{"id":13901,"date":"2011-11-14T01:31:30","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T09:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2011\/11\/14\/13901.html"},"modified":"2011-11-14T01:31:30","modified_gmt":"2011-11-14T09:31:30","slug":"whoopi-goldbergs-broadway-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2011\/11\/14\/whoopi-goldbergs-broadway-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Whoopi Goldberg’s Broadway show"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some years back, I bought or was given the VHS version of the 1985 HBO special broadcast of Whoopi Goldberg's one-woman Broadway show.<\/p>\n

I watched it a few times over the years; I found that it was a nicely cathartic balm for grief. Mary Anne and I watched it in 2001, for example, shortly after the scattering of Alex's ashes (hard to believe it's been over ten years), and the mix of laughter and tears helped.<\/p>\n

But it's been a while since I've set up my VCR. So a couple weeks ago I was looking at my shelf of useless VHS tapes—I've been waiting for the movies in question to come out on Blu-ray before replacing them (I'm astonished that Singin' in the Rain<\/cite> and The English Patient<\/cite> aren't yet out on Blu-ray, for example), and I decided that for a couple of the movies that are less popular, I might as well just order them on DVD, 'cause it's probably gonna be a long wait for the Blu-ray versions.<\/p>\n

And when I saw that Back to Broadway<\/a><\/cite>, a 2-DVD set of the 1985 show and the 20th anniversary sequel\/update, was available for five bucks from Amazon, it seemed like an obvious choice.<\/p>\n

Meant to watch it on the 11th, but didn't get home ’til very late. Saturday night, I needed something funny to watch, so I watched the 1985 show. (I've heard that the 20th anniversary show isn't as good.)<\/p>\n

I didn't find it as funny as I used to. There are still lines that made me laugh, but I think most of it is familiar enough to me by now to not have the same humor effect that it used to for me.<\/p>\n

But it still made me cry.<\/p>\n

This time through, I didn't love it as much as I used to. And there are a couple of bits that are potentially politically problematic. And I gather that the original HBO version was longer; I'm not sure what, if anything, got cut. (I don't remember the VHS version that<\/em> well.)<\/p>\n

But it's still really good, and worth watching.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some years back, I bought or was given the VHS version of the 1985 HBO special broadcast of Whoopi Goldberg’s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-movies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}