I had all these brilliant plans to watch the film version of Kander & Ebbs' musical KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN last night. I'm a big fan of Raul Julia, and I was very excited to see what he would do with the role of Valentin, the Latin American dissident who has been arrested and put in a cell with the transgender Molina, played by William Hurt.
The film is actually very hard to find online. No streaming service carries it. But finally I discovered it had been downloaded to YouTube, and I settled in to watch the story unfold.
And then about five minutes in this little bell started sounding inside me. Do I have this right? I scoffed at the thought. There's no way Hollywood would take a Tony Award-winning musical and turn into a straight drama, is there? (I mean, what planet am I living on. Of course Hollywood would do that.)
And then about five minutes later I thought, Have I ever heard William Hurt sing? I don't think I have, nor heard tell of it.
So then I paused the film and discovered actually, this film is not only not a musical, it's not based on the musical, but rather on the same source text the musical would look to years later. (Yeah, the musical came later.)
I did still get to see the musical, but pretty much the worst possible version possible.
All of which is to say I had pretty much given hope of having something for today. But then in the shower something about the story hit me that I think is worth mentioning. Until very recently and still almost never, the queer character is the supporting role. They're the best friend. Cue them up for something sassy and wise or, as I wrote about GREATEST SHOWMAN, to bless/redeem a straight character.
The film version of KISS opens on Molina, the transgender woman in jail for having sex with a minor, telling a story to Julia's Valentin. Valentin has his back to us for a good long time, and as it turns out Molina is telling a story to try and help him, all of which (plus the fact that this is goddamn Raul Julia) suggests that he is the protagonist of the story.
The musical version goes exactly the other way. We start on Valentin, not Molina, and the bigger story line of the piece is all about Molina being pushed by the prison to draw information out of Valentin in exchange for the chance to see his dying mother, while Molina is slowly falling in love with Valentin, all while he's haunted by visions of the Spider Woman whose kiss kills.
He is the character with the biggest stakes, the biggest struggle, the greatest degree of vulnerability and whose point of view informs absolutely everything. It is clearly his story.
That's not to say it had to be. I don't know how the film plays out, but there is definitely a version of this story that is about Valentin, and that plays into the queer supportive friend trope so that Molina's betrayal can be that much more surprising.
But by choosing to turn the camera away from the familiar protagonist and focus instead on the back-up singer, Kander and Ebb and book writer Terrence McNally create a radically different story, one much more emotionally tender and also painful.
Whether conceiving a pilot or considering a pitch for an episode, it's a helpful exercise to stop and reimagine things from different characters' points of view. You will absolutely find new veins of story to mine for your ensemble. But you may also find that the most interesting or emotional story to tell, the character who should be at the center is not the one who seems natural or hungry for the spotlight, but the one standing quietly off to the side, always relegated to the supporting role.
