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A truly on-brand #Cats story: When I was 6 I LOVED Cats. I listened to the Broadway record over and over. All I wanted for my birthday was to see it live. So my dad, a grizzled New Yorker, took me to see it in Chicago.
At intermission, he said we needed to get something in the car. However, once we got in the car he drove off. Confused, I explained, “Dad, it isn’t over!” And he looked at me and said, “Leila, I didn't realize it was really about *actual* cats."
This is not the first time whimsy irritated him. He took me out of the screening of Elijah Wood’s North because he said it was highly unrealistic.
Mind you, this Cats incident was ON MY BIRTHDAY. I had a favorite cat! It was the all white one!
I confronted him about this years later and he was like, "I feel like I did the only reasonable thing given the situation."
I confronted him about this years later and he was like, "I feel like I did the only reasonable thing given the situation."
And now I will tell you the very true, very real plot of “Cats” so you can imagine what broke my dad’s brain and also what a giant room of agents/producers were pitched and then said, “Yes, let’s green light that. It will make the general populace take part in capitalism.”
So, a group of cats get together to through a party called a Jellicle ball, because they are Jellicle cats.
All cats are Jellicle cats, you realize, and Jellicle cats have THREE (3) names. A family name, a fancy name, and a secret name. Also an old cat is going to come and assign a cat who will pick a cat who is worthy to go to the heavyside layer (serious) to be reborn as a kitten.
And then you get to meet the contenders for going to this cat heaven. Lord, do you meet them.
The contenders include the following fucking insane cats: (I am doing this from memory. “MEMMMORY.”)
Rum Tum Tugger, the cat who fucks. All the lady cats swoon over his barbed penis.
The contenders include the following fucking insane cats: (I am doing this from memory. “MEMMMORY.”)
Rum Tum Tugger, the cat who fucks. All the lady cats swoon over his barbed penis.
And then a cat who teaches mice diction, which is reasonable and fine. Mungojerry and Rumpleteezer, who are chaotic neutral. Bustopher Jones who is the James Corden cat. And then “Grizabella the glamour cat” who is the cat most likely to yell at you for having wire hangers.
Then there is Macavity who gets a super sexy blues-y song and he is basically like, Danny Ocean. (Note: There are only two types of songs in Cats: super sexy songs and then super Andrew Lloyd Weber gospel songs with horns and triumphant choruses.)
Then you get Gus the theater cat who basically sings “Send In The Clowns” and then they do a weird slightly nationalist play about the evil of Siamese cats, and then there is my personal favorite cat Mr. Mistofelees (sp?) who is basically David Bowie and his song slaps.
Then they send Grizabella (the sad glamour cat) to the Heavyside Layer and you are told that you need to give your cats caviar and heavy cream and the bombshell that cats are in fact not dogs. (“First, your memory I'll jog/And say: A cat is not a dog.”)
And then you wonder how this was on Broadway TWICE and then you remember that this musical has bewildered people for literally forty years and this movie certainly won’t clear a damn thing up.
