Author: Douglas McLennan

“Cats” Was Bad Theatre, An Even Worse Movie. So Why Does It Endure?

“Theater people resent “Cats” not just because it made Broadway uncool until “Hamilton” finally rescued it from the pop cultural stocks. What really infuriates buffs is that “Cats” ushered in an era of grandiose spectacle, the vacuous parade of shows from the 1980s and early ’90s that made it seem as if a musical had to have a helicopter or a crashing chandelier to be worth the rapidly rising ticket price.” – Los Angeles Times

“Beetlejuice” Has Been A Hit – What Its Surprise Closing Says About Today’s Broadway

Broadway’s supply and demand for theatres is a far cry from the mid 1980s, when commercial theatre in New York in general seemed like it might be on the ropes. Hamilton, Moulin Rouge!, The Lion King and Wicked all grossed more than $2 million last week, and To Kill a Mockingbird – a play – grossed $700,000 more than Beetlejuice – evidence of how expectations and earnings are being recalibrated. – The Stage

Requiem For The Newseum, A “Museum” For News

The Newseum was “prey to the economic and cultural forces that have bedeviled institutions as diverse as symphony orchestras and the electronic media. It had to compete for audience and achieve the right balance between substance and entertainment. Like so many organizations in American society, it struggled to find a compromise between being authoritative and being accessible.” – Washington Post

Tracking Down (And Saving) Hollywood’s Movie Backdrops

“Hollywood started as a green industry and then became brown. Everything was used repeatedly; nothing went into storage. Then when studios began to decline, they got rid of everything, sold things in auctions or just threw them away. And the first to go were backings. We will never know how many were lost, and if I go down that road I will just start to cry.” – Los Angeles Times

The Politics Of Self-Plagiarism

“As a transgression, plagiarism comes with a fully operational stigma attached. Not so with self-plagiarism. It can be forbidden but without the benefit of shame as a reinforcement. I did find it denounced as unethical while reading through some 50-odd articles or papers mentioning it, most of them from scholarly journals. At least as frequent, though, were suggestions that a certain amount of self-plagiarism is inevitable — and perhaps even necessary.” – Inside Higher Education

Were The 2010’s The Best Ever Decade In Human History?

“We are living through the greatest improvement in human living standards in history. Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 per cent of the world’s population for the first time. It was 60 per cent when I was born. Global inequality has been plunging as Africa and Asia experience faster economic growth than Europe and North America; child mortality has fallen to record low levels; famine virtually went extinct; malaria, polio and heart disease are all in decline.” – The Spectator