Cultural Ephemera: Xanadu

 A friend recommended this movie as of possible interest though the story, he admitted, was bad. I do like weird stories, true--making sense of strange things in life, no matter how odd--but less fond of bad weird stories.

I didn't see the whole but whatever clips I could find. However, I was interested, interested that this was made at all (and how). 

For clarity, by "ephemera" I mean things that take the world by storm for a brief period of time then evaporate, almost without trace.

Xanadu would seems to both fit and fail that definition. As a movie, it barely broke even. As a soundtrack, though, it had five songs chart on the Top 40 and the album went platinum. The stars were huge: Gene Kelly was a major star to pull in the older generations while Olivia Newton-John and Michael Beck had just come off major successes. On other other hand, it pretty much stunted their acting careers. Meanwhile, the musicians and much of the film crew had major careers that continued beyond the film, which wouldn't fit. But the writers and director really never hit it out of the park, afterwards, although the director found more success when he focused on stories with a nonfictional frame. 

Perhaps it could classify as a cult film as it spawned a hit Broadway musical a quarter century later (this Wiki article makes it sound like they were able to make a plausibly good story out of the raw materials), and a killer who thought.he was guided by it.

The main reason I'm calling it ephemera, though, is the treatment: roller skates and rainbow color schemes. It mashes up classical Greek culture with Romantic Xanadu but without understanding either culture, so that it's alien to both. Yes, we have Gene Kelly but not in a way that utilizes him well. We have two generations represented here, but neither seem realistically depicted.  

It's as if aliens (or someone from the present or future with no understanding of the past) were given a time machine to kidnap talented music and dance and music video people from the past and told them to update the musical with a laundry list of things that once was popular from two different eras, to shake well and pour into a story. "Okay," the alien movie moguls said, "we want modernized versions of older clothing styles with dancing from Gene Kelly, music and weirdness for the younger Star-Wars set, cowboy outfits for those whose home is on the range, and cartoons for the kiddies. Famous music makers will help us sell the accompanying soundtrack. A recipe for million dollar industry!" 

This is what you'd get. Here's the identifying clip that sort of outlines the movie's presumed modus operanadi:

It's almost a parody of the eras it's trying to reach, past and present--and parody of basic storytelling. It doesn't seem to belong to any time period.

 

Yet there is so something visually and auditorily fascinating--not to mention the other-woldly perspective. The only way to interpret the movie that makes sense is as a music video that isn't trying to make sense of the story but of the music. The logical flow resolves as a music video would. 

 

Proof? See the last moments of the film, which would only work in a music video. Music videos often have compressed moments at the beginning and end which try to make sense of the music. This works just like one of those (cued up for you although you can rewind to watch the glitzy cowboy routine to get how it tried to rope in the rural and country crowd):

The only problem with this theory is the film occurred just before MTV. But maybe it was trying to ride the same cusp that MTV was riding. It sounds like music videos got their start in 1970s Australia (where Newton-John is from), and this has the same feel.

 

As such, the music-video movie is somewhat innovative--perhaps too innovative, Yet it had a huge musical impact and perhaps inspired the musical video industry. If you consider the project as having multiple revenue streams including Broadway musical parody (you can sense the mockery in the promotional poster above), it's hard to say it's a failure. No doubt, all of the above, the murders, and the Golden Raspberries (started in part because of the film) helped create the film's cult status.

 

However, you would have to pay me handsomely to watch the whole thing.