Cher Scholar visits Las Vegas. See the pics.
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…Mostly to have so much new fodder for CherScholaring.
Spoiler Alert: if you haven’t seen the new Las Vegas show and don’t want to hear about it, for God’s sake click away!
I’ve broken this post into two pages because it’s looong. And I’m even shaving out comments about show news, the program and the
But the length of this page is unavoidable. The fact is this show is a crucial point in the career of
1. It’s going to be judged against other major headliners at Caesars-famed Colosseum (my spell-check hates that coliseum is being spelled that way).
2. It’s a theatrical show in Vegas as opposed to a touring concert and it will be judged based on this.
3.
It is, in Celine Dion’s words, a new day. And much pop-scholarship should ensue.
I am not even going to pretend I can talk about anything else this week but that fact that I’m going to see a new (hopefully new?!) Cher show this weekend in Vegas which means I’m expecting an awesome marquee and oh God….the Cher store – I can’t even imagine what Cher crap apropos of nothing I’ll find there! I am like a kid in a toy store, a toy store of all Cher toys!! Wait….I think I may be starting to hyperventilate. Don’t tell my mother!
My Pavlov’s dog response to Cher product is disturbing on many levels. Main thing being I’ll be 40 next year. I’m too old for this. I am a grown up, I swear it! I’ve been making the argument for who will be president next year for about 9 months now and I’ve stopped letting American Idol eat away at my life’s precious hours. Surely, that proves something. (Although I do like the David’s a lot.)
To prove to you that I am a grownup with other interests this week besides the new Cher stuff (!!), here is a list of 10 other things I care about right now besides the Caesar’s Palace Cher Store:
- My processional wedding music. My bf nixed my first choice, “Jerusalem” by Herb Albert. I can’t do something as high-energy as I think he would like (I’m just too contemplative and low key) and I hate that Here Comes the Bride Wedding March. But don’t suggest I “process” to Cher music because that would make Cher Scholar’s mother cry.
- Although…I would like to find a dance re-mix of “Gypsys Tramps and Thieves” for the reception cos we need a good Cher song to dance to from the 70s…but I’m Cher-gressing again!
- Winning trivia last night at Kings Head pub in Santa Monica. We came and we clobbered. We squashed all the other teams the first time we played a year ago but we had a new team this time and I was worried that the Europeans on it would show up late. They’re on EPT you know: European People’s Time. As it was, we had the start time wrong and so at 30 and 50 minutes late, they still made it on time. And were very helpful to our clobberings.
- Ordering Audio-Visual equipment for my parent’s reunion & 50th anniversary in 6 weeks. My father and brother have made DVD home movies to show and my father made me record myself reading a poem my grandmother’s sister wrote which was a huge crisis for me because every time I played it back I got hysterical when I realized I have been developing Richard Nixon jowls. My bf eventually had to tape it for me.
- Showing my bf the great state of New Mexico soon, specifically Albuquerque and Santa Fe. We’re driving out from LA because we can’t afford airline prices right now…even with our $100 vouchers. He loves Arizona; just wait til he sees NM.
- Teaching our furkid Franz how to roll over. He’s acting very put out about it.
- Learning the brave new world of Microsoft Office 2007 products which are suddenly on my new work computer. I can’t find clippy! Actually to be honest with you, I’m happy clippy is dead. I just want to be able to find the Thesaurus again.
- My Dad’s birthday is Monday and I don’t think he’ll like the gift I sent him via Amazon. But really, he’s unnecessarily hard to shop for and he never tells me whether he likes my gifts anyway.
- I start a new ceramics class in June and the bf and I start yoga next week! Whoo hoo! Not even wedding plans can keep me from the mud.
- The Edgar Winter Dog’s birthday party is coming in a few weeks. I was thinking of either getting him doggie sunscreen (cos he’s an albino) or poop freeze that I saw in the Skymall catalog on the way to Paris.
I’m off the see the wizard. We’ll talk on the other side.
Okay…so the big day arrived this week and reviews are literally pouring in on Cher’s Caesar Place show. I don’t want to read them until I see the show next week. I don’t even want to look too hard at the photos. I don’t want to discuss the new stuff until I see it. Which is extremely, extremely hard!
In fact, for any of the other tours (there have only been three I’ve been able to see live in my lifetime – Heart of Stone, Believe, and Never Can Say Goodbye), I’ve never been able to resist. And I’m getting very, very excited about seeing the show and reading over everybody’s thoughts. I just hope I don’t get hit by a bus before I can see it! (I always think that right before new Cher product drops).
In fact, I don’t feel like talking about anything else but this thing I can’t talk about!!
But I did post my France pics and here are the Cher-centric ones:
John on the Seine like that Sonny & Cher album back cover pic.
Don’t these chateaux entryways look like Cher’s house??
I can totally see why Cher wants to be buried at Pere LaChaise cemetery in Paris. It’s very goth. I can see her with a tomb not unlike the one above, but hopefully with some subtle half-breed design in the stained glass…hey, for the fans.
Cher river, Cher valley, Cher county seat…lots of Cherness in the Loire Valley.
I can also take this time to answer a few Cher questions from the blog.
Jimmy wrote:
“AND, Mary, why haven’t you digressed about the fact that these unlikely 3 would do something together so out-of-line for their personalities???? love and kisses-jimmy”
Jimmy is right. I could easily do an essay about the old 70s-variety format and how we just don’t get miraculous celebrity combinations singing medleys apropos of nothing like we did back in the day. It’s heartbreaking because I’d watch any show that could convince Bono to sing a Madonna medley with Barney and Tiger Woods. Who wouldn’t watch that?? It’s TV Gold.
Michael asked:
“Okay, so combining “she’s overdue a juicy boxed-set” and “It’s my dream job really”…How about you tell us what you would put in the ultimate Cher box? Anything you ever wanted on CD, DVD, books, whatever. I’m totally curious what you’d put.
There’s so much I could do as curator of a Chersonian Institute. Really, I don’t know where to start. Her video collection needs a serious overhaul. More and more we’re finding amazing gems of foreign video clips for old Cher hits on the you-tubes.
I haven’t wrapped my head around what a good box-set of CDs would be. I know the mix I normally make my friends has too many non-hits on it to ever make bank. Other than the obvious of doing notes for the four-CD Warner Bros 1975-1977 re-release collection we’re so overdue, I don’t know what other regurgitation of her greatest hits I would feel morally okay with dumping into the pile of too-many-already.
I would love to do a coffee-table book of photographs and essays compiled by various writers on Cher’s career and her cultural relevance. That would be the dreamiest.
Excitement is brewing for the new Cher show in Las Vegas (premiering in just 6 days). I’m very excited, speaking for myself. Although I must say gas prices have inhibited my ability to afford a plane ticket to Vegas for the weekend I’m going to see it. They’re off the charts. And I even have a $100 voucher. Big sigh. I may end up driving, which I enjoy anyway. I just want to use the damn voucher before it expires in two months. But I digress…
- Cher was on ET Wednesday (and will be again tonight) talking about the new show: http://www.etonline.com/news/2008/05/61152/index.html
- ET also posted her uncensored commentary:
http://www.etonline.com/news/2008/04/61115/index.html - And thank God for taxonomy and tagging – all Cher pieces currently on ET can be found: http://www.etonline.com/index.html?tag=cher
Also, this week Oprah filmed Tina Turner and Cher in her Las Vegas episode which is set to air on May 8. Set thee Tivos. Here’s a link to some of the gossip about the episode which was posted on Cher World.
Other links this week
In light of that, there was a funny blog post last week from The Cher Show, the episode with Tina Turner and Kate Smith and it reminds us how charismatic Tina and Cher are together. The blog post is funny, too.
And two good links were posted this week on the Cher list from Tyler. There’s a new mashup!!! I love these! Cher with Snoop Dog! Here’s the MP3.
And Gregg and Cher singing "Move Me" in concert.
Last year a PHD at the University of Southern California sent me a link to her thesis paper on how Sonny & Cher defined celebrity marriage as a marketing strategy. She uses Nick and Jessica as an example of a modern celebrity marriage that she says heralds back to Sonny & Cher. Although now I wonder if Liz Taylor and Richard Burton were also a couple-as-one-marketable-celebrity-entity, too.
The copy of the paper I read was a longer, looser draft but essentially the same points were covered. The PHD student, Charisse L’Pree Corsbie-Massay, has now posted the essay on her website.
Her basic theory is that “the star couple creates its own marketing machine” which for S&C she dubs The Bono Plan. Star couples create their own unique celebrity entity. The marriage even helps solidify an individuals celebrity stature by giving them a safe-sex storyline and grounding their singular (sometimes scandalous) behaviors off-camera. Plus it’s all juicy biography material later on.
Okay, I’m making it sound more salacious than the theory really is. Although Corsbie-Massay does quote someone named Dyer who says “Marriage is a perpetual tabloid scandal.”
Drawbacks of this plan include the fact that you have to let strangers into your private life, or some staged (in Cher’s variety-show case) or edited (in Jessica’s reality-how case) version thereof. But the result is that the audience feels included somehow in your personal space. In any case, you need a constant medium to transmit your couple brand: for Sonny & Cher TV show and tabloids and for Nick and Jessica TV show and tabloids.
But then the PHD brings in the big guns: somehow this whole marketing plan ends up solidifying sexist cultural norms regarding husband and wife roles. In other words, the wife usually gets slotted “in her place” attempting to submit to the husband. When I think of this theory in terms of Liz Taylor, it’s interesting how hard she seemed to fight that exact subservience.
In Cher’s case, she could be feminist on the show with her suggestive banter, but be a proper wife and mother off-camera. In fact Corsbie-Massay credits Cher with helping to “spearhead the women’s lib movement” on air and I would agree with that assessment. Through image and attitude and the show’s opening duologue storylines, Cher made a statement of breaking out of subservient roles, no matter what the private reality of their lives was behind closed doors. In the draft I read, Corsbie-Massay says Cher’s “role as a feminist icon is obvious.” But here is where I think Cher actually gets short shift and is not often enough acknowledged for her role as a 70s independent feminist icon.
Corsbie-Massay provides a very interesting reading of Cher’s pre-variety-show biography with all it’s politics, counter-culturalism and early marketing strategies. And her research weights on Peter Bogdanovich’s article from 1966 in The Saturday Evening Post, one of the first scholarly-toned and critical piece on Cher. I know…Bogdanovich can be annoyingly cerebral and pompous, but the article is certainly worthy re-reading and an important piece on Cher, not only for the controversy regarding what it says about S&C but for that controversy’s impact on Cher and Bogdanovich’s relationship when he directed her in Mask.
It’s also interesting when Corsbie-Massay discusses how S&C were different than Nick and Jessica, how they embraced their physical flaws and ethnicity (whereas Jessica and Nick tried to snuff theirs).
In the initial draft Corsbie-Massay also briefly discussed how Iranian women associated with Cher’s "swarthy complexion and powerful presence" and how they emulated her. I am dying to know more about this. How did their television show get to Iran in the first place? And Cher’s influence on women of color is also grossly under-evaluated.
Unfortunately I did not get to go to the Pasadena Playhouse and see the musical resurrection of the movie Mask. I only had one friend who was willing to go with me and then only with half-price tickets which were available but I was in France for most of the show’s run and then my friend had to go to New York during the last week of the run. So no cookies for me. Or "I Ride With Rocky" buttons which were allegedly available in the lobby.
I was curious to hear the new songs written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (who have done Barry Manilow songs I have loved before). The musical also promised to flesh out the story a bit more with a longer running time. Unfortunately, the reviews weren’t all that great.
Sean Mitchell of the LA Times made these points:
“When a play or musical derives from a popular movie, even one more than 20 years old, it is hard — if not impossible — to put the film out of your mind, certainly when staged within commuting distance of Hollywood.”
“Allen E. Read, a young actor with a wonderful, emotive tenor, makes Rocky every bit as vivid and touching as Stoltz did. In the other two roles, however, the actresses tend to remind us of how good Cher and Dern were on-screen.”
“The main set, by Robert Brill, provides a painterly evocation of the Southern California suburbs, with a hazy sky dominated by power lines, dark palms and the crests of the San Gabriels. It is humble Azusa, to be precise…”
“A biker clan revealed as an unexpected cradle of homespun values is a hard sell, but it’s the sort of transaction made possible through the wiles of Hollywood and musical theater.”
Mitchell actually liked the Mann and Weil music, but didn’t feel the cast pulled off the energy needed to perform them successfully. I was surprised to hear that the character Dozer had some lead vocals. Wasn’t he was mute in the film? He sings "Close to Heaven,"
“describing to Rocky the transcendent experience of cruising the Black Hills of South Dakota on the way to an annual bikers’ convention.” (Mitchell)
We can picture Cher there at that convention, no? Other songs include:
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"Look at Me" sung near those fun-house mirrors.
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"I Can’t" with Rusty singing about drug abuse. Mitchell describes this number interestingly as “her cathartic Act 2 explanation to the Tribe (during an intervention) that her drug abuse is all about enduring the tragedy of her misshapen son. And for some reason, she bestows on Rusty an intrusive Brooklyn accent.”
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"It’s a Beautiful World" sung at blind camp when Rocky teaches Diana about colors.
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"Planet Vulkturn" a song which Mitchell describes as “Rocky’s stoically defiant response to being rejected by Diana’s parents.”
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"Do It for Love" with Rocky singing about The Trojan War in history class.
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"A Woman So Beautiful" lovingly sung by Gar about Rusty.
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"Every Birth" which Mitchell says is “describing every mother’s hope for her newborn, slide projections reveal photographs of Rocky as a normal-looking adorable baby, followed by clinical pictures of his later, slowly emerging freakishness. Ouch. Try adding music to that.”
Overall Mitchell felt the musical was too long, a bit mawkish and not cohesive enough, even though the book was written by the screenwriter, Anna Hamilton Phelan, and the film’s makeup man Michael Westmore was also involved but couldn’t “rescue this overwrought idea from itself.”
Full review: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-mask24mar24,0,7180256.story
Another review on Blogcritics written by Robert Machray described the original film this way:
“The tearjerker was a highly successful vehicle for Eric Stoltz, Laura Dern, and the inimitable Cher.”
Inimitable. I love it. It means not capable of being imitated.
He goes on to say,
“Despite the fact that the story was based on real people, it was not the easiest movie to sit through despite its stellar cast and uplifting message. Add music to the mix, and believability is stretched too far.”
Like Mitchell, Machray likes the bike anthem “Look At Me” and “Planet Volturn” (these two reviews spell it differently…I always thought Cher was saying Planet Voltron, myself). But overall Machray says,
“The problem is that several of the numbers are delivered down center, as in a concert, doing nothing to further the action and serving only to tell us more about the character. This can make the show drag, especially at its staggering two hour and 45 minute length. The acting is also a mixed bag. While the principals are all quite good, the chorus is often, well, chorusy. The scenes in the classroom are quite obnoxious…”
However,
“The sets by Robert Brill evoke California’s gorgeous sky, power lines, palm trees, and the San Gabriel Mountains.
Living in LA, I would have loved to have seen their depictions of the Inland Empire, which is the main thing that struck me after watching the movie Mask for the first time after moving here.
Full review: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/03/27/122433.php
The run ended on April 13 and wasn’t extended. Of Mice and Men is playing there in a few days.
Exactly how many Cher songs can one play at a wedding? Is there a Miss Etiquette rule on that? Hmmm. Anyway, thank you for your well wishes. I have lots of planning to do and would be grateful for any tips. Plus, I still have Paris-trip wrap-up to do. Hopefully next week. In the meantime, behold some new Cher links:
There was a great Entertainment Weekly blog post on Cher’s performance of West Side Story in her 1978 TV special and why this means Cher should perform every role in everything from now on.
Another blogger talks about the value on the dollar of a Cher Vegas show vs a Celine Dion Vegas show. She rambles a bit but I think I get her point: Cher is more than the sum of her parts. Is that the point?
And here’s news! Yahoo Music’s list of the 10 most annoying singers of all time and Cher’s not on it!! What a relief. Unfortunately, Celine Dion is.
Apropos of nothing, I found that crazy picture of Cher while searching "Cher Store." I was hoping to find a sneak peak of the Caesars boutique soon to open. This photo, taken during for her many gym ads of the 80s post-Mask with her skunk-do, is crazy-odd. Is it the angle that’s so freakified?
I’m back from my two-week trip to Paris. It’s been a bit of a crazy week managing between personal announcements, dramas, getting back into the swing of work and dealing with my general jet lag and discombobulation being back in the United States. It will take me a bit to get back up to speed with CherStuff.
In the meantime I will make these two small posts. Before our trip my bf answered a question posted by jimmydeanPartee on March 25, 2008:
I would like to know from your boyfriend — what it is like being the significant-other of a SONNY & CHER fanatic like you and me…I ask because I know throughout my entire life everyone around seems jealous of my S&C devotion..plus, should IIIII ever get a boyfriend…
First of all, I’d link to point out the fact that this issue of finding a Cher-positive lover was once covered in my first Cher Zine, the answer to which appears on CherScholar.com: http://www.cherscholar.com/cherschool-2.htm#odyssey
However, this is John’s personal response:
I admit there was a time when I thought it’d be easier telling my friends I’d joined al Qaeda than admitting I was going to a Cher concert. But, after years of hiding in my cubicle at work surreptitiously listening to the new Cher-mix Mary had purchased off the Internet (which, by the way, always sounded strikingly similar to the last Cher mix Mary purchased off the Internet, except for some mystically incomprehensible rearrangement of the song order), hoping the ex-Marines I work with wouldn’t be able to make out the tinny strains of "Do you believe in life after love" coming from my Walgreens headphones, I have honestly embraced Cher. Oh, believe me, there were still frequent moments of awkward silence, for example when I told my Harley-riding, Vietnam-veteran friend Andrew that I was traveling to La Jolla with Mary to hear the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus sing a tribute to Cher a few years back.
But over time, you begin not to notice the blank stares and gaping mouths so much, sort of the way black people, midgets, and hair bands must feel when they stop at hillbilly truck stops and must go in and order lunch from some toothless waitress who’s afraid to approach their table for fear of catching something. But honestly, all it took was one trip to the Cher Convention and I was hooked. I met some of the most sincere, fun, and yes, completely obsessed people I’ve ever met (and I’m a former drunk!), and I love every one of them.
So, when you ask me what it’s like living with a Cher fanatic, I’d have to say it’s like 1962 and I’m a 26-year-old short Sicilian dude from Inglewood who just met a 15-year-old runaway dropout who looks kinda hot and I’m thinking to myself, maybe, just maybe, there’s something here. In other words, it’s pure excitement.
And, besides, you haven’t lived until you’ve made love in a Sonny and Cher costume…I still haven’t found that damn mustache!
Note to readers from Cher Scholar: I saw many things that reminded me of Cher in France (more pictures of such to come but here’s one above: the fabulous chateau Chenonceau on the Cher River). It was truly a trip of a lifetime in many ways, the highlights being the amazing food we ate, the mind-boggeling history (from Roman ruins to Napoleon’s tomb to James Joyce and Ernest Hemmingway sights near our lovely hotel in the Latin Quarter), and the walk home after one diner at a Turkish cafe (where I got a little tipsy on a small bottle of Turkish wine) where near the steps of The Pantheon my bf proposed marriage. After three years of witnessing wonton Cher obsession, my nagging health issues (my knee completely gave out in Paris and I swear I’m in the beginnings thoes of menopause), I answered simply that I hope he knows what he’s getting into.
While I was in Paris, I saw nary a piece of French Cher product. Not for lack of looking for it once in a while. However, I did score a Miriam Makeba CD called Reflections from 2004. It consists of remakes of her most famous or favorite songs. As you know, on the 1968 Cher album Backstage, Cher covered Makeba’s "The Click Song."
The remake of "The Click Song" on Reflections is lovely, modern and fresh. As are her remakes of "Mas Que Nada", "Xica De Silva" (a very kewl song), and "Pata Pata." Those are well-worth the album price. But the two jazz songs at the top of the album are quite dull (but note, I’m normally annoyed by any percussion sound that comes from a thing that looks more like a brush than a stick) and the feel-good pop-African songs at the end feel like filler.
I learned more about Makeba in the liner notes. She was banned from South Africa for her speaking out at the UN against Apartheid early in her career and lived as an ex-patriot in Guinea West Africa for many years. She recently opened (circa 2004) for Paul Simon’s shows.
She’d be worth checking out.
