Why the Music in Les Misérables (2012) is Worse than you Thought

0:00 this video is brought to you by viewers like you thanks for helping support all my bad habits okay so check it out I'm just going to be really really honest with you Les Miserables is like a super simple and straightforward musical it's really not that complicated at all in fact it's one of my go-tos for explaining how a theme or a light Motif Works here's a really easy example listen to that song that the bishop sings to veljan in the beginning of act one you are okay now listen to the song that Marius sings when he realizes that all his friends are dead it's a grief that can't be spoken it's the exact same music just different lyrics you don't have to like dig into the musical code or get complicated or anything like that it's literally just the same music over and over again with different words and honestly it makes for a great contrasting parallel between like making somebody feel invited and realizing that you're alone and there

0:46 are tons of moments like this in this musical some people go so far as to describe this musical as symmetrical because so many pieces of music that appear in the First Act come back in the second and that's what I was seeing in the requests when people were asking me to talk about lay Miz and I figured oh cool that's going to be a really fun and easy video to make also I figured like covering a musical about a revolution might be poignant right now because of how absolutely nothing is going on don't worry everything's fine there's nothing happening just stay indoors and watch the news but I also thought that doing a video on L Miz could be nice because they just did that remake a couple years ago that I never checked out and oh my god what the hell did they do stole a loaf of bread I can't believe they messed up lay Miser Rob that bad it's like finding out someone forgot the lyrics to Barney like when I was watching the Lovecraft and fever dreams

1:32 that were the liveaction Disney remakes I thought that they were an anomaly not the new industry standard holy crap on a cracker I know that the internet's like full of hot ticks of people just tearing into things that are marginally bad and I've absolutely been a part of that system it's okay to like Tarzan just leave me alone so I want to be really clear when I say this this isn't just me saying that I don't think that the performances are good or that I didn't like the choices that they made or anything like that the performances in this film are so bad that they legitimately devalue the music music in Lay Miz it isn't just a bad performance it's literally wrong they just aren't singing the right notes welcome sir come our I'm sure we're here in common I mean this when I say it I wanted this video to just be about the musical

2:18 construction of lay Miz but so many aspects of this film are just so inexcusably bad that it's actually derailed my entire life for the last few weeks this film completely misrepresents the music in the show and we all know how this is going to start so let's just get down to it part one Russell Crow oh yeah big shock wow Russell Crow is bad someone give me a pullitzer for journalism but there's a lot to his performance that people aren't talking about and I feel need to be said like for starters did you know that Russell Crow is not only not a bad singer but also has his own band oh [Music] I'm is Crow has been singing since 1980 which is when this show originally premiered that's right Russell Crow has been singing for as long as this Show's been around and he's not bad [Music]

3:07 bad so if he's so experienced then why does he suck a lemon in this movie well in order to explain that we have to go into vocal Tech and vocal pedagogy what I mean by that is that when it comes to vocalists you're honestly dealing with a completely different breed of the musical world see ever since like oh I don't know the 1600s or so everyone and their mother who's ever had a solo at their local church has felt qualified enough to become some kind a vocal teacher so over hundreds and hundreds of years of people basically faking it until they make it all trying to be their generation Beyonce a lot of technical terms and labels in the vocalist catalog have ended up with dozens of different meanings and interpretations there are some vocal terms and techniques out there that have been so misused over so many years that they are almost completely meaningless so trying to honestly grow and develop in the vocal

3:54 world is an absolute nightmare there's so much bad information out there that I don't even really know how to give you an example like okay here's one like so there's this thing in your throat called your lnx it's your voice box and if at any point in your life you've had a large amount of testosterone in your system then your vocal folds in your lnx have gotten thicker which has made your voice drop now in your larynx there are two muscles that we're going to focus on the thyro aroid muscle and the cryo thyroid muscle and we abbreviate those to the TA and CT muscles now when you're speaking in basically your normal speaking voice you're primarily utilizing your ta muscle but if you raise your voice a little bit then you're going to be using more of your CT muscle that's just how it works now when you're singing singers tend to characterize dominated singing as your chest voice because a lot of people describe it as being able to feel your voice vibrate in your chest and when you're using CT dominated singing vocalists call it your head voice because it feels like it's vibrating in

4:41 your head now instead of chest and head voice some teachers call this your M1 register and your M2 register and that's fine some other people call your chest voice your modal voice because it's what people tend to use to speak and they'll call your head voice your falsetto register that's actually how Wikipedia categorizes them and that's wrong it's wrong because technically only men can sing in falsetto when women try to their glaus or the Gap in between their vocal folds they just end up in their head voice I'm going to link some videos in the description to help you guys out from everything I've seen this dude in the New York vocal coaching YouTube channel is the best I've seen for accurate information he knows what's up the three registers for men are actually chest head and falsetto while for women it's chest head and something you call your mixed voice and even then some people debate the whole mixed voice thing but then again some other people throw this whole system out and I've heard some coaches that use diaphragm oral and nasal residence registers which

5:27 is completely wrong from everything that I've read in terms of what is and is not a register but that doesn't stop them from saying that and making a living teaching that to other people now if your eyes have glazed over then good because the thing about studying vocal anything is that you have to Wade through this swamp of misinformation I'm literally looking at my vocal Tech textbook and it's contradicting Wikipedia what are you supposed to do with that and we haven't even gotten to vocal fry or whistle register whatever the hell flaget is and none of this even begins to address different styles of singing like belting which is not a register and it's not just High chest voice I want to lay that to rest or death metal growls or throat singing there's a lot out there now I tell you all this because I want to offer some context to the Colossal idiocy you're about to hear in a lot of different places through that period I was in

6:14 Vancouver or no no I was in Illinois Sydney Los Angeles you know going round and around and so wherever I went my aim was to sing every day so ended up hooking up with a whole bunch of different singing teachers and they all have their own Shand and language that you have to learn Crow clearly does not have any experience singing in a musical theater situation and going to four different vocal coaches is not the same as going to four different math tutors you're not just picking back up at like fractions or something like that there's a very good chance that they all told him something different had him do different exercises and had different end goals in mind in many ways at his level of experience with each new teacher he went to he was basically starting over and over and over and never actually got off the ground so watching Russell Crow sing in this movie would be like watching people line up for the Olympic freestyle and then

6:59 seeing someone wearing water wings like it's it's impressive that they're going to give him a try but really who let this happen and who let this happen Cameron Macintosh everyone blames the director Tom Hooper for this film and that's not entirely fair but don't worry we're going to get there so a lot of people don't know this but leiz is a French musical and no not like not French is in like France it's it's French as in it was originally written in French it premiered in 1980 and in 1985 an English language adaptation made it to London's West End all financed by Macintosh here and since its release Macintosh has kept the film rights to L Miz in a development hell he didn't want to give away the rights to the film until he could get someone who and I

7:46 quote has a vision for the show that will put the original Show's team including me back to work we don't just want an adaptation we want a film audiences will find as fresh as the actual show so the thing is that Hooper wanting to the show live was literally what brought this film out of development hell because it's what eventually won Macintosh over one of the things that he said to me that I went I really think this person really has a chance of making something special out of lame M was that he felt that the film needed to be recorded live and that you couldn't you couldn't do what was traditionally done with musical films and as far as Tom Hooper goes I'm just going to say this I'm not taking musical advice from someone who feels the need to explain what a click track is The

8:32 Click track gives us the pulse where the piece is Flowing which is basically a a sound that the orchestra hear in there ears so if I'm going to put my money on it that whole making the cast sing live on set instead of in the studio which is so stupid that I literally cannot talk about it here and finish my thoughts before the earth completes one rotation around the Sun it is just a stupid amount of time and effort to try and get a live recording to work basically what we're doing is we're radio micing every actor we've gone for something which gives us as close to a studio sound as possible now each each radio mic is on a separate track um sometimes on lay mov we're running up to 26 tracks of radio mics movie sets are are very very noisy places camera and the camera's over here shooting a closeup please don't be here sort of Shifting around on the sets have to be specially deadened down he's

9:19 always bringing carpet in Sam is a classic case doing uh on my own as eponine all we heard was the rain dropping onto microphones and onto the set so all you heard was Bop water hit in our water Pro was a a little bit noisy so we've put on the cloths that pianist is basically playing live into the actor earpieces we just sing at each other on an otherwise deathly silent set than you which is why we've put The Pianist in this box um with a double plexiglass so that the microphones capturing the voices of the actors would not capture the sound of The Pianist fingers hitting the keys which leads to hilarious moments like

10:08 this must if you've only seen the film you probably can't tell what's going wrong here but those orchestra hits they're supposed to sink up with Von tearing up his parole slip must begin they literally couldn't do it because Hugh Jackman isn't listening to the music that we're listening to it's like the whole point of the scene and they didn't get it right it is so simple and I just oh I can't okay back to Crow here like I said the performance is just so bad the ending to Stars where ja commits

10:53 himself to finding Von the end of the song is the same notes like four times and Crow struggles to find them over over and over this I sby the star this [Applause] [Music] iby this is someone who needs help it's honestly sad to see someone getting abandoned on stage like that no one wants to see this you just want to give him a pat on the back and help him run some drills but it's not just that it's a bad performance the performance has so many issues that it actually messes with the structure of the music like okay listen to what's happening during his confrontation with Von you a

11:40 chain Von's like just let me help cazette and then I'll turn myself in and you can put me in prison and Ja is all like no all lives matter this is a reverse of what happens in the opening in the opening Von is singing look down look down look down don't look in the ey with ja introducing himself with the this light Motif and I'm ja do not forget my name but here ja is singing look down and veljan is singing ja's prison guard light Motif at last we see each othere look down look down don't look in the ey before you say another

12:27 word before you chain me up like a slave again follow to the letter your iny this B of Shame you show it till you die they've switched positions and they keep switching back and forth as the confrontation continues right here jaier goes back to singing his original light Motif it's the entire structure of the conflict these two are battling for who's going to control the narrative does vhan get to go and save cazette or is he going to go directly to jail do not pass go do not collect $200 but during the scene in the film they flub the lines so bad that for first time listener it's it's honestly really difficult to tell what's going on like listen to how this is supposed to sound you

13:16 know I did was so yeah the performances are so rough that it actually devalues the music which I guess is a good as time as any to get to part two and Hathaway okay so Hathway's performance here was doesn't um okay bear with me uh let's actually come at this from another angle so there's this thing that vocalists do that I absolutely hate and it's when they're right there's this saying that when you're a vocalist you are your instrument and it's completely true and what that means is is that when you've spent 30 years honing your instrument your voice is comparable to a Masterwork instrument Pavarotti's voice was comparable to a strat of various they're both Priceless instruments now if you have a Priceless instrument like a out of areas worth millions and millions of

14:02 whatever currency you want to pick and someone just drops that instrument in your hands your first instinct before playing it probably wouldn't be to dunk it in a bathtub full of fleg right because that's what you're doing to your voice when you cry all those tears are going down the back of your throat all that stuff that comes out of your nose is just Surplus tears so when you're singing you really don't want to cry it is in your best interest to not cry when you cry you're kind of throwing out the ability to sing really well this is like this is a thing most vocalists will avoid crying but try to make it look like they're crying see memories here looks like she's crying but she's not crying she's got to hit those notes you see that in every one of those performances look at Ruthie Henshaw who performed the 10th anniversary of I Dreamed a Dream looks like she's crying but she's not looks like she's about to

14:48 but she doesn't ugly crying will not a good vocal performance make you're coating your vocal folds with more flim than you're used to which throws off how you're used to sounding notes your diaphragm will start spasming which means you don't have complete control over your breathing then you might end up hitting your audiences with one of those and that's not good for anybody there's actually a really good cut and dry example here with bernardette Peters in the live recording of Sunday in the park with George she actually cried on stage and they made her come back to dub herself in post because she wasn't as good with all that cry juice in her system a mission to see now I have one to George so with that in mind let's get back to Anne Hathaway now it's important to keep in mind that she did a great job here gotten Oscar and everything and the reason I think she did such a good job in this performance was because when she was 6 years old she saw her mother perform as fontine on stage in a

15:33 performance of lay Miz and that was the moment Hathaway decided that she was going to be an actress rumor has it that her mother even helped her prepare for this role in every way it kind of feels like this was her Heath Ledger Joker moment which is why I imagine she let them shave her head on camera and it worked but for as good as this is a theatrical performance as good as this is an acting performance it is not so much a vocal performance watch what happens if I black out the screen for a minute and force you to just listen he took my childhood and a strong he took my childhood in his be honest with me that's not something you're going to put on your Spotify playlist is it now one excuse that people have thrown at me is that

16:20 she's sitting like she couldn't get breath that she needed or something cuz she was sitting which if sitting stops you from being able to project then someone forgot to tell Alli stroker I can't [Music] no but what I will believe is that she probably practiced standing up and had her vocal coach go through with her and write down where and when she was going to breathe but when she was directed to sit down on set it meant that she couldn't get as much air as she was used to and she couldn't compensate on the Fly because she's not an experienced vocalist and when you mix that in with the crying we end up with all those painful gasps for air he fill my days with endless Wonder G

17:09 and this is going to come as a shock to some of you but it seems like that was on purpose the first thing that I did was just learn how to sing the songs properly you know where my technique was in the proper place and I knew the song backwards and forwards and then you start to apply the reality of the scene and it started to affect my voice and I started to think I can't sing this for lack of a better word I can't sing this pretty because it'll take you out of it that is just such a massive issue so I've said this before on this channel like a half dozen times and I'll say it again the entire language of musical theater goes like this you talk until the emotions become so intense that you can't talk anymore and you break into song then once the emotions are too much for song you break into dance you talk until you sing and then you sing until you dance you talk sing dance talk sing dance talk sing dance you get the idea

17:55 but Lis is actually kind of unique in this system here it's almost completely sunk through with little to no dialogue which ends up making it more like a traditional Opera but Opera doesn't work in the same system that musical theater does just watch this a lot of lame is is what they call res okay so the material is really suitable for this kind of freedom I do the Soliloquy and it starts with what have I done sweet Jesus what have I done become a thief in the night become a dog on the Run Okay so that's if you were singing it literally be like that I can go out there and some takes I'll be like what have I done sweet Jesus what have I done become a so what happens is that instead of using that musical theater language of moving through acting singing and dancing to convey emotional intensity the powers that be elected to make these vocal performances less like vocal

18:41 performances and more like an actor's interpretation of the music so instead of going from speaking to singing we're going from singing to speaking and becoming less emotionally intense in this musical theater structure having all these messed up musical deliveries is going to completely suck all the power out of the performance compare this what have I done sweet Jesus what have I done become a thief in the night become a dog on the run to this what have I done sweet Jesus what have I done become a thief in the night become a dog on the run but coming back to Hathaway we see this focus on acting over music directly impact the overall musical structure of the work right here in fontine is dying in his hallucinating cassette we get a really important piece of music to me

19:29 clet the light is fading this song comes back for eponine singing about getting ditched by Marius he beside me and again when veljan is dying and giving cazette away to Marius on this page I write my last confession this piece of music is supposed to represent like if you love it let it go or something like that fontine is letting go of cazette epan is letting go of Marius and vj's letting go of cazette again I'm starting to realize that cuz that's kind of like the center of all these situations anyway hathway here is so fixated on trying to get that goldplated validation that she ends up shopping the song so hard that you can barely tell that that's what she's singing come to

20:15 meet the light is fading if this is your first time hearing lay Miz it's almost impossible for you to be able to parse that these three pieces of music are all the same this just sounds like the ravings of a Dying woman again compare that to what it sounds like on [Music] stage is fading the vocal performance is so rough you can't really musically tell what's going on it's just it's it's literally wrong those are not the notes this is literally not the music of lay Miz but while we're here I want to talk about the part of the film that bothered me the most part three Hugh Jackman guys Hugh Jackman sucked in this movie

21:01 welcome sir where I stand the Turning of the sto a loaf of bread no one's talking about it because everyone just needs a scapegoat to point and laugh at because that's how the internet works but holy crap Jackman really did not show up for this film and when you find out why it's going to give you a stroke prepare yourself is it true you deprived yourself of water for 36 hours yeah this water restriction thing which is what bodybuild do before a show and you can lose up to 10 lb of body weight and ride off the surface do not do this at home the regime he put himself under to to get to this extraordinary place where he you know had no fat on him but was still strong and you know he was he almost kind of

21:46 recreated the rations of being a convict and was doing unbelievable lount of working out none of this I required him to do he wanted to do it Tom hoop first day of rehearsal said I need you actually before then he said I need you unrecognizable he said if people recogniz you I want them to think you're sick in real life so uh I do my best so I'm going to give all the vocalists watching this a minute to recover from how painful that was I'll explain why what you just saw was absolutely horrifying so listen I've known vocalists to not speak for several days before performance and I've known vocalist to not speak for several days after a performance as well kind of like an athlete dunking their body in an ice bath to recover I've heard of vocalists completely cutting out Dairy and sugar from their diet which to be fair all of this seems like something that the cast was instructed to do as well there's no coffee there's no Dairy there's 8 hours of sleep I drink hot water with lemon

22:33 all day long I'd go on vocal rest some days where I don't speak at all but like I've heard of vocalists wrapping a damp washcloth over their nose and mouth when they travel on an airplane because the air is too dry eight cups of water a day is a bare minimum for vocalists like I can't even begin to express how much of a bare minimum I've heard of some vocalists carefully monitoring their menstrual cycle because they insist that as estrogen levels decline their body will hold on to more water and their vocal folds will swell which will make them sound more raspy I've known Opera Productions that only have their performers do something called marking during rehearsals which basically means that they like don't sing at all marking is when you sing in a super soft almost non- singing way to be clear here in Opera rehearsals they won't have their performers actually sing to preserve and

23:20 not strain their voices for professional vocalists only at the absolute highest level of operatic performance will you hear about rehearsals going full force and even then you're dealing with people that are so good that you only need one rehearsal before they have the entire Showdown I've heard of some pretty insane things to prepare and conserve your voice before a performance which makes this whole situation absolutely horrifying like I'm not going to crack any jokes here this isn't funny Jackman put himself at very serious risk of doing permanent damage to his voice because he wanted to look like Wolverine in a scene where he isn't even shirtless this is one of the most Reckless and insane things I've ever heard of somebody doing for a performance forget no one checking in to make sure that is going to his vocal lessons the fact that this happened at all is terrifying it is

24:05 genuinely baffling that he's saying all this with a smile on his face like he's proud of it or something but it gets even worse that kind of Fitness really helped me because singing live for every take is daunting there are some days where you're singing 10 12 hours a day and you need to be right on it at the 10th hour as you are in the first hour I I never wanted to go on and on about it but that weight loss was not a long-term good thing for my health and it took a really long time to come back from it in order to do the transformation I'd lost a lot of weight in a very small amount of in about two weeks so I lost an unhealthy amount of weight in in a very short amount of time and I was still

24:51 really sick because of it so Tom came up to me after that when it was the fourth take and he said I'm I'm very happy and I said I I want to keep going and so we shot for another 8 hours um and then at the end of those 8 hours we looked at each other and said it was that one that we shot in the morning oh dear um you start the song you sing the whole damn song go how many times does the blo have to die in a given day I mean for God's sake I've been dying all morning I say this all the time and No One Believes Me I know people who have permanently damaged their vocal folds from just doing the standard eight shows a week rotation people get hurt when they don't do this properly to have your performers run through numbers over and over and over at full blast for 10 hours straight is a goddamn miracle that no one got hurt and I don't mean like oh

25:37 they got a sore throat I mean like the full Miles Davis developed pops and could never speak properly again you know what I mean you don't study you know whatever they learn when they started out that's what that's all they know the entire cast was so dangerously close to this it's unreal but the thing is that this is probably the biggest reason they all suck not only do you have a bunch of people with like no musical theater experience but even the people who do have musical theater experience are dehydrating themselves for 3 days before singing for 12 hours straight days on end of course they're going to suck Jackman just sounds like he's rubbing two pieces of sandpaper together beneath the Lash upon the rack I feel my shame Inside Me Like a Knife you may cath always sing this

26:23 scene for 8 hours only to use the take from When She's Fresh in other news Tom Hooper discovers that water is wet like okay look at it this way remember that fight scene from The Last Jedi that everyone made fun of because it had a bunch of mistakes or whatever imagine this after they've been at it for 10 hours that's what you're looking at for this entire film and that doesn't just go for the vocal performances it's how they treated the orchestra as well at the end of a long day which was this is the end of our third session we got so that's sort of 7 hours later of playing I need 2 minutes yes he does I know I I can't go straight on yet do you need something you want to drink you want it's a lot that in the show there's a spontaneity after you know nearly 10 hours playing they found the

27:09 reserves and we got it but here's the thing even when you consider all that all these technical problems having to sing live on said to hydrating yourself for 3 Days singing for 10 to 12 hours a day there are still bad choices being made here so the song bring him home I almost don't want to touch on it because Kevin Lynch made an absolutely amazing video specifically on this number and you should absolutely go watch it but the idea is that this song is all about veljan praying to God so it's higher up because he's literally singing up he's singing to God who is up in the sky but this song is also really quiet because it's personal it's just this mono imano kind of thing like yo god listen I'm trying to wingman for my daughter so can you not have this guy get infection when I drag him through a literal sewer with all these open wounds so having to sing high and quiet makes it really demanding to sing you have to give yourself enough

27:55 breath support to sound the note but not enough to get too loud you have to thread the needle it's all about a demonstration of control over your voice that's why vocalists tend to use this song when they want to flex God but Jackman over here just elects to Belt it as loud as he can like a gorilla in a car wash and that similarly doesn't even make sense just like the choices in this [Music] film like everything else in this film The perform performance is just so rough that at times it's musically unintelligible like listen right here this innocent who my face who goes to judgment in my place that must my name

28:42 until I die be no more than an aliim must I lie my soul belongs to God I know I made that bargain long ago I don't know if it was him saying that he wanted to speak this line or if it was Hooper or if it was Macintosh or if this was take 11 and Jackman was just exhausted and hadn't had any water in 3 days because I just can't get over how stupid that was jeez you basically can't tell that this is the line from One Day More these men who seem to know my crime will surely come a second time One Day More this innocent who Bears my face who goes to judgment in my place this innocent who wears my face who goes to judgment in my place that must my name until I die be no more than an alpie must I lie and must my name until I die be nor more

29:30 than an Aly must I Die My Soul belongs to God I know I made that bargain long ago my soul belongs to God I know I made that barain long this is vhon resolving himself to confessing to having faked his identity and throwing away the life he's made this is his call to Destiny this is what he sings during One Day More this is literally like this is literally his call to Destiny his entire identity it's what governs all the choices that he makes for the rest of the show and by having this stupid half-spoken delivery you can't really tell that that's what's going on it completely undermines the musical structure of the work as a whole and you get the exact same thing during the opening Soliloquy like how are you even supposed to like pick up half of what's going on he told me that I have a soul he told me that I have a

30:16 soul but here's the part that's going to really throw you for a loop part four I love this movie because of how it proves itself right this is one of the most fascinating films I've ever seen and I don't just mean that to sound like another pretentious YouTuber I have never seen a film so clearly make every single wrong decision and then in a matter of minutes do everything right it's like if half the time Tommy myo just doctor jacel and Mr hided himself into Steven Spielberg or something it's unreal let me explain at the end of act one we're introduced to older cazette Marius and eponine played by Amanda Cipher Eddie redm and Samantha Barks these three completely steal the show not only do they steal the entire show but they prove how and why all this nonsense can actually work like okay I don't like the whole recording live thing I think it's an absolutely

31:01 terrible idea but listen the problem with that is that you have to make all your acting choices 3 months before you've even met the actor you're working with by recording it live Tom is allowing us the spontaneity of normal film acting okay that's a very good point but that's coming from Eddie redm and while he's won a Tony for some boring no Music Theater stuff at least as far as I can tell he's had no professional singing experience prior to this film in fact depending on how you look at it he technically has less singing experience than and Russell Crow but take a look at what happens when you go to Just One vocal coach and practice a whole bunch phant Shadows on the floor in fact red M here does what Jackman doesn't for Empty Chairs at Empty Tables he starts soft and in falsetto before building up to belting

31:47 and I can hear them now my friends don't ask me that's exactly what Wilkinson does for bring him [Music] home the must die one by one how soon they fly I just want to take a minute here to say that I think it's pretty cool that they brought on Wilkinson to be the bishop it's poetic the old Von be gets the new Von I I like that but back to Red Wayne here he absolutely brings the heat he does way better than the Jonas Brother and credit where credits due Nick Jonas doesn't do a bad

32:33 job here it was they lit the flame which i' like to bring attention to the fact that the guy who has no prior singing experience is doing a better job than someone who hosted the Tony not only that but check out cazette and eping here Cipher over here did Mama Mia so she's already got the chops but Samantha Barks was eping in the 25th anniversary not only does she have experienc singing on stage she has experienced singing on stage being this character character and it shows because she blows every other performance out of the water oh you want it to look like I'm crying without me actually crying and screwing up my performance no worries I'm Samantha Barks and I'm a badass that I have [Music] never hey do you want to know what's harder than belting while sitting down having to sing quietly with someone

33:19 inches from your face while you have debris digging in your side and you're lying on your back most of your lungs are on your back so she's having to work against her entire body weight to get air but it's no problem for her because she's insane and threads that needle because she's done it a thousand times on stage and is really really good don't you afet miss marus I don't feel anything and I don't want to leave Cipher out here I'll admit she's got that crazy Snow White vbr so many questions Anders that seem but my God compared to the rest of the cast I could listen to her sing all day just listen to this

34:08 [Music] Trio oh my god dude it is just so good they are just so perfectly in tune okay and here's Jackman and Crow during the confrontation and here's the trio of [Music] perfection confrontation you know nothing Trio of perfection it's almost difficult to face the fact that these two scenes are from the same film and with that I kind of like to address the elephant in the room the elephant in the room is if you wanted to capture the fresh energy of a live performance why would you do 12 consecutive hours of takes these people only got to do it once and they only needed to do it once we're listening to

34:54 exhausted performers do their best in what is let's be generous here and call them non ideal circumstances but then I guess these guys probably aren't as tired because you only need one or two takes when you're killing it this [Music] hard oh my God it's Perfection you know it's common knowledge at this point that Hooper tried to imitate what he did with lay Miz when he went on to make 2019s cats and that was a dumpster fire you can check out Lindsay Ellis's video if you want to know more on that but the part that entertains me the most is that when he went on to secure the rights for cats Hooper offered the leading roles to Hugh Jackman and Anne hathway he was literally just trying to make lay Miz 2 Electric bugaloo obviously they both declined in fact even fewer people know this Taylor Swift originally audition for eping and lost to the queen Samantha

35:39 Barks so when cats came around Hooper gave Swift the role of bumble Arena without an audition and we all know how that went cuz that's the kicker that's the real punchline to all this you ready for this these actors know that they're better than this film they know that they're better than just this one performance don't just take my word for it [Music] that is so much more clear than what made it into the film such things be for I had come to hate this world such things be for I had come to hate the world and hathway is no slouch either it's amazing what you can get out of your performers when they're hydrated

36:26 and not malnourished I dreed a dream and time gone they can literally do a better job standing outside in the cold that's not how this is supposed to work I like L Mizer Rob I think lay Miz is a good musical lay Miz is good these performers are good and somehow bizarrely this film proves that you can actually have a good performance given exceptionally unreasonable circumstances but this is not a good performance of lay Miz leiz is a very simple very straightforward Musical and I know that I've just been showing the concert versions here you get the idea this is not a musical that necessitates some kind of wire work or something like that it's one of the easiest most concise Works to put on and us as a model to explain to people how reoccurring themes and light motifs

37:13 function in a larger work but this like I wish I can end on a joke here I have nothing to say just damn thanks for watching I'd like to thank my patrons for making these videos possible with an extra special thank you to Alec Kowski Alex clinkert always Posh bentastic Mr Ben Captain Casey Christian Clara tan Darren elmgren Elis and Thomas Constantine Google it Hayden elza I want you to tell me if my fear is Justified that no one will pay attention to me if I'm honest about my addiction to ice cream Jacob Solace John Eggbert Jordan Adams Julian DUIs Karen Rosenau Kate Jay Michael hubard Mike wisnu myth lenck Myan John tatarin Nicholas Kent prac Rafael Martinez sales Rick Osborne who am I wisdom manari Kel tier Joe angle

38:00 and majored enina Elizabeth ivth the lard guy kid wiu I'm sorry I'd also like to thank everybody who requested that I talk about lame Miz I love this musical so it was tons of fun to talk about even if I was complaining most of the time if you like what you saw here be sure to subscribe and check out my other videos follow me on Twitter and twitch to have your musical questions answered live and if you really like what I'm doing then consider supporting the channel on patreon but that's all I got for now thanks for watching so I know that when you do a movie musical you have to cut out a number here or there just to make it fit the runtime I just think it's hilarious that they man to reduce an entire musical number to hug Jackman screaming Marksman that just the funniest thing to me