What's it like to star in a flop?

There was a London West End musical life of Leonardo Da Vinci which the critics hated, partly because it featured a fictional female love interest when Leonardo is generally believed to have been gay. It was financed by the island nation of Nauru using proceeds from its guano fertilizer business, prompting every critic to say they had found a way to turn crap into crap.

My Dad told me about another West End disaster called "Fire Angel". Every West End theatre has little signage areas out front where they put press quotes about the show. Even with a terrible show they can always quote critics saying something positive, even if it's only about one song or one actor. However, no review said anything good about the show, so the signs all had snippets like "Fire Angel is a musical" - The Times.

I went to see Manor at opening night. I thought it was OK, I was entertained. Was weird to find out (just now!) that it had got an absolute mauling in the press. It makes me wonder if I have terrible taste, and to what extent the 'quality' of a work of art is constructed after the fact by a social in-group (the critics).

Relatedly, I've started watching movies at random, without reading reviews before or after, to try to develop a sense of what I actually enjoy. Whether I have any real critical faculties at all. Perhaps it is all just received opinion. I re-watched League of Extraordinary Gentlemen last night though, and can confirm that it is in fact bad.

My Dad starred in an epic flop which ironically got raves from John Simon, a much-feared theater critic for New York Magazine. Unfortunately, his positive review was not enough to rescue the play, which promptly closed after (I think) 2 or maybe 3 performances.

https://slleiter.blogspot.com/2021/06/589-whitsuntide-from-m...

Actors need to grow an iron hide. My pop went on to have a decent career with small parts in big movies, bigger roles in some low-budget films, and a few commercials to pay the bills. The writer of the flop, Tom La Bar, was my dad's mate in the Marine Corps. They lived interesting lives.

Art is about risk. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I've been "lucky" enough to be in theatrical flops, and start-up flops. The mood is very similar -- the sort of constant background nervousness, and the tricks you play to keep your motivation up. I liked this piece for describing something that you never feel at the time, which is the transitory and arbitrary nature of the failure. The show that I was in which was called "the worst show on the (Edinburgh) Fringe" was directed, written and and starred folks that would go on to be well-known as very talented, popular performers; and in different combinations the folks in the start-up would be the engines behind much more successful companies.

Of course, it could have all been my fault as the common element, but I'd rather not think about that :)

I've always wondered if actors know while they are filming it that the movie is going to be terrible or if they can't tell until it is finished.

Kinda makes me wonder how the live action Cowboy Bebop actors took it. There was so much buildup for the show.

Working in feature film visual effects for several years, when an obvious flop goes through the studio it casts a dark depressing cloud over the entire 2000 person operation, despite the film being only one of 4-6 productions in the studio at that time. Regardless, the work requires painful attention to detail and long hours - which seem to double in length when the film content is stupid, poorly executed, and we (the VFX team) have an irrational hope from the filmmakers that the VFX will somehow polish their turd. It really hurts the entire studio, dragging on all productions.

Yet, worst than working on a flop is working on what everyone recognizes will be a Best Picture Oscar candidate, and the filmmakers are hell bent on driving your studio out of business with their extreme demands. It was extremely painful to be at Rhythm & Hues during the making of "Life Of Pi" - we knew it was gonna win Best Picture and we knew it was bankrupting our company and ending our jobs.

I found it fascinating that the London theatre business is such that a play must continue running for a minimum period (described in the article) even if it's a failure. That's really bizarre.

In my younger childless life, I used to go to the theatre fairly often and even had a Goodman subscription. I don't think I ever saw anything that would have qualified as a flop or even an artistic failure, but the Chicago theatre scene is pretty vibrant. While we lived in Los Angeles, we went to the theatre less often, but again a pretty vibrant theatre scene although not as risk-taking as Chicago (many smaller venues seemed to be actor-financed productions meant to catch casting directors' eyes, but none of these actor-producers had Ed Wood–like blindness to bad production, at least none that I saw).

My sense is that New York is a lot more risk-averse, especially in the main stages. Perhaps things get more daring in smaller venues in the outer boroughs?

Sounds a bit like the work I've done for a startup I eventually knew was dead, followed by the position I was hired into for a contract that never went through... but at least I didn't have an audience for those!

(That dotcom burst thing suuuuuuucked.)

Look Look sounds really interesting. I wonder if it's possible to get copies of the script to do a table read, I've been wanting to get occasional table reads together with my friends, even if just over Zoom.

> ”The first thing you do is tell all your friends who have booked tickets to cancel.“

Beyond a certain level of awful wouldn’t it become ironically amusing to watch especially with your friend in the show?