Andrew Lloyd Webber thought the Cats movie was so horrible that he bought a dog. Seriously.

Hey, I still like actual cats, they are awesome.

It’s just like you said, a collection of poems with no connected narrative is a really bad choice for source material for a film.

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People are still occasionally managing to make successful stage and movie productions by stringing together unrelated existing IP into a narrative. Some efforts are more successful than others.

(And TIL about the term “jukebox musical.”)

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I think the movie is just amazing. Amazing for all of the wrong reasons, but watched with some friends and a couple of beers it’s a great time.

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is Cats the play where everyone skates around and there are all kinds of neon lights and stuff?

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I’m … not sure how to feel about that. It’s magnificent and horrifying. A little like the real thing I guess.

I may have nightmares.

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I thought the film was mostly fun, and pretty much what I expected it was going to be going into it (never saw the play, love the poems). The biggest issue I did have with it was that Webber completely disregarded Eliot’s wonderful sense of rhythm, which is completely Webber’s fuckup and nothing to do with the film at all.

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Was he in the right theater?

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Because for some reason the article didn’t provide the one thing I wanted from it: a picture of the doggo.

(Sorry, couldn’t find one without the guy in it)

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That’s an “innie” - not an “outie”

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The outie is for a prolapse.

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All I need to know about Cats the musical I learned from the incessant and unceasing TV ads for the original Broadway production at the Winter Garden Theater… No idea what kind of cushy deal they cut with WPIX to air it so frequently (nearly two decades that I can recall), but whichever salescritter held that account must have made bank!

I checked the googs and verified I wasn’t alone in remembering this. Behold the lamentation (begins about halfway down the page, though the first part of the write-up goes nicely with @pesco’s OP) from someone else who grew up with these commercials too: The Commercial For The Broadway Show “CATS” Ruined My Life | Barstool Sports

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I still have trouble wrapping my head around that concept.

He also did one about singing trains, played by people in shiny costumes zipping about the stage on roller skates.

He knows fuck all about taste but I think he knows a lot about coke.

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That’s not the musical, though. That’s the BBQ.

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And then the big song made from a mashup of Ravel’s bolero and as couple of poems from Eliot’s first book that are completely unrelated and tonally opposite to the kid friendly cat book he did.

I’ve never seen it but its success has mystified many as it was an obvious pile of shite.

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You’re thinking of the play in which an opera aficionado is so impoverished he can only afford to buy half a mask, steals a full mask, and is pursued by a policeman.

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all that green screening did not impress me a lot… at all thank you and good night

Rich people make the laws, what more is there to understand? :wink:

(Although I’d argue that there’s some good in the idea of an unelected second house. To remove ‘popularity politics’ and ‘there’s an election coming up’ from policy making. If only there was a way to ditch all the other baggage that comes along with ‘unelected’).

Wait, weren’t we supposed to be talking about a dog?

Seriously. Now he gets how terrible the play was?

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