'The Music of Regret' is a mini-musical in three acts. The film is inspired by three distinct periods of Laurie Simmon’s photographic work. Vintage childcraft puppets, ventriloquist dummies and walking objects enact three tales of ambition, disappointment, love and regret.
Act One, entitled “the Green Tie”, takes the form of a puppet show/radio play and tells the tale of a suburban tragedy where one simple decision has the power to cascade through many lives and wreak havoc on the fragile ecology of everyday life. The story is told in four scenes by several generations of two feuding families and is punctuated by a greek chorus singing a refrain about regret:
“would’a should’a could’a
wish you had but you didn’t
wish you were but you’re not”
The actors are 36 Childcraft rubber hand puppets from 1968, which Simmons has collected over the course of several years. The puppets were originally used as educational aids in schools, churches etc to portray the different characters that might comprise the “perfect” neighborhood; Multi-cultural representations of businessmen, housewives, teens, policemen, nurses and doctors have been repainted in Simmons studio to give them the patina of porcelain dolls.
Act 1 culminates in a sad duet called “Basements” which is sung by the two kindly grandfather characters, lifelong friends and neighbors, who sing about a life where in the face of tragedy one must turn towards friendship and the banal routines of life to survive.
Act 2 titled the” Music of Regret” is based on a 1994 photograph by the same name. The scene opens to reveal a girl ventriloquist dummy surrounded by 5 boy dummy suitors. They circle around her admiringly and as the suitors move slowly around the girl dummy she becomes a real woman. The circling boys come to a stop five times and each time the woman is face to face with one of her suitors. She engages each dummy in conversation and a musical duet that examines regret and it’s many guises in love. Act 2 contains 4 songs composed by Michael Rohatyn with lyrics by Laurie Simmons The scenes include a rhumba in a romantic café where the woman sings a song about the inability to recognize true love except in hindsight.. “Excellent Moon” (sung partly in Hawaiian) is set in a tropical paradise and speaks about the fleeting and false nature of perfect love. “Love Grown Cold” takes place in a gentle snowfall where a boy and a girl struggle to reclaim a time when the pleasure of each other’s company and the first bloom of love kept them warm. The rain song addresses the inherent inadequacy of the love connection and the very human inability to speak of the same thoughts and needs at the same time. Act 2 takes it’s structure from the American musical which relies on melody and lyric to move the narrative forward. The duets in act 2 are sung by Adan Guettel and Meryl Streep
Act two is a ventriloquist dummy reality TV dating show in which the dummies enact the sadomasochistic rituals of speed dating and sing about the failures of attachment and communication. Act three is an audition for an unspecified part in a Broadway shows in which giant objects with legs dance their encumbered hearts out for the privilege Of being noticed. Incorporating narrative, music and film, the piece lies on the boundaries between narrative cinema, puppetry, musical theater and dance.
The Music Of Regret
Director Laurie Simmons
Original Music Michael Rohatyn
Cinematography (35m) Ed Lachman
Producers Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and Donald Rosenfeld
Lyrics Laurie Simmons
Story Laurie Simmons and Matthew Weinstein
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