Back when we had an Internet but no Facebook yet, a lot of our arguing was done on what were called Newsgroups — which I believe still exist but now Facebook is a much handier place to call someone an idiot. I once was involved with a lot of discussions on a newsgroup about Broadway-style musicals.
It was a gathering place for folks who claimed to love musical comedies but I was amazed how many of them seemed to live for the opportunity to trash some new production of something. There were people there who didn't seem to think anything was any good…and boy, were they happy when something flopped. There's no schadenfreude like theatrical schadenfreude.
As I get older, I have less tolerance for lists of The World's Worst Movies, The World's Worst Records, The World's Worst Comic Books, The World's Worst Cartoons, etc. I have one acquaintance who I doubt has ever seen a movie that he didn't describe at the time as "The worst movie ever made." They're all "The worst movie ever made!" Not long ago, we had approximately the following conversation…
HE: That movie I saw last night was the worst movie ever made.
ME: I thought the movie you saw last Saturday was the worst movie ever made.
HE: Oh, God, it was. The worst movie ever made.
ME: You cannot by definition have two films be the worst movie ever made. One of them must have been the second-worst.
HE: No, they were both the worst movie ever made.
ME: Why do you even go to movies if every one of them is the worst movie ever made? That's like saying, "Hey, tonight, I think I'll go eat the worst meal I ever had!"
HE: Not every movie I ever see is the worst movie ever made.
ME: Okay, name one that wasn't. Name one from the last three years.
HE: [Long pause while he tries to think of one.]
ME: [Trying to be helpful:] The Big Short?
HE: The Big Short? Are you kidding? That was the worst movie ever made.
ME: The Martian? Moonlight? The Shape of Water?
HE: No, those were all the worst movie ever made. Oh, I know one I liked! Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri!
ME: You told me that was the worst movie ever made!
HE: Well, maybe I did. But everything else has been so much worse so that one's looking pretty good now.
ME: Okay but you haven't told me why you still go to movies.
HE: Because I love movies.
ME: Just not 98% of them.
HE: Well…I have high standards.
I don't buy that. Maybe with some people but not with this guy. I think he hates movies because he's not part of that industry. It's not high standards. It's jealousy and resentment and maybe an inability to understand and/or respect how much hard work and best intentions go into even films that ultimately please very few people. I'm not saying there aren't bad movies — obviously there are plenty of them and reviewers should help identify them. But I sometimes can't take the glee some people show when they find something they can trash. They go in praying for it to be attackable.
This article started off to be about the musical Minnie's Boys which opened on Broadway in 1970 and closed there, eighty performances later. It has been said that it only ran that long because a segment of the theatergoing community bought tickets to chortle about how poor it was and to savor the schadenfreude. Its failure obviously pleased some.
I saw a production of it last night — a staged reading, actually — and I was going to write about it when I wandered a bit off-topic. Ill try to get on-topic by tomorrow. It was not the worst musical ever, as some have called it. I liked some of it but am not surprised it wasn't a smash and I'll try to tell you why I thought that.