Have you ever walked to a party and wished you were instead going over to your grandma's to hear about how much friendlier people used to be? If you're spending most of Intro to Psych wishing the professor was wistfully and slowly narrating how he used to be able to take his girl out on the town for less than a quarter, then Rick McKay may have a solution to your problems.
And for those who fall prey to Western tradition by thinking that anyone over 70 has little more to offer than cookies and milk should check out Rick McKay's recent documentary, \Broadway: The Golden Age."" It makes a convincing argument that if we ask the right questions, we can actually learn things from old people. Well, at least formerly famous and talented old people.
This film delves into what Broadway was like from the 1930s to the early 1960s, its heyday period before ""Cats"" left its scent on that gay white way. Enter the old people: a sizeable cast of former Broadway stars comprise this film's list of interviewees, and ""Broadway"" spends almost all of its time allowing these aging and ailing former stars to gab about life as a Broadway staple or a starving understudy.
That's pretty much it. Screen time alternates between wrinkly talking heads telling anecdotes and pictures of what those heads (and bodies) looked like when they were young and famous. Sound interesting?
Well, it is. ""Broadway: The Golden Age"" may be about a dying art form, a long passed era, and feature many dying interviewees, (almost 10 of the film's stars died before this picture was released), but this film retains an overwhelming vitality by doing one thing most documentaries don't: easing up on the direction and narration and letting the people who were there do the talking. McKay does not try to convince us of the magical glory of heyday Broadway, and neither do his interviewees. They simply talk on and on about their struggles for fame, their lucky breaks, never paying to see plays, the animal magnetism of Marlon Brando who got started on Broadway, and some long-forgotten talents that they argue rival his.
Even for people who have little to no interest in Broadway, ""Broadway"" provides more than enough interesting stories to tell. These people lived in a place and time simply nonexistent today. The incongruent mix of ambition and camaraderie, talent and lucky accidents, dancing and alcoholism that somehow made Broadway work so well for so long has passed, but these interviews give a good taste of what it was like. Unlike a Michael Moore documentary, there is no omniscient voice that subtly lets us know when we should be laughing, feeling outraged, or feeling the injustice of a situation. But its easy to tell from their stories.
Most of the interviewed stars talk about a now unknown actress named Laurette Taylor, who played Amanda in ""The Glass Menagerie"" and influenced or inspired half of Broadway and Hollywood in the '40s by pioneering method acting -acting as if her character was actually real.
Mere minutes exist of her performing on film, and this injustice is felt by the audience not because a narrator says so but because the stars go on and on about her talent and we gradually come to feel their excitement and wish that we too could have shared in that.
""Broadway: The Golden Age"" convinces its viewers of the magic of a long lost Broadway by dispensing with claims and arguments and just letting some old people talk about what they knew and loved best.
And the stories about how cheap a burger used to be don't last too long.
