aspie rhetor

ELO and autism: who knew?

My jaw dropped when I read this article yesterday morning. Apparently, the guy who directed Hairspray is directing a new musical based on ELO songs. (The article deems ELO as an “iconic eighties band.” Incorrect. ELO’s only top U.S. hits in the 80s were Hold on Tight and the Xanadu soundtrack, which incidentally brought about their demise, seeing as most people don’t find movies about roller-skating Greek muses who save disco houses with a tap-dancing Gene Kelly to be, erm, enjoyable? The 70s were ELO’s heyday. 1978, specifically. Big spaceships and laser shows.)

Also from the article:

In a script written by newcomer Marvin Easter, the two socially-prominent Trump-Hilton sisters and their mildly autistic brother, a toy store proprietor, attempt to reinvent a centuries-old love potion and launch a designer clothing line based on insomnia and prescription pharmaceuticals to save their “Grey Gardens”-style penthouse from foreclosure.

I’m not sure how “true” this article is, but it’s been plastered on a lot of ELO sites and listservs. Apparently, they’re looking to cast Steve Carell, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Amy Sedaris as the lead roles. I take this to mean that, if Steve Carell were cast, he would play the “mildly autistic brother.” A mildly autistic guy who sings ELO songs? All I can think of is his performance in Bruce Almighty.

I hope that this musical doesn’t make ELO look ridiculous, and I’m also curious to see how autism will be performed. I keep imagining a faux-autistic Steve Carell trying to sing something like Evil Woman or Ticket to the Moon. And that kind of scares me.

As an example of ELO gone bad, take the recent Broadway remaking of Xanadu, the 1980 bomb starring Olivia Newton-John. The plot was pointless, but the soundtrack, half of it being written and performed by ELO, rocked. The 2007 remake of the music is quite horrific, and the singers have even added a couple ELO songs to their show that were not in the original movie.

Here is a comparison of the original “Do Ya” with its recent bastardization:

1. The original 1972 version of Do Ya by the Move (which was basically early ELO with a different name)
2. The sucky new version

Additionally, being that ELO has been my nearly lifelong perseveration of choice, I writhe over any cheesy commercialization of them that might occur. As an AS child of the eighties and nineties, I suffered for my love of ELO. Kids tortured me over my obsession with Jeff Lynne. And while one of my largest hopes in life is to talk intelligibly with people about ELO, I don’t think that this musical will accomplish that for me. Rather, I think that a bunch of fourteen-year-old girls will become engrossed with tin-can, screechy sounding ELO makeovers and the actors and actresses who sing them. They’d be clueless as to the context and history surrounding the real ELO. And I highly doubt that this wannabe musical would have cellists running around on stage with instruments over their heads, or dudes in sequins playing their violins with oranges. And the setting doesn’t sound amenable to giant spaceships either, unless the HFA toy-store guy happens to perseverate on them.

I always imagined that an ELO movie would revolve around time travel or outer space and aliens, something cultishly classic. Not this pop-culturish rich people stuff.