This was really quite fun! I wasn’t expecting “Hip Hop Rap Opera” to be my thing, but it was very good. I’m curious about the experience of seeing it as a play.
I think I’ll need to expand my hebrew playlists beyond indie pop now.
Thoughts from discussion with the Amit Ulman (director, Joe) and Omer Mor (musical director, unnamed musician):
• Interesting that it started out as a song, which became a 5-person play, which became the film
• Predates Hamilton by several years!
• Amit said that it was hard to create a sense of a city in Israel for the cinematic version: “you have to find places in Israel that don’t look like Israel.” This kind of raises the question—what does “city” mean here? Obviously there is allusion to the crime noirs of America, and so the setting feels similar to that. But why couldn’t it be set in Tel Aviv? What does it mean to be “a city” for this story?
• Wild that nearly all the music, aside from the guitar, is non-diegetic
• “Why were you drawn to the noir genre?” “I wanted to play a detective” perfect, no notes
• “The city is a character—specifically, the city is the villain. Even when he cracks the case, Joe is losing to the corrupt city.”
This was really quite fun! I wasn’t expecting “Hip Hop Rap Opera” to be my thing, but it was very good. I’m curious about the experience of seeing it as a play.
I think I’ll need to expand my hebrew playlists beyond indie pop now.
Thoughts from discussion with the Amit Ulman (director, Joe) and Omer Mor (musical director, unnamed musician):
• Interesting that it started out as a song, which became a 5-person play, which became the film
• Predates Hamilton by several years!
• Amit said that it was hard to create a sense of a city in Israel for the cinematic version: “you have to find places in Israel that don’t look like Israel.” This kind of raises the question—what does “city” mean here? Obviously there is allusion to the crime noirs of America, and so the setting feels similar to that. But why couldn’t it be set in Tel Aviv? What does it mean to be “a city” for this story?
• Wild that nearly all the music, aside from the guitar, is non-diegetic
• “Why were you drawn to the noir genre?” “I wanted to play a detective” perfect, no notes
• “The city is a character—specifically, the city is the villain. Even when he cracks the case, Joe is losing to the corrupt city.”
