In Regard to Monsieur Butler....

     I know my family is part of a very very small minority in that we don't mind, even like, even, yeah... love Gerard Butler as the Phantom of the Opera. *ducks to avoid rogue tomatoes*  But please understand that by writing this post I'm not at all trying to make an effort to negate the brilliance of other performances.  I definitely make no pretensions to say he's the best of the best, or anything of the sort.  For me at least, choosing a favorite phantom is just the old apples and oranges routine all over again.  Every adaptation brings its own strengths and weaknesses to the table, and there are way too many intricacies in any given performance to pick just favorite.  But that's one of the many beauties to The Phantom of the Opera.  The entire outlook or perspective on the story can turn a complete 180 with the slightest change to the way one syllable is sung... delightfully changeable and complex.  *le sigh*


Some Phantom actors choose to play up the animal side of him, growling and howling on the roof scene when he's been "betrayed" by Christine, others work the insane angle, laughing and cackling at the chandelier fall all. the. way. down, still others emphasize the softer side of the depressed and lonely outsider that just wants somebody toohooo loooooovvve.... *ahem*  It's the combination and the interaction of these elements, along with a host of other details that add many layers to any given performance.

With all that in mind, I think Gerard Butler's performance deserves just as much unbiased analysis as the next actor's.  It's really easy to dismiss his performance as "horrific" and forget many of the really excellent points in it, and that's, well, just sad; because he does have a lot of really interesting, strong points I've not seen in any other performances.  I've also found a lot of interest in considering why he did go wrong where he did.  It wasn't perfect by any means, and that's... odd.

Let me 'splain...  No, there is too much.  Let me sum up.

I'm not going to get into all of the violent Butler hate out there.  Again, there's too much.  But generally speaking, I think it's fair to say that the overwhelmingly declared objection to his Phantom is that he wasn't a professional singer, he was awful, he fell flat, oh gosh look at that deformity (it's not even a deformity it looks like a bad sunburn, what happened there, ugh! he's so awful)...  But, for now, let's keep the deformity out of this.... that's a whole 'nother post.

     For the movie, Joel Shumacher and Andrew Lloyd Webber agreed during the early stages of development that the lead actors must sing their own parts.  No dubbing from other singers.  Shumacher also took issue with the fact that bringing in a professional theater cast would lead to the risk of alienating those uncultured swine movie-goers unfamiliar with "theater acting".  Theater acting is big and bold; it wouldn't be any substitute for the more subtle, intimate "film" acting that movies call for.  They wanted movie actors for movie roles.  Names like Kevin Spacey, John Travolta, Antonio Banderas, and even Meatloaf were thrown around (see Phans?  It could be much, much worse), but the rest is history.  Gerard Butler was chosen, and promptly threw himself into 10 months of vocal training to prepare for the role.  10 months...


     Boy, that elephant in the room is getting uncomfortable, no?  The flat notes.  Why on earth would the lead character in a prerecorded musical go flat?

     "'Why?' So simples, precious.  Rotten Butler! *gollum!!*  Should have gotten real Broadway singer instead of fiddling round with novices.  Stupid Shumachers! Stupid!!"

     Oh hi, it's you.. again.  Well... that's not exactly what I mean.  I'll concede, you do make a good point.  For such a renown musical, you would think they'd work as hard as possible to make sure every note is pristine.  Especially with the technology they had available to them to copy and paste good portions together.  Seems like it would be piece of cake, right?

     "Yeees precious!! Must be so tune-deaf, Butler, if they needs just give up after trying forever to get it perfects.  Failed, precious..."

     Maybe...  That's where things start getting a wee bit fishy for me.  It was around 2006, just a year or two after the "Phantom" movie was released, when my family and I went with a group to a recording studio for a tour.  It was a smaller, independently owned studio, but one of the most impressive things we took away from the tour was just how much fiddling they can do with a really, really rotten recording.  The tour guide grinned as he gave us a demonstration of what kind of tools studios have available to make anyone "sound like a million bucks" with ease.  The power of auto-tune is underestimated.  And with a production that hinges so heavily on everyone's voices sounding absolutely perfect, I don't doubt for an instant it was readily available to the Phantom team, and would have provided an easy fix for such a seemingly huge problem.  So, logically, the only conclusion I can come to is that the flat notes were actually...well... intentional.

     "Intentional??  Andrew Lloyd Webber wouldn't do that to us.  Webber understands good music!"

     I agree!  Andrew Lloyd Webber knows good music.  And I know this sounds completely anti-Webber, but if they could have fixed any of the issues, and they obviously didn't, then the only reasonable conclusion we can come to is that the final cut was exactly what the "powers that be" wanted, flat notes and all.  Now, why they wanted it?  That's something I've been puzzling over for some time... and I think the answer lies in a comparison of the two male protagonists in the film:

Mr. Perfect.  (now he's on a horse)

     Patrick Wilson, who plays Raoul, is a professional singer.  His voice is smooth, silky, and sophisticated.  Giving just a moment to listen to his performance shows an absolutely flawless gentleman of a voice, much like the character he plays.  Raoul is the image of cool refinement, and like many of the arguments against him declare, he's not the wild, uber-passionate, romantic lover that the Phantom makes himself out to be.  He's not dangerous, he's not rough around the edges, he's shiny and pristine like a polished pearl.  His voice reflects that. (and it's gorrrgeous, precious)

     Gerard Butler, on the other hand, as we all know, is not a professional singer.  His voice is rough, gritty, and imperfect.  As Andrew Lloyd Webber said:

"We needed somebody who has a bit of rock and roll sensibility in him.  He's got to be a bit rough, a bit dangerous; not a conventional singer.  Christine is attracted to the Phantom because he's the right side of danger."

Mr. Not-so-perfect.  (no horse either. tsk.)

The conventional belief is that the Phantom's control over Christine stems from the near inhuman perfection and beauty of his voice.  But I think it's safe to say the Phantom would not have had any professional voice training; it wouldn't have been perfect.  His power over her, rather, comes from the unpolished, raw, artistic emotion that oozes out of him when he sings, and think that's what he teaches Christine to use in her own music.  He teaches her that good art isn't encumbered or constrained by convention, but driven by passion and instinct.  Well done art is wild, natural, and raw.  And though, to date, it's been an extremely unpopular one, I'm tempted to think that's the very statement the creators were making in leaving the imperfections intact.  It's the savage passion not the perfection, that makes his voice so bewitching to Christine.  (plus a little diabolical jedi mind trickery to boot)

At least that's how I see it.  The differences not only draw a dark line of contrast between the two men, but end up making a statement about the nature of art itself.  One that's definitely not seen as strongly in more polished stage versions.

That said, ultimately, I believe Gerard Butler pulled off what the creators set out for him to do.  His acting was fraught with the subtleties that film acting requires, the animal was plain to see, and even if they were touched up a bit, his falsetto notes are absolutely beautiful.  I'm not usually emotional during movies (with a few exceptions), but his moment during the roof scene always manages to blow me away.  The close, intimate point of view the film medium provides, paired with the wildly contrasting personas of the Phantom and Raoul, seen by the differences in "polish", really make for something vastly different from the stage version.  The film is an entirely different creature, and the same can be said for its cast.  And though I do love other casts and their renditions, I think this cast, Gerard Butler included, will always have a special place "inside my mind".