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swingchickiei just finished watching "life after tomorrow", the documentary about all the girls who were in "annie" over the years. if you're a theatre geek at all... especially if, like me, you were obsessed with the show as a kid... you should definitely add it to your netflix list. it's an interesting look at what it was like to be a little girl in the show and suddently plunge into fame, with all the crud that comes along with it.
i had an interesting connection to "annie" as a kid. like i said, i was completely geeked out on the show when i was 8 or 9 years old, like all the other girls in my class. we had all the songs memorized, and would belt them out at the top of our lungs whenever we got the chance -- lunchtime, recess, waiting for the bus... i'd choreograph the entire show in my bedroom and perform in front of the mirror. then came the hoopla surrounding the national search for who would play annie in the movie version... and of all the people in the world, aileen quinn, who was a school friend of mine, won the lead. to say i was jealous was an understatement... even though she was a professional actress (and had done annie on broadway), and i clammed up at the one audition my mom took me to at that age (for the bucks county playhouse), i still so desperately wanted that to be me. all over the country, little girls were heartbroken because they had dreams of being annie someday... but i had it right there in front of me, because the girl who got the part was someone who starred with me in all of our grade school shows. a month or so later when we had our big school talent show, they had aileen get up on stage in a red dress and sing "tomorrow", and the place went wild... i remember TV crews being there to tape the whole thing, and all the parents' camera flashes firing. she was the pride of our school, and a national star, and i was still singing along to the record in my bedroom.
(no, i'm not obsessed over it, i don't have an annie voodoo doll hidden under my bed or anything. i just look back at that time and feel a teeny bit sad, because i loved to perform so much but was soooo shy to do it anywhere other than at school or in the safety of my room.)
cut to several years later, in high school -- of all things, 2 of my good friends had also been in annie on broadway when they were younger. (my school, which was K to 12, was about an hour from new york... and the school was very cool with girls taking half or whole days off to audition or perform. a couple of the girls had pretty good acting careers, one of them going on to be relatively famous in the early 90s.) so as i watched this documentary, i got to see the two of them all grown up, talking about their time in the show. it was wild. you forget just how many famous actresses got their start in "annie" -- sarah jessica parker, molly ringwald, danielle brisebois, dara brown (MSNBC anchor), allison smith... even wilder was seeing some of these women and thinking "she looks familiar", and realizing that i recognized them from the back of my broadway cast album or the still photos in my program from when the national tour came to philly. these women are all around my age, and they're moms and career women and such now.
so, it was like a whole flashback to my childhood, with all the awkwardness and issues that i had back then. whee! but definitely fun to watch. so, rent it. :)
i had an interesting connection to "annie" as a kid. like i said, i was completely geeked out on the show when i was 8 or 9 years old, like all the other girls in my class. we had all the songs memorized, and would belt them out at the top of our lungs whenever we got the chance -- lunchtime, recess, waiting for the bus... i'd choreograph the entire show in my bedroom and perform in front of the mirror. then came the hoopla surrounding the national search for who would play annie in the movie version... and of all the people in the world, aileen quinn, who was a school friend of mine, won the lead. to say i was jealous was an understatement... even though she was a professional actress (and had done annie on broadway), and i clammed up at the one audition my mom took me to at that age (for the bucks county playhouse), i still so desperately wanted that to be me. all over the country, little girls were heartbroken because they had dreams of being annie someday... but i had it right there in front of me, because the girl who got the part was someone who starred with me in all of our grade school shows. a month or so later when we had our big school talent show, they had aileen get up on stage in a red dress and sing "tomorrow", and the place went wild... i remember TV crews being there to tape the whole thing, and all the parents' camera flashes firing. she was the pride of our school, and a national star, and i was still singing along to the record in my bedroom.
(no, i'm not obsessed over it, i don't have an annie voodoo doll hidden under my bed or anything. i just look back at that time and feel a teeny bit sad, because i loved to perform so much but was soooo shy to do it anywhere other than at school or in the safety of my room.)
cut to several years later, in high school -- of all things, 2 of my good friends had also been in annie on broadway when they were younger. (my school, which was K to 12, was about an hour from new york... and the school was very cool with girls taking half or whole days off to audition or perform. a couple of the girls had pretty good acting careers, one of them going on to be relatively famous in the early 90s.) so as i watched this documentary, i got to see the two of them all grown up, talking about their time in the show. it was wild. you forget just how many famous actresses got their start in "annie" -- sarah jessica parker, molly ringwald, danielle brisebois, dara brown (MSNBC anchor), allison smith... even wilder was seeing some of these women and thinking "she looks familiar", and realizing that i recognized them from the back of my broadway cast album or the still photos in my program from when the national tour came to philly. these women are all around my age, and they're moms and career women and such now.
so, it was like a whole flashback to my childhood, with all the awkwardness and issues that i had back then. whee! but definitely fun to watch. so, rent it. :)
