New Vid: "It Depends On What You Pay" (Dollhouse)

[giandujakiss]

Song: It Depends On What You Pay from The Fantasticks
Artist: Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones

Fandom: Dollhouse

Summary: You've come a long way, baby.

Spoilers: Through "Haunted"

Sizes: 30.8 MB (540 x 360 .avi), 13.3 MB (420 x 280 .wmv)
Length: 2:48

Download from Sendspace: The .avi file is here and the .wmv file is here.

Notes and Warnings:

I'm really not sure if a warning is necessary here, but I'd rather err on the side of caution and say that the song may be a bit ... triggery? Possibly.

It Depends On What You Pay is from the 1960 off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks. The original production of The Fantasticks ran continuously for 42 years, making it the world's longest running musical. By 1990, however, for reasons that will be obvious when you see the vid, It Depends On What You Pay had been largely excised from the show. Recent productions of The Fantasticks either include the song with a different set of lyrics, or delete it entirely and substitute a new song in its place.

The version used in the vid is from the original cast recording, and is performed by Jerry Orbach. It has been edited for length.

Watch on Vimeo

Password: omega


Thanks so much to cathexys, danegen, sol_se, and Thuvia Ptarth for their comments. Any flaws are entirely my own.

Comments would be appreciated. Cross-posted to LJ.

Comments

[kass]

Oh My God. :-)

This is...fabulous and makes me go "ow" a lot. *g* Which I'm guessing is what you were going for.

The song is awful and therefore just perfect. I come away particularly struck by your use of clips which are less...obviously objectionable, I guess is the best I can come up with. I mean, Echo in the dominatrix outfit is a gimme, but there are more innocuous moments here (Echo walking through the dollhouse; the quiver of someone in the brainwashing chair; even Ballard kissing Mellie before he realizes that she's a doll) which become much more sinister in this context. Brava.

[giandujakiss]

there are more innocuous moments here (Echo walking through the dollhouse; the quiver of someone in the brainwashing chair; even Ballard kissing Mellie before he realizes that she's a doll) which become much more sinister in this context

Oh, yes, that's exactly what I hoped would come across! I'm so glad you liked it - thank you!

[kass]

On a second viewing, I'm struck by the whimsy, especially where Topher is concerned. I love him conducting (and that final shot -- brilliant!), "costumes from the east," the clips showing the backup dancers rehearsing. It's a surprisingly funny vid, in places, for one which I also read as so righteously furious with the source-text. Like watching a very angry kick-boxer be at once entertaining and lethal. :-)

[giandujakiss]

Thank you again! Yeah, the song is funny - or is, umm, supposed to be - so I needed to match the tone of it to make the vid work. And in some ways it was easy; there's a certain stereotypical set of scenarios, and both the song and the show hit them. The song is actually a lot longer, and I hated to cut some of the lyrics because including them would have driven the point home even more, but this really couldn't have gone on for over 4 minutes - I felt like I was pushing it even at 2:48. Anyway, I'm delighted that both the anger and the humor came through for you - thank you!

[wembley]

Oh, wow, you edited the song, too? I've never heard the song before this vid and I had no idea it was even edited. Flawless, dude!

[giandujakiss]

Hee - yeah, it's much longer. There's like a whole 'nother deeply offensive verse in there. It pained me to leave it out.