Forget Citizen Kane. Banish Vertigo. Give us a break from Brokeback.
There can be ONLY ONE.
You know what it is. We don’t even have to name it. It was one magical moment after another.
Moments …. like …
Alas, where have all the Roller Discos gone? And it’s important to remember, this came from Hollywood, not Bollywood. If only that number could have gone on … and on … and on …. for another 15 minutes!
The film really has no peers … well maybe one: From Justin to Kelly.
(UPDATE: Nightcharm reader bats tells us that the film will be revived as a NEW MUSICAL this spring on Broadway. Oxygen please!)
©2007 Nightcharm
© 2007, Nightcharm. All rights reserved. Nightcharm.com
wow, love ONJ, listened to hits compilation this week and love the track xanadoo but have never seen the film. Is it as bad as it looks? or is it so bad its good? (like sunset beach was). Maybe seeing is believing and i am going to have to have a xanadu night in!
Xanadu is an acquired and frankly difficult taste — like eating snails. It is not so bad it’s good. The purity of its effect is not diluted in any way. It is very simply a place where nobody dared to go.
Something about this movie depresses me deeply. Much like The Wiz and Caligula, it strikes me as a pure, tragic anachronism, produced in a cocaine-addled haze, bizarrely unrelated to any context or meaning. It’s very hard to articulate the reasons why, but this film is just so sad, seeming to exist all by itself outside any context of time and place.
Plus, is there anything more dismal than Gene Kelly’s lamentable role in this?
Ack! This is one of my husband’s fave-o-rite movies (no kidding!). Our local art-film theater has started a Cult Movie night, and one of its features was indeed “Xanadu.” Not only was it probably the most-attended film we’ve seen there in the series (this is an old 500-seat theater with a HUGE screen), but I was astounded that a LOT of the audience members, all significantly younger than us (we’re in our late 40s/early 50s) were singing along! I didn’t know whether to laugh or be terrified…
Friends of mine in St. Louis love this movie with a passion. A passion I just can’t grasp. How much blow did the writers/directors/whomever was responsible have to do to come up with this?
It must have been a whole table of it, heaped up in a ridiculous mountain.
For all you nay-sayers and other’s who “hate” this movie, just remember it was made for pure fun, and to enjoy watching it you have to “believe in magic.” Remember this movie came out in 1980, and there were no special FX at the time. Sure it was all camp and cheese, but being a 10 year old at the time I sure did love this movie. I didn’t find out until later in life that Xanadu was a flop, but who really cares? I feel in love Olivia Newton-John in 1977 when she did Grease. So as a kid, I followed her other ventures in music and film. I really enjoyed all of the dance numbers in the film and the ending roller skaking muscial number was great! Before I feel in love with Madonna there was Olivia.
I also saw this film as a kid and really enjoyed all the music and spectacle. Honestly, I thought it was basically a long-form music video for ELO and ONJ even then! It’s a live-action cartoon, it’s an over the top stage show like a drag performance, just larger than life.
Now I’m going to have to go get a copy of this and sit back with some coolers and have a riot watching it.
Oh lordy – you people with your narrative ideas and roped in tastes. This movie prefaced the awkward birth of postmodernism into the mainstream. It was the LA new wave stylists who did blow that were hired on by Universal to amp out a vehicle for ONJ, and in doing so – crashed through the late 70′s wall of concept rock and film musicals with a film so artificial, audacious and ghastly, it truly stands out as a sublime piece of subversive queer cinema. With the strange combinations of late 70′s arena rock (ELO, the Tubes) mixed with big band boogie woogie (Gene Kelly), tasteless Erte Deco mise en scene, rollerdisco-laser cocaine excess, this film made it possible for Hedwig, Laz Burhmann and Matthew Barney. Ok, that might be a stretch – but they sure don’t make them like this anymore (with the exception of “The Big Apple” or “The Pirate Movie” with Kristy Mcnicholl and Willie Ames).
…oh yes, “The Pirate Movie.” I was only four years old when my parents took us to see that in the theater, and it totally resonated with every gay fiber of my being.
Does “Love at First Bite” fit within this context? It’s the same time period, pretty campy, and was another movie I was obsessed with at about age 5.
I boxed for several years. I own serious power tools. I know how to operate earth-moving equipment. I can build a wood-panelled library from scratch. And I have the soundtracks to “Xanadu” and “The Pirate Movie” on my iPod and I listen to them all the freaking time.
Loved this movie as a young ‘un as well. Along with Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Saw that one with my grandmother and got a boner during the football shower scene. My granny got drunk another night and asked me to model some underwear she’d bought me for my birthday. I declined.
Gawd, I keep coming back to this post. (Help meeeee!)
For those of you lucky gents in the NYC area, here’s some news (good or bad, I’ll leave it to you):
A $5 million Broadway musical adaptation of the film will open at the Helen Hayes Theatre in Manhattan with previews May 2007, starring Kerry Butler as Kira, James Carpinello as Sonny and Tony Roberts (actor) as Danny. Jackie Hoffman and Mary Testa will co-star as (in a new plot twist to the Broadway version) “evil” Muse sisters. The official website of the show is (link)
Best. Movie. Ever.
I’ve burned through 3 VHS copies and possibly 4 DVD copies (since I always end up giving my copies to friends and the uninitiated–I’ve even converted my straight brother, his wife and her sisters). Some random thoughts: Several ago here in L.A., Outfest had an outdoor Xanadu sing-a-long screening–which was a hoot. A couple of years after that, the American Cinematheque hosted a screening with special guest speakers (the cinematographer–who also happened to be DP of the equally sublime Eyes of Laura Mars–and Gene Kelly’s widow, both of whom had great production stories)… A few years ago, I caught ONJ’s Vegas show at the Paris Hotel and Casino. And since it was her first live concert in a while in which she had both a small orchestra and a live “rock band” (her words) backing her. Because of this, she did a full Xanadu medley–including Dancin’, the track she does on-screen with the Tubes that mashes a ’40s Andrews Sisters-styled ditty with an overblown ’80s powerpop-rock song. Xanadu presenting a cinematic precursor to mash-ups: discuss… Don’t even get me started on the great locations used in the film: the late great streamline-moderne Pan Pacific Auditorium, the Fiorucci store in Beverly Hills, the Venice Beach boardwalk, etc… Or the crazy roller-disco/drumline prelude to the final Xanadu production number that culminates with Kira (ONJ) and her 7 sisters being beamed back up… This shit is crazy. It succeeded where other disco-fied/new-waved musicals like The Apple failed… Yes, it’s a pretty mess; but it’s also pure, unapologetic guilty-pleasure bliss. (I think I just wet myself.)
…even better than Can’t Stop the Music which really only had 2 good moments: the YMCA production number(because of its steaming hot serving of PG-rated homoeroticism–that referenced Gentlemen Prefer Blonde’s Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love number by Jane Russell) and the Do the Shake (fake Milk TV commercial set with glammed-out, disco White Party trimmings and Valerie Perrine–Valerie Perrine?!?–as the hot-hot hottie fashion model bankrolling the Village People endeavor.
Thank you Enrique for the kind words in another post. Love your encyclopedic memory of Xanadu. Last year I watched Eyes of Laura Mars when we did a piece on Faye Dunaway. Laura Mars was very much on the same page as Xanadu, part of an era when to say a film was a movie that blows meant that everybody in it was on blow.
Laura Mars, The Eyes of: The moment for me of mind-rending clarity came when Faye did that balletic split in the middle of Columbus Circle and her dress opens up on either side with splits of its own. Miles and miles of showgirl leg run out either side as she descends to the pavement and you wonder just how long it’s going to go on before the ole beaveroonie catches light. It doesn’t, of course Faye is too much a lady, Britney hasn’t been born yet, and really the great Faye is just doing it for the role: Laura Mars is a fashion photographer and in the scene she is photographing supermodels emerging unscathed and fabulous from a staged car crash.
Past the wacky dust, please.
Best laugh I’ve had in ages ….
Seeing it at 16 was one secret that STAYED in the closet until now …
So for serving up this ghast from the past, I’d thought I’d add my humble retort …
A place where nobody dared to go …
I wanted no one to know
I went to Xanadu
(thought it nice
he saw it twice)
And now I open my eyes and see
What they made makes me squeal …
A nightmare called Xanadu
(I’m older now
My excuse anyhow … )
Ten million bucks are burnin’
And there you are
A film too far
A uberkitsch blast now will be haunting me
Eternally
Xanadu Xanadu
It is so QUEER
In xanadu
Xanadu Xanadu
NOW BROADWAY TOO
Has Xanadu ????
Coleridge would roll over in his grave
‘cos of you Xanadu !
Xanadu killed a film career for you, Livvy, Oh, Xanadu !
The dross, this echo of long ago
How I liked it I’ll never know
Who thought up Xanadu ?
With Gene, the musical’s greatest friend,
What a way for a career to end
Killed off by Xanadu
(Go all the way
with ON-J ????)
And now that we’re ending
There’s one thing more I should put in
I never understood a word of the backing din by Jeff Lynne
Xanadu Xanadu
Too much I fear
Of Xanadu
Xanadu Xanadu
Curses to you
Oh Xanadu
So now I’m here
So now I’m queer,
Blame Xanadu
Before he blabs
Turn on the Babs
Over Xanadu ….
What’s a goi to do ???
Bravo, Kabuk.
Clap clap clap clap clap.