Me: mentions Gene Kelly in Brigadoon because I’ve been writing a story called “Treegadoon”
Friend: misreads Gene Kelly as Gene Wilder
Other Friend: mentions they haven’t seen Brigadoon
Me: writes whole essay on Brigadoon with a focus on replacing Gene Kelly with Gene Wilder
Brigadoon is by the same team that wrote My Fair Lady, Camelot, and The Little Prince, but it was a completely original piece. And it’s got the song, “Almost Like Being in Love,” which is fantastic. But… Gene Kelly’s strength is not singing, so he doesn’t really do it justice, and the rest of the songs are more… meh. And the whole concept of Brigadoon — while magical and captivating — is fundamentally conservative and kind of fascistic. It makes me wonder how much it was meant to be that way versus how much it was kind of an unintentional fallout from a cool idea. ‘Cause, really, Camelot and The Little Prince are two of my absolute favorite musicals, so it’s a bit weird how much Brigadoon kind of fails.
To be fair, I haven’t actually watched it in about twenty years, but I did listen to the soundtrack (which I haven’t even bothered to own; I just streamed it) and read the wiki page about it as a refresher a few weeks ago. The mere fact that I haven’t bothered re-watching Brigadoon as “research” should probably tell you all you really need to know about how much I remember enjoying it.
Brigadoon was a movie I knew about as a kid and was entranced by the little bits I knew, but we didn’t have it taped (my mom taped SO MANY MOVIES when I was a kid — we had a whole wall of video tapes, each with like six movies on them), and so it wasn’t really a movie I’d actually seen. When I lived in Seattle after college, I was so excited to check a DVD of it out from the library and actually finally get to watch it.
Bringing this back to where we started, I don’t know that Gene Wilder being in Brigadoon would actually necessitate a different plot, but I do think that he has a kind of ethereal, unearthly quality like he sees things no one else can see as opposed to a much more down-to-earth, matter-of-fact quality to Gene Kelly, and it might help elevate the aspects of Brigadoon — the general magical sense of the place and its temporary nature — that are interesting about it, so it might work better overall. I also think his singing style might bring out something more interesting about the songs than Gene Kelly is able to.
In conclusion: I have a LOT of thoughts about Brigadoon in general and also, apparently, Gene Wilder replacing Gene Kelly in it in particular.
I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that I have sooooo many thoughts on Brigadoon given that I’ve spent the last month or so writing “Treegadoon.”
For what it’s worth, “Treegadoon” is really a complete transformation of Brigadoon — it’s not just a question of squirrels and otters; it’s also got significant elements of Beauty & the Beast mixed in (to make the back story more magical) and Back to the Future (to wrestle with the time jumps more fully and really explore the effect of them). So the overall effect is very different.