is to examining the human condition. Lest we forget, CATS started off as an experiment. Webber wanted to see what would happen if he wrote music for pre-established poetry.

In recent years, Andrew Lloyd Webber has become a figure that the musical theatre community likes to make fun of. He was such a phenomenon in the 70s and 80s with CATS cat-apulting him from respected, working composer to mega-star. That fame only grew with the release of Phantom, and soon it felt like he was everywhere. Unfortunately, that meant that when his less successful work of the late 80s and 90s came around, he was a highly public figure whose flubs were likewise highly public. It was very easy to slide into mocking him as the weird cat guy. Or the guy who made a play about dropping a chandelier onstage.

But I do think we can be a bit unfair, because often, Webber's strength was being that weird cat guy. Theatre needs weirdness if it's going to survive and thrive. He understood and recaptured the spectacle of theatre better than he told stories or understood the human condition. He needed a good lyricist, like Tim Rice, if he was going to say anything profound or develop characters convincingly. Better to leave the heartfelt, emotional musicals to the likes of Sondheim and let Webber make silly things about dancing cats and chandeliers.

But with the crazy costumes, expressive dancing and energetically scored poetry, CATS did capture something real. As a nine-year-old, seeing that play was a highlight of my brief existence. I've often wondered if one of the reasons we're so hard on CATS as a play is also because of it's intended audience. As a play based on children's poems, it still is intended for children. I've spoken with so many people who struggle with the idea that something can be beautiful or artistic or profound and still be understood by a child. It's been my experience that some of the most beautiful things are those that resonate with children. Children are deeply sensitive to beauty, because they haven't learned to be cynical about it yet.

Cynical, like some of us might be about a certain movie trailer.

And so, that Trailer...

Look what you made her do

Like a lot of you, my initial reaction to the trailer was one of... horrified curiosity, let's say. It does look weird. Film, in it's over fascination with computer graphics, has turned the painted faces and lycra bodysuits of the original CATS world into photorealistic fur. What was expressive in the theatre is now rendered uncanny on film. Some people have suggested it would have been better animated in a more stylized way, like a traditional hand drawn musical. But I do empathize with the film makers, because that would have lost the dancing, and dance is one of the primary reasons to go see CATS.

If I'm being honest, what actually concerned me is the dialogue. CATS the musical gave up on having a plot, but the film seems to be trying to pull one out of the emotive, theme driven material that Trevor Nunn cobbled together. The proportion of singing to spoken lines in the trailer is way off of what it was in the musical and that... concerns me. Concerns me that someone involved in the film's production got confused and figured CATS was actually about Grizabella's quest to ascend to the heaviside layer.

For the last time, guys. It's about cats.

But this is a multi-million dollar film that needs multi-million dollar ticket sales and so, following the logic of Hollywood formula, some poor screenwriter seems to have been tasked with shoving Three Act Structure down CATS throat at last, like a pill from the veterinarian that your pet is just going to regurgitate in a few minutes anyway.

Maybe the transition will work better than I think. Maybe some of the experimental nature will still shine through in the film, or they'll at least capture some of the joyous spectacle and dancing that made the musical worth seeing. Or maybe it will be a ghastly, expensive train wreck, fueled only by a cash grab at our nostalgia for the musical.

Either way, I kinda want to see it. With it's giant franchises and carefully plotted Blockbusters, Hollywood takes so few risks any more. Whether it succeeds or fails, CATS was a risk. And at least there's singing. At least there's dancing. At least most of the leads are actual singers and dancers.

And I, for one, am curious how they picked a protagonist. Just which cat did the dart hit when they threw it at the board? And what character journey are they going to take us on between Taylor Swift shaking catnip over a crowd from a bejeweled canister?

I have only questions. No answers. And with that, I need to go feed my cat.

Tropes VS Tropes: The Big Freaking Kiss Song

As a life long musical theatre nerd, I feel very lucky that my college days managed to coincide with the rise of the Wicked Witch of the West on Broadway. While kids today go around singing their Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen, I came of age to the angst filled power ballads of Idina Menzel in her most famous pre-Frozen role, that of Elphaba, the famous Ozian witch, in the musical Wicked.

If you have even a passing interest in musical theatre, you know Wicked. If you don't, you've probably still heard a few of it's songs. It was everywhere at it's height, with shows like Glee featuring it's most famous song, "Defying Gravity" in one of it's earliest episodes.

As a nineteen-year-old, I was obsessed. I had the soundtrack memorized. All I wanted was to see a proper production of it. To my incredible luck, a touring production of it visited Toronto the very week I was scheduled to be in Ontario, visiting my sister for reading week. She lived a few hours south of the city, but we took a bus up, spent a couple days sightseeing Canada's great metropolis and, of course, saw Wicked.

Overall, it was spectacular, but I do have one memory of a particular song falling short of my imagination. Towards the end of Act II, Elphaba and her love interest, the dashing Fiyero, are reunited and sing "As Long as You're Mine," a passionate song about how they're gonna smooch and snuggle and probably do more things. This was, in my Wicked addicted brain, the sexiest love song to ever exist.

But on stage, it kinda… fell flat. They just stared at each other and stroked each other's arms a bunch. I kept waiting for it to heat up or for there to be choreography or something. Anything to give the scene a bit more shape than just singing forcefully in the face of the one you love. Instead, it felt like the song was a thing the characters had to get through, before they could finally reach the kissing that came at the end.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. Apparently, you can't smooch and sing at the same time. At least, not in real life. When I listened to the song on the soundtrack, it had played more like a music video in my mind, with shots of the characters making out, cut together with overlays of the actors singing at each other. Like, check out any Taylor Swift song. She makes out with dudes while singing all the time. But this doesn't translate to the stage. In concert, I'm guessing she's never snogged a man while crooning "Wildest Dreams" at him.

For Ms. Swift, this isn't much of a problem. Her songs may exist in the broader context of an album or a music video or a live performance, but they're rarely defined by them. Pop music is meant to exist as something the audience vicariously experiences and can imagine their own lives and fantasies onto. With great songs that come from musicals, there's an aspect of that, but most theatre songs require the context of their plots and performers in order to give full weight to the experience of a particular song.

"As Long as You're Mine" requires context and it still saddens me a little that it's stronger with only the context of the other songs on the album, not the actual performance. It might sadden me more if it weren't such a reoccurring problem in theatre. Yes, Wicked fell into the trap of the boring pre-kissing song, but it's far from the only show to do so.

Oh, Where is the Song that Goes Like This?

Quick question! In a musical, are the characters actually singing? Within the confines of his reality, does Javert actually stand next to the university students, belting out his plans to trick them and infiltrate their numbers, as he appears to do in the song "One Day More" in Les Miserables? Do a group of nuns actually argue about "How do You Solve a Problem like Maria" via song, as they appear to in The Sound of Music? Within the confines of their own realities, the answers are almost certainly "no." I mean, Javert would have to be really stupid to do that. Leader of the students, Enjolras, is literally just a few feet away from him during that number.

Most musical numbers aren't meant to be taken literally. Instead, the music and dancing is meant to stand in for something else. So what do they represent? The quick answer is usually something like "emotion" or the "feel" of a particular scene. Energetic, frantic songs coincide with when the mood is particularly tense or exciting. So in The Sound of Music, Maria sings the bouncy "Confidence" when she's trying to convince herself she feels braver than she does. In contrast, Javert sings the slow, contemplative song "Stars" when he's feeling, well... contemplative. Emotion and mood are the major drivers of song choice and placement in traditional musicals.

So it's little surprise that there are lots and lots of love songs in musicals, especially songs that come right before characters kiss. Great, big kiss scenes frequently come at the emotional height of a piece, as they release the tension of the character's building romance. Whole stories are structured around that moment of triumph. So of course there are songs about it! On paper, it sounds so incredible, ending a soaring ballad with the leads finally locking lips. But often, it falls flat, because these songs can't help but grind the plot to a halt. As mentioned before, you can't kiss and sing at the same time, which means that often, the characters have to get the song over with before the plot can advance any further, because the next plot point IS the kissing!!!

For here you are, standing there... standing there.

Both Les Miserables and The Sound of Music have scenes that suffer from this. In Les Miserables, Marius and Cossette sing at each other through a gate, and I remember as a kid thinking this scene took for-freaking-ever. They don't necessarily kiss at the end, but they want to, and nothing exciting is allowed to happen until they're done making goo-goo eyes at each other. In The Sound of Music, an even straighter example occurs, where Maria and Captain VonTrapp stand in a gazebo and stare sweetly at each other while their silhouettes delay kissing just long enough to get a refrain of "Something Good" out.

Researching for this article was a blast, because I got to relive some truly hilarious stage direction as I looked up examples of this phenomenon. How many times can Marion run back and forth across a bridge before finally ending her song and kissing Herald Hill in the Music Man? How long can Christine sway side to side before realizing that all Raoul asks of her is a kiss in Phantom of the Opera? Why does the Baker's wife keep wandering away from him during "It Takes Two" from Into the Woods, except to delay his inevitable kiss of her face?

By now, you might be asking what could possibly please me? Haven't I any romance inside of me? Don't I appreciate the need to slow down for these moments? IF THE PLOT CAN'T STOP FOR LOVE, WHAT CAN IT STOP FOR??????

It might be tempting to assume this kind of thing is inevitable--that it's impossible to end a song with a kiss without it coming across as cheesy and overblown. There's a reason White Christmas interrupts the smooch at the end of "Count Your Blessings" with another character stumbling in on the happy couple, because it stops an intensely earnest moment from feeling too corny. But to that I say, the presence of examples where it's done well shows that there's no excuse for doing it poorly. So who did do it well?

The Multitask Scene

The next slew of examples are all going to have one thing in common: In addition to being songs that end with dramatic kisses, they also do something else for the scene. Some subtext or character moment is going on, or the plot is carefully advancing without you noticing it. Returning to Sound of Music and Les Miserables, these shows actually have TWO of these scenes, and the other two are far more poignant.

For Sound of Music, the scene in question is the kiss between Liesl and her baby Nazi boyfriend, Rolfe. The classic "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" serves as a precursor to her first kiss, and between the singing and prolonged dance section, it takes a looooooooong time to get there. But, here, the delay is justified. She and Rolfe are young, inexperienced and nervous about love. When they finally do kiss, it's an impulsive peck by Rolfe, before he runs off into the rain. All the foofering around delightfully illustrates his nervousness, even while he's trying to front maturity to her.

Les Miserables has it's second occurrence with Marius again, but this time, he's cradling Eponine during "A Little Drop of Rain." And, erm, spoiler alert I guess, but... SHE'S DYING! As an audience, we're all heartbroken, like Marius. You get the sense he didn't even know to expect the kiss she gives him at the end, because this is the first time she's desperate enough to make her feelings clear to him. It is, quite literally, her last chance. This subtext makes the scene far richer than any he shares with Cosette and helped launch the wallowing of a thousand lonely theatre girls, who forever see themselves in Eponine's tragic friend-zone fate.

So, now that we've explored this issue thoroughly, what are the best examples? In order to qualify for honors on this list, a scene must involve:

1) A love song.
2) At the conclusion of the song, the characters kiss
3) At some point, they preferably sing directly into each other's faces. Bonus points for volume.
4) While indulging in the pathos above, the scene still manages to progress the plot meaningfully
5) As in yes, there is kissing, but you aren't just waiting for them to get the singing over with so that they can kiss.

And now, for the awards for best use of the singing-in-face-leads-to-kissing trope...

Best Classic Example:

"If I Loved You" - Carousel

Despite having incredible music, this is one of those musicals you don't see very often any more, largely because sections of it haven't aged well. At all. It takes a... VERY outdated stance on a few issues, and I say this as someone who watches Howard Keel movies. But this song, guys. It's that good.

Rogers and Hammerstein were masters of the I-Swear-I'm-Not-In-Love-With-You song. "Sixteen Going on Seventeen," mentioned earlier, has aspects of this with the way Rolfe clearly has no clue what he's doing. More famously, Oklahoma has "People Will Say We're In Love," which is delightful, even while making you want to smack the people singing it. But those still aren't "If I Loved You."

There's a cat and mouse feel to the whole thing, as both Julie and Bill swear to the other that they don't love each other, but if they did? Well, they know exactly what that would be like. And what would it be like? It would involve failing to say it out loud, because they're both too nervous and proud to admit what they feel. They verbally dance in circles around each other during the song, underscoring the tension in their relationship, yet by the end, they can't help it! They must give in! And yes, we get that glorious kiss.

Bonus points: The sheer length of the scene. I'm amazed this song stays enjoyable when they're taking SO LONG to get to the point, but that's the beauty of a song that spells out multiple levels of character.

What could make it better: They actually face each other very little, and never sing at the same time in each other's faces. Wasted opportunity.

Best Lyric: Longin' to tell you/But afraid and shy/I'd let my golden chances/Pass me by

Best Comedic Example:

"The Night is Young and You're So Beautiful" - Robin Hood: Men in Tights

I had to break the rules a little here, since this number doesn't technically end in a kiss, but it gets pretty close. One of the running gags in this movie is that the characters aren't allowed to kiss, so that's part of why it gets a pass.

The other reason why is because in comedic songs, they don't tend to end with the kiss actually happening. Whether it's "Where is the Song that Goes Like This?" from Spamalot, "Love is Strange" from Galavant, "Let's Have Intercourse" from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or even "The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room" from Flight of the Conchords, the kiss doesn't come to be. Part of the comedy of the thing, I guess. But the purpose is pretty clear with all of these songs. They're designed to subvert our romance expectations and poke fun at the common tropes associated with these songs.

And with that disclaimer out of the way, the best of them is definitely the one Robin sings to Maid Marion. The whole scene kills me. Carey Elwes hams up his role fantastically, but it's Amy Yasbeck as Marion that really sells the scene for me. She's trying so hard to be into it for his sake, but she's mostly just startled and terrified by the theatrics. Man, this movie is a frickin' classic.

Bonus Points: He sings at her so forcefully her crown falls off her head.

What could make it better: Some sweeping camera angles? Spinning, maybe? I dunno, aside from the lack of a kiss, it's pretty perfect already.

Best lyric: What can I DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO??????

Best Disney Example:

"A Whole New World" - Aladdin

In the movie, both of Aladdin and Jasmine's kisses are scored to this classic, Oscar winning tune. So yes, there is technically a delay between the song and their first kiss, but the instrumentation comes in with the song when they kiss on the balcony and see??? At the end, they kiss as they sing a reprise of the song again. So it counts. It's my list, I say it counts.

This song has been overplayed a little, and even as a wee one back in 1992, I remember getting tired of hearing the pop version on the radio. But this list is all about context and how the scene plays into the overall narrative. And here, it absolutely works. Aladdin works his way up to their epic balcony kiss by giving Jasmine the adventure she was never able to have before. Within the context of the movie, the scene is wonderfully charming. And like the best of these song+kiss scenes, it's about more than their romance. It's about the thrill of discovery and magic of their world. Subtly, it's also about Jasmine putting together the pieces that Prince Ali is the same boy she fell for back when she dressed up as a commoner in Agrabah.

Bonus Points: A flying magic carpet! Obvious, I know, but you'll notice they do way more interesting things than stand in a gazebo or walk back and forth across a bridge.

What could make it better: If the balcony kiss came more immediately on the heels of the song so that I didn't feel like I'm fudging it a bit.

Best lyric: Hold your breath/It gets better.

But enough beating around the bush! You came for the best triumphant, end-of-song kiss, and there must be one! So what is it? What beats out all the others to be Emily's all around favorite scene of this variety? How do you beat Disney at dramatic musical theatre kisses?

You do it by looking at what the guys who wrote all your favorite Disney Songs did before coming to Disney. You go just a little Off Broadway to...

Best Dramatic Kissing Song

"Suddenly Seymour" - Little Shop of Horrors

So first off, fun fact:

Back when Disney was trying to kickstart their animation division again, Broadway was experiencing something of a revival. Both Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim were at the top of their game in the Eighties. What a time it must have been to be alive in New York city! They weren't the only ones doing great work either, with two talented, young writers named Howard Ashman and Alan Menken collaborating together on numerous smaller shows. The strongest of them, and the one that caught Disney's eyes, was Little Shop of Horrors.

Top to bottom, it's a fantastic musical, and once you know that the same people who wrote the music for Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast are helming it, you can never unhear how much the show sounds like a Disney movie. It's got their classic brand of villain song, as well as one of the best love ballads anywhere.

Mind you, "Suddenly Seymour" isn't a song that works great divorced from it's context. Part of why it's so good is because it's tailored to its characters. During the song, they both have the realization that they can and should be together. One of the many tragedies of this show (especially if you see the stage version, which is altogether far more tragic) is that it's taken so long for them to admit this to each other. Both Seymour and Audrey have adored and admired the other from a distance, but until this moment, they don't feel good enough for each other.

This song is so loaded with catharsis. Over the course of the show, we've watched Audrey go through so much abuse and heartache. In "Suddenly Seymour," he finally gets up the courage to put himself forward, Audrey works through part of her own baggage about life and love, and then together, the two of them beg the universe to let this moment last. This song is an absolute emotional ringer of a number.

It's also a good example of how these songs should work. At the beginning of the song, they are not ready to kiss. The emotion isn't there yet. They have to work their way through the emotions of the song and the little character transformations it involves before they reach the moment where they are ready to kiss. The song isn't a delay on the road to kissing, it's the vehicle by which they get there. As a result, it's so satisfying.

Bonus points: This song hits everything. Character transformation in the course of a single song, agonized wailing directly in each other's faces, interlocking melodies, plus a totally sincere smackeroo at the end. What else could you ask for?

What could make it better: As adorable as Rick Moranis is, I've generally preferred the live versions I've seen of this show to the filmed one. For one thing, I think there's some subtext lost to the song with the movie's happier ending.

Best lyrics: All of Audrey's verse. It breaks my heart every time, despite how silly the musical is.
Nobody ever treated me kindly/Daddy left early, Mama was poor/I'd meet a man and I'd follow him blindly/He'd snap his fingers. Me, I'd say, "sure."

You'll notice those lyrics don't seem to have a lot to do with loving Seymour, but that's what makes the song work so well. It points out how all the lies and garbage we believe about ourselves impacts our ability to seize love when it comes to us.

So if you're feeling lonely tonight, maybe get out there, grab someone attractive, and belt your personal issues at their face until you feel like kissing them. I mean... I've seen it work on stage.