“No one in our original cast, male or female, was remotely gay. I knew them all.”
I didn’t say they were.
Thanks for the correction on Jim Jabobs.
Do you disagree that the movie was gay kitsch?
It’s possible. Maybe the director(Randall Kleiser)was gay. I honestly don’t think I even sat through the movie, having seen bits and pieces of it accidentally from exposure on TV.What I saw of it was so completely different from the original play and the experience of being in it, I couldn’t force myself to see it all the way through. And Grease 2 I didn’t see at all. The movies looked way too slick and “jokey”, and that might be an element of kitsch. Self-conscious, not meant to be taken seriously..even the touring Broadway production a year or two later I saw with one of my old Chi castmates, Jim Canning,in his old part, who did it on B’way for years, and it was also too slick for my taste,all the actors overdoing “greaser” accents and playing everything to the back row, hyperkinetic movement, the usual things that irritate me about (some) B’way musicals. Besides, I didn’t know you were talking about the movie(s) so I was “defending the honor” of our modest Chicago production, which cost virtually nothing to produce and which drew all kinds of people in to see it. We did a quick impromptu show for Dick Clark (who said he might be interested) on a day we were usually dark, and still managed to get a couple hundred additional folks in the audience. Clark came up into the dressing room after the show and talked with us. It was great. One girl in the cast, who played Frenchy, apparently couldn’t resist doing some shtick, so she played a starstruck teenager and screamed “DICK CLARK!!” and crumpled to the floor, pretending to faint. Clark grinned faintly.