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Re: TOMMY Road show in Chicago



    Date: Wed, 2 Nov 1994 14:45 CST
    From: Shanon T Dell <tommy@selway.umt.edu>

      PT let Russell have quite a bit of creative license with the
    movie (the baked beans scene for example.  What the hell was that about
    anyway?)

Ever seen the cover of "The Who Sell Out"?  If you still have questions,
here's my take on the scene:

Ann-Margaret's watching Tommy's pinball-wizard success on TV and
drinking champagne in a sumptuous mansion, which has been bought with
Tommy's pinball income.  In the song "Champagne", which Pete wrote new
for the movie, she sings about the luxuries she's enjoying now, but then
comes to the realization that it's all worth nothing as long as Tommy's
still deaf, dumb, and blind...he can't enjoy the wealth, and the guilt
she feels from inducing his ailments prevent her from enjoying the
wealth either.  She tries to change the channel from the Tommy
broadcast, but it keeps showing his face over and over (the first sly
indication that we're entering into fantasy), increasing her guilty
feeling and her frenzy to be released from his unwittingly accusing
gaze.  Finally she hurls the champagne bottle at the TV, smashing it and
releasing a flood of soap bubbles (foreshadowed by an earlier
laundry-detergent commercial).  She actually enjoys the feeling of the
bubbles, smoothing them onto her body, but then a flood of baked beans
erupts from the TV (in another of Pete's frequent in-references, this
time to the "Who Sell Out" cover photo of Roger), followed by a similar
flood of liquid chocolate.  By the time the whole floor is completely
flooded with sludge, and Ann-Margaret is voluntarily covering herself in
it, **as a punishment she accepts for her guilt**.  Finally, she,
completely covered (except for her face) in dark-brown sludge, lifts a
pure white carnation out of a silver spherical vase (recurrance of the
circle/sphere/pinball theme throughout) and kisses it, polluting the
clean flower by her very touch, as the music builds to a crashing
climax.  As the music fades away, Oliver Reed enters the room, which is
suddenly pure white and completely clean, to see her writhing on the
ground, with the flower in her hand, eyes closed, also completely
clean--and we realize that what we've been watching for the last 5
minutes is a picture of the thoughts in her mind, not reality itself.
It is this ability to slowly and almost imperceptibly pull us into
fantasy for extended minutes, only to suddenly cut to objective reality,
that is Ken Russell at his best.

It's one of my favorite sequences in the movie.

	    This book is pretty good.  It comes with a cd single of "I
    Believe My Own Eyes" (I managed to scratch mine all to hell) from the
                                                                 ^^^^^^^^
    show and it includes the complete script.
    ^^^^

Just a clarification, this CD is of Pete, not the Broadway singers,
performing the song.

    It runs about 40 bucks if you can still find it.

Look for it in used-book stores.  I agree, it is an excellent
documentary book on all aspects of the production.

Alan