September 26, 2009 – WE SAW FAME!!! AND WE LOVED IT!!! From beginning to end, it was fast-paced and held our attention, and the dancing was awesome! We think audiences will love it. The only complaint we had was that we didn’t get to see a lot more of Paul! But to be fair, we would have said that even if he was on-screen for 94% of the movie 
***SPOILER ALERT!!!*** If you haven’t seen the movie yet, STOP READING NOW!!
Paul played Kevin Barrett, an aspiring ballet dancer from Iowa. We’ll have to watch it again to be sure, but we think Paul and Bebe Neuwirth had the first real dialogue in the whole film. She basically insulted him during the audition scene, telling him he might be going back to Iowa sooner than he thinks. But he (obviously!) got into the school, and we get to follow his four years.
Kevin struggles in an early dance class, and is shown up by another dancer who does it perfectly. Again, Bebe criticizes him in front of the whole class, and Kherington Payne’s character Alice smirks at him. That scene sets up the juxtaposition between their characters that continues throughout the film (more on that later!).
We don’t quite remember the order of things, but let us just tell you about a few of Paul’s smaller scenes, and then we’ll get to the BIG stuff: Kevin can be seen dancing in his awesome red jeans with Joy in the cafeteria scene, which we LOVED! We wish our school was like that! We also see Kevin in the audience at Naturi’s big “coming out” singing scene at the club, where her dad freaks out. Kevin also opens the Halloween scene–the camera follows him as he enters the party, and there is no other word to describe how he looks in that scene: FIERCE!! Seriously, whoever did his costume and makeup deserve an Oscar. He looks incredible!
Kevin is also in two other scenes with Joy and Paul Iacono’s Neil. In one, they’re in an art class (Paul looks so cute with paint all over him!) talking about one of Neil’s hair-brained ideas for a film. In another scene, they’re in a park at night, shooting a scene for one of Neil’s student films.
Kevin also has another moving scene in dance class. He has some horrendous blond highlights…but we all make mistakes with our hair in high school! haha! The kids are going around a circle, and each one gets a chance to dance around in the center and show off. Kevin gets out there to dance and looks like he’s having fun, but some other students come out and steal his thunder, and the teacher lets them. Kevin just quietly slinks back to his place. The look on his face was devastating, and effective: he doesn’t want everyone to see that he’s disappointed, but he can’t quite hide the embarrassment. It’s how anybody would feel in that situation, and Paul nailed it. We don’t know about everybody else, but we just wanted to give him a big hug.
Ok, now for the big scenes that really develop his character. Let us just start by saying that Paul shows, by far, the most emotional depth of any of the actors. Collins Pennie had some emotionally raw scenes, but it played out like the stereotypical “angry black man” character in so many movies, so it doesn’t really hit the viewer on a gut level because we’ve seen it all before. Collins did an AMAZING job with the material, but it was just written kinda blah. And Paul Iacono could have had a really emotional scene when he finds out he got screwed out of his dad’s savings, but for some reason they just had him stare blankly at the empty room and later make a joke about paying his dad back til he’s 30. But that’s not Paul Iacono’s fault-he’s an awesome actor too, and so funny…it’s just bad writing!
Paul McGill, however, is able to show the heart-wrenching devastation of finding out that your lifelong dreams aren’t going to work out, and that, of course, is what the movie FAME is supposed to be all about! We’ve all seen what it looks like to find success–that’s a Hollywood staple. But FAME exists to show us what it looks like to fail, too. And even though they didn’t give him a whole lot of screen time to do it in, that crucial message in the movie rode solely on the shoulders of our very own Paul McGill! Other than Walter Perez’s character, who we never really know whether he’s going to make it, it seems like all the other characters are going on to have success in the arts. Kevin is the only character who we get to follow as he fails to realize his dream. And since that is the experience of 99.999% of all people who dream of a life in the arts, we think it was the most important story line in the whole film. It actually reminds us a lot of the documentary Every Little Step (which you should rent if you haven’t seen it yet!). But wait, we’re getting ahead of ourselves! Let’s talk about the karaoke scene first.
Megan Mullally takes the kids to a karaoke bar, and Kevin gives up his time at the mic in order to let Megan sing instead. We were honestly kinda disappointed that we didn’t get to hear Paul sing, but we saw later that it was setting up an important character development scene for Kevin. When Megan rocks the house, all the kids are surprised she has it in her. At a coffee shop after the show, the kids ask her why she didn’t pursue a career on Broadway, and she tries to brush them off. But in a very dramatic closeup (with Paul’s eyes looking quite beautiful, we might add ) Kevin presses her for an answer. She explains that she just didn’t have what it takes, and got discouraged, and gave up. The camera goes back to Kevin, and just with the look in his eyes he is able to convey all the anxiety and fear and foreboding that his fate will be the same.
A few of us have had a few acting classes, so we know that there’s a big difference between acting on stage and on film. On stage, you have to be BIG, so that the people in the last row can see you. On film, the viewer is right up in your face, so you have to convey a lot more in much smaller ways. A lot of actors can’t make that transition, but Paul did a brilliant job. His character wasn’t written with any big monologues to explain his feelings…he just has to convey it in his eyes and the way he moves. And he’s amazing!
Kevin’s biggest scene of all is when Bebe sits him down to tell him, straight up, that he doesn’t have what it takes. Kevin’s first reaction is very sad, because he’s clearly grasping for straws: “But I work harder than anybody else.” But, again, most of his anguish is conveyed through his eyes. The scene cuts back and forth from Kevin and Bebe in one room, to Alice and a bunch of dancers in another room. The dancers are totally kicking ass, dancing to Sam Sparro’s Black and Gold (we love that song!), while Kevin is having his dreams torn apart. The juxtaposition makes you think back to that first dance class, when Alice smirks at Kevin because she did it perfectly and he didn’t. In this scene, they close the story line: Alice is going to make it, and Kevin is not.
The scene then cuts to the subway, with Kevin moping along behind three of the girls who are happily talking about Sesame Street. Kevin looks like death, and he clearly doesn’t care. He looks like he’s about to collapse in tears. His friends are not paying attention to him as he slowly walks toward the rails. A subway train starts coming fast, with Kevin’s toes right up next to the gap. It wasn’t until the guy sitting right next to us in the theater said “oh no” that the tears started flowing for us! Just as the train arrives, Kay looks up and, in slow-motion, screams “KEVIN!” The train whooshes past, and for a few agonizing seconds we’re left to wonder whether he did it or not. Then we see Kevin in a heap on the floor, surrounded by the girls comforting him. There wasn’t a dry eye among us at that point!
Kevin’s next big scene comes as he’s in his apartment getting dressed for graduation. Joy knocks on the door, and gives him a present. It’s a graduation robe, lined with Gucci’s green-red-green trademark design. As he’s trying it on excitedly, she looks around and notices all his stuff is gone. Kevin explains that it all went back to Iowa already. She is confused, and starts to object, but he stops her. He has resigned himself to his future: he is giving up his dreams of professional ballet. He is going back to Iowa to take over his mom’s dance studio. In a very sweet moment, he says something like “And I’m going to be the best damn dance teacher I can be.” She gives him a big hug, and while he stays strong, she is clearly sad for him. It really sinks in that he didn’t make it. Not everything is a happy ending. We were crying again, but it really should be a happy moment. So much of life involves disappointment, andKevin shows us the right way to handle it. He is ok with it, and we should be too.
Finally comes one of our favorite scenes in the whole film: the graduation scene! We always love big musical numbers, especially when they’re so emotional! We’ll skip most of it and focus on Kevin. We finally see him dancing like we know he can (well, we know PAUL can, anyway!). But the most moving part is when the camera closes in on his face. He is soaking up the glory of the moment, realizing this will probably be his last time ever performing on a stage. He is strong and stoical. And, probably because Kevin’s storyline is really the one that ties the whole film together, he is the last character we see as the camera rushes over his head to show the audience erupt in cheers.
It was such a beautiful moment, and Paul did SUCH AN AMAZING JOB!! Go see FAME now!!!
September 26, 2009
Categories: Uncategorized . . Author: paulmcgillfans . Comments: Leave a Comment
Check out this cute picture of Paul with the Tony Award. This won’t be the last time we see a picture like this, for sure!
Paul and Legacy met up at the red carpet for the UCLA Dance Marathon benefiting the Elizabeth Glazer Pediatric AIDS Foundation. What a worthy cause!
