What is The Telegraph doing? Doing your research is the best bit!

Photo by Peter Mountain.

By JBR

My family are pretty normal. Growing up, if a movie ended in a kiss or a wedding, we knew that it was just a movie and not real life. There wasn’t a moment where I ever believed that people who get together at the end of movies might be happy for ever and ever.

So, when I heard about Disney’s latest film - an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway musical Into the Woods - I couldn’t wait to see. It’s set in the world of fairy tales, but you know what? I had a listen to it before I started to write this and realised that Sondheim was actually writing a blistering deconstruction of the ‘happy ever after’ myth. Who knew?

Hardcore musical theatre fans might be shocked to hear that The Telegraph’s Scarlett Curtis didn’t bother to do her research. But she’s Richard Curtis’ daughter so we forgive her. And lucky she told us she was Richard Curtis' daughter in her byline. Otherwise we might have wondered quite what qualified her to write this in the first place.

Like a lot of journalists and bloggers I got sent production images of Into the Woods and a press release. But unlike Scarlett I actually knew what the piece was about already. It calls into question the entire notion of the happy ending. It toys with audience expectations and subverts our preconceived ideas of beloved fairy-tale characters. It exposes the lie behind the glossy, dance-off-into-the-sunset of escapist stories like, oh, I don’t know, Four Weddings and a Funeral, or About Time.

True, as I’ve got older, I’ve got a little busier than I used to be, but still, when I write about something, I like to have a little bit more of an idea about it than just what I’ve gleaned from a press release. After all, that’s my job, and I’m being paid to, you know, do some work. So, as busy as I get, I still think, "oh, I'm being paid to write about this, I really ought to know something about it!"

I know too, that traditional journalism is falling out of favour. Bloggers and online sites are now providing more detailed, researched and nuanced articles than the broadsheets, but surely if I'm being paid to write about something my opinion should be, er…informed? It’s little wonder that arts journalists are a dying breed if all they can be bothered to do is regurgitate the odd press release here and there.

As a kid growing up in London in the 80s we didn’t have the t’internet. We relied on the broadsheets for quality writing and intelligent opinion. That’s not something I’m ready to forget.

I’m definitely going to see Into the Woods when it comes in December. The movie is adapted from a brilliant stage musical and it looks like it’s going to be a very interesting adaptation. I’m aware I’ve used ‘adapt’ twice there, but hey, I couldn’t be bothered to think of another word. But come on, we’ve already established that I don’t have to actually work at this writing lark, haven’t we? Unlike, I suspect, Scarlett Curtis, I’ve actually seen the musical, several times, and I understand what adaptation is and how it works. I discovered the musical when I was just 11 years old, but even if I hadn’t, there’s this new thing called Wikipedia that I could have used to read a little bit about it before I started opining - but I’ve got more important things to do, like wondering when Prince Charming is going to rock up at my office on a white horse and take me away. Apparently there's a recording or two of it as well which I could have listened to. I could even have claimed the purchase of one of those recordings against my expenses - but it's like, two hours long, and I was on a deadline.

I’m hoping that Disney don’t give up on happy endings altogether. With so much bad news in the world we need a company prepared to stick its neck out and do something really avant-garde and unusual, like letting the chisel-jawed, anatomically incorrect cartoon hero always get the buxom, feisty but ultimately subordinated-to-her-man heroine. That's real life, right?

Read the original here.

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