The singing Messiah returns to screens
This week, the 1973 classic “Jesus Christ Superstar” will be screened across Southern California in a brand-new digitally restored and remastered print of the film.
It’s coming to the MGN Five Star Cinema in Glendale on Sunday evening, Sept. 27. And to consecrate the event, beloved principal cast members will be on hand for a Q&A meet and greet, including Jesus himself (Ted Neeley), Pilate (Barry Dennen) and Annas (Kurt Yaghjian).
For die-hard fans of the rock opera, this current rebirth is no shocker. The movie — originally a Broadway show scored by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice — has been on a kind of never-ending tour since its inception, hitting all points on the globe as stage show, movie, documentary and beyond. (As of press time, one production is selling out arenas in the UK and Australia — featuring ex-Spice Girl Melanie C as Mary Magdalene.)
Still, for the man who played Jesus on the screen and has played him in countless productions around the world, the show’s endurance is a kind of on-going miracle. His on-again, off-again relationship with the role has lasted almost five decades now, with cult followers and passionate believers.
“We’ve recently been invited to go back to Italy,” explains affable “Superstar” star Ted Neeley, who sometimes jokingly refers to fans as Ted-Heads. “It just really touches their hearts, everywhere. In Italy, Sweden, Germany, Holland, the Hague, the audiences just love us. They come back for more, again and again, year after year.”
In one performance, Neeley is strapped to a cross and lifted by crane over thousands of audience members. Eat your heart out, David Lee Roth.
Of course, there have been countless representations of Jesus’ life in popular culture, but there’s something about “Jesus Christ Superstar” that stands apart.
For one, despite the ancient settings, it’s a peculiarly perfect rendering of its own decade, a Robert Stigwood-Norman Jewison production through and through.
The young people on the screen exist in a vortex of time, where long hair just is, and although there were no electric guitars in Jesus’ world so far as we know, if there had been, you just know they would sound like the ones in this movie.
Hopefully it’s not sacrilegious to say that it’s a weird flick, but it is. For one, it’s really truly an opera. No spoken lines. Not many other classics can support that claim.
So, what accounts for Superstar’s enduring influence? Neeley isn’t sure, but he thinks it could be the movie’s down-to-earth quality.
“It’s one of the first times that Jesus was shown to contemporary man as a human being. Six days of his life,” he said. “And we sang the songs and performed as if we were real people.”
In fact, “JCSS” wasn’t the first time Neeley imitated a king and a holy icon.
“In the mid-’60s, I was in a band called the Teddy Neeley Five and we did Elvis impersonations, among other things,” Neeley said.
The band, which had a deal on Capitol Records, was even featured on a Dragnet episode. “Well one day, we were playing a show at a club called the Trip on the Sunset Strip, and Elvis showed up to watch us. He wanted to see what it was all about and, well … he just loved it!”
Still, from Sunset Boulevard it would be a long, dusty road before Neeley would play the king of kings.
He originally auditioned for the role of Judas in the Broadway show, but when Ben Vereen scored it, Neeley stayed on as a Christ understudy. This put him in the spotlight for the L.A. stage show, originally at the Universal Amphitheatre. Later, while handling the lead in another outsized rock opera, “Tommy,” director Norman Jewison anointed him.
“It was wonderful,” Neeley recalls. “He flew us to Israel to shoot it. Most of us were really completely unknowns. He took a big chance and absolutely nobody thought it was gonna work.”
In truth, Neeley was one of several singers considered — Mickey Dolenz and David Cassidy were also in the running as was Ian Gillan who sang on the album, but turned down the role to tour with Deep Purple.
Ultimately, Neeley got the gig, and his piercingly intense G above high C is forever embedded in our culture as an unforgettable psychedelic ’70s alarm. No wonder, then, that Quentin Tarantino cast him in “Django Unchained.” His “Tracker’s Chant” is on the soundtrack.
“So many good things came of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’” says Neeley, who met his wife in Israel during the making of the film — she’s one of the dancers. “Everywhere I go, people have been moved by the movie … at this point, several generations. And every once in awhile, someone will come up to me and say, ‘You gave me faith.’”
Screenings:
Sunday, Sept. 27
MGN Five Star Cinema, Glendale
4 p.m. VIP / 6 p.m. film
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Monday, Sept. 28
Aero Theatre, Santa Monica
5 p.m. VIP / 7:30 p.m. film
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Wednesday, Sept. 30
Agoura Hills Stadium 8, Agoura Hills
7 p.m.
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Friday, Oct. 2
Fremont Theater, San Luis Obispo
For information and tour dates for the 2015 “JCS Screening Tour,” see tedneeley.com.
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DANIEL WEIZMANN is a frequent contributor to Marquee.