A musical about the last few weeks of Jesus Christ’s life before being crucified.
Blaine: “Jesus Christ Superstar” is based on a rock opera from 1970 by Tim Rice. Tim Rice was living life creating music, writing songs and loving rock ’n’ roll. He met Andrew Lloyd Webber, who had a passion for writing theater plays. They thought about collaborating together and combine their interests into one. No one had ever put rock into the theater and Tim was interested in creating something different. They thought about doing something religious and Tim Rice was always fascinated with Jesus Christ from Judas point of view.
They originally wanted to sell it as a show, but no one was interested, so they did a recording hoping that could help them get the show they wanted. They had to do a single first and if it did well enough they could do an album. They wrote the song “Jesus Christ Superstar” and because the record studio liked it Tim and Andrew were able to make an album called “Jesus Christ Superstar”. Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber found people with great singing voices to sing the songs they had written. Shortly after that “Jesus Christ Superstar” became a rock opera. Filmmaker Norman Jewison (Fiddler on the Roof) listened to the album and wanted to make it into a film.
Tim Rice was asked to do a screenplay for the movie and he was in, even though there was already a story and songs. Tim would just have to add more stuff to it like people and Roman armies. Problem was it was going to cost too much so they replaced Tim Rice with Melvyn Bragg and director Norman Jewison pitched in as well. Norman didn’t want Tim Rice to be kicked out of the project, but Tim felt there was nothing they could have done that would have affected Norman’s vision. Tim liked Norman because he was a nice guy and he trusted him enough to do whatever in order to turn his Broadway play into a movie.
They wanted to shoot “Jesus Christ Superstar” in Israel because the story takes place there. While visiting Israel, Norman Jewison and his co-writer Melvyn Bragg had an idea that the movie should start off with the cast arriving to Israel on a bus with all these props. The bus was Ted Neeley’s (Jesus Christ) from his rock and roll tour and Norman Jewison had to make it look authentic compared to what it looked like before with all the rock and roll stuff in it.
It was interesting for Norman Jewison to make a movie where the actors are singing through the entire movie instead of having dialog and having an extraordinary cast of dancers and singers. What was exciting for Norman was the audience had no idea of what they were going to see. Ted Neeley was already apart of the Broadway show playing Jesus Christ and when it came to the movie they wanted him because he looked like Jesus and had a beautiful voice. It was very clear to them that he was the only person right for the job and there was no one else who could compete with him.
They also had Yvonne Elliman, who plays Mary Magdalene and had sung for the album, be apart of the film as well. One night Andrew Lloyd Webber went down to a club and the warm-up act in it was a girl named Yvonne Elliman and she was fantastic. Andrew phoned Tim Rice with excitement telling him about Yvonne and how she is perfect for Mary Magdalene. They had Yvonne sing this song they had written and she sung it beautifully. Yvonne's agent informed Tim and Andrew that if they wanted her to sing on a record they were going to have to pay her 100 pounds and so that’s what they did even though they didn’t have a lot of money at the time. Carl Anderson wanted to know why Norman wanted to cast him as Judas Iscariot and the reason why was because he had talent. Carl respected that and was in after that.
My rating on “Jesus Christ Superstar” is five out of five stars.
