Full transcript of “The Greatest Showman (2017) dir. Michael Gracey | Showgays: A Movie Musical Podcast”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:04 uh tell me the story about this uh that PT Barnum did you end up you must have done a bunch of research and read yeah about a lot uh he's an amazing character he was a true Pioneer a bit of a disrupter like I I think of him as a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk he saw the world completely differently to anybody else and he had this idea to change entertainment art at that time was kind of Stuffy it was Opera it was meant to elevate him into civilizing he was like you know screw that let's just have some fun let's make it for everybody he really invented pop culture so it was first of all in the form of a museum and then it became the circus and The Greatest Show on Earth and he really redefined marketing he redefined entertainment as we know it today but after a series of show-stopping musical numbers this social climbing con
0:51 man will be met with lifelong success and happiness maybe you are a fraud maybe it was just about making a buck oh they're only you quick do a hat trick witness this real-life Willy Wonka but instead of selling kids candy he's selling kids tickets to laugh at the Oompa Loompas where the tragedy of these people's exploitation is brushed aside I'm not laughing anyway kids might as well get paid to spend more time with two perfect physical specimens a lot of ugly face before the two seconds of pretty face so do you switch from the the the face to the like that like the actual close-up shot yeah it's definitely a conscious Choice it starts with it because it's uncomfortable right and
1:37 then and then as soon as I felt that lift happen you 've Fallen that was it and then as soon as you dropped like [ __ ] let me down I want to see that tape my face would be like hysterically [Laughter] um [Music] not Jack Frost not Olaf not a reindeer named Rudolph I'm Frosty [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you
2:23 [Music] foreign [Music] talk to my friends talk to my friends back to me I hate this movie um hello welcome back um starting off strong [Music] um are we are all three in different locales today
3:09 um RJ I mean Molly and I are just normally where we are RJ is in the far-flung Tropics of Phoenix and by tropics I mean desert desert how is it it's fine nothing has changed from my family's home there's boxes everywhere you know there's snacks in every room every room has a pile of snacks I am not joking every room uh which is funny now because Adam won't let me eat in the bedroom and I've always been like I'm not eating on the bed I'm like on the chair and that now I'm fully seeing uh what he means great Molly how are you oh good I was gonna
3:55 ask what the temperature is there RJ it is uh 64 degrees so it was very nice out it's still a light jacket you know yeah I'm jealous but at least it's not tormenting me it was 50 degrees here in Madison yesterday which was so exciting and now it's 20 again so oh no it's been 40 years in Chicago it hasn't dropped down here yet oh yeah it's 46 right now so but all the snow has melted and so everywhere is wet and Friedrich hates walking in in the wet you should get in booties I did that for Sam in the last few years of his life because he got more Persnickety about the cold weather and he didn't love the booties but he liked them better than the snow and ice and salt and stuff he does prance when he's has
4:43 the boots on it's very yeah yeah full Bambi um well I'm well thank you um how were you Adam yes did you celebrate George Washington and Abraham Lincoln's birthdays um yeah nothing but respect for my presidents which do include Eisenhower Nixon Reagan first push second bush another [Laughter] Bush no it's fine I didn't do anything I RJ had to go to the airport this morning at 5 30 in the morning so
5:30 um I got home and then my mom had to get to her train station at eight we had to leave here at eight so by the time I got back I was like well I'm not gonna go I'm not gonna go to sleep for an hour and then get back and you know what I mean so I just like stayed up had a cup of coffee took Mom to the train station came back and then another cast out another club passed out and then woke up at noon and I was like well I guess I'll start my day this week I have the arduous task of succinctly summarizing the plot of the greatest Showman um so RJ if you could uh tell me when to
6:18 start Adam this is your one minute summary of the greatest showman in your time starts now Phineas Taylor Barnum is the son of a poor Taylor in love with the local rich girl named charity they have two children but a humble life in New York City he is terminated from his job as a shipping clerk when the company goes bankrupt but Khan's way to using the shipping vessel's Deeds as collateral for a new uh theater space which will hold Barnum's American Museum it's just essentially a wax museum his daughters give him the idea to have living people as part of the show and he employs a number of people on the outskirts of society for different quote abnormalities although tawdry the popularity of the venue allows him to
7:05 earn success but it isn't enough because critics don't like what he's done he Bears who the theater producer named Carlisle to tour with Jenny Lind the Great opera star from Sweden around the country neglecting his business and his family when that falls through he relearns the meaning of I don't know being true to yourself there's a fire his theater burns down but then he uses tents and yes this movie sucks but Zendaya is okay that's all right and that's one minute nice look at that we've we've hit a nice balance of plot and snark I believe so that we don't get twittered about it I believe it's Zendaya yeah okay I apologize as Michi as Zendaya as Michi as Mary
7:50 Jane MJ as everything hopefully that's yeah if she could just be an automobile is there anything is there any big thing in the plot that I missed like what is the plot of this movie this is this was genuinely my question I think you talked about the plot that had the most screen time Maybe there are B and C plots but I think you covered the main plot yeah um and The Listener she said B and Z plots as in a Range B to Z yeah there are so many plots we cover the rest of the alphabet B to Zendaya foreign
8:36 so I'm gonna start since I brought this I essentially brought this musical to the table this week um because I am a masochist um and my relationship to this musical is RJ and I saw this um in theaters we did not like go opening day but we went in like it was like a Christmas release so we went at like Christmas time around there and it is the first I think it's the first movie let alone movie Musical that I have ever considered walking out of wow because I disliked it so immensely um and I can't even tell you I think it was early on that I was like this is not for me
9:21 uh but I don't remember which part specifically but I was like I'm not gonna because we we also had like AMC A-list or whatever was it MoviePass back then I don't remember whichever it was Movie Pass back then so we were like seeing it for free basically so I was like I could have just left but I was like no I'll stick it out because it's a musical it's a musical yeah we really tried very hard to give it as many benefits of doubts and I would like to say that when I saw I re-watched when RJ and I rewatched it the other night I was like I went into it and I was like I want to I don't think I'm going to like it again but I want to see if like maybe I'm like oh I was a little harsher on that than it and no I don't think it was but
10:08 it's fine um so RJ is your story basically the same as mine your relationship very good it wasn't us it was one of those dine-in theaters that I was like I think one of the first ones so it was really old like the screen it was not redone the screens weren't updated it was so bright like it was really bright and what's funny is that I think we watched cats and kind of like I think the same theater um no we we watched cats no that's in one of the new ones that they had redone okay but I just remember it being so
10:53 bright that I was like I was already kind of like thrown it back by like okay what is this dining experience gonna be like I don't remember what I had I think it was nachos it was fine um I just remember leaving it being like at least we was dying in but the dining wasn't even that good and I don't think we drank enough I don't remember being I don't believe I had a drink which is really the unfortunate that position here Fasteners need to know exactly what you ate what you want absolutely that is my perspective because at least I could have like the food to to be a silver lining but it wasn't even I didn't even have that so and then the other thing the only other
11:39 thing I want to say about our experience of this movie was that like everyone we knew in Orlando loved this movie uh our Facebook feeds were full of long posts multiple times and then also saw it when we redid it as like a sing-along and like went and saw it then and I was like and I think we we didn't have any we didn't know any criticism at that point so we were like I mean everyone just said it was really good so let's try it let's watch it yeah Molly uh what is your you didn't you hadn't seen this right this is your first time I've never seen it before um so I knew that it came out because it got promoted a lot and I knew it was about PT Barnum but that was about it I
12:25 had heard the song this is me before um but that was the only song I had heard um and I but I feel like I should give my take as well on it um because you guys just gave so so many opinions and you know I have a professional obligation because I am a theater scholar who deals with disability studies as well that I want to give the disclaimer up top that I've very complicated feelings about how disability is portrayed in this film so I want to put that like as a pin before I say my next comment which is that I enjoyed this movie Molly no no I'm turning the zoom off I'm kicking Molly out of the chat and me and RJ are gonna go back to old showgaze and it's just gonna be us to talk about it I
13:10 didn't love everything about it I thought that they didn't pick the best plot lines to be following but I enjoyed the time watching it and felt it was a competently made movie and I watched it thinking what is Adam's problem with this movie because I don't know why you would feel so strongly that it is terrible well this is my quest I'll get into it when we talk about the movie but okay well that's very interesting um I definitely respect you less now I can definitely say that as a person as an intellectual yeah you respect me as the woman oh yeah is gobsmacked I am gobsmacked [Laughter]
14:01 um well let's talk about I don't know the movie I guess so uh this movie is directed by Michael Gracie um it is his first movie so um he had done a lot of like uh uh music videos and Commercial work uh the screenplay is by Jenny Bix and Bill Condon who famously directed Dream Girls uh the stories by Jenny bicks it is produced by Lawrence Mark Peter chair chernin and Jenna topping General topping me definitely right um great it starts Hugh Jackman as PT Barnum Zac Efron as Philip Carlisle Michelle Williams as Charity Barnum I
14:47 guess and Rebecca Ferguson as uh what is her name hold on let me see Jenny Jenny Lind Jenny Lind yes that's right a real person and Zendaya as made up person and and we we and hold on what is it where are my notes uh Zendaya plays Anne wheeler a made-up person uh the cinematographies by Seamus McGarvey it is edited by Tom cross Robert Duffy Michael mccusker John pole and Spencer susser this movie has one two three four five six editors so wow interesting most
15:33 edited films until we do Bohemian Rhapsody and then it's most edited film uh music by John debney and Joseph trap Benes um but the song specifically are by pasik and Paul from uh dear Evan Hansen that we talked about in January uh it was done by Lawrence Mark Productions tournament entertainment tsg entertainment but it was distributed by 20th Century Fox which is now again owned by Disney uh the release date was it went wide December 20th 2017. it has a running time of 105 minutes uh its budget was 84 million dollars and its box office was 434.9 million dollars making it the
16:20 third highest grossing movie musical of all time wow okay do we know what the other top two are no I didn't look it up I could but I didn't feel like it let's wildly speculate I'm gonna say um I feel like it's always newer movies or highest grossing because they don't yeah there's more reach yeah maybe La La Land since it got the Oscar maybe nomination land um what's another one that was like I don't know uh what other ones have been big that have been popular or like box office smashes but like recent Chicago it's not super recent but yeah I don't
17:07 know there's no way to know unfortunately unfortunately there's just no way to know um so this movie uh came about because Bill Condon and Lawrence mark um were the producers of the 2009 Oscars ceremony in which Hugh Jackman was the host and they commented to each other he's just like PT Barnum and then they were like wait we should make a musical about PT Barnum and Hugh Jackman is the star they love their personal experience of viewing PT Barnum they were able to see I mean they're two gay men in theaters so I'm
17:52 assuming they have like listened to Barnum a bunch like the 1980 Musical that like ran for a couple years on Broadway that's my guess I didn't even know that that existed still not a representation of B Barnum the writers that their imagination their version of PT Barnum he's such a he's such a a showman he's one could say the greatest showman I don't think one could say that um so then at the at that Oscar ceremony Jenny bicks who's the screenwriter of this film she was one of the like staff writers for like that ceremony and if you don't remember I just watched it I can put a clip in of that like
18:38 opening Oscars thing but he does a number in which he like the bit is like in his garage he made like little sets representing each of the 10 best uh picture movies represented hmm and it's really stupid uh it's fine it's fine it's fine it's not something that I'd be like this man should lead a movie musical about PT Barnum but okay go off Queen hi I'm a wrestler I am alone [Music] my role is Outcast my heart is bypassed and yet I have grown dog with nothing
19:26 I melt my button I I and all my men frosted my Nixon cause I am Hugh Jackman and I've waited so long and no recession can stop my confession or silence my song these are the Oscars is my dream I am a Slumdog I am a wrestler I'll read the reader [Music]
20:15 this literally started in development almost immediately after so like 2009 was the Oscars like six months later they started working on this project um he was Hugh Jackman was on board from the beginning um and then they uh uh they got Paisley and Paul on board I think in like 2013 or something like that 2013 2014. and then they had this like big meaning that they were gonna like fly to 20 20th century Studios and like present it to like get greenlit and stuff for like producers and whatever and um in that uh in that like read through
21:01 sing through whatever you want to call it of like the music um the person playing uh Philip Carlisle was Jeremy Jordan which I thought you would find very interesting Molly what could have been Molly yeah more interestingly you could have had that the day before this like sing through was to happen Hugh Jackman had nose surgery to have like a cancerous thing removed from his nose I had no his yes so his like nose was stitched up and the doctor was like you can't sing for like six weeks because like also Hugh Jackman is a very nasal singer which is yeah that's fine but uh he was
21:47 like you can't sing so they made Jeremy Jordan sing both roles a person who is decidedly not in this movie in any way whatsoever which I think is like crazy rude but then like I guess during it what is that stupid song Hold on let me look I shouldn't the bar song where they have to sing to each other no from now on which is the song at the end oh the last song Hugh Jackman was like moved to sing live and then realized he was like gushing blood halfway through the song but like continued to do it and everyone was so moved they felt like they needed to like bring this to life so that's how it got its funding his passion he was so passionate that he
22:33 bled my actors actors should all be put to death oh my God like stop like romanticizing actors being in pain and like doing like it's unhealthy you wouldn't be like oh this marketing presentation is way better because this guy's a nosebleed during it don't imply that same standard to actors please everyone what is going on anyway so that's how uh that's what happened and then like uh Zac Efron um got on board Zendaya got on board and then it basically was just made I kind of had Jeremy Jordan and Zendaya together oh my God okay yep the movie playing inside uh Molly's mind is amazing
23:19 uh the movie spent 219 days in theaters 219 days it finally left theaters on July 26 2018. so like six straight months in the cinemas which is wild now they did have the like re-release like in March I think like when they started doing like the sing-alongs or maybe it was like April whatever um so that was the thing that helped like that I get those bfas in the theaters you know gotta get gotta get the Milliken class of 2018 on there to but in terms of movies that have that were never that never hit number one in the American domestic box office this is the 14th highest grossing movie so like
24:06 it never hit one in any of its weeks but like it just kept it was like it like debuted for and then like held there for a few weeks because that was when Last Jedi came out and then like basically once the music started like being pushed it like went up to like number two was its top spot which is crazy um which that just doesn't really happen um fun people that could have been in this movie uh Jenny Lind was written with Anna Hathaway in mind now you may not remember I just watched it but Anne Hathaway is also featured in that 2009 Oscars opening performance yes she plays Nixon in his Frost Nixon bit this was a different year was it was it
24:54 her and James Franco that then hosted the Oscars yes and that was like what made everybody decide they were sick of Anne Hathaway right was like that Oscar's performance I believe it started there because I think she was she she ended up winning I think like a couple years later after that yeah it was it was her speech where she said it came true that everyone was like well you don't deserve this or good things which is a very normal reaction the internet always has um other people that could have been Jenny Lind include Carrie Mulligan or Elliot page which are wow Carrie Mulligan I see she gives a very similar energy to or no I guess Carrie Mulligan would make more sense actually as Charity charity yeah yeah
25:41 but then do either I guess Rebecca Ferguson isn't known for being a singer either but I feel like no but she is being Swedish she was like oh yeah good for her loved bringing that up and she was fairly new right like this was kind of like her one of her big early roles um I did not go deep into her filmography I think she's fine in the movie I do think it's sucks for this voice girl who the girl who sings her song is from The Voice so go off NBC's The Voice this is the stuff um yeah so Michael Gracie the director of this film said this movie is similar to West Side Story Mary Poppins and the sound of music and I would like to say I don't think he's ever seen those three
26:27 films truly how dare you oh those movies had music oh that's the that's the through line um and then just for fun just for context put this in historical perspective the week this movie opens uh Ferdinand about the movie the animated movie about the bull that was number five in the box office yeah John Cena plays the Vol John Cena The Bull uh the greatest showman was number four Pitch Perfect three uh that was in third place Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle that was number two in Star Wars episode 8 The Last Jedi was number one so that was where we were at at the time so wait did this come out the same weekend as the Star Wars movie or it was
27:13 like Star Wars was just still on top by the time the greatest showman came out um this was the second week for Star Wars gotcha I think Star Wars came out like the 18th because that'd be pretty wet I mean they obviously had a big budget for greatest showman so it'd be pretty wild to decide to put it against or against Star Wars well that was the thing is like everyone was like well this movie's gonna die on the vine because it's opening against pretty like the whole season will be dominated by Star Wars it's not gonna do anything and then like basically just people loved it so much so that in the music specifically that like that helped Propel The Narrative continuously until July of the next year so um I have no further things to talk about in terms of History regarding this film so I think we should move on to our
28:00 discussion of the actual film itself let's do it [Music] so I want to start by saying I do not know specifically why I do not like this movie um I I cannot narrow down I think there are things that I can see as like objectively not it this movie doesn't excel in
28:46 um that I have seen other movie musicals do the same thing and I give them a pass and for some reason I do not feel that way about this movie um so during this conversation I think I'd like to like kind of finesse and figure it out and hone in on like what are my actual issues with it because right now I just generally think it's bad but I can't really say why specifically yeah your eyes are just so red you can't see past the the just the guttural reaction that you have to it yeah this movie gave me pink eye crying because you're so moved by so your eyes are right just the inspiring story of Phineas can I ask even though I know
29:33 we're gonna talk about this later but just as like a comparison point do you like Moulin Rouge okay so I do not like Moulin Rouge we did okay we did do Moulin Rouge on the podcast I do think Moulin Rouge is a much better film than this film and I think I I personally do not like baslerman's style that is just like my personal it doesn't Vibe for me so that could be a big part of it because I think a lot of this film like draws inspiration from that kind of thing do you like do you like I'm trying to think of any other examples but like very current pop music style musicals uh Hamilton I think is like okay this is
30:19 obviously a very different I think he experience um no because I think I think [Music] um I like like next to normal but that's not it's not like deposing the time and yeah which I think this movie is trying to do and I don't think it super does well I think the thing that makes like Hamilton interesting in terms of like the music versus uh the setting is like it's so juxtaposed but it it's with intention whereas like this one they they talked about how they like wanted specifically like a poppier sound like a more current sound quote because they were like I shouldn't say quote when it's not a quote but they were like this is misinformation
31:06 um but they were like because we wanted to show how ahead of his time PT Barnum was which like what yes that's that is real that part is real they were like we wanted to like really bring forth that like he was ahead of his time and really Progressive they're genuine they're genuine opinion of him in making this movie was like to memorialize how Progressive PT Barnum was yeah yeah it's very it's giving like when you are so invested in the prompt that you're just fully eating up like wow and it's just like full tunnel visioned into like not even I invented the prompt and
31:52 chose not to engage in anything that would tell me about what the prompt should be I assume they just like actively avoided all information about who PT Barnum was in his life in order to have come to the conclusion that the movie we should make is about what a great guy he was or like found one thing and like he created this and then just or maybe stop watch that musical from the 80s I guess and then they were like this must be factual let's go with this yeah I feel like now we have to yeah I wish now I had um engaged with that musical ahead of time because I'm very curious now how that portrays him should we I saw that Barnum was more a little more historically accurate than this but it still took like creative license and
32:38 Liberties which obviously anything is going to do anyway but I think this one I almost I don't care okay I want to be clear PG Barnum was like a like many historical figures like very complex and nuanced and like we can have that conversation that is them kind of like sanitizing him isn't really my issue with this movie like I don't think it's great but like I've musicals do that generally anyway so like that doesn't bother me that's not the part of this movie that like frustrates me I think my biggest issue is like everything seems very surface I think if this movie came out and it was like a television movie musical I would be like oh this was great what a great time I had because I do think like the pacing
33:24 is good I think like the way the songs are shot are like at least visually interesting and hold your attention and like as a piece of entertainment I am like objectively entertained by it like I can watch it and be like okay yeah but I think like once you start to think more analytically and like critically about this movie I just don't think like any of it really holds up and a lot of it feels like very neutered and watered down and like a committee of board members was like well at around the 48 minute Mark we do need a rousing anthem for the freaks to sing and then we can never see them again for 45 more minutes of this movie like it just like there are things about this movie that I'm like
34:09 you didn't choose anything to actually talk about like there are seven plot there are like three plots but there are like seven themes in this movie and it doesn't actually sink its teeth into any of them and it could be like interesting if they actually like talked about like how interesting Barnum wasn't like how kind of complex he was or if they really like wanted to go with this like Carlisle and Anne story and be like completely made up by the way like not true at all but like if you really want to be like interracial relationships and 18 whatever like that could be interesting that they don't really do anything with that either they have like one scene where someone's like she's not white and it's like yeah but it's Zendaya and she's like half white anyway so what are we really arguing about here or also we could talk about like come on
34:56 hold on wait wait I don't think the conclusion should be Zendaya is mixed so nobody would care more of my issue is that they set this up as like her and the guy that she like does trapeze with is her brother when they don't look like anything alike whatsoever which is very frustrating not that people have to look alike when their twin brother and sister however like it still feels like they're leaning into the light well she has to be the Romantic lead of the situation so she does have to be more fair oh yeah like that frustrates does that say that they're twins I think I missed that it could be twins I know they're brother and sister for sure yeah I don't know if they're twins because I mean certainly people in the same family can end up with very different skin tones or they could have
35:41 had a different parent or yeah anyway that's very true I'm probably gonna cut all that so I don't sell so I don't get canceled again but also they canceled you a lot during The Wiz episode we can't keep up we can't keep up but also like the the the the like like people with disabilities or like whatever it also doesn't really do anything with that either because sorry to sorry to blow this information on you the guy who plays Tom Thumb who like in the movie if you don't hey his name is mentioned like once but like he's like the short one in the group he's like the little person that actor was on his knees in these shots and they cgi'd him to be shorter
36:26 than he actually is wait so oh a little enough for the movie so he still has to lay on his knees so this the actors like 127 centimeters tall and like the real Tom Thumb who was four years old by the way that's real he was four years old was 107 centimeters and like well so everyone was four years old but you mean when when he was first put into Barnum's yes yes as a performer in the movie it's like oh he's like an adult or like I don't know maybe you're led to believe he's like 16 or something like some he's like the actor himself is 22 but like you kind of aren't really understood what age he's supposed to be
37:13 um they also dubbed his voice that's not even his voice and then they like cgied his lips to match the like speech okay this movie is Bonkers like this movie makes no sense and I just wish it like had a vision this is why I was like I think cats is better because while I can disagree with what Tom Hooper thought cats is which is not what that he made at least he was like here's a singular point of view this is what I think cat says it's like when you go see like a local production of a musical and you're like wow the concept was bad like let's not we don't actually need to set uh in the into the woods in like a playground like I I think it's a little roped we're like
38:00 Adam coming for an actual production we watch we're like this is like not even doing it's not doing anything and I'm it's just like why are we just floundering listening to like basic and Paul songs I don't know okay we got it yeah let's take a deep breath um because there's been a lot of information it's just like I just received a lot of info um yeah so uh I want to respond to the like Tom Thumb thing thinking this through from a disability lens um so Tom thought that the real guy Tom who was Barnum's um like centerpiece performer and like later became kind of a business partner to him was of remarkably short stature so he was he
38:46 was smaller than most little people are so I guess I can see the thought of like well we are gonna cast a little person but we want him to look a little bit more historically accurate okay sorry but like this is the thing that the movie was like this needs to be historically like like nothing else about this movie they were like oh let's worry about accuracy there living in this mansion that could not have existed in like 1830. this dilapidated mansion that they saw as children in like 1815 that literally looks like it walked out of the French like uh Riviera and they're like oh let's live here in Connecticut sorry I've never felt more like Adam is yelling at me when he is I am yelling but it's about the greatest showman when
39:31 I say you I mean everyone that has ever told me that they thought this movie was good this is who I'm yelling at every single person which is most cast members I worked with at Walt Disney World um so what I okay so um what I find disappointing about it is is the fact that I think Tom Thumb is like a really interesting historical figure and especially the fact that Barnum did adopt him as a child and he was the centerpiece to his show and then later they kind of became business partners and he he sort of parlayed himself into great wealth and sort of esteem um I would love to see a movie about Tom right like that's a way more interesting
40:17 character yes and so what's weird about it is is having this as as far as I could tell the only major cast member who actually has a disability because I know that the woman who plays the the bearded lady it does not have a beard in real life and you can see the wig line you can literally see like how it's cut off and the plastic right release so like here was this opportunity to make this like way more interesting movie about Tom and how his life was changed and the complicated decision of being a person with a disability in the 1800s and choosing to put yourself on display in a freak Show um so that would have been a way more interesting story also some other stories would have been more interesting um the bearded woman I'm sure she has a
41:04 name in the movie I'm sorry I didn't catch it uh Zendaya and her whole plotline would have loved to know literally anything about her that wasn't I do trapeze and I'm black um even Zac Efron's character while also a white man would have probably been more interesting the choice that they made in this movie was um the most interesting story we could tell about a person in the 1800s would be a guy who wasn't particularly wealthy when he was a kid gets wealth pretty early in the movie and then feels bad about the fact that uh he used to not have as much money as he does now then he goes off to hang out with an opera singer who's into him but he's not into her and that causes a crisis in his marriage that it has no reason to be a
41:50 crisis because of the fact that he's not into her and there's there's no actual impropriety happening in any way um and then he comes back to his wife and they're like we do we do continue to love each other and they were like of this movie with an incredibly diverse like about an incredibly diverse group of people who came together in this interesting way in a weird time in American history that's the most interesting story we think we could focus on is about Barnum having a very tepid crisis in his life and I just feel that that is like such a such a weird Choice yeah and the idea of like the the whole class thing was like I felt like he just kept you know like risking it
42:36 all and gambling it all um because he really wanted to like prove that he wasn't just like a Taylor son or that he is is above Beyond its means but it's like that is other stories have told that a lot better than this like he keeps gambling and winning also so there's like very little real tension to the I mean yeah there's tension you don't know if it's gonna work out but like he continues to succeed throughout it and it's yeah it's a story about somebody who's lower middle class becoming upper middle class like that's that's the great tension of this film and that how like he and his family does don't fit in and like you know wealthy New York whatever because he he got his money through like um like you know like scammy way he's a
43:22 con man yeah well no he wasn't because he was like actually working as like a ship ship company clerk like that was just like yes a real job not you understand what I'm saying he was like he had an office job basically how this movie portrays it and then he like went off to do art and then also like I really don't like that this movie does the like very annoying thing that like a lot of movies do this is not the only one where it'll be like oh the critic the critic portrayed by one person represents uh any criticism at all of like don't understand critics like the the idea that he's like there's a little line he has where he's like for a Critic who likes art you should or
44:09 likes theater you really don't enjoy theater and I was like it does it does display a lot about the people who wrote the movie that they feel that the things that Americans care most about are um snobby critics and whether old money will take them in to their society because I have to tell you those are those are truly not things that I think about ever and so the fact that they were like that should be the great tension in this movie not how do you get a society to accept you when you're visibly very different from the people around you that that's that no one will connect with but if we talk about theater critics I think everyone will really resonate it's not like they always they
44:54 always try to make these stories about like you have what it takes to you know like Stick it to the Man and like make it like yeah like uh you know get past your your quote unquote bullies or whatever and like be successful and beat them at their own game I'm like this is always like just perpetuating so many problems about people make making people always selfish about like their wealth or whatever and like will always just I don't know like it's I'm so tired of of that being glorified and and even for the marginalized characters it's like the lesson they have to learn is like believe in yourself more like why don't you have more confidence about the fact that everyone's oppressing you yeah
45:39 I know I thought I liked this movie I Didn't I felt like this was the messages I just liked the Aesthetics of it which we're going to talk about later so yes yeah um I do also well we are talking about phineas's story and the the Gob how Gob smacked I am that this was what they felt word of the Pod the word of the Pod is gobsmacked uh the musical The Musical so okay so Barnum brings Jenny Lind this fish singer to America this is based on true events um and he starts to promote her and he kind of loses focus a little bit in his circus because he wants to promote Jenny and then after they've had a series of scenes together where I guess she's like friendly with him but that I wasn't watching it being like it's so clear
46:26 this woman is like very into him and he's not the sexual tension it was not palpable they seem like more than just business partners but it wasn't like too much I thought and then there's this scene where I don't remember does she try to kiss him or there's something that happens where it's like clear that she's like comes on to him yeah and in her nightgown he doesn't reciprocate and she's like so I guess I'm just another one of your little ax and I was like so this man hired you [Laughter] as a performer and you're like I can't believe you see me as a professional rather than a sexual object I've never in my life been so offended that a
47:11 promoter of my singing career would care about me merely for my ability to sing what yeah what is your world view in which you are offended that a man who hired you to do an act views you as an act it's also frustrating because that entire plot line is like made up like none of that none of this like a fair situation like happened like that is all just like Hollywood tropes which are fine I love a Hollywood Trope my middle name is Hollywood Trope Adam Hollywood Trope but it's so on the nose and it doesn't like my overarching I think issue is just
47:56 like it doesn't go anywhere like it's not given time to like breathe and like you can take a Trope and make it interesting by like going with it and being like okay objectively where could this go but like it just ends right after that and then he has to like go back home and his wife's like Michelle Williams who's also in a different movie she's in a completely different film from everyone else in this movie and God bless Michelle Williams it is crazy to see her smiling at anything because she typically plays very sad characters so it is wild to see her smile but I was like what movie are you in girl is it even a Trope though to like have a woman be offended that a man is not in a professional setting is not interested in her romantic it doesn't even feel like a Trope to me it's just
48:42 like I think they are I think it's just the Trope of like man falling in love with like the project uh the Eliza Doolittle the Eliza Doolittle what is that what is that whom I think I guess what is that your version is it Pygmalion yes thank you chameleon so it's like a subversion of Pygmalion that's what you're saying but she's like I can't believe that you're not in love with your creation it's the yeah it's the like she because of how he acts towards her like obviously the scene where she first sings and he's like that is the greatest voice I've ever heard which I have a hilarious story about the first time Adam and I ever watched that scene but it's that I think like she kind of like yeah subverts it and thinks
49:28 that like oh this man is in love with me and it definitely felt like they were featured like they kept showing it that like he is so happy that he finally found something that isn't a scam or isn't something that I have to twist and subvert to people to buy like they don't he doesn't have to do the you know he doesn't have to put the pillow in the fattest man in the world and like that was my problem because it was like at the end of the day I'm still supposed to like root for this guy when this whole plot is just so terribly mean to his cast of like performers in in the wait which part of the plot is mean to his performance just the whole idea of like him being like this is real talent
50:15 uh the service have just been like you know like have just been like something to get me through or whatever or like I just need to make a get rich quick scheme yeah right this is which this is what I'm talking about and so that is that is based on I read an article about Barnum and Linds in a like uh what is it the 19th Century theater class that I took but I couldn't find it for this but that part is true that he brought her and like tried to use her to break into more legitimate sort of performance circles and that she left early because she was offended by the way that he was promoting her yes it's not for me and then she spent like all of her money on like charities in Sweden like it's amazing so like a gun with a historical now I guess you can't
51:01 make it you can't make a fun musical about Barnum and make it historically accurate because we're about to tell you some stuff about PT Barnum but like again with the historical story being way more interesting than this like completely just like not not interesting romantic plot line like yes there's no tension there's no sexual chemistry there's no like real threat that he's gonna leave his wife it's like what if he liked another lady he doesn't though don't worry that's the plot or like what if another pretty lady is in movie like what is genuinely I I want you to tell me specifically for the PT Barnum plot line because the Carlisle plotline has its own thing what is the conflict of this plot
51:47 genuinely I do I cannot when I was writing that summary I was like I don't know what he is supposed to overcome because he doesn't learn it yeah I mean it's like ostensibly he learns right I think is good is meant to be that he gets distracted from the thing that he is good at and then he tries to pursue something else but what's confusing is that how it goes down with him and Jenny doesn't teach him that lesson like that should be a bad it should have been just what happened in real life which is her getting upset about the way that he promotes her yeah because that teaches him more of a lesson because then not gives him the opportunity to say like you know what actually this it this is me oh god
52:32 um this is what I love like I love being a huckster and like a Carnival Barker and like I I don't care Jenny that like this isn't your European fancy way of doing things this is what I want to do but like the way he learns it is just by a lady being like I'm I'm mad you see me as a professional like I don't how does that ended up being it ended up being more of like a because she rejected him he was able to like go back home early and like the fire and the carnival or the fire in the museum happened like it ended up just happenstance that like oh I learned a lesson quote unquote rather than actually being like I am gonna change I'm gonna go back and like you know events just happened to him I guess you could say he's like appreciating what he
53:19 has or something but like the whole movie has been him built like taking all these risks and building up this thing so it's not like it's not like previously I well okay I guess previously he was a character who was never satisfied with what he had he was always going for more and like gambling for the next thing so he's like appreciating his family and his thing that he already built but like I don't know you it could be interesting yeah so he doesn't have flaws if it was like if they were more specifically things will work out for him it could be more interesting if they were like specifically making it like a commentary on the American entrepreneurial Spirit or something like that like I don't know just like it's like Barnum is a fascinating study and like what what is the identity of
54:06 America like and again but like to make a really interesting movie about PT Barnum it can't also be a fun musical because like it's just not it's not like it's not fun it's it's asking us to ask really hard questions about what it means to be American and what it means to like participate in a diverse Society so well should we talk about the slavery plot line that was cut from his life oh I was so hoping that you guys wouldn't read ahead in my notes but I didn't read ahead it's on it's on the IMDb trivia page oh okay oh I would like to tell you about an article called James R sorry not called by James alright Jr called how public autopsy of slave Joyce Heath launched PT Barnum's career as the greatest showman on Earth yeah oh no this is really bad this is
54:55 like what we've talked about bad people before on this podcast this is bad this is bad oh yikes so let's hear about how PT Barnum became who he is take a drink all right let's sink in who yeah who he became who he is today a dead person a dead man um okay so PT Barnum was as this movie tells us he was the son of a tailor and also his father was also like an Innkeeper and A store owner so it sounds like he had various jobs that he did but also his maternal grandfather was a state legislator and a landowner and a lottery schemer so it sounds like he came from quite a bit of privilege on his mother's side I mean we all know like if you were a landowner early America that gave you a lot more rights
55:40 than everybody else but also did this kind of Lottery scheme so like privilege but also like a little bit Shady which is kind of makes sense so then he ended up running a weekly newspaper for a while but then he had libel suits against him so he sort of he had to flee to New York um and then and for a while in Connecticut he also ran a Statewide Lottery which then he had to move to New York because lotteries became illegal in Connecticut so he had this sort of you know like legally gray stuff that he was doing ahead of time and then he decides he wants to get into Show Business um and he sees this show feature bring this elderly black woman who claims to be George Washington's nurse which would make her like 150 years old If This Were
56:26 true at the time her name is Joyce Heath and we have very little information about her early life like her real early life at least um so uh she was born into slavery and uh her legal status becomes very unclear by the time that Barnum encounters her because it is illegal at this time in the north to own slaves um so Barnum rented her he he leased her from the guy that was displaying her previously um so obviously that makes it fine it's fine to lease people you just can't own them um so he purchased the rights to her for a thousand dollars in 1835 um and he like drums up the Press he
57:13 brings in super big crowds he displays her as a 161 year old uh former nurse maid to George Washington um and this article talks about the fact that what Barnum's real skill was in was in drumming up progress um so at the time there was a sort of new technological invention where it was much cheaper to print newspapers so we had these Penny newspapers that were very about like sensationalism and they weren't interested in factual information they just like would print whatever as long as people would read it basically um so he ginned up a lot of press he also had this really great skill of like as soon as interest started to dip he'd come up with a new story to get uh interest so at one point he claimed that she was an automaton made of quote India
58:00 rubber whale bone and a number of Springs end quote um so every time that people lost interest in George Washington's nurse made he was like what other crew he was like she's a Transformer Optimus Prime oh my God yeah uh and oh and I think it's important to note this that it says itinerant freak shows like his weren't an especially novel phenomenon in the 1830s but the media frenzy that Barnum managed to whip up was something different um because they like very heavily implying greatest showman that he like invented the concept of a circus and also the way they tell the story is that he starts with the museum and then it burns down and then he puts it in a tent so like that's not true there were itinerant circuses it and it also happened in the opposite direction in his life he like started out touring
58:46 circuses and eventually bought a museum so that's wild he doesn't get credit for inventing circuses um oh yeah so as he is displaying Joyce um uh in a truly unbelievable display of audacity in one case he was facing protests from clergy men about the fact that he was displaying this enslaved woman um and so he remarketed the show and this is the first time I've agreed with the church he remarketed the show as an anti-slavery benefit and claims that the proceeds would be put toward buying he's still enslaved great-grandchildren um so he had truly no shame uh and this was and where did that money end up going do we know there was no comment but I didn't feel that it needed
59:32 to be commented on um and then this was really interesting so this was like a very well researched uh article so I think that the author probably had reason for this client but they didn't cite anything in particular so I'm not quite sure where it came from but they said that while their relationship was very obviously unbalanced um it does seem like Heath taught a lot to Barnum because this was sort of his first foray into the world of Showmanship and she had a lot of experience of like being an act um so she kind of like you know was a little bit of a mentor to him I guess world of of putting on a show um so he released her in 1835 and then she died in 1836 uh but since it was this is when it gets [ __ ] yeah this is
1:00:19 literally released obviously 1836. so it was a year after he leased her but since it was Elise I'm sure that he just like let her body go respectfully and interred her right no um so he hosted a public autopsy of her body to see how old she was oh my God so there were 1500 Spectators who each paid 50 cents a piece which was a considerable sum at the time um and the author points out that this was not unusual in 19th century America that the bodies of deceased black slaves were routinely sold by their masters to medical schools for anatomical dissection and others were resurrected from black cemeteries and what was interesting is that public
1:01:04 dissections were not uncommon for criminals and the idea of that was both to like promote scientific knowledge in the public and the idea that medical students did need cadavers in order to like learn about the body and become doctors but also that part of dissection for criminals was like part of your punishment was was being on display in this way but autopsies were different and so an autopsy is where you like have a medical question you're trying to solve like how did this person die or like I'm trying to learn about this disease that they had or something like that so they were rarer but they also didn't have quite the same level of stigma against them so this was a public autopsy yeah RJ what do you think the question that will be posed I don't like where this is going I don't oh no so part of the way
1:01:54 that he kind of got away with it was the fact that he was like well it's an autopsy so it's like and that was like a less stigmatized idea so the thing that they were trying to determine was how old was she and that was the justification was because it was like well she said she was George Washington's nurse mates like let's find out how old she really was turned out she was in her 80s um and so Barnum somehow managed to spin this to his Advantage by continuing to plant even crazier stories about her in the Press like oh maybe this wasn't really Joyce Heath and like she's still alive somewhere else and they dissected a different person or like it was the Doctor Who was lying to people or whatever um and he wrote several autobiographies in his lifetime and every time he told a different story about Heath so we'll never know like if he was genuinely
1:02:40 deceived about her age or if he was totally in on it I mean I'm gonna guess that he was aware of the fact that she wasn't 106. um so yeah so that was how he you know kind of broke out into the scene his big break really exciting um and then after that he worked for a while Aaron Turner's traveling circus and after about six months started his own circus which he eventually purchased a Riverboat that went up and down the Mississippi doing performances and then eventually he returned to New York City and opened the American Museum um so it was sort of he he had this whole life of doing itinerant circuses and then eventually worked his way up to having the museum um did not invent circuses but did profit off of the the bodies of black women as all entrepreneurs do
1:03:29 um so thank you so much for coming to my TED Talk and thank you specifically to James R Wright Jr for writing this article um and giving our listeners the information that they need here's some I like noticed some flags from that story with the whole hymn starting as it is where I didn't wait there I was a really lovely Pleasant I was Charmed the entire way through nostalgic story truly oh foreign no I mean okay first of all the fact that he like did have like a stint in like newspapers or whatever
1:04:14 um very much that one scene when he was a kid like shouting out the different headlines and stuff of like of just him trying to do different things to survive yeah as a newsy at one point yeah yeah yes like that was the Callback the call to that it is crazy that oh my God this whole autopsy thing ended up just being like uh how many jelly beans are in the jar like I could and just other alternatives to that uh to kind of keep the scam going which that that was my thing like it just felt so even though I didn't have the full aspect of like what that was watching the movie like now twice you just knew that like something is something is off with the real story of
1:05:01 this man that I'm like should I be celebrating this person like I don't know no I would argue you shouldn't celebrate you should celebrate neither the version of Phineas that is a fictional character presented in this movie nor should you be celebrating PT Barnum the real human being I mean Phineas and the movie is a lot less problematic but he's still not really a person to be celebrated yeah but that was the thing just the entire thought I had in our second watch there was like why did they feel the need to tell the story just because Hugh Jackman is a Showman one a completely new story I did I mean
1:05:46 I mean they kind of did so I do love Hugh Jackman's presence in the culture as like a classic song and dance man I like the idea that we have a person like that that exists um but yeah put them in anything else please or playing any other character can we talk now I want to talk more about disability is this is a good time so since we talked about the newsy scene um I think just before that or maybe as part of that there's some it's yeah yes yes oh my God he's orphaned yeah after he's orphaned then he's like working for himself and whatever because he's he's on the street and at one point he steals an apple and then he gets chased and I
1:06:31 think the Apple gets away from him or something like that and then a woman who has some sort of a facial disfigurement hands him an apple because she sees that he's hungry because you obviously need to have a scene that explains why someone would be sympathetic towards people who have disabilities there needs to be a why you couldn't you couldn't simply have human empathy for other people you need to like have a scene that explains why a person would care that there are people who have disabilities in the world I also okay I don't know this is true or not so this is purely conjecture I think that her face was cgi'd I again
1:07:17 we don't know we may never know the it just when I was watching it on my massive TV and I was sitting like three feet away from it I was like that doesn't look that doesn't something looks like it's like uncanny valley like like some doctoring was done so I don't know I don't I don't know we'll never know I will certainly say that that seems like the track record in this movie not to actually cast people with disabilities to play characters with disabilities that something seems true I mean even the other performers were like that woman is supposed to be albino but it's like not like I don't know like not accurately
1:08:02 portraying about like some people were just Asian that was their you know like some people just had a crazy wig like that well yeah I mean that's like a mixed bag though because as I just told the story about Joyce Heath like certainly the idea that like just people of color being put in the same category as people with disabilities that's like quote unquote freaks is historically accurate so like while it seems wild it's like not wrong that that was how it was um yeah I feel like I truly I think potentially the most offensive thing to me about the trail of disability in this movie is the fact that we have this whole scene where Barnum is casting and we like see people with various different sort of bodily abnormalities so there's
1:08:49 like a guy who's really tall there's a guy who's quite overweight there's a guy's just like got tattoos all over himself and so we see this like celebration of like body diversity and him like being excited about the fact that um that he's got these like interesting looking people that he can cast in his show and then we cut to a dance number in which everyone has the most normative bodies I've ever seen they were like oh nobody who has a disability is a dancer we couldn't possibly just cast professional dancers who have disabilities they have to be um you know uh completely able-bodied like hyper able-bodied like you can tell they have like strong dancer bodies totally normative for every dance number
1:09:35 because we couldn't possibly show you what it looks like for a person with a disability to be performing at a show which is the plot of our movie now you're yelling at me I'm yelling at you why did you cast that way Adam Adam how dare you cast the movie again canceled again I think the thing that about what I will call the C plot of this movie is frustrating is that the C plot is being the like people yeah like the the people in the circus are the most interesting characters in this movie and you could do the most stuff with them and still if you focused on them you
1:10:23 could both if you want to have your cake and eat it too you could both have Barnum be the entrepreneur that you want to make him out to be and also flip that and show like but he wasn't all that great like you could do both if you Center this movie on these performers and not him because then you don't have to make him like the hero that you have to like root for the whole movie right who plays the bearded woman who's who's Broadway she played Madame tenardier in Les Mis when he was on Broadway um she does a great job she's a really funny uh video with Seth rudetsky on playbill.com where she does a bunch of bits and it's very funny maybe I'll maybe I'll throw it in the maybe I'll
1:11:08 throw it in who knows um but she is like really good in this like bearded lady role but like is it's just she's not really given anything to do the scene where he like finds her in that like laundry on that in that laundry shop and she's like hidden away because of like how she looks there's like such actual um like fear and like uh like kind of like uh just like unsure of like everything that's gonna happen because obviously she's been in the world in this way and like people clearly look down on her for how she looks and blah blah and like I thought that was really interesting and then it just like doesn't go anywhere and you don't get
1:11:55 anything except for like at one party they shut the door on them and didn't let them go to the party and so then they had to sing the like rousing anthem from dear Evan Hansen uh you will be found you will be found so that also had to happen in this movie and I was like I think yeah having only ever heard that song the fact that it came Midway through the movie was such a shock to me by like assumed that it was like the movie would be about like leads up to that I knew that it was it was her that saying it and I actually played a bearded lady and I was like oh so like the whole movie is gonna be about how like people have these really complicated feelings about being on display in a freak Show it's like a really complex thing to decide to do and that it's going to be like the
1:12:40 celebratory moment when they like fully Embrace that that that's what they want to do with their lives and it was like just like in the middle there of them being like Oh we gotta talk about the freaks for a second and then like yeah and then we'll go and then we will just like Barnum forget about them and forget about them yes and they I don't know no worse they show up in the second Drinking Song which [ __ ] the fact that there are two drinking songs in this musical [ __ ] off the second Drinking Song in which he doesn't even like say like I should have known better
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