New Characters, No Lapdance — Do Story Changes Make Rock of Ages Better Or Worse?
Fans of the Broadway musical Rock of Ages may throw tomatoes when they see the big screen version; director Adam Shankman, screenwriter Justin Theroux and even Tom Cruise himself made some major changes to the plot of the stage show. Some make the edgy musical more family friendly, but others sharpen the story. Will fans embrace their toned-down Rock of Ages movie?
In the film version Cruise stars as Stacee Jaxx, a legendary hair metal rocker with existential issues. Meanwhile, at The Bourbon Room, where Jaxx is performing his last show before going solo, Sherrie (Julianne Hough) and Drew (Diego Boneta) are falling in love. Sherrie just moved to L.A. to pursue her dreams; Drew has been paying his dues and gets the chance to open for Jaxx, but the rock n’ roll world splits up the young lovers.
But exactly how Rock of Ages unfolds from there differs notably from the Tony-nominated stage musical. Movieline spoke with director Shankman, writer Theroux, and star Hough about five major changes in the Rock of Ages movie, for better and worse.
1. Sherrie and Stacee no longer, uh, do it
A major plot point in the stage musical is that Sherrie sleeps with Stacee during the “I Wanna Know What Love Is” number and that’s what leads to her split from Drew. In the movie, the incident is reduced to a misunderstanding involving a spilled bottle of scotch — Drew gets the wrong idea when he sees Stacee zipping up his pants in close proximity to Sherrie — which kinda makes Drew look like a moron.
In the stage version, Stacee later comes back to Sherrie when she is working at a gentleman’s club, where she gives him a lap dance. Oddly, Shankman went ahead and shot the lap dance scene with Hough and Cruise, but took it out of the movie.
"'Rock You Like a Hurricane' was the duet that I did with Tom and it is bad frickin’ ass," Hough revealed at the Rock of Ages press day. "I mean, literally ass. No literally, this was the sexiest but roughest performance in the movie and I think it was a little bit too much for people. I think that people, especially women, didn’t really like Sherrie after that."
It wasn’t just women, but a very specific group of women, said Shankman. "Super easy to explain," Shankman said of the scenes that didn't test well pre-release. "It really upset mothers. The mothers literally turned against her character because her character sold out so much and she was such an animal in the scene. On top of which, where that scene was placed, it was at the top of the third act and you just want her to get to the Bourbon with those records. It was this huge deviation from the story in order to just do this number.”
It also makes sense as a story omission because without their sex scene, what’s the point of a lap dance? Shankman said empowering teenage girls in the audience was the most important factor. “The number, frankly, it is on the extended version and will be on Netflix and all that, you’ll understand why it got cut because it really upset mothers,” Shankman said. “I was like, I can’t have mothers saying to their teenage daughters, ‘No, you can’t go see this movie because Julianne Hough is lap dancing Tom Cruise in a G-string — [and doing it] very well.’”
2. Stacee Jaxx’s redemption
On stage, Jaxx remains a creep and flees the country dodging statutory rape charges. Not only would this ending be irrelevant to the new story, it would also be a lame and creepy move for a Tom Cruise movie.
Now the climax of the film involves Jaxx reading an article written by a reporter (Malin Akerman) in Rolling Stone. For the first time, Jaxx sees how he and his management screwed over hard-working music promoters like the owners of The Bourbon Room. To make amends, Jaxx returns to the Bourbon for a free benefit show, thus paving the way for a real finale where Sherrie and Drew join Jaxx on tour — and giving Cruise's Jaxx a means of redemption.
Screenwriter Justin Theroux credited Cruise himself with the new ending. “That was actually an invention of Tom,” Theroux said. “He was like, ‘This guy needs to connect somewhere at the end of the movie.’ He treats it like it’s a dramatic part and he says, ‘No matter what, you still need to have these motivating factors and you need to have this. There needs to be a beginning, middle and an end to this guy. It can’t just be a guy who’s just floating around being funny. He actually has to have something to perform.’ The character of Stacee Jaxx was looking for something and being so famous that he couldn’t even identify it. That thing is, in our movie, love and someone telling the truth. And then also how do we resolve that in a comedic way? [After] that scene where he’s walking and makes out with a girl on his way to make out with the girl — how would that guy find love? That was really the fun part of creating that.”
3. New songs added, some songs gone
Of course, it would be hard for any movie adaptation to keep every single song from its stage iteration, so a few rock classics had to go. Rock of Ages had the unusual problem of obtaining even MORE music than the stage show, and having to make sure to find places for them in the story.
“Well, the movie couldn’t be two hours and 40 minutes long, which is basically the show,” Shankman said. “I also had the opportunity that the play didn’t have — Def Leppard, Joan Jett and Guns n’ Roses opened up their catalogs to the movie, which I would have to attribute to Mr. Cruise’s involvement. I never talked to the guys but I would think that that is what sort of did it. On top of which, the Hairspray cred, people knew that I wasn’t going to make fun of anything.”
Thanks to that, we now get to hear Cruise sing “Pour Some Sugar On Me.” Worth it.
4. A whole new family values subplot
The plot of the stage show involves two developers battling a city planner over a Sunset Strip land deal, a pretty convoluted angle involving the politics of historical landmarks and zoning districts. The movie invents the character of the mayor’s wife (Catherine Zeta Jones), who is protesting The Bourbon Room on moral grounds, as a Christian crusader against rock n’ roll. It’s clean, simple and pays off when the reasons for her repression are revealed.
In the film, the mayor’s wife steals the song “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” from her land developer counterparts in the musical; it becomes the anthem for her church protest group.
5. Goodbye, Fourth Wall
The biggest change musical buffs will notice is that the movie Rock of Ages has no narrator. The stage show not only had a character narrating the story, but it also broke the fourth wall and addressed the audience. The climax of the stage show had the characters realize some playwright gave them a sad ending, so they go and change it.
Meta humor is all well and good but in a movie that might have felt like a cheap cop out. Shankman decided to tell the story linearly, so it has a traditional, feel-good movie plot. The characters succeed because of their own actions, not thanks to some clever meta-device. In taking out the narrator, Shankman decided to make it Sherrie’s story (which also makes it more important that she not lose the audience with her sexual exploits — see #1.).
“By taking out the narrator I had to give it the point of view of somebody, and I thought it would be best to give it to the person who’s new to Los Angeles,” Shankman said.
Stay tuned for more on Rock of Ages, which opens this Friday.
Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Subscribe to the new Movieline on YouTube
Comments
I haven't seen the stage play, but it looks to me like the changes from theater to movie screen basically reflect the differences in the two media. The fourth wall, and the lack of a need for a coherent plot are intrinsic to stage musicals, since they are physically and psychologically so close to the audience. To succeed,, a movie needs a coherent story line with a beginning, middle, and end, and needs to speak to its audience with likeable characters that theycan root for,
I have seen the movie and having read the plot of the stage musical, the changes were a definite improvement.
Finally, someone thinks how I did; that the film improved upon the stage show, which was fun, but cartoonish and incoherently silly. I've heard so many people make the show sound like some sort of masterpiece and I just don't get it.
As someone who has seen both the movie and the musical now, I think they are two different things with the same name. The plot changes are so drastic that it really creates a different vibe for each production. The story of Sherrie eventually having the child in the play was taken out. Tom Cruise obviously was involved and couldn't just be a side character like the musical. The movie takes the fog machine 3000 out of the plot and throws in an actual kiss. I am all for plot interpretation and when I watched the Musical I felt Dennis wasn't really like hey i'm gay but more man-love/bro-love/BFF was what the shutting down of the Bourbon Room was about. Either way I still preferred the Musical over the Movie, just have to go in with an open mind that certain characters were made and some were taken out just to give some actors more plot lines.
I have watched both and loved both the stage play is great on its own, however the changes made for the movie have made it open up to a whole new audience and was the right decision.
Ive also watched both and I like the stage show better.
You know what bugged me the most? The fact that the took Sherrie from a (real) location of Paola, KS, a very small town in Kansas, and had her from Tulsa, OK. It may not seem like a big deal but I always viewed it as a)kind of a dig at Kansas (the band) and resting on the hopes and dreams of hundreds of small town kids. Tulsa, while no New York, LA, or Chicago, IS a city. I also didn't care for the movie killing her parents and replacing it with a talked about, but never seen, supportive grandmother. That took all the poignancy out of Sister Christian.
Also a point of correction, the stage show, Drew and Sherrie never hooked up until the end. They had one disastrous first date, Drew makes the "friends" comment and that's that. Sherrie wasn't some kind of cheating whore in the stage show for sleeping with Stacee, she was just...a real person.
Overall I was dissapointed by the film. The changes were a big part of that, but it seems like Shankman forced in his own agenda (Christians as the villains again?) which bothered me.. The misinterpertation of Can't Fight This Feeling (yes there is a gay subtext but it's also about bromance and a connection of working closely, and friendship. To take out the Fogmaster and replace it with an actual kiss...again just seemed out of place to me). Hough and Boneta had no chemistry.
There is a way to change the medium and keep the same book, story, etc (classic examples, Oklahoma! Hello Dolly, Fiddler, and modern examples of Phantom [which I wasn't a fan of the movie version but it wasn't POTOINO] or Sweeney Todd).
Now that said, Tom Cruise was AMAZING! I don't ever want to see Rock of ages again, but I would like to see a Stacee Jaxx movie.
Stage performances are always entertaining. There are a lot of adaptations being done in the case of stage performance. Adaptation of a stage performance means the method of recreating an idea from a famous play or book. It is the method that provides the adapter maximum freedom to express his own ideas through the play. According to Brad mill's definition, this types of plays will not be faithful to the original works. We can see a lot of such attempts in the world of performing art. For details, read this link, http://www.courseworkwriters.com/blog/adaptation-for-stage-performance/#more-470
It is easiest and most effective to make moving your body a habit.
While the weight can disappear, the burden of long-term
health risks looming ahead can be a weight that will never go away.
Just as importantly, Tru - Sculpt Body Shaping is safe, largely painless,
can be performed on-site at reputable medical spas, and requires no anesthesia.
It's awesome to pay a visit this web page and reading the views of all colleagues concerning this piece of writing, while I am also eager of getting experience.
great publish, very informative. I wonder why the opposite experts of this sector do not understand this.
You must continue your writing. I'm confident, you have a huge readers' base already!
The researchers concluded that tooth brushing is a good health
habit that could play a role in preventing obesity. After one week, the group which
took green tea extracts loss urge for food and reduced their consumption by 60 percent.
You can use body measurement and set goals
based on that.
I every time spent my half an hour to read this weblog's posts
every day along with a cup of coffee.
This is very interesting, You're a very skilled blogger.
I've jouned your rss eed and look forward too seeking more of your magnificent post.
Also, I have shared your web site in my social networks!
Hi, I think your website might be having browser compatibility issues.
When I look aat your blog in Opera, it looks fine but when opening in Internet Explorer, it has
some overlapping. I just wanted tto give you a quick heads
up! Other then that, excellent blog!
If some one wishers expert view concerning blogging andd site-building after that i recommend him/her to pay a visit this
blog, Keep upp tthe nice job.
Hello, this weekend is noce in support of me, for the reason that this
moment i am reading this great educational piece of writing here at my home.
You need to be a part of a contest for one of the greatest websites on the web.
I most certainly will highly recommend this site!
These are genuinely fantastic ideas in about blogging.
You hasve touched slme nice things here.
Any way keep up wrinting.
Heya i'm for the first time here. I came across this board and I find
It really useful & it helped me out much. I hope to
give something back and help others like you helped me.
Why viewers still use to read news papers when in this technological world the whole
thing is accessible on net?
I'm not sure where you're getting your info, but good topic.
I needs to sped some tme learning much more or understanding more.
Thanks for magnificent info I was looking for this information ffor my mission.
Нeya i am for the pгimary timme here. I came across this board
and I find It truly useful & it helped me out a lot. Ι hope to give something baсk and aid others like you aised mе.
I am not surе where you're gеtting your info, however grеat topic.
I needs to spend somе time learning more or figuring out more.
Thanks for excellent info I used to be on the lookout for this info
for my mission.
еаch time i used to read smaller posts that аlso сlear their motive, and that is aleo happening with this рiece of writing which I am reading at his
time.
Its not my first time to go to see this site, i am browsing
this site dailly and obtain fastidious facts from here all the time.
Next »