Ben Platt – This Had Oscar Buzz

To settle your post-Oscar hangover, we’re cracking open the Class of 2021 films this week and we’ve invited Muppeturgy co-host Adam Grosswirth to join us. Dear Evan Hansen follows a titular teen battling severe social anxiety, who fabricates a friendship with his bully after he dies by suicide, and faces the consequences of his lie when he goes viral. After emerging victorious from the 2017 Tonys with a Best Musical win and cementing star Ben Platt’s performance into theatre legend, the musical was destined for a whole other kind of THOB legend. Once the trailer dropped, skepticism and mockery of the near-30 Platt playing a teen went rampant, and vicious reviews made the film DOA.

This episode, we unpack the many problems inherent to the material and the attempts to soften them on film that only… make more problems. We also discuss the 2017 Tony season, Julianne Moore attempting the risk of a singing role, Amy Adams disappointing recent years, and the origins of the songwriting oeuvre of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

Topics also include The Politician, director Stephen Chbosky’s association to multiple failed movie musicals, and orchard confusion.

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And we’re backbackback again with a special BONUS episode this week to talk about our experience will the films of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival! The big prize winner for US Dramatic Competition was A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One, and Chris was wowed by it. We talk about our shared love for new films from our beloved Nicole Holofcener, Ira Sachs, and gnarly debut horror film by Laura Moss, birth/rebirth. We also get into the divisiveness of Magazine Dreams and Eileen, the crowdpleasing delights of Theatre Camp, Celia Weston LARPing in colonial garb in A Little Prayer, and lots more!

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Tag: Ben Platt

234 – Dear Evan Hansen (with Adam Grosswirth!)

BONUS – Sundancing On My Own